Li Shuangyan moved.
To the naked eye of the ordinary disciples guarding the perimeter, she simply ceased to exist. She utilized the Physique Traversing Step, a supreme movement technique of the Nine Saint Demon Gate derived from the observations of the Virtuous Paragon himself. It was a technique that folded the distance between two points using pure physical explosive power and wind affinity.
A trail of afterimages—white phantoms of her silhouette—lingered in the air, marking a path of destruction. Her sword, the Autumn Water Cold Blade, became a streak of silver moonlight aiming directly for Ling Feng's throat.
It was a strike meant to humiliate. Fast enough to terrify, precise enough to stop a millimeter from the skin. She wanted to see fear in his eyes. She wanted to see him flinch.
But Ling Feng didn't see a blur.
Inside his Inner Void, suspended within the dark, nebulous cosmos of his Dantian, the Green Chaos Emerald began to spin.
It didn't hum with the melodic Dao chants of this universe. It revved. It sounded like a high-performance engine redlining, a mechanical roar of alien power.
[Chaos Control: Time Dilation]
The world instantly plunged into grayscale. The roaring wind of Li Shuangyan's approach slowed to a dull drone. Ling Feng watched the dust motes in the air suspend in animation. He watched the terrifying speed of the genius beauty reduce to a crawl, like a video buffered at 0.25x speed.
He studied her form as she approached.
'Good posture,' Ling Feng noted internally, tilting his head as he watched the blade inch toward his jugular. 'Elbow tucked in, center of gravity low. Very textbook. But that's the problem with you Xianxia types. You rely too much on the Dao Laws to guide your blade. You move in straight lines because the formations tell you to.'
He felt a strange, electric itch under his skin. It wasn't fear. It was the thrill of the Primal Chaos Genesis Physique waking up. This alien body, which fed on emotions and willpower, was purring at the prospect of conflict.
Just as the cold steel of her blade was about to kiss the skin of his neck, Ling Feng didn't dodge. He didn't duck.
He glitched.
[Chaos Control: Blink]
There was no burst of wind, no displacement of air that signaled a teleportation technique. One millisecond, his atomic structure was in front of her sword. The next, he was simply... gone.
WHIFF.
Li Shuangyan's blade pierced empty air. The momentum of her strike, meeting zero resistance, threw her balance off by a fraction of an inch. Her eyes widened, the pupils contracting in shock. Her spiritual sense, which covered the entire hall, had felt nothing. No fluctuation in space, no burning of blood energy. He had simply vanished from the sensory map.
"Missed me."
The whisper came from directly behind her right ear. It was intimate, teasing, and terrifyingly close.
A shiver, primal and electric, shot down Li Shuangyan's spine. She spun around, her combat instincts screaming that a predator was inside her guard.
"Impudent!"
She didn't hesitate. She didn't try to turn and slash. Instead, she detonated her aura.
BOOM!
A shockwave of pure, white Royal Noble aura exploded outward from her body in a sphere of destruction. It was a defensive burst meant to shatter the bones of anyone foolish enough to get into close quarters with a Prime Saint aptitude possessor. The stone floor around her pulverized into dust.
Ling Feng didn't retreat.
The Primal Chaos Genesis Physique activated.
[Trait: Hydro-State]
As the shockwave hit him, Ling Feng's body didn't break. It rippled. Like water crashing against a rock, or rather, like the creature Chaos 0, his physical form lost its rigidity. The crushing force of her aura passed through him, his body undulating and reforming instantly.
He stepped through the shockwave as if it were a gentle breeze.
Before Li Shuangyan could recover from her burst, Ling Feng's arm snaked out, wrapping securely around her waist. He pulled her flush against him.
"Gotcha," he laughed, the sound vibrating against her chest.
For a second, the entire hall froze. The Elders' jaws were on the floor. The Prime Disciple... hugged? By a rogue?
"Let go!" Li Shuangyan shrieked, her face flushing a brilliant, furious crimson. It was a mix of humiliation and a strange, foreign panic.
She channeled the raw strength of her physique. Her body became harder than Divine Steel, heavier than a falling mountain. She clamped her hand onto his forearm, intending to crush his bones into powder.
But as she squeezed, his arm felt like liquid mercury—dense, heavy, but impossible to grasp. It molded around her fingers, slippery and undefined.
"Wow, you're seriously out for blood, aren't you?" Ling Feng grinned, his face inches from hers. He could smell the faint scent of snow lotuses on her.
"Die!"
Li Shuangyan's eyes flashed with silver light. She channeled her vast spirit energy into her sword arm, twisting her body with incredible flexibility. She performed the Heaven Severing Slash, a reverse-grip strike capable of slicing through the void itself.
The energy on the blade was so intense it created a vacuum, a black line of severed space trailing the edge.
Ling Feng's grin sharpened. 'Okay, that one might actually sting.'
He didn't tank it. He released her waist and pushed off the air itself.
He didn't walk backward. He slid. It looked as if the friction of the world had been turned off for him alone. He glided backward twenty feet in a smooth, frictionless motion, his feet not lifting from the ground, looking for all the world like a glitching character model sliding across a map.
The tip of her sword slashed the air where his nose had been a microsecond prior, the wind pressure alone cutting a deep gouge into the pillar behind him.
"That's a beautiful sword you have there," Ling Feng said, dusting off his chest as he came to a halt. He looked genuinely impressed, not mocking. "Sharp. fast. But you're telegraphing your anger. You're fighting with your emotions, not your head."
And then a more amused smile curled his lips. "But isn't it a bit dangerous to use on your fiancé? Domestic violence isn't a joke, you know."
"Shut up!" Li Shuangyan shouted, losing her ice-cold composure for the first time in years.
This man was infuriating! This man... he wasn't fighting her. He was playing with her.
He was a stain on her pride, a riddle she couldn't solve, and a pest she couldn't swat.
She leaped into the air, her white robes fluttering like the wings of a swan.
But the shadow she cast was not a swan.
Behind her, the air grew heavy and dark. A massive phantom manifested—a terrifying, avian beast with nine heads, screeching silently into the void.
The Elders gasped.
"The Totem!"
"She's invoking the Nine-Headed Demon Bird! That's a Life Wheel technique!"
"Is she trying to kill him?! That's the Lunar Slash!"
The atmospheric pressure in the hall doubled, then tripled. The Demon King Lun Ri narrowed his eyes, his fingers drumming rhythmically on his armrest. He didn't intervene. He wanted to see.
Li Shuangyan hovered in the air, her eyes glowing with silver light. She raised her sword high. The phantom bird merged with the blade, creating a colossal projection of sword energy that looked like a falling moon.
"This will silence you!"
She swung down.
RUUUUUMBLE!
The attack was catastrophic. A massive wave of sword energy, shaped like a waxing moon and fifty feet wide, roared toward Ling Feng. It tore up the floor, shattered the remaining pillars, and carried enough force to level massive mountains.
The Elders watched with bated breath, shielding their eyes. 'He's finished! That's a move she reserves for life-and-death duels!'
Ling Feng stood his ground. The wind from the approaching attack whipped his gray robes violently, but his hair—that synthetic, stubborn black—remained perfectly styled.
He raised an eyebrow. 'Huh. Never saw that one in the webnovel. Must be pre-Li Qiye training,' he mused irreverently. 'Still. Seeing something like this is quite amazing.'
He raised his right hand. He didn't make a fist. He extended his index finger and thumb, forming a simple gun shape.
Inside his Inner Void, the Green Emerald dimmed, and the Red Chaos Emerald ignited like a supernova.
[Trait: Absolute Force] [Effect: 500% Energy Density // 50% Defense Ignore]
"Chaos..." Ling Feng murmured, his voice taking on a distorted, echoing quality that sounded like two voices speaking in unison.
Sparks of red electricity, thick and jagged, began to dance around his fingers. The air around his hand distorted, warping from the sheer mass of the energy gathering at his fingertip.
"...Spear."
He snapped his thumb down.
PWING.
It wasn't a roar. It was a sharp, high-pitched release of pressure.
A bolt of crimson energy, no thicker than a needle, shot from his fingertip. Compared to the massive, mountain-crushing Lunar Slash, it looked pathetic. A twig against a tidal wave.
But when they collided, physics wept.
There was no explosion. There was no stalemate.
The Chaos Spear didn't push the sword energy back; it pierced it. The crimson beam was so dense, so fundamentally "real" compared to the magical constructs of this world, that it treated the Lunar Slash like mist.
The red beam drilled straight through the center of the white crescent, shattering the Dao Laws that held the technique together.
CRACK-SHATTER.
The massive Lunar Slash disintegrated mid-air, dissolving into harmless motes of light that rained down like snow.
The Red Chaos Spear didn't slow down. It continued its trajectory, a streak of red doom aiming directly for Li Shuangyan's forehead.
Li Shuangyan froze mid-air. The lock-on was absolute. She felt the aura of death wash over her. It was cold, indifferent, and inevitable. She couldn't dodge. Her defensive artifacts wouldn't trigger in time.
'I'm going to die.'
The thought was clear, lucid.
But the beam stopped.
Just an inch from the smooth, jade-like skin of her forehead, the red energy froze. It sizzled, the heat from it curling her bangs slightly, before dissipating into a puff of red sparks that vanished into the ether.
Silence. absolute, deafening silence reigned in the Grand Hall.
Ling Feng stood there, one hand in his pocket, the other still holding the finger-gun pose, pointed directly at the stunned beauty hovering in the air.
"Bang," he whispered, a smirk playing on his lips. "You're dead."
Li Shuangyan dropped from the air, her legs giving out as her feet touched the ruined floor. She stumbled, catching herself on her sword. Her face was pale, her chest heaving.
She knew. The Elders knew. Lun Ri knew.
If he hadn't stopped, her head would be a canoe.
"You..." she whispered, her voice trembling. The arrogance, the pride, the icy demeanor—it had all been shattered by a finger gun.
The entire hall was deathly silent. The Elders were statues, their mouths agape. They had just witnessed a Life Wheel technique—one of the sect's strongest arts—getting dismantled by a finger snap.
Ling Feng walked up to her. The static electricity faded from his body, returning him to the appearance of a harmless mortal. He looked at the devastation around them—the cratered floor, the pulverized pillars—and shrugged.
"We're only sparring, right?" Ling Feng said, his tone shifting. The mocking edge was gone, replaced by a genuine, charming warmth. "I would never actually hurt you."
He stopped in front of her. Li Shuangyan flinched instinctively, expecting another attack, or perhaps mockery. But he didn't strike.
He reached out, his hand gentle, and tucked a stray strand of messy, sweat-dampened hair behind her ear. His fingers brushed her cheek—warm, calloused, and shockingly human.
"Plus," Ling Feng smiled, his eyes locking onto hers with an intensity that made her heart skip a beat. "It's hard to kiss you if you don't have a head."
Li Shuangyan stared at him. Really looked at him.
He was rude. He was dressed like a beggar. He spoke in riddles and strange tongues. But his power was undeniable. And in his eyes... there wasn't the scheming malice of the other Young Masters who sought her hand for her physique or her sect's backing. There was just a chaotic, unbridled appreciation. He looked at her not as a trophy, but as a challenge he had already enjoyed solving.
"I..." She looked away, biting her lip. Her heart was beating a rhythm she didn't recognize—a chaotic drum that matched the energy of the man in front of her.
The Elders were statues. Their worldviews had crumbled. A Provisional Palace cultivator... destroying a Life Wheel technique with a snap of his fingers? It was impossible. It was heresy.
And yet, reality refused to be argued with.
CLAP. CLAP. CLAP.
The slow, rhythmic sound of applause broke the trance.
Demon King Lun Ri stood up from his shadow-draped throne. His eyes were shining with a terrifying light—not of anger, but of discovery.
"Hahaha! Good! Good!" Lun Ri laughed, his voice booming through the hall. "Heroic! Truly heroic! The Cleansing Incense Ancient Sect has hidden a dragon in the shallows!"
Lun Ri was a wise ruler. He saw what the Elders missed. He saw the potential. This boy disregarded the Heavens. He disregarded the Dao. He was an anomaly. And in the world of cultivation, anomalies were often the ones who became Immortal Emperors.
"Yea, yea," Ling Feng waved his hand dismissively at the Demon King, not even turning around completely. "Save the speeches. We good? The deal is on?"
"The deal is on," Lun Ri confirmed, a smile gracing his scholarly face. "Li Shuangyan will accompany you. She will serve as your... protector."
"Protector? I don't need a babysitter," Ling Feng winked at Li Shuangyan, who was still recovering her composure. "But she'll be the sharpest sword under the Nine Worlds standing by my side. And the best looking one, too."
He leaned in close to Li Shuangyan again, dropping his voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"So pack your bags. We're going on a road trip. And by road trip, I mean we're going to flip the Mortal Emperor World upside down and shake the change out of its pockets."
Li Shuangyan looked at him, her cheeks still dusted with a faint pink. She sheathed her sword with a sharp click, regaining a shred of her icy dignity, though her eyes betrayed her inner turmoil.
"Shameless," she muttered, though there was no bite in it anymore.
"And proud of it," Ling Feng retorted with a radiant, blinding smile.