Bolin looked at the white fire, his eyes gleaming with a burning greed.
"That flame..." Bolin murmured, his gaze locked on Jin Hao's hand. "That is a Heaven Grade technique. And before that, you possessed an artifact that devoured an entire vault."
He looked back at Jin Hao's face. "Give me the artifact and the manual for that flame. Surrender them to me now and I promise you a quick death. Refuse and I will hand you over to the inquisitors and they will spend a month peeling your secrets from your flesh."
Jin Hao lunged forward, throwing his entire body weight behind a massive arc of the white gold fire.
Bolin scoffed. He raised a single hand. A shield of dense Qi solidified in the air before him.
The Celestial Fire Purging Palm slammed into the Golden Core shield.
BOOM!
A shockwave of heat and force exploded outward, shattering the windows of the nearby warehouses.
Jin Hao poured every ounce of his Qi into the attack, his teeth gritted, sweat pouring down his face. The white fire roared, trying to consume the golden shield.
And for a second, Bolin's eyes widened in shock. The white fire was actually eating into his Qi barrier, the sheer quality of the Heaven Grade technique bridging the massive gap in their cultivation realms.
The golden shield began to crack, the heat searing Bolin's face.
"What is this flame?!" Bolin shouted, taking a hasty step back, his composure finally breaking.
He channeled more power into his defense, struggling to hold the line against a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
Jin Hao let out a triumphant laugh. "I am a dragon!"
He pushed harder, the white fire blazing brighter.
"Elders! Attack!" Bolin roared, realizing he could not easily overpower the strange fire.
The twenty elders surrounding them moved as one. They unleashed a barrage of techniques… sword strikes, elemental blasts, binding formations… all converging on Jin Hao.
Jin Hao was forced to break his attack on Bolin. He spun, swinging his burning arm in a wide arc, creating a wall of white fire to intercept the incoming assault.
BOOM!
The explosion was deafening.
Jin Hao was thrown backward, crashing hard against the side of one of the decoy carriages. He coughed up a mouthful of blood, his vision swimming.
The Celestial Fire had protected him from the brunt of the damage, but the combined force of twenty experts had battered his internal organs.
He scrambled to his feet, panting heavily.
"Press the attack!" one of the elders shouted.
"Enough!" a voice thundered, echoing from the sky.
The air pressure multiplied tenfold. The very gravity in the alleyway seemed to crush downward. The twenty elders instantly dropped to their knees, gasping for breath.
Jin Hao was slammed face first into the cobblestones, his bones groaning under the impossible weight.
Bolin immediately bowed low, his face pale with reverence. "Ancestor!"
A figure descended slowly from the darkness above, landing silently between Jin Hao and the patriarch.
It was an old man, impossibly thin, dressed in simple gray robes. He held a wooden staff and his eyes were closed.
But the aura he radiated was a suffocating ocean of power. It was an aura that made Bolin's Golden Core feel like a flickering candle.
It was the Jin Family's sole Nascent Soul Ancestor.
"You play with fire, Bolin," Ancestor wheezed. "You allow a thieving whelp to disrupt the peace of our family and burn our guards."
"Forgive me, Ancestor," Bolin said, his head bowed. "He possesses a powerful artifact and a Heaven Grade technique. I wished to secure them for the family."
"Treasures are useless if the family is destroyed in the process," Ancestor said dismissively.
He turned his closed eyes toward Jin Hao, who was struggling weakly against the crushing pressure, unable to even lift his head.
"A Foundation Establishment boy," Ancestor murmured, probing Jin Hao with his spiritual sense.
Jin Hao gritted his teeth, his face pressed against the cold stone.
Nascent Soul. He had known the Jin Family had one, hidden away in seclusion. But facing the reality of it was different.
Am I going to die? The thought was a cold spike of terror. Here? In the dirt? After everything?
He thought of Su Lian, waiting for him. He thought of the revenge he hadn't fully tasted.
"System," he begged internally. "Do something! Devour him! Blast him! Save me!"
[Warning: Host is subjected to Nascent Soul Suppression. Probability of survival: 0%.]
"No..." Jin Hao whimpered, tears mixing with the dust on his face.
Ancestor raised his wooden staff, aiming the tip down at Jin Hao's head.
"A thief who steals from his own blood deserves no mercy," Ancestor said coldly. "Your treasures will serve the family better without you."
He began to channel a lethal spike of Qi into the staff.
Jin Hao squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the end.
Suddenly, a searing heat erupted against Jin Hao's chest. It was coming from beneath his robes.
It was the wooden pendant he wore around his neck. The only thing he had kept from his father, the only token left from a mother he had never known.
He had worn it for years, assuming it was just a piece of sentimental junk.
The pendant burst into a blinding crimson light.
The crushing Nascent Soul pressure was instantly shattered, blown away like smoke in a hurricane.
Jin Hao gasped, suddenly able to breathe, able to move. He rolled onto his back, staring in shock at his own chest.
The wooden pendant disintegrated into ash. From the ashes, a single bead of crimson blood floated upward.
The bead of blood radiated an aura so terrifyingly powerful, that even the Nascent Soul Ancestor staggered backward, his closed eyes snapping open in absolute horror.
"What... what is that presence?!" Ancestor screamed, raising his staff defensively.
The bead of blood shot forward with a speed that defied comprehension.
It bypassed Ancestor's frantic defenses as if they didn't exist. It struck the old man squarely in the center of his forehead.
Ancestor turned to dust.
In the span of a single heartbeat, the most powerful being in the Jin Family, a Nascent Soul expert who had lived for centuries, crumbled into a pile of gray ash that blew away on the night breeze.
The alley plunged into a horrified silence.
The twenty elders were paralyzed, their minds unable to process what they had just witnessed.
Jin Hao sat up, his mouth hanging open, staring at the empty space where Ancestor had stood.
"It... it worked," Jin Hao whispered, a hystericallaugh bubbling up in his throat. "The pendant... it was a divine savior left by my mysterious mother?"
The absurd luck of it washed over him.
"I knew it!" Jin Hao yelled, jumping to his feet, ignoring the pain in his battered body. He threw his arms wide, looking at the terrified Jin elders. "You see?! The heavens protect me! You cannot kill me! I am immortal!"
He laughed madly, drunk on the miraculous survival, the adrenaline overriding all reason.
He turned to look at Jin Bolin, who was standing frozen, his face a mask of pale terror.
"Well, Uncle?" Jin Hao gloated, a manic gleam in his eye. "Where is your ancestor now? It seems my treasure is better than yours."
Bolin stared at the ash of his ancestor. Then, he looked at his nephew, who was currently laughing, completely unguarded, his chest puffed out in arrogant triumph.
With the speed of Peak Golden Core expert, Bolin crossed the distance between them in a flash of golden light.
He drove his hand, hardened with dense Golden Core Qi, straight forward like a spear.
Jin Hao's laughter cut off abruptly.
He looked down.
Jin Bolin's hand was buried elbow deep in his chest.
Jin Hao gasped. He looked up at his uncle's face. Bolin's eyes were filled with a frantic survival instinct.
"You used your trick, boy," Bolin hissed, twisting his hand brutally. "You don't get a second one."
Jin Hao's vision swam. The pain was muted by the overwhelming cold spreading through his limbs.
He tried to summon the Celestial Fire, but his Dantian was silent. He tried to call the System, but there was only static.
He looked at the dark sky above the alley.
But... I'm the protagonist, he thought, a final spark of confusion in his fading mind.
Bolin yanked his hand back, ripping Jin Hao's heart out in a spray of hot blood.
Jin Hao's eyes went vacant. His body crumpled to the cobblestones, landing in a heap of dirty robes.
Patriarch Jin Bolin stood over the corpse of his nephew, his hand dripping with blood.
He looked around at his paralyzed elders, then threw his head back and let out a hysterical laugh that echoed through the bloody street.
PS: Come on guys, we just need 46 more Power Stones for a bonus chapter. Let's push it, haha.
PS: There are 10+ Advance chapters available on the Patreon for those who want to read ahead. www.patreon. com/Drrajnovel