Chapter 889: You're a Nascent Soul Cultivator!

With a casual flick of Zhuge Chi's hand, the Supreme Elder—eyes wide and face full of disbelief—was sent pitching backward.

One of the blind eunuchs behind Zhuge Chi caught the body and drifted rapidly away, carrying the corpse with him. In the blink of an eye, both had disappeared.

Only one blind eunuch remained behind Zhuge Chi, standing quietly with his hands folded.

Zhuge Chi's old eyes were still clouded.

His back remained hunched.

He simply stood beneath the eaves and calmly looked at the two remaining Supreme Elders of Qiyun Sect.

The two were badly shaken.

Had their fellow disciple merely been careless and lost his life because of it?

Naturally, they could not simply give up.

One of them flashed forward again.

This time, there could be no question of carelessness.

"Careful!"

The other Supreme Elder, watching closely from behind, suddenly shouted.

Alarm and horror filled his eyes.

The lantern had gone out.

An ordinary person might have been unable to see what had happened beneath the darkened eaves, but cultivators possessed the Dharma Eye. At such close range, they had seen the earlier exchange clearly enough.

Besides, the darkness was not absolute. Moonlight and starlight still reached the courtyard.

The Supreme Elder who attacked suddenly discovered that the old eunuch before him had disappeared.

By the time he heard the warning and tried to dodge, it was already too late.

Agony exploded through his back.

Another burst of terrible pain tore through his chest.

Then he felt a cold draft against the front of his body.

He lowered his head.

A blood-covered hand had punched straight through his chest.

In its palm was a heart.

His heart.

He could actually see it still beating inside the man's grasp.

Then the five fingers tightened.

Pop!

Blood and flesh burst apart.

At some point, Zhuge Chi had already appeared behind him.

One hand had pierced directly through the man's back and chest.

With a casual sweep of his arm, he tossed aside the corpse hanging from that hand.

The remaining blind eunuch caught the falling body and drifted backward.

Like the first corpse, the dead Supreme Elder was quickly carried away.

No one knew where.

Zhuge Chi turned his head.

His pair of murky old eyes fixed on the final Supreme Elder of Qiyun Sect.

The man being stared at felt as though a stormy sea had exploded inside his chest.

His expression looked as though he had seen a ghost.

Cold sweat broke out across his entire body.

Perhaps the first fellow disciple had been careless.

But the second had been on guard.

He could not possibly have died merely because he had underestimated the opponent.

If this man still failed to understand that they had encountered a genuine supreme expert, then he would have lived all these years for nothing.

What cultivation did this old eunuch possess?

He no longer dared think too deeply about it.

The old man was already watching him.

The difference in strength was terrifying.

Two fellow Supreme Elders had faced Zhuge Chi and been unable even to defend themselves.

Any thought of freely coming and going through this imperial palace because it lacked true experts had vanished.

The final Supreme Elder did not dare remain another instant.

He shot skyward.

The cultivators guarding the courtyard and those who had rushed over as reinforcements were all stunned by what they had just seen.

The lantern dropped from Zhuge Chi's hand with a soft clatter.

Then he moved.

His figure vanished.

But he did not pursue the fleeing assassin.

Instead, he flashed like a ghost through the Empress Dowager's residence.

Cries of alarm and screams erupted everywhere.

No one escaped.

Every cultivator who had personally witnessed Zhuge Chi's attack and clearly seen what had happened was killed.

Not one was spared.

The last man tried to flee through the air.

His skull burst apart in midflight, and his body crashed back to the ground.

The figure who had struck him had already shot into the starry night like a strange wisp of green smoke.

Zhuge Chi was gone.

Dozens of cultivator corpses now lay throughout the residence, along with the bodies of several palace guards, eunuchs, and maids.

It did not matter whether they were friend or foe.

Anyone who had seen Zhuge Chi attack had been silenced.

No witnesses remained.

The entire incident had actually happened very quickly.

From Empress Dowager Shang Youlan down to the lowest servants, everyone inside had been so frightened that they huddled in their rooms without daring to breathe loudly.

They had no idea what had happened outside.

When the next group of troops and cultivators arrived, they knew no more than the people inside did.

All they saw were corpses covering the ground.

They naturally assumed the dead had all been killed by the three powerful intruders.

Only after they rushed into the rooms and found Empress Dowager Shang Youlan and the others safe and unharmed did everyone finally breathe a sigh of relief.

...

High in the night sky, the Qiyun Sect Supreme Elder who had escaped was driving his spiritual power to the limit as he fled.

He no longer cared about the other Qiyun Sect disciples who had entered Zhao's imperial palace with them.

He truly did not dare care.

Such a terrifying existence was hiding inside the palace.

If he did not flee now, he feared none of them would escape later.

A strange sound suddenly came from behind.

He looked back.

Far in the moonlit night sky, a human figure was rapidly flying toward him.

The speed of that approach immediately gave him a terrible premonition.

As the figure drew closer and became clear, every hair on his body stood on end.

His feeling had been right.

It was that old eunuch.

A simple comparison of their speed made one thing obvious.

Unless he was a fool, he knew there was almost no possibility of escaping this old eunuch through the air.

He immediately dove toward the ground, hoping to use terrain and obstacles below to find a chance to escape.

The old eunuch changed direction and shot after him like a meteor.

At this rate, Zhuge Chi would intercept him in midair before he ever touched the ground.

The Supreme Elder hurriedly swept both sleeves outward and climbed back into the sky.

The old eunuch angled upward as well, shooting toward him like an arrow loosed at a bird.

Despair nearly swallowed the Supreme Elder whole.

He could already see how vast the difference between them was.

He had indeed broken free of the low-level gliding used by ordinary cultivators and reached the point where he could truly fly by riding qi.

But his qi-flight and the old eunuch's were not remotely on the same level.

The strange sound made when Zhuge Chi flew came from the sheer speed of his acceleration as he tore through the air.

As the two converged from above and below, the Supreme Elder flipped one hand.

A Heavenly Sword Talisman appeared.

Boom!

A gigantic sword-aura projection erupted and smashed toward the oncoming old eunuch.

In that instant, Zhuge Chi's clouded eyes changed.

Sharp brilliance flashed from them.

His hunched back straightened as well.

The frail old man suddenly radiated a completely different presence, as though he could fight Heaven and battle Earth.

He seemed to grow younger in a single breath.

His broad sleeves snapped in the wind.

From one sleeve, five clawed fingers struck upward into the enormous sword aura.

Boom!

A thunderous explosion shook the sky.

The gigantic Heavenly Sword aura collapsed.

One strike from Zhuge Chi's claw had shattered it.

The Supreme Elder grew even more desperate.

He triggered the talisman again and again.

Twelve enormous Heavenly Sword auras burst forth in dazzling succession, all concentrated on a single target as they hammered toward the old eunuch.

One shattered.

Then another.

Then another.

The twelve giant sword projections collapsed one after another in rapid succession.

Before those enormous sword shadows, Zhuge Chi resembled some dragon-capturing wanderer descending from the Ninth Heaven, his two clawed hands subduing and tearing apart one dragon after another.

He seemed to be breaking through bolts of heavenly thunder.

The brilliant light finally ceased.

Thunder still rolled through the sky.

The Supreme Elder kept climbing desperately while shouting, "Who exactly are you? Are you one of the supreme experts in person?"

"If you truly are one of the supreme experts, then I want to know which rule of Misty Pavilion I violated! What exactly did I do wrong that makes you pursue me without mercy?"

"Supreme expert?"

Zhuge Chi's voice came from behind the shattered sword auras.

"I've never met one, and I have no desire to."

"That is precisely why you must die!"

By the time he finished speaking, he had already broken through the remaining sword light and reached the Supreme Elder.

The man threw both hands forward.

Two gigantic hammer-shaped force projections appeared in the air.

He swung both arms and smashed the huge hammers down at the charging old eunuch.

Zhuge Chi swept his sleeves outward.

His movements looked almost effortless.

Yet his two palms actually caught the ferocious hammer projections head-on.

Then he seemed merely to give them a light push aside.

The Supreme Elder instantly lost control.

A terrifying force surged back at him, blasting his arms apart to either side.

The two enormous hammer projections split left and right.

His center was completely exposed.

Zhuge Chi was already standing before him.

The two men were simply not opponents on the same level.

Violent astral winds churned high in the sky.

Without spiritual power to sustain or guide them, the two hammer projections gradually faded until they disappeared entirely.

The Supreme Elder's arms remained spread wide, both hands still half-curled as though gripping vanished hammers.

Bang!

Flesh and blood burst from his back.

A clawed hand punched through from behind, reaching straight through his chest and tearing out a heart.

The heart was still warm.

Still bloody.

Still beating.

The Supreme Elder stared at the expressionless old eunuch standing almost face-to-face with him.

Then he slowly lowered his gaze toward his own chest.

It hurt.

Blood was seeping from the wound.

One of the old eunuch's hands had undeniably been thrust directly into the place where his heart should have been.

His cheeks twitched.

For many years, he had cultivated the Blazing Flame Golden Body Art.

His flesh could be called impervious to blades and spears.

Even in a storm of arrows fired by thousands of troops, he would dare charge straight through.

That was one reason Jin's cultivators were so formidable in battle, and one reason this small group had dared raid Zhao's imperial palace in the first place.

Yet before this old eunuch, his supposedly invulnerable body was like paper.

Compared with ordinary flesh and blood, it seemed no different at all.

The old man's hand had pierced him effortlessly.

And it was not only him.

He had personally watched two fellow Supreme Elders fall to the same old eunuch.

He lifted his eyes again.

His Adam's apple bobbed.

His expression was full of agony.

"Nascent Soul Realm... You're a Nascent Soul cultivator!"

Pop!

The claw behind him crushed the still-hot, still-beating heart.

Blood and flesh scattered through the night air.

But that heart no longer had anything to do with him.

Crushing it caused no further pain.

Only his voice weakened rapidly.

"Who... exactly are you?"

No answer came.

The claw embedded in his chest withdrew.

Two clawed hands flashed like phantoms.

In an instant, man and clothing alike were torn into pieces.

Chunks of flesh and cloth scattered downward through the night.

Zhuge Chi gave both hands a slight shake.

The blood coating them burst into a fine red mist and vanished from his skin.

He did not linger.

His body tilted backward.

Facing the stars, he rolled once in the air, then turned toward the vast earth below and flew back in the direction of the capital.

...

The battle in the sky had ended quickly.

The chaos inside the imperial palace had not.

There was no denying that Qiyun Sect's disciples were powerful fighters.

There was also no denying that Zhao's imperial palace truly no longer had any real experts stationed inside.

As far as Zhao's three great sects were concerned, with matters having reached this stage, imperial authority was worth nothing.

The lives and deaths of the people in the palace were no longer the most important matter.

Their strongest forces had to be concentrated on winning the decisive battle.

If the people in the imperial palace died, they could always replace them and let another group live there.

But if the foundation of the three great sects disappeared, then everything was gone.

Protecting the lives of the people inside the palace no longer held much meaning to them.

Sects that had reached the level of Zhao's three great sects were always perfectly clear about what was primary and what was secondary.

Perhaps it was cruel.

But it was a reality they had no choice but to face.

Whether an individual could emotionally accept it meant very little compared with the interests of an entire great faction.

Still, this had only been a surprise raid by Qiyun Sect.

Not many people had come.

Nor could Jin transfer large numbers of reinforcements across such a distance in a short time.

And the three top experts who had led the operation had somehow vanished.

The palace defenders were not decorations either.

In the end, the raiders were overwhelmed by superior numbers and wiped out.

More troops were transferred into the imperial palace.

Security tightened again.

Along one narrow passage between palace walls, Zhuge Chi walked slowly to one side with a lantern in hand, his body once again hunched.

Four young eunuchs followed behind him.

A group of soldiers rushed past them in the opposite direction.

Zhuge Chi merely kept walking.

Everything that had happened seemed to have nothing whatsoever to do with him.

[End of Chapter 889]