The sword-light hadn't even fully stopped moving before the figure riding it threw himself off—from fifteen meters up, without a moment's hesitation.
THUD.
He hit the edge of the wasteland hard enough to drive mud up the front of his Inner Sect Dao robe. He didn't notice.
He was already scrambling upright on all fours, eyes red, tearing through the crowd like a man on fire.
Li Hansong. A-Song.
Out of closed-door cultivation at last—and the moment he landed, a wave of spiritual energy rolled off him, dense and completely unrestrained.
[ Foundation Establishment ].
A few months since the Spirit Root Ceremony.
A few months since this same boy had been a half-starved wraith in the servant quarters, too thin to cast a proper shadow.
And now—Foundation Establishment. Without a single stumble.
This was what a Superior Wood Spirit Root looked like.
This was what happened when the Sect Master threw the full weight of Azure Cloud Sect's resources behind a single disciple.
"Xiaoqi-ge! Are you hurt?! Where are you hurt?!"
A-Song crashed to his knees in front of Mo Fan and grabbed both his arms, eyes bloodshot, tears threatening to spill.
His hands were already moving frantically, checking Mo Fan's body for damage.
He'd planned it differently.
After breaking through, he was going to find the best gift he could, then show up at Mo Fan's door with proper ceremony.
Instead, the first thing he'd heard upon leaving seclusion was that Huang Yun had gone to make trouble for Mo Fan.
A-Song had nearly lost his mind on the spot. No rest, no recovery—he'd summoned his sword and flown straight here.
Behind him, a middle-aged cultivator landed with quiet precision.
Sharp-faced, deep-breathed—one of the Sect Master's personal guards, assigned to watch over A-Song.
This man had spent the entire flight mentally rehearsing how he was going to explain a corpse to the Sect Master.
A body cultivator versus Mid-Stage Foundation Establishment. He'd assumed the math was simple.
He looked at the scene in front of him. Then he looked again.
The body cultivator in question—Lu Xiaoqi, supposedly at death's door—was sitting up with perfectly healthy color in his cheeks...
Patting A-Song on the shoulder with a warm, contented expression.
And Huang Yun—the one who was supposed to be the victor—was slumped in the dirt at the center of a ring of Hundred Forging Peak disciples...
His robes in tatters, looking like a drenched quail that had fallen into a wolf den.
...
"I'm fine. Completely fine."
Mo Fan felt the surge of spiritual energy radiating off A-Song and looked at the young man in front of him...
Tall now, sharp-featured, carrying himself with the natural bearing of a sword cultivator—and felt something warm move through his chest.
Not bad at all. Exactly who I picked. Death Vision never lies.
"Come here, A-Song. Let me introduce you."
Mo Fan pulled him to his feet and turned toward the others.
"This is Wu Mang—Eldest Senior Brother of Hundred Forging Peak. And this is Zhao Ziwei—Second Senior Brother. If they hadn't been here today, I'd have been in real trouble."
A-Song turned to face them.
No trace of the Sect Master's favored disciple about him—just a young man who meant every word.
He bowed. Deep, formal, and completely sincere.
"Senior Brothers—thank you for protecting my older brother. A-Song will engrave this in his heart."
Wu Mang and Zhao Ziwei looked at each other. Then they both scrambled forward to haul him upright, flustered in a way that neither of them would ever admit to.
"No, no, no—we can't accept this, don't do that—"
Fwish—
Li Banxia arrived moments later, sword beneath her feet, slightly out of breath from the urgency of Wu Mang's voice transmission.
Hundred Forging Peak's core roster was now fully assembled.
The atmosphere, which had been on the edge of a bloody brawl thirty seconds ago, was rapidly transforming into something resembling a heartwarming family reunion.
At the center of it all, Huang Yun was regretting every decision he had ever made in his life.
He wanted to slap himself. Twice. Hard.
He'd come here to squeeze a soft target with no backing.
Instead, he'd slapped his hand against an iron plate—and the plate had connections that went all the way to the top of the Sect!
If anyone pressed the issue of him breaking the duel rules and going for the kill...
Not even his father from the Vice Sect Master's lineage could pull him out of that fire.
"Let's go... hurry up and go..."
Huang Yun began edging sideways, leaning on his lackeys—both of them equally battered...
Hunched over and trying to find a gap in the crowd to slip through unnoticed.
Clatter. Clatter. Clatter.
His foot moved half an inch.
Seven or eight carved cyan wooden tokens rained down from every direction and piled up directly in front of his toes like a small mountain.
Sect Wager Battle tokens. Every single one of them.
Huang Yun went rigid. He looked up.
The ring of Hundred Forging Peak disciples had closed again without him noticing.
Every one of them was cracking their knuckles, the sound sharp and deliberate, their eyes carrying a very specific kind of anticipation.
"Going somewhere, Senior Brother Huang?"
"Your duel with our Junior Brother is done. Ours hasn't started yet."
"We'll keep it civilized. Just a friendly spar. Stop before serious harm, right?"
Huang Yun's legs went soft.
His spiritual energy was completely depleted right now.
If he accepted even one of those tokens, these lunatics would absolutely beat him into meat paste alive.
"Step aside, Senior Brothers. Step aside."
Mo Fan's voice, mild and unhurried, cut through the crowd.
He pushed through the ring and stopped in front of Huang Yun, looking down at him from a comfortable height.
"Senior Brother Huang." His tone was perfectly pleasant.
"I should thank you—for the grace of sparing my life just now, and for the life-saving grace of that [ Purple Yang Bone-Restoration Elixir ]. Truly, Junior Brother is grateful."
He even made a show of clasping his hands in a formal bow.
Huang Yun stared at Mo Fan's completely undamaged face and felt the blood drain from his own, his vision going dark with anger.
"What do you want," he said through gritted teeth.
Mo Fan smiled.
"Senior Brother, we've had quite the introduction. As for our wager..." He tilted his head slightly. "What if we both took a step back?"
"You're a distinguished disciple of the Main Peak. Face matters more than anything to someone in your position."
"Making you wear a Big Yellow Dog headgear and ride a sword for a lap above the Main Peak—honestly, that would just hurt the harmony between our peaks too much. I'm not interested in that."
Mo Fan adopted the expression of a man making a deeply magnanimous concession.
Huang Yun blinked. Something cautious flickered in his eyes.
"You... you'd cancel the bet?"
"Cancel it entirely? No—rules are rules, after all."
Mo Fan sighed and gestured at the wasteland around them, now thoroughly cratered and furrowed from the battle.
"But look at what's happened to this treasured feng shui land outside my courtyard. And I nearly lost my life today. The emotional distress alone..."
He met Huang Yun's eyes.
"How about this: Senior Brother pays me a modest sum for damages and emotional suffering, and we write the whole bet off. Clean slate. Friends going forward. What do you say?"
Extortion. Naked, cheerful, completely shameless extortion.
Huang Yun's first instinct was to stiffen his neck and spit something defiant to salvage whatever was left of his dignity.
Then his eyes drifted sideways.
A-Song. The Sect Master's personal guard standing behind him, watching everything with cold, evaluating eyes.
The ring of Hundred Forging Peak disciples who looked genuinely disappointed that they weren't going to get to hit anyone.
"I'll... pay."
The words came out like he was biting through stone.
Extremely humiliated, his hands shaking, Huang Yun pressed his identity token against Mo Fan's.
The Sect Contribution Points he'd accumulated over years of careful cultivation transferred out in a single, agonizing transaction.
Ding. Mo Fan's token lit up.
[ +1,000 Sect Contribution Points. ]
Mo Fan's smile became radiant. Genuine. Heartfelt.
"Senior Brother Huang, you're too generous! Come visit Hundred Forging Peak anytime!"
"Tell no one about this!"
Huang Yun didn't even dare to leave a parting threat.
Propped up by his lackeys, he dissolved into a streak of light and fled Hundred Forging Peak as if running for his life.
With the entertainment concluded, the rest of Hundred Forging Peak's disciples felt bored, yawning and drifting off.
Wu Mang, Zhao Ziwei, and the others were extremely loyal; they didn't even spare the thousand contribution points a second glance, leaving every last one with Mo Fan without a word about it.
The wasteland emptied out until only the familiar faces remained.
Wu Mang directly produced an intact Eight-Immortals table from his storage bag, setting it up right in the middle of the craters, along with several jars of good spirit wine.
The group sat around, enjoying a harmonious time.
"Seven-ge, the Sect Master has been incredible to me!"
A-Song's face was flushed from the wine, eyes bright as he launched into everything that had happened since entering the Dao Asking Palace.
"Master taught me breathing techniques himself. He opened the Main Peak's highest-grade Spirit Gathering Formation just for me."
"He said my [ Yi-Wood Azure Dragon Qi ] has extraordinary potential—that as long as I build steadily, I'll definitely form a supreme-grade Golden Core someday!"
He clenched his fist, eyes burning with conviction as he looked at Mo Fan.
"Seven-ge—once I form my Core, I want to see who dares bully you after that."
Mo Fan looked at him—this boy who had gone from a starving refugee who couldn't afford a full meal...
To a young man standing straight and bright, already an energetic small tree capable of sheltering him from the wind.
Something moved in his chest that he didn't have a name for.
"Good." Mo Fan laughed and raised his bowl. "Seven-ge will be waiting to cling to your thigh."
He turned toward Wu Mang to clink bowls—
And stopped.
His bowl hung in the air.
Wu Mang's bowl had stopped too, frozen halfway to his mouth.
Across the table, Zhao Ziwei had gone still with a half-eaten piece of roasted meat still dangling from his teeth.
Even Li Banxia—perpetually composed, perpetually cool—had her beautiful brows furrowed tight.
All three of them, at the exact same moment, wearing the exact same twisted expression. The expression of people who had just witnessed something that should not be physically possible in this world.
A-Song, not being a Hundred Forging Peak disciple, hadn't felt whatever they'd felt.
He was still talking, still animated, still painting pictures of the future.
Only Mo Fan, looking at the identical expressions on these three people, felt his heart skip a beat.
"What's wrong?" Mo Fan put down his bowl, a trace of wariness in his voice. "What happened?"
Dead silence stretched for several full seconds.
Eldest Senior Brother Wu Mang turned his head. Slowly. Mechanically. Like a door on a rusted hinge.
He swallowed with extreme difficulty.
Those bull-like eyes that usually feared nothing in heaven or earth were actually filled with absurdity right now.
"The... the Peak Master..."
His voice had developed a slight tremor, as if recounting a fantastical tale.
"Just sent a mass voice transmission..."
Mo Fan felt an ominous premonition settle deep into his bones.
"What did he say?"
Wu Mang stared at him, his expression uglier than if he were crying.
"He said..."
"Tomorrow morning..."
"He's calling... a full assembly of all Hundred Forging Peak disciples."