Duan Chenyi was clad in a black martial robe secured with a cerulean sash. Time had left its merciless mark upon him, carving deep furrows across his face. His hair, streaked with black and white, was half-grey and bound by a black ribbon.
With his hands tucked behind his back, he stood as though he were not merely a man, but an unscalable mountain range.
Huo Wubian descended from mid-air and bowed deeply to Duan Chenyi with the utmost respect. "Senior Duan! Huo Wubian of Fire Cloud Manor pays you his respects." Facing Duan Chenyi, the true master of the Duan clan, Huo Wubian had no grounds for pride. He was but a Spirit Fusion Realm Tier Two cultivator, while the elder stood at Tier Four—they existed on entirely different planes of power.
"Hmm." Duan Chenyi gave a faint, expressionless nod. To such a venerable elder, Huo Wubian was little more than a junior; only the previous Manor Lord of Fire Cloud Manor might have addressed him as an equal.
"What? Duan Chenyi? The ancestral patriarch of the Duan clan? It was said he had been in secluded cultivation for nearly twenty years! Has he emerged once more?"
"The Spirit Kingdom shall be thrown into true turmoil now! The Duan clan's ascension to seven-star power is as certain as death and taxes!"
Sure enough, no sooner had the whispers faded than Duan Chenyi spoke. "I know many of you dispute the Duan clan's rise to seven-star status." He swept his gaze around, and everyone who met his eyes lowered their heads—Huo Wubian included.
What eyes they were! Within them lay boundless sorrow and the desolate chill of late autumn. The hearts of all onlookers were engulfed by a wave of grief, dredging up old memories and long-buried regrets.
A dreary rain severs the soul;
A bitter wind weeps through the hollow.
Lonely spirits wail and shed tears;
Awake from dreams, only hatred and woe follow.
The beloved he had once cherished lay buried in the earth; his sworn brothers had become wandering ghosts; the comrades who had fought beside him were either dead, scattered, or vanished.
Huo Wubian jolted violently, biting down hard on his tongue until he tasted blood. What is wrong with me? Why am I drowning in these thoughts?
He glanced up at Duan Chenyi's eyes once more, and understanding dawned.
The elder had comprehended an artistic conception—the rarest of all: Autumn Intent.
"Autumn brings countless sorrows in its wake." No sooner had Huo Wubian sighed than he bit his tongue again, daring not to look upon Duan Chenyi's gaze any longer.
The black-robed middle-aged man did the same, his heart trembling at the sheer power of the conception. To be swayed in mind and trapped in illusion by a single glance! Had he not bitten his tongue to snap back to his senses, he would have made a fool of himself.
Huo Wubian too was shaken, yet relieved.
Duan Chenyi had only released a wisp of Autumn Intent deliberately. Had he focused it upon a single foe, their state of mind would have collapsed without the patriarch lifting a finger. Such a person could not unleash even seventy percent of their power, let alone ninety.
The worst fate befell Hu Zi, who had attained Wood Intent. The gentle vitality of flora stood in fatal opposition to the withering despair of Autumn Intent.
"My potted plants! My parasol trees—why have all their leaves fallen? It cannot be! I wield Wood Intent; this should not be possible! What is happening? What is happening?" Hu Zi had fallen into a delirium, muttering wildly before suddenly reciting in a loud, broken voice: "A cup of wine to drown the sorrows of autumn; ten thousand li of frosty sky binds the falling leaves."
Truly befitting the Prime Minister's scholarly household—poetry flowed from his lips. Yet paired with his tearful, frantic expression, he looked nothing like a man of letters.
"Senior, please show us mercy!" The black-robed man could endure Hu Zi's rambling no longer. If not for the elder's presence, he would have buried his face in the ground.
"Hmm." Duan Chenyi gave a slight nod and retracted all trace of Autumn Intent. Those trapped in their own hallucinations snapped back to their senses at once.
They remembered every moment vividly, and a cold dread ran down their spines. They hung their heads, never daring to meet Duan Chenyi's eyes again.
"Very well. The grudge for your injuring the Duan clan's disciples shall be set aside. Half a year from now, the Duan Manor will officially ascend to seven-star status. I invite you all to grace us with your presence. Any who still object to our rise may voice their complaints then. The Duan clan shall 'win others over with virtue.'"
Duan Chenyi enunciated the phrase "win others over with virtue" with deliberate weight. Everyone understood his true meaning: the Duan clan would not rely on virtue, but on force.
Duan Chenyi told them the location of Southern Valley and ordered Lu Shuang to have the imperial court issue a royal proclamation announcing the news. Lu Shuang nodded frantically, eager for the elder to leave as soon as possible.
With his instructions given, Duan Chenyi took Duan Qianchou and Duan Lang under his wing and soared into the sky, heading south. The remaining Duan clansman was carried away by Duan Muhua.
They departed with calm composure, under the watchful eyes of all.
Huo Wubian let out a relieved sigh, glanced at the three great clans, and snorted coldly. "Useless fools." He then transformed into a cloud of fire and vanished.
"That good-for-nothing Ma Liang dared egg me on to my death! I shall not spare him when I return!" Huo Wubian fumed inwardly as he flew.
Only the three clans remained, exchanging awkward glances before shaking their heads in resignation and flying back toward the imperial capital.
Five li away, hidden atop a tall tree, two figures concealed their aura completely, watching every event unfold.
"Father. How powerful is Duan Chenyi?" one figure asked.
"Extremely powerful. His Autumn Intent has reached an astonishing forty percent—it has entered minor attainment." The voice was aged, suggesting a man of years equal to Duan Chenyi's.
"Which of you is stronger?"
"We are evenly matched. His Autumn Intent is formidable, but my Sword Intent is no weaker. I am but a hair's breadth from forty percent. There is nothing left for us here. Let us go." The two figures vanished into the canopy, flying westward.
Anyone present would have recognized one of them as Jian Wuxiang of the Jian clan.
"This grows ever more interesting. So the old ghost Jian Yixuan still lives. It seems the Jian clan has prepared thoroughly indeed." A faint smile tugged at the corner of Duan Chenyi's mouth as he soared through the air.
Hengyuan Valley:
A desolate graveyard shrouded in frigid aura, where not a single bird dared alight. The cold was so bitter that any creature lingering would soon freeze stiff, with death as its only fate.
The chill emanated from a broken tomb at the center, ghostly and menacing, as if a wraith might emerge at any moment.
Even the entrance to the tomb was sealed with a thin sheet of ice. Since the graveyard had transformed, rain falling nearby turned into delicate snowflakes upon reaching this zone, drifting gently from the sky.
The ground was covered in a beautiful layer of snow. Were it not a graveyard, it would be a place of breathtaking serenity.
Dark clouds loomed over Hengyuan Valley that day, as if the sky itself were about to collapse. An hour later, a fine drizzle began to fall.
Within the frigid zone, snowflakes drifted down—each a perfect hexagon, uniform in size and exquisitely crafted, like miniature works of art.
This place held another peculiarity: elsewhere, snow melted or merged upon settling.
Here, however, each flake was fortified by the pervasive cold mid-fall, becoming unbreakable by the time it touched the ground—harder than ordinary stone.
Thus, the snowscape was carpeted with glittering hexagonal flakes, translucent and pale.
The tranquil stillness was suddenly shattered by a sharp sound.
Crack!
The source was the frigid tomb at the valley's heart. A gaunt, almost skeletal figure burst through the thin ice barrier and shot into the sky.
He brought his palm crashing downward. At the strike, pure white frost gushed forth in a torrential wave, so bitterly cold that it further solidified the frozen snowflakes hanging in mid-air.
The frost condensed violently at his palm, reaching the very peak of cold and density, taking shape as a towering mountain.
"Frost Forged Mountain!"
The palm struck with crushing force, the frigid aura compressing into a thick beam that blasted downward. The cold was so extreme that the air itself froze, growing dense and heavy. Snowflakes fell slower, and even the spiritual energy of heaven and earth showed signs of being frozen solid.
Any witness would have thought not a wave of cold, but a colossal mountain crashing down—its very aura enough to unnerve any foe.
The ice mountain surged beyond the graveyard and slammed into the forest. It radiated a killing frost that sought to freeze all creation in its path.
The space it traversed turned stiff and solid. Moisture within the trees on either side was frozen out, turning them into ice sculptures in the shape of trunks and branches, their inner life snuffed out entirely.
BOOM!
A thunderous explosion shook the ground as the ice mountain crashed into the earth. Cracks spread outward from the point of impact—each two fingers wide, ten zhang long, and five zhang deep.
This man was none other than Gao Han.
After leaving the imperial capital, he had ridden nonstop to Hengyuan Valley, stabling his horse with a villager outside the valley before entering alone.
He had cultivated within the tomb for more than ten days. Without food or water, his face was gaunt and sallow; he no longer bore his former handsome appearance, but looked haggard and ghostly, made all the more terrifying by the graveyard behind him.
His cheeks were sunken, his cheekbones prominent, his body little more than skin and bones. Only his identity as a True Essence cultivator had kept him from starving, turning the tomb into his final resting place.
Yet from this frail, emaciated frame erupted an overwhelming frost and oppressive aura, as if Gao Han were not a thin young man, but a towering, immovable mountain.