A flash of blinding white light, and a fist-sized Heavenly Fruit materialized in Lu Chen's palm.
Shen Qing had once shown him this miraculous treasure.
"Nothing beats robbing cultivators blind—thrilling every damn time."
"By the end of this, I'll have hauled in a mountain of loot."
"That Zhang Bo guy Zhang Heng mentioned… core disciple, huh? He's gotta be sitting on a goldmine."
Lu Chen muttered under his breath, a sharp glint dancing in his eyes.
"Ten-thousandfold enhancement… better keep that under wraps. No one would believe it anyway."
With that thought, his True Yuan surged, billowing outward like living mist, wrapping around him and cutting him off from prying eyes.
Then—
Scanning Eye!
[Heavenly Fruit: Fourth-Grade Treasure Medicine. Effect: Elevate cultivation by one minor stage within the Divine Core Realm. Ten-Thousandfold Enhancement available. Confirm / Deny?]
So it really works on this thing too.
Hell yes.
Lu Chen's eyes gleamed.
Everything that lands in my hands is mine to use. Everything gets the ten-thousandfold treatment.
He confirmed without a second thought.
—
Lu Chen might have been stone-cold calm about enhancing the Heavenly Fruit, but the rest of the outer sect had completely lost it.
"Hall Master Zhao is DEAD?! What the actual hell?! How did Lu Chen even do that?!"
"Wasn't he only at the fourth level of the Divine Core Realm?! He killed Hall Master Zhao—a peak ninth-level expert—just like that?!"
"Who IS this guy?!"
"He's not that good-for-nothing who rode his sister's coattails anymore. He's a mountain nobody can climb!"
"But… he's turned on the sect. There's no walking that back."
"I don't care what anyone says—I'm not making an enemy out of him."
"Please. Like you'd even get the chance."
"If Lu Chen survives this, he's going to be a living legend."
"He won't survive. The sect will bury him for killing Hall Master Zhao."
"Why are we even arguing? We're outer disciples. All we can do is watch."
The crowd of outer disciples buzzed with disbelief, one voice tumbling over the next. None of them had seen this coming. Every time they thought Lu Chen had hit his ceiling, he blew straight through it.
A few even felt a twinge of something like sympathy. The way things were going, a clash with the sect wasn't a possibility—it was a guarantee.
"Lu Chen actually killed Hall Master Zhao…"
If the disciples were rattled, the outer elders were downright shaken. They were Divine Core Realm cultivators themselves. They knew exactly how strong Zhao had been. His death wasn't just shocking—it was a gut punch.
Wang Wuji and the other six stood pale-faced, cold sweat soaking through their robes.
"Thank the heavens he didn't come straight for us. We'd all be corpses by now."
Hall Master Zhao was dead.
Seven of them, and they still wouldn't have lasted a round against him.
Yet Lu Chen had erased him with a single move.
The seven of them had already put as much distance as possible between themselves and that terrifying killing god—and they weren't stopping anytime soon.
Even the outer elders who had no quarrel with Lu Chen were struggling to make sense of it.
Once upon a time, everyone in the sect knew one thing about Shen Qing's younger brother: he was a talentless waste. Some of the elders had assessed him personally. The verdict had been unanimous—bottom of the barrel, not worth a second glance.
And now?
Fourth-level Divine Core Realm. A Peak-Grade Divine Weapon. A martial skill that had just put down a ninth-level powerhouse.
A waste couldn't do that.
Only a monster could.
Only someone heaven itself had chosen.
So when did the waste become a monster? How had no one noticed?
Nobody had an answer. Then again, nobody had been paying attention to Lu Chen for a long, long time.
Even now, as he stood in the aftermath of the battle, a shroud of True Yuan mist curling around him—what was he doing in there?
"Looking at him now… I see Shen Qing. Back when she was at the Divine Core Realm, she had that same edge. That same untouchable quality."
One elder murmured, gaze distant.
"Shen Qing… what a pity."
Another shook his head slowly.
"Heads up—! A terrifying aura, closing in fast! The inner sect is finally moving!"
"That's Divine Ability Realm pressure—and more than one source. How many inner elders did they send?!"
Every outer elder in earshot—hall masters, deputy hall masters, the lot—snapped their attention to the horizon, eyes wide.
Streaks of light carved across the sky, bearing down on the outer sect with a momentum that pressed against the lungs.
"We greet the honored inner elders!"
Inner elders stood in relation to outer elders the way inner disciples stood in relation to outer disciples—untouchable, absolute, unquestioned.
The outer elders dropped into a unified bow the moment the newcomers landed. The gap between them wasn't just rank. It was a canyon.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
One figure after another touched down.
Eleven inner elders.
"Rise."
They acknowledged the bow with a slight nod, composed and unhurried.