41: The price of a thunderbolt

Blood Fiend Sect.

Deep within the eerie main hall, rows of soul lamps burned silently, their dim yellow light illuminating the grotesque demon god reliefs on the walls, casting distorted shadows that writhed like a dance of demons.

This was the Forbidden Ground of the Blood Fiend Sect, where the life tablets and soul lamps of all Core Disciples were enshrined.

Suddenly.

"Crack."

A crisp cracking sound exploded in the deadly silence, exceptionally grating.

The Elder guarding the hall abruptly opened his cloudy eyes, a look of horror seizing his aged face.

He stiffly turned his head, his gaze falling upon the third row of the soul lamp rack.

There, the life tablet belonging to Zhao Qian, a Prodigy of the inner Sect, wasn't merely a lamp whose flame had extinguished.

Instead, amidst the overflowing lamp oil, the entire jade tablet had split down the middle with a grotesque crack.

Immediately after, under the Elder's gaze, which was frozen in terror, that crack spread like a spiderweb across the entire life tablet.

"Bang."

A muffled thud.

The life tablet shattered into dust.

A terrifying pressure, enough to freeze one's Divine Soul, awakened with a roar from the Blood Pool Forbidden Ground, the deepest part of the Sect.

The pressure, like a tsunami, engulfed the entire Blood Fiend Sect mountain range.

All the Disciples, regardless of their cultivation level, felt their hearts clutched by an invisible giant hand at this moment, their breathing stopped, and their spiritual Qi solidified.

The doors of the great hall were shattered by an immense force.

A middle-aged man with a sinister face, clad in a dark red robe, stepped in.

He walked very slowly.

But with each step he took, the stone bricks beneath his feet silently turned to dust.

The air around him was subtly distorted by his extreme rage.

The Sect Master of the Blood Fiend Sect, a Late Golden Core Stage Cultivator, Zhao Wuji.

The Elder guarding the hall prostrated himself on the ground, trembling like a sieve, not even daring to lift his head.

"Sect... Sect Master..."

Zhao Wuji did not look at him.

His gaze was fixed on the empty tablet slot, on that cold, lifeless pinch of powder.

His only son, Zhao Qian.

He was dead.

And it was a complete annihilation of his Divine Soul, even the chance to enter Reincarnation was completely erased.

Zhao Wuji's body did not tremble, nor did his voice rise; he merely reached out and gently picked up a pinch of the life tablet's powder with his fingertips.

"Who."

He asked softly.

His voice was hoarse.

But as that word was uttered, the temperature of the entire hall abruptly froze, and even a layer of eerie blood-colored frost condensed in the corners of the walls.

No one dared to answer.

Zhao Wuji closed his eyes.

When he opened them again, there was no human emotion left in them, only madness and a venomous hatred that threatened to incinerate all directions.

He opened his mouth and spat out a drop of purplish-black heart blood, which pulsed violently as if alive.

"Bloodline Tracing, Soul Pursuit Across Ten Thousand Li!"

"By sacrificing a hundred years of my Lifespan, manifest!"

That drop of heart blood exploded, transforming into billions of blood-red threads, as fine as hair, which frantically intertwined in the center of the hall, attempting to outline the Karma of the murderer in the Void Realm.

The blood threads pierced through the physical barrier of Black Wind Cliff, following the long-dissipated aura, and locked onto Lu Yuan.

However, just as the blood threads were about to touch Lu Yuan's Karma line.

A layer of hazy green light, like the moon in water or a flower in a mirror, quietly appeared, gently sweeping aside the billions of blood threads.

It was Han Yuexi's Heaven-Shrouding Scarf.

The blood threads frantically crashed against it, unwilling to give up, but were always unable to penetrate that veil-like obstruction.

At the same time, the Great Dao Options Exchange in Lu Yuan's mind also seemed to sense the prying, and an imperceptible data stream vortex appeared out of thin air, completely crushing and devouring the few blood threads that had luckily slipped through.

Under the double obstruction, the tracking lost its most precise target.

The blood threads twisted madly in the air, ultimately only able to converge into an extremely vague arrow pointing northeast.

That was where the Qingyun Sect's mountain gate was located.

"Pfft."

Zhao Wuji spat out a mouthful of blood, his face ashen as paper, and the hair on his temples visibly turned a shade grayer.

The forbidden technique had backfired.

He looked at the vague direction, but a monstrously ferocious smile bloomed on his face.

"Qingyun Sect..."

"Very good."

"Issue my command: all Disciples of the Sect at Foundation Establishment Stage and above, assemble immediately."

"Follow me... to raze Qingyun to the ground."

... "Dong! Dong! Dong!"

Three urgent and heavy bell tolls echoed throughout the entire Qingyun Sect.

The highest Rank alarm.

The newly promoted Disciples, still immersed in joy, only felt the suffocating sensation of an impending storm.

Inside the deliberation hall, the atmosphere was as heavy as iron.

The Sect Master of Qingyun Sect, an Early Golden Core Stage Elder, looked at the intelligence report, returned by a scout at the cost of his life, his hand trembling slightly.

"Zhao Wuji, Sect Master of the Blood Fiend Sect, is personally leading the entire Sect's elite to attack our Sect."

"Expected to arrive in half an hour."

The faces of the Elders lost all color.

"Zhao Wuji? Is he mad? He's a Late Golden Core Stage Cultivator!"

"Our Sect has no deep enmity with him, why is this happening!"

"Late Golden Core Stage... the mountain-protecting array can only hold him for half an incense stick's time at most..."

Despair, like a plague, silently spread through the hall.

This was not war.

This was a slaughter.

Just as the entire Sect was enveloped by clouds of chaos and despair.

Lu Yuan's Immortal Cave, however, was in a state of deadly silence.

He sat cross-legged, a freshly brewed cup of hot tea on the table before him, emitting wisps of green smoke.

The external bell tolls and panic seemed to be a world away from him.

His entire mind was immersed in the cold golden light screen in his mind.

A line of blood-red warnings flashed frantically at the top of the light screen.

"Warning: A massive Karma debt triggered by 'Zhao Qian's Death' is being traced; target lock complete."

"It is expected to be collectively borne by the 'Qingyun Sect'."

"Warning: Your long-term target 'Qingyun Sect's Luck' is about to collapse. If not intervened, your call options will go to zero, triggering a chain of Karma losses."

Lu Yuan picked up the teacup and gently blew away the foam.

The stock he had just bought hadn't even started paying dividends.

Now, someone wanted to smash the Exchange directly, forcing his assets to be liquidated.

This wouldn't do.

He calmly thought to himself.

"Contact Heavenly Secret Pavilion, Azure Bird."

"I want all information on Zhao Wuji, Sect Master of the Blood Fiend Sect, top Rank, the most detailed kind."

"karma points deduction successful."

The next moment, a torrent of information flooded his mind.

Zhao Wuji, his life story, Cultivation Technique, combat habits, personality weaknesses... When he saw one particular piece of information, Lu Yuan's hand, holding the teacup, paused in mid-air.

"The Blood Fiend Sect's Zhenpai Demonic Technique, 'Blood God Scripture,' possesses extremely yin and evil Devilish Qi. Cultivators' Divine Souls will be corrupted by the Devilish Qi and are most vulnerable to the most yang and rigid power of lightning arts in heaven and earth."

Lightning arts.

Lu Yuan put down the teacup, a smile slowly curving at the corner of his lips, devoid of any warmth.

He had made up his mind.

To pull the rug out from under them.

He opened the trading interface of the Great Dao Options Exchange and quickly tapped his fingers in the Void Realm.

His movements were steady and precise, executing a seemingly ordinary transaction.

"Target: Blood Fiend Sect."

"Put Option: Annihilation within one day."

"Purchase Quantity: All available positions."

"Confirm."

After completing this transaction, almost all of his karma points were drained.

But it wasn't over yet.

Lu Yuan took a deep breath and switched to the function interface that he had only recently unlocked and had never used on a large scale.

"Market Maker."

He stretched out his finger and heavily wrote a few words on the light screen.

Each word that fell seemed to carry an invisible weight, shaking some underlying logic of this world.

He wanted to create a new contract.

A contract that this world had never seen before, utterly absurd.

"Target: Above Qingyun Sect, one incense stick's time later, a 'Heavenly Thunder of Demonic Aura Purification' shall descend."

Below the light screen, a cold number popped up.

"To create this Karma contract, the basic karma points required: five hundred thousand."

Lu Yuan looked at his rapidly increased, yet now pitifully small, few hundred points balance, and fell silent.

Without hesitation, he clicked on another function of the Exchange.

"Asset Exchange."

"Do you wish to Exchange your own assets for karma points?"

Lu Yuan did not hesitate at all.

"Exchange."

"Please select assets for Exchange: Lifespan, Luck, Cultivation, Dao Foundation..."

His gaze fell on the words "Lifespan."

"Confirm to Exchange 'thirty years of Lifespan' for four hundred ninety-nine thousand seven hundred karma points?"

"Confirm."

In an instant.

Lu Yuan felt that something warm and life-sustaining within his body was being frantically and brutally drawn out by an invisible force!

That feeling was not pain, but a deeper kind of stripping away.

It was the emptiness in the depths of his bone marrow, the withering of his Divine Soul Origin.

A few strands of his black hair at his temples silently turned gray in the windless Immortal Cave.

But he didn't care.

He looked at the karma points balance, which had surged to five hundred thousand, his eyes gleaming with a nearly insane light called "calculation."

He invested all five hundred thousand karma points into the mad contract he had just created.

"Confirm!"

"Contract creation successful."

"Karma Engine activated... Prying into the world's underlying rules... Probability correction in progress..."

After doing all this, Lu Yuan slowly stood up and pushed open the window.

Outside, were the terrified and despairing faces of countless Disciples of the Qingyun Sect.

In the distance, a blood-red cloud was sweeping in at an alarming speed, Devilish Qi soaring, almost dyeing the sky crimson.

And higher up.

Above the unnoticed, azure, cloudless clear sky.

A faint, imperceptible golden arc of electricity flashed and vanished.