Revenge without overnight delay

"Anyway, Junior Brother, I simply don't believe it," Zheng Yu said lazily, half-reclining on a soft couch. A renowned thunder cultivator prodigy? Until he saw the person with his own eyes, he wouldn't believe a single word.

Those local martial artists were experts at gilding their own lilies. Who wouldn't want their hometown to produce a widely celebrated martial arts genius?

Wang Jian shook his head in silence. He and Zheng Yu had never quite gotten along; his junior brother was always eccentric, possessing no exceptional virtues yet looking down on everyone.

He had a premonition that he and this gifted young prodigy would definitely cross paths.

Lost in their respective thoughts, the two men closed their eyes to gather their thoughts, each pondering his own concerns.

The room returned to silence, save for the gentle tendrils of fragrant tea drifting in the air.

Suddenly, a hurried sound of footsteps echoed from outside, and both men instantly opened their eyes and looked toward the door.

"Bang, bang, bang!" A hasty knocking rang out.

Zheng Yu's heart skipped a beat. The last time someone knocked with such urgency was a few days ago, when his female disciple Ziyu had stirred up trouble outside, and he had to invoke the mighty name of the Northern Cold Palace to smooth things over.

Now, facing the same situation again, he wondered what disaster had struck.

"Come in!" Wang Jian shouted in a deep voice.

The door swung open, revealing Li Che and the others. They filed in one after another, standing in a neat row before Zheng Yu and Wang Jian, wearing expressions of having committed a grave offense.

Zheng Yu's temples throbbed violently, his back teeth clenched involuntarily, and the veins on his forehead wriggled like earthworms.

"Speak! What trouble have you stirred up this time? Who have you offended?"

Seeing his junior brother enraged to such a state, Wang Jian took the initiative to ask.

Having brought only Lianyi, his well-behaved female disciple, this time, he naturally directed his question straight to her.

Lianyi, the woman in green, quietly raised her head, cast a glance left and right, and let her gaze linger a bit longer on Ziyu.

Wang Jian instantly understood his beloved disciple's intent and fell silent, turning his gaze to his junior brother Zheng Yu; a disciple's misdeeds were for their own master to handle.

"Master, Martial Uncle, let me explain!" Ziyu suddenly piped up.

Zheng Yu glanced at his chief disciple and gave a slight tilt of his chin, signaling her to continue.

"Your disciple happened to fancy a young man's horse and offered to buy it. But the young man ignored us completely, so we made a few mocking remarks."

"In the end, that young man merely glanced at us and said he hoped the elders of our sect knew how to fight!"

Ziyu neatly recast their malicious taunts as casual banter, completely omitting their intention to press Ling Chi into servitude as a martial slave.

Several of her companions wore expressions that clearly said, "Exactly as she described," silently endorsing Ziyu's words.

Lianyi sidled up to her master Wang Jian, her lips parting as if to speak, but she swallowed the words back, wearing a hesitant expression.

"You just wanted to buy someone else's horse? You didn't hurl insults?" Zheng Yu wore an incredulous expression. How could he not know what kind of people his disciples were?

Yet, hearing that the young man intended to come looking for trouble, a surge of resentment welled up within him.

"What does that boy mean? Does he want to measure my cultivation?"

Zheng Yu slammed his palm down on the table, a formidable aura erupting forth. His tier-two Spiritual Pearl realm pressure instantly knocked his disciples flat onto the floor.

"Do you lack horses? You had to go buy someone else's?"

"Don't think I don't know what you lot are like, constantly bringing trouble to my doorstep. The next time this happens, I'll expel every single one of you from the sect."

Zheng Yu bellowed in fury. If Ziyu hadn't been the daughter of his deceased friend, he would have chased her away long ago.

That friend had died saving him, which led him to spoil the friend's daughter with excessive indulgence.

Looking unconvinced, Ziyu still wanted to argue her case, but Li Che pulled her sleeve and dragged her back.

"Lianyi, why didn't you try to persuade your senior sister? She lacks sense, but are you equally clueless? When we set out, your Martial Uncle specifically told you to keep a rein on your senior sister," Zheng Yu said to Lianyi, his tone harsh.

"Martial Uncle, I..."

Lianyi looked aggrieved, not knowing what to say. She certainly couldn't blurt out that she was completely powerless to control these senior brothers and sisters of hers, or else they would make her life miserable upon returning to the sect.

"Zheng Yu, you know Lianyi's temperament. Stop taking your frustrations out on her!" Wang Jian immediately stepped in to protect her.

Lianyi cast a grateful look at her master and fell silent, offering no further explanation.

"And you lot, utterly useless the lot of you! Provoked publicly yet lacking the backbone to even strike back—you have no spine whatsoever! Go home, pick up a piece of tofu, and smash your heads against it until you die!"

Zheng Yu glared at his other useless disciples and cursed them out.

Just at that moment, Wang Jian and Zheng Yu snapped their heads toward the door. Before the disciples could figure out what was happening, a deafening crash echoed through the air.

"Boom!"

The door instantly shattered into countless splintered fragments that flew inward like a storm.

Zheng Yu thrust his palm forward, blasting the debris away, though the recoil forced him back two steps.

Horror gripped his heart instantly—the intruder's cultivation was actually higher than his own!

Before Zheng Yu could open his mouth to roar in fury, an icy voice echoed from outside.

"If those wretches could actually beat me, would they need to come running back to you, old fogey, to file false complaints?"

"You wanted to make me your martial slave? Have you eaten the gall of a mad dog?"

Before Ling Chi's voice even faded, his slender figure transformed into a streak of lightning, materializing right before Zheng Yu.

Caught entirely off guard, Ziyu, Li Che, and the others were violently blown backward by the shockwave, dying on the spot. Nearly a thousand strands of lightning spiritual energy instantly fed back into Ling Chi's spiritual pearl.

"How long has it even been? That boy couldn't wait and came straight to our door!" Li Che thought in despair before his consciousness faded away entirely.

A flash of golden light emanated from Wang Jian, whose profound cultivation surpassed even that of the deceased Ghost Church master Bi Rengui. However, sensing that the intruder had not targeted him, he chose to hold his ground and wait.

The moment she laid eyes on Ling Chi, the green-clad Lianyi's delicate face turned deathly pale. Only then did she realize that Senior Sister Ziyu and the others had provoked such a terrifying fiend, one whose sheer presence had forced her Martial Pearl realm master Zheng Yu to retreat with a single blow.

Like a shooting star blazing with invincible momentum, Ling Chi had crashed into the room, sending ripples of shock crashing through Lianyi's heart.

"Show some spine and face me!" Ling Chi bellowed as he drew his saber.

The blade kicked up a crimson aura of slaughter, striking directly at Zheng Yu's neck.

Hearing Ling Chi's words, Zheng Yu felt a murderous urge to revive Ziyu just to kill her all over again.

His disciples had been audaciously bold, actually trying to take a Spiritual Pearl realm powerhouse as a martial slave—why hadn't they tried to take him, their own elder, as a martial slave instead?

Hastily drawing the sword from his waist, Zheng Yu found himself caught on the horns of a dilemma. He had no choice but to brace himself and fight; otherwise, the only path left to him was to drop to his knees and surrender.

A piercing surge of icy sword qi soared into the sky, instantly freezing the entire room solid.

A crimson glint flashed across Ling Chi's eyes as the supreme yang energy flared and vanished, murderous intent overwhelming the entire chamber and instantly shattering Zheng Yu's glacial sword qi.

Losing his composure entirely, Zheng Yu hacked out several chaotic sword strokes to no avail.

Ling Chi moved with escalating speed, shattering Zheng Yu's protective sword qi with a single slash. The blade swept downward, snapping Zheng Yu's collarbone. Struck by the overwhelming force, Zheng Yu spat blood and was sent flying backward, instantly knocked unconscious.

Had Wang Jian not reacted with lightning speed, lunging forward to grab Zheng Yu's leg and neutralizing the momentum, Zheng Yu would have been launched straight out of the building and into the river below.

"The saber technique of slaughter... You are the thunder cultivator of He County, the Fierce Tiger Ling Chi!"

"Young Master Ling, hold on! Old man, I have been searching for you for a long time!"