The question hung in the air, a silken thread in a slaughterhouse. "Looking for something?"
The words were quiet, spoken with the polite cadence of a host greeting a guest. But in the desolate, smoking crater, to the eight broken men who stood amidst the wreckage of their ambition, the sound was more terrifying than a dragon's roar.
Yu Luomian, his body a canvas of agony from the poison coursing through his veins, was the first to find his voice. He forced himself to look up, his vision swimming, at the nine figures silhouetted against the starless sky. His gaze locked onto the man at the center, the smiling merchant, and a lifetime of draconic pride erupted in a venomous hiss.
"Ning Fengzhi!" he spat, his voice a ragged sound. "You snake in the grass! Is this how your sect of merchants wages war? With cowardly traps and explosions?!" He gestured wildly with a trembling arm at the devastation around them. "There is no honor in this! This is the work of a back-alley rat, not a Sect Master!"
"Where is your courage, merchant?!" another voice, this one choked with rage, joined in. "Do you only know how to hide behind your wealth and your tricks?"
Tang Haien, his face a ruined landscape of scorched flesh, roared in agreement, his voice cracking with pain and disbelief. "To think we ever considered you an ally! You have no honor! You speak of rules and decorum, yet you resort to such despicable means!" He took a stumbling step forward, his Clear Sky Hammer appearing in his hand, though its aura was weak, flickering like a dying candle. "Do you truly believe your support sect can withstand the fury of the Clear Sky Sect and the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan?! You have declared war on us tonight, merchant! A war you cannot possibly win!"
"A war?" Ning Fengzhi's smile didn't waver. He simply descended, walking on the air as if it were a staircase of solid jade, the nine-colored light of his domain pulsing gently around him. He moved without haste, the picture of a king surveying his conquered lands.
"You speak of war as if you were the ones who were wronged," he said, his voice calm, the single word dripping with a cold amusement that cut deeper than any blade. "An interesting perspective." He landed softly in the center of the crater, his elegant robes untouched by the ash and gore. "A debt was incurred in the Heavenly Star Mountains. A debt of blood. Tonight, I am simply here to collect."
He stopped before them, and the gentle warmth that usually resided in his eyes was gone, replaced by a coldness that was like a winter morning. "You tortured one of my elders," he stated, his voice a blade of pure, irrefutable certainty. "A man who had served my sect faithfully for over a hundred years. You murdered him. And you left his body for the beasts to hide your crime, like a common grave robber discarding a looted corpse."
His voice, though quiet, resonated with a power that silenced all protest. "Did you think a debt like that would go unpaid? Did you think the Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect was a toothless old tiger you could provoke without consequence?"
The eight elders were stunned into silence. Their minds, clouded by pain and poison, struggled to process his words. How could he know? How could he possibly know the details?
Tang Haien, his fury overriding his shock, tried to retort. "That was—"
"Do not," Ning Fengzhi interrupted, his voice becoming a blade, "speak of what you have done as if you were justified." He took a step closer, his gaze sweeping over their broken forms. "You came here tonight driven by a greed that would make a starving wolf seem tame. You wanted our secrets. You were willing to spill blood, to break every code of honor between our sects, to get them."
"You were the ones who broke the pact first!" one of the Blue Lightning elders snarled from the ground, his body twitching. "Absorbing the Breaking Clan! That was a slap to the face of the Clear Sky Sect!"
"An internal matter of a subordinate clan choosing a new, more prosperous path," Ning Fengzhi countered smoothly. "Not a declaration of war. Not an excuse for abduction and murder."
He gestured to the smoking ruin around them, a grand, sweeping motion of finality. "This is not my treachery. This is simply the price of your own ambition. You wanted to taste the treasures of my sect? Well, you have. I hope you find the taste to your liking."
It was then that Sword Douluo, Chen Xin, took a single, silent step forward. He didn't draw his sword. He didn't need to. A killing intent as sharp and as cold as his blade's edge poured from him, a silent, invisible pressure that washed over the eight Titled Douluos. They felt it not as a physical force, but as a spiritual one. It was the feeling of a thousand tiny, razored needles piercing their very souls. The pain from their wounds, the fire of the poison, it all faded into the background, replaced by a single, primal, and all-consuming emotion.
Fear.
They were no longer Titled Douluos, proud elders of the two greatest attack-type sects in the world. They were prey. And the hunter had just revealed his fangs. They finally understood. They were not here to negotiate. They were not here to threaten. They were here to be judged. Their perfect, glorious plan had led them directly to the executioner's block.
Ning Fengzhi looked at the broken men before him, at the dawning, terrified understanding in their eyes. "Killing you would be easy," he said, his voice flat, devoid of all emotion. "A simple matter. But death is a release. A mercy. And you do not deserve such a thing. No, you will live."
He looked at them, a slow, cold smile touching his lips. "You will live, and you will return to your sects as messengers. You will be living monuments to your failure. A constant, beautiful reminder of the price of crossing my Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect."
Before they could even begin to process the meaning of his words, Sword Douluo moved.
He did not blur. He did not charge. He simply ceased to be in one place and appeared in another. He was a ghost, a whisper of death moving through the night, his movements as silent and as final as the grave.
He appeared before one of the Clear Sky elders. There was no grand swing, no brilliant flash of light. Just a single, almost lazy, flick of his wrist. A line of silver light, thinner than a hair, flashed in the dim, orange glow of the crater.
The elder screamed. It was a raw, agonized sound, the cry of a man whose very foundation had just been shattered. His right arm, the one that had held his mighty Clear Sky Hammer for over a century, simply fell to the ground with a soft, wet thud, severed cleanly at the shoulder. The spirit bone within it, a treasure of over sixty thousand years, glowed with a brilliant, golden light for a single, heart-stopping moment before its light was extinguished, its connection to its host irrevocably broken.
"My arm! My spirit bone!" the elder shrieked, staring at the stump of his shoulder in disbelief.
Sword Douluo was already moving to the next.
Flick.
A left leg bone, glowing with an earthy, brown light, was severed. The elder toppled over, a look of pure shock on his face.
Flick.
A right arm, pulsing with the power of a forty-thousand-year-old spirit bone, fell to the ground.
He moved through them like a reaper through a field of wheat, his movements a symphony of beautiful, terrifying precision. The screams of the elders were a chaotic, agonized chorus, a sound of not just physical pain, but of a profound, spiritual violation.
Their Titled Douluo auras, which had been flickering, weakened things, now shattered like glass. The immense power they had worked a lifetime to accumulate, the pride of their clans, their very identities, all came crashing down. Their cultivation, their realms, plummeted from the ninetieth rank back down to the eighties, their foundations crippled, their futures destroyed.
"No! Please! Mercy!" one of the Blue Lightning elders begged, his draconic pride completely gone, replaced by a primal fear.
"You had your chance for mercy when you tortured our elder," Sword Douluo's voice was as cold as the grave.
He finally stood before Yu Luomian. The Blue Lightning elder's face was a mask of pure terror. He was the only one left. Chen Xin's gaze lingered on his head, where the powerful, eighty-six-thousand-year-old Hydra Skull Bone resided. For a moment, it looked as if he would simply, with another lazy flick of his wrist, decapitate him.
But then he sighed, a soft, almost regretful sound. To take a skull bone is to take a life. And the Sect Master had ordered them to live.
Instead, two more silver flashes.
Yu Luomian roared in agony, a sound that was not human, but the raw, wounded cry of a dragon, as both of his legs were severed cleanly at the hip. He collapsed to the ground, a powerful, proud Titled Douluo reduced to a writhing, legless torso.
Sword Douluo sheathed his unseen blade. He looked at the seven broken, weeping men before him, and his voice was as cold and as final as the grave. "I have not just cut your limbs," he said. "I have left a sliver of my sword's intent in each wound. It is a venom no healer can purge. It will feed on your spirit power. You will regenerate, yes. But it will take you years. And the pain… the pain will be your constant companion."
The other Titled Douluos of the Seven Treasure Sect stepped forward, their faces impassive. They calmly, efficiently, gathered the severed limbs, the precious spirit bones still housed within them, and placed them in storage tools. It was a grim, efficient harvest, the spoils of a war that their enemies had started, and that they had just, decisively, finished.
The seven newly-made Spirit Douluos looked at their stumps, at their shattered realms. They knew the truth. Even if they recovered, even if they somehow, through a miracle, managed to reach the Titled Douluo realm again, their potential had been destroyed. They would be the weakest of their rank for the rest of their lives, a permanent, walking, and utterly humiliating stain on the honor of their clans.
Ning Fengzhi walked among the broken, weeping men, his expression one of cold, regal disappointment. "This," he said, his voice echoing in the silent, smoking crater, "is a warning."
He stopped before the legless, writhing form of Yu Luomian. "You thought my Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect was a clan of merchants," he said, his voice a low, contemptuous sound. "You thought we were weak. You thought you could take what was ours." He crouched down, his handsome, elegant face just inches from the elder's. "You were wrong."
He stood and addressed all of them, his voice now a grand, sweeping pronouncement. "This is for your first offense. For the murder of my elder. Consider the debt paid. We will let you live. You will crawl back to your sects, and you will deliver my message."
The Bone Douluo let out another of his rattling, bone-grinding chuckles. "And you will keep this night a secret," he rasped, his voice a sound from a forgotten tomb. "You will tell no one of what happened here. Because if the world were to learn that eight of your new Titled Douluos were crippled by a 'support sect'... the shame would be a wound far deeper than any sword could inflict. Your clans would become a laughingstock for a thousand years."
Ning Fengzhi's voice became a final, chilling promise, a vow that was as cold and as hard as a diamond. "But know this. If you, or anyone from your sects, ever harms another member of my Seven Treasure Glaze Tile Sect again… there will be no more warnings. There will be no more traps. There will be war."
His Nine Treasure Pagoda flared to life behind him, its nine-colored light a beautiful, terrifying halo that cast long, dancing shadows in the crater. "And it will be a war of annihilation. We will hunt you down. We will burn your fortresses to the ground. And we will erase the names of the Clear Sky Sect and the Blue Lightning Tyrant Dragon Clan from the annals of history. Forever."
With that, he turned. The Nine Treasure Domain dissolved. The nine Titled Douluos of the Seven Treasure Sect simply faded into the darkness, leaving the eight broken men alone in their self-made hell.
Yu Luomian looked at his poisoned brothers, at the crippled elders of the Clear Sky Sect. He looked at his own, bleeding stumps. The journey back to their fortress, the shame of reporting their catastrophic, humiliating failure to their leaders… it would be a fate far, far worse than a simple, clean death.
He thought of his brother, Yu Yuanzhen. He thought of Tang Xiao. He thought of the grand, ambitious plans they had made, of the new, glorious era they were supposed to usher in.
And he knew, with a certainty that was a cold, hard stone in his gut, that their new, glorious era was over before it had even begun.
The eight men, the supposed future pillars of their clans, began the slow, agonizing, and humiliating process of helping each other, a pathetic, broken band of cripples in the dark, silent night. They had not just been defeated. They had been broken. And a new, profound, and deeply personal fear of the smiling merchant had been planted in their souls. A fear that would haunt their dreams for the rest of their long, and very, very painful, lives.