The Hall of Swords
The Azure Sky Sect's grand hall was built to awe: marble floors polished to mirrors, banners embroidered with victories, murals of gods and dragons bowing to swords. Tonight, that majesty meant nothing.
At the center, Lai stood barefoot, soil clinging to his farmer's clothes. A faint scent of cabbage leaves drifted with him, utterly alien in this sacred place.
The sect's elders trembled in silence. None dared move, but their hearts screamed: Who is he? What is he?
The Young Master broke first. His robe shimmered with jade threads, his voice high with inherited arrogance.
"You dare invade the Azure Sky Sect, mortal?! Do you know who my father is? Do you know our backing in the immortal world? Do you—"
A cabbage leaf floated lazily across the room.
The Young Master froze. His eyes bulged as the leaf sliced neatly through his throat, then his chest, then out the other side. He collapsed in two halves before his father's throne, blood soaking into the hall's jade tiles.
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The Sect Master's Rage
"YOU!" The Sect Master rose, eyes red with grief and fury. "You slaughter my son in front of me—do you think there will be no price?!"
He raised his palm, a storm of qi twisting into the form of a screaming phoenix. The hall shook. Disciples across the peaks bowed, knees forced down by the force of his killing intent.
Lai simply sighed.
The phoenix screamed toward him, talons reaching for his head.
One word. "Paralyzed."
The phoenix froze in midair, shattering into motes of dust. The Sect Master screamed as invisible chains bound his cultivation, wrenching his qi out of him like water through a cracked gourd. His aura collapsed from Peak Nascent Soul into nothingness.
Lai smiled kindly, like a farmer giving a child a tool. "Now you are like the mortals you despise. Weak. Hungry. Helpless."
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Judgment of the Elders
The sect's ten great elders rallied, desperation boiling over. "He is only one man! Together—!"
Their combined auras lit the hall with spectral beasts, dragons, and swords of light. The pressure alone would have crushed armies.
Lai reached out and snapped his fingers.
The sound was like a seed pod splitting.
The elders screamed as their dantians ruptured one by one, their golden cores shattering like brittle shells. Power they had cultivated for centuries gushed from them in bloody rivers, leaving them collapsed, coughing blood, their bones brittle like peasants in famine.
"You have tasted life as gods," Lai said softly. "Now taste life as mortals."
---
The Sect Ancestor Appears
The roof split with thunder. A colossal shadow unfurled, the Sect Ancestor stepping forth from a pocket realm, eyes glowing like twin suns. He was draped in robes older than dynasties, his beard trailing like rivers. His voice was a rolling storm:
"How dare a worm trample this mountain! You will kneel before—"
His words ended in a strangled gasp. His body convulsed. His aura plummeted from heights that shook heavens to the level of a limping mortal. His veins bulged as his cultivation crumbled into rot.
He fell to his knees before Lai, coughing blood.
Lai leaned close, voice so calm it was worse than thunder.
"You've said this world belongs to the strong. That mortals are fodder. That peasants should bow. Now you will crawl as they crawl. Feel hunger. Feel fear. Feel the world as they do."
The Ancestor wept, his tears muddying the blood pooling on the jade floor.
---
The Sect's Children
The disciples outside—hundreds of millions, spread across peaks, valleys, and halls—were already kneeling, unable to rise under the weight of Lai's will. For one moment, they thought perhaps they would be spared.
Then cabbages began to fall.
From the sky. From thin air. From nowhere.
Leaves as sharp as blades, heads like iron, roots like spears. The vegetables tore through disciples in waves, cutting bodies to shreds, splitting skulls, piercing hearts.
Screams echoed like thunder rolling across mountains. Blood rained into rivers. Entire courtyards turned into slaughterfields as disciples were diced into mulch.
One disciple sobbed, "Why? We're only following orders!"
Lai's voice, soft as dusk, rolled over the entire sect.
"Mortals never had a choice when you trampled them either. Today, you learn."
By the time the last cabbage fell, the Azure Sky Sect was silent. Over a hundred million disciples lay dead, their remains soaking into the mountain soil. The once-proud sect now smelled like a battlefield fertilized in gore.
---
Mercy in Chains
Lai turned back to the throne.
The Sect Master writhed on the floor, his arms and legs twisted and broken, his cultivation hollowed out like a gutted fish. His face was pale as ash, yet still he tried to roar, spitting blood.
"You… you dare… the immortal world will crush you! You will—"
"Shhh." Lai crouched, meeting his eyes with a farmer's patience. "I spare your life, so you may live humbly. Farm your own food. Carry your own buckets of water. Feel the sun on your back not as a conqueror, but as a laborer. Teach your descendants to till, not kill."
The Sect Master trembled, too weak to reply.
Lai stood, brushing dirt from his sleeves as if he had finished nothing more than a day's harvest.
---
The Empress's Restless Night
Far away, in the Imperial Capital, the Empress lay awake. Reports flooded the palace:
The Azure Sky Sect has fallen.
Hundreds of millions dead.
Its elders crippled. Its patriarch broken. Its ancestor silenced.
And the whispers: A farmer did it.
She closed her eyes, but she saw his face—the calm smile, the terrifying ease with which he dismissed gods. His voice still echoed in her chest, warm and sharp at once.
She pressed her hand against her heart. It beat too fast, too strong.
When had she last felt this way? Not as Empress. Not as ruler. As a woman.
She exhaled, steadying herself. "Who… are you?" she whispered into the dark.
---
Cliffhanger
Across the mortal world, sects and holy lands trembled as news spread like wildfire. Banners burned, elders argued, disciples panicked.
One question spread from mountaintops to hidden valleys:
"Who is this farmer? Is he truly a mountain god? Or something far worse?"
The multiverse tilted toward Lai.
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⚡️ End of Chapter 16 ⚡️