The air in the clearing was thick enough to choke on. Three hundred disciples of the Iron Blood Sect stood in a perfect encirclement, their swords drawn, the steel glinting under the pale moonlight. The atmosphere buzzed with the ambient Killing Intent of a Golden Core cultivator.
Hovering ten feet off the ground—a display of dominance reserved for those who had transcended gravity—was Sect Leader Ren Tianxing. His robes billowed despite the lack of wind, and a barrier of golden light, the renowned Golden Bell Spirit Armor, shimmered around him.
In the center of this execution ground stood Lin Fan.
He looked strikingly out of place. He wasn't wearing the sect's uniform anymore. He wore the Mantle of the Villain, a dark, flowing coat that seemed to absorb the light around him. In his right hand, he held the Desert Eagle. It had changed since the Tower. The steel was now darker, etched with vein-like red glowing lines where his Qi circulated. It wasn't just metal; it was part of his soul.
"Lin Fan," Ren Tianxing's voice boomed, amplified by Qi, shaking the leaves off the nearby trees. "You have returned from the Sovereign's Tower. The Admin Token is not something a mere disciple like you can suppress. Hand it over, cripple your own cultivation to atone for your arrogance, and I might leave your corpse intact for your family to bury."
Lin Fan didn't look up. He was busy adjusting the slide on his pistol. Clack-clack.
"Did you hear me, wretched thing?" Ren roared, his pressure intensifying. The disciples on the ground took a step forward, shouting in unison to intimidate the lone target.
"I heard you," Lin Fan said. His voice wasn't loud, yet it carried a strange, metallic dissonance that cut through the chanting. "I'm just doing the math."
"Math?" Ren scoffed. "There is no calculation that saves you here. I am a Golden Core master. You are a rat who got lucky in a tutorial."
[System Active]
[Seal 2: Sovereign's Blueprint - Active]
Lin Fan's eyes flashed with a faint blue light. He wasn't looking at Ren Tianxing the man; he was looking at Ren Tianxing the construct.
Suddenly, the world stripped away its skin. The trees became wireframes of cellulose and carbon. The disciples became heat signatures. And Ren Tianxing… Ren Tianxing became a swirling vortex of energy data.
Lin Fan saw the Golden Bell Spirit Armor. To the naked eye, it was an impenetrable wall of light. To the Blueprint, it was code.
Structure: Rotating Qi Barrier.
Rotation Speed: 3,400 cycles per minute.
Energy Source: Dantian.
Lin Fan's eyes narrowed. He traced the flow of energy. The armor wasn't static; it refreshed itself like a screen. There was a micro-delay—a latency issue in the ancient technique. Every 0.8 seconds, the barrier thinned by 14% at the point directly covering the throat to vent excess heat from the Golden Core.
"Found you," Lin Fan whispered.
Ren Tianxing lost his patience. "Die!"
The Sect Leader raised his palm. The air distorted as a massive, spectral hand made of blood-red Qi materialized above Lin Fan. The Blood God's Palm. It was a technique that could flatten a house. It took three seconds to channel fully.
In the old world, three seconds was a short time.
In the new world Lin Fan was building, three seconds was an eternity.
Lin Fan raised his right arm. He didn't assume a horse stance. He didn't chant a mantra. He simply aligned the iron sights with the flickering node on Ren's throat.
He poured his Qi into the gun. The Desert Eagle hummed, the red veins flaring bright crimson. It didn't require a beast core anymore. It ate his own violent energy, compressing it, spinning it, hardening it into a solid projectile of concentrated death.
[Natal Weapon Art: Soul Bullet]
BANG.
The sound was wrong. It wasn't the roar of a tiger or the clap of thunder that cultivators were used to. It was a sharp, mechanical crack that defied the laws of nature.
A streak of red light exited the barrel at Mach 3.
It arrived at Ren Tianxing's throat exactly as the 0.8-second ventilation cycle began.
The Golden Bell Spirit Armor didn't even shatter; it was bypassed. The bullet punched through the weakened point of the barrier, drilled through the soft tissue of the windpipe, and exited out the back of the neck, severing the spinal column in an explosion of red mist.
The spectral Blood God's Palm dissipated instantly, turning into harmless breeze.
Ren Tianxing's eyes went wide. He reached for his throat, trying to circulate Qi to heal, but the connection between his brain and his body was gone. The flight spell failed.
The Golden Core master dropped from the sky like a sack of rocks.
THUD.
Silence.
Absolute, suffocating silence.
Three hundred disciples froze. They looked at the corpse of their invincible leader, then at the smoking iron tube in Lin Fan's hand. They couldn't process it. There was no exchange of moves. No clash of ideals. No desperate struggle.
Just a noise, and then death.
[System Notification]
[Target Neutralized: Ren Tianxing (Golden Core - Early Stage)]
[Experience Gained: +50,000]
[Fear Qi Detected: High Concentration]
Lin Fan walked forward, the crunch of his boots on the gravel echoing loudly. He stepped over the line of shocked disciples, who parted like water, too terrified to raise their swords.
He stopped at the corpse. He crouched down, rummaging through Ren's bloody robes until he found the Sect Leader's storage bag. He tossed it into his inventory without checking the contents.
Then, he stood up and turned to the crowd. He held the Desert Eagle casually, the barrel still hot.
"The Iron Blood Sect is inefficient," Lin Fan said, his voice bored. "You spend thirty years meditating to cultivate a barrier that I can penetrate with a piece of iron I refined in a week. Your formations are slow. Your spells are loud."
He looked at the trembling First Elder, a white-bearded man clutching a staff.
"Ren Tianxing is dead," Lin Fan stated, as if commenting on the weather. "The position of Sect Leader is vacant. I am taking it."
"You... you devil!" The First Elder stammered, his face pale. "You committed regicide! The Azure Sword Sect will—"
Lin Fan pointed the gun at the Elder. The old man flinched, silencing himself instantly. The instinct to survive overrode seventy years of cultivation dogma.
"The Azure Sword Sect will die next if they get in my way," Lin Fan lowered the gun. "But I am not unreasonable. I don't need dead bodies; I need workers."
He pulled the Admin Token from his inventory. It pulsed with a chaotic, digital light that made the disciples squint.
"From this moment, the Iron Blood Sect is dissolved," Lin Fan declared. "We are no longer a martial arts sect. We are a manufacturing plant. We are the Iron Legion."
He swept his gaze across the sea of faces—fear, confusion, and awe.
"Those who wish to leave may do so. I will shoot you in the back, but you are free to try." Lin Fan smiled, a cold, humorless expression. "Those who stay will receive a new kind of power. Power that doesn't care about your talent or your spirit roots. Power that relies only on steel."
He holstered the gun.
"Clean up this mess," he gestured to the corpse. "And bring all the sect's forging blueprints to my chambers. We have work to do."
Lin Fan turned and walked toward the Sect Leader's opulent hall, leaving three hundred cultivators standing in the dust, realizing that the era of swords and magic had just been violently updated.