"First, we reclaim our Daoist Site. Only then do we plan our next move."
Lao Zi spoke with a measured weight, a shrewd, calculating light flickering in the depths of his eyes. "If the Twelve Ancestral Witches do not act recklessly after we take back our home, it means they have learned to fear us. At that point, we shall bring the fight to their very Ancestral Land!"
"Excellent! Let it be so!"
The plan earned the immediate, heated approval of both Yuanshi and Tongtian. The mere thought of washing away their past humiliation brought a chorus of cold, hearty laughter to the mountain peak. They did not linger. Rising in unison, they streaked through the firmament toward the East Kunlun range of Mount Buzhou.
Since its fall, the Sanqing's ancestral home had been occupied. The Twelve Ancestral Witches had left two Great Witches to guard the peaks, but this was no mere occupation. It was bait. The Witches intended to lure the Sanqing out of hiding, hoping to draw them back to their birthplace so the entire Witch Clan could descend and finish them once and for all. It was far more efficient than hunting three slippery Daoists across the vastness of the Honghuang world.
The Sanqing were not fools; they had avoided the trap for millennia, waiting for absolute power. But the winds had shifted.
On this day, three terrifying auras slammed down upon East Kunlun. The Great Witches on guard duty bolted upright, their faces pale as the sky turned a bruised purple.
"Three Pure Ones! You dare return to this place?" one Great Witch roared, his voice trembling despite his brave front.
"Mountain-guarding dogs," Yuanshi sneered. His eyes shifted, and two beams of absolute destructive light erupted from his pupils. They didn't just strike the Great Witches; they melted them, erasing their very existence in a heartbeat. With a casual wave of his hand, he swept the surrounding slopes clean of every remaining Witch soldier.
Stepping back onto their long-lost soil, the brothers felt a deep, resonant satisfaction. Their temperaments seemed to sublimate, their spirits lifting as their ancestral Luck—tethered to this very earth—began to surge once more.
"Now we shall see if that pack of pathetic wretches has the courage to show their faces!" Yuanshi laughed coldly, his gaze sharp with a murderous intent that could frost the air.
"The Witches likely have no idea we've achieved a breakthrough," Lao Zi added with a dry chuckle, seating himself cross-legged on a prayer mat to begin centering his energy. "If they come, we shall provide them with a most unpleasant surprise."
"We shouldn't be entirely careless," Tongtian remarked, shrugging his shoulders with a half-joking grin. "What if those barbarians have also stepped into the Quasi-Saint realm? Wouldn't we be in a miserable spot?"
Yuanshi's rebuttal was instantaneous and sharp. "Impossible. It is not so easy for a group of innately incomplete barbarians to find a path to breakthrough. Even if one or two managed it by some fluke, we would have nothing to fear. In the past, they only won because of their numbers. In a true test of cultivation, they have never been our equals."
His disdain was absolute. To Yuanshi, the Witches were no different from the "low-born" creatures of the world—those born from dampness, eggs, or covered in fur and scales. Tongtian simply nodded, choosing not to poke the hornet's nest of his brother's extreme temperament.
"They're here."
Lao Zi stood abruptly, his expression turning solemn. The earth itself began to hum with a rhythmic, heavy vibration. The Witches were close.
"Perfect timing!" Yuanshi's face lit up with a predatory glee. Revenge was finally within arm's reach.
Rumble!
The mountain range groaned as twelve god-and-demon-like figures surrounded the peaks of Mount Buzhou. A deluge of thick, suffocating Evil Qi surged forth, turning the vibrant sky into a murky, dim void. Fierce winds howled like dying beasts as the laws of the world began to warp under the pressure.
"Three Pure Ones, we showed you mercy once," Di Jiang's voice boomed, mocking and cold. "I didn't expect you to come crawling back just to court a swifter death!"
Lao Zi, Yuanshi, and Tongtian walked out of their sanctuary, stepping into the void with a calm that bordered on arrogance.
"Do you truly think you are worthy of such talk?" Yuanshi's voice was a jagged blade. "You innately incomplete wretches... are you still living in the glory of the past?"
It was a critical strike of an opening. The smiles vanished from the Witches' faces, replaced by a singular, focused killing intent. Ten thousand years had passed, and Yuanshi's tongue was still as poisonous as ever.
"Yuanshi, I will personally tear the tongue from your head and make you regret every word!" Xuanming hissed. As she spoke, rain began to fall, freezing into jagged ice before it hit the ground. The very vegetation on the slopes withered into ash.
"I'd like to see what scraps you picked up in Zixiao Palace that gave you such a big mouth," Di Jiang growled. He stopped concealing his power. His Quasi-Saint cultivation erupted, the sheer force of his presence shattering the surrounding Void Realm.
"Di Jiang... you've reached the Quasi-Saint level?" Lao Zi's voice remained steady. He wasn't surprised; as the leader of the Twelve, it would have been more shocking if Di Jiang hadn't progressed. But they weren't afraid of a single Quasi-Saint. In a fair fight of realms, Lao Zi believed himself second to none.
"Heh. Since even three shameless thieves like you managed a breakthrough, how could I lag behind?"
"You knew we had achieved Quasi-Saint status?" The Sanqing's expressions shifted, a flicker of unease crossing their faces. If the Witches knew and still came, what did that imply?
"Given your cautious, cowardly nature," Di Jiang said lightly, "would you ever dare return for revenge if you were still weak? Stop pretending. Show your true colors!"
As the words fell, several vast, world-shaking auras erupted from the Witch ranks. The air around Candle Nine Nethers, Xuanming, and Ju Mang distorted violently. They had all stepped into the realm of the Hun Yuan Golden Immortal—the physical body's equivalent of a Quasi-Saint.
"Four... four Quasi-Saints!?" The Sanqing's faces turned ashen. They finally realized why the Witches had been so confident.
"Afraid? It's far too late for that!"
Di Jiang let out a roar that caused the stars to tremble in their orbits. The Twelve Ancestral Witches moved as one, a tidal wave of primal power crashing toward the three brothers.
The Sanqing reacted instantly, summoning their premier Spirit Treasures and bathing themselves in protective Immortal Light. They avoided the crushing weight of a head-on collision, choosing instead to weave through the chaos and focus their combined might on the eight Witches who had yet to breakthrough.
"You shameless beasts! Die!" Candle Nine Nethers snarled, reaching out to twist the very fabric of time. He unleashed the Great Divine Ability of Time and Years, a shimmering wave of temporal distortion that sought to age the Sanqing into dust.
Though the three brothers were at a disadvantage, they were no longer the easy targets they once were. Their strategy was cold: ignore the four leaders and slaughter the weaker siblings. Di Jiang and Candle Nine Nethers were forced into a frantic defensive rhythm, having to shield their weaker kin from the Sanqing's focused, lethal strikes.
High above on the Sun Star, Ling Xiao was jarred from his meditation by the tremors of the distant conflict. He turned his gaze toward Mount Buzhou and a wide, slow smile spread across his face.
"Oh? Are the Sanqing acting as sparring partners again?"
He remembered the last time; he had spent the entire battle comprehending the Law of Thunder. He hadn't expected them to provide him with another free lesson so soon.
"Wonderful," he whispered, his eyes sparkling with a hungry intelligence. He projected his Divine Thought across the void, anchoring it to the battlefield with the assistance of the Chaos Pearl. He began to dissect the raw, primal Laws emanating from the Twelve Ancestral Witches.
Theoretical knowledge from his pearl, meeting the raw practice of a world-shattering battle.
A bold, staggering thought surfaced in his mind.
"What if I didn't stop at one?" he mused. "What if I mastered the Laws of all twelve?"