034 Time to go Home?

I stepped forward without thinking, my staff rising instinctively as I placed myself between Zhen Ai and the man. Every instinct I had screamed at me that this was not someone we could afford to take lightly, but that didn’t matter. Not right now.

“Where is Guo Yimu?” I demanded, my grip tightening around the staff. “What did you do to him?”

The man’s smile widened, amused rather than threatened. “Why ask me?” he said lightly. “Why don’t you see it for yourself?”

The world shifted.

The illusion peeled away like rotting bark, and reality bled through in all its ugliness.

My treehouse was on fire.

Flames crawled hungrily up the wooden structure, devouring everything I had built with patient hands. The thorny vines that once guarded the clearing were gone, reduced to brittle ash scattered across scorched earth. The ground itself was a grotesque mixture of mud and soot, as though water and fire had fought here and neither had truly won.

The guesthouse was no longer a building. It was splinters.

And at the center of it all was Guo Yimu.

He was impaled on a wooden post, his body hanging limply, barely held together by sheer stubbornness. Parts of his skin were charred black, others swollen with angry boils that pulsed beneath the surface. His breathing came in shallow, ragged gasps that sounded more like a death rattle than life.

“Senior…” rasped Guo Yimu, his voice barely more than a whisper. “I… I didn’t tell him anything…”

His head slumped forward as tears mixed with soot on his face. His chest hitched once, twice, and then stilled.

The light in his eyes faded into something empty and glassy.

Behind me, the man clicked his tongue in mild disappointment. “I didn’t expect the baldy to be so hard-headed,” he said. “Quite the waste of effort.”

Something inside me snapped.

I stared at Guo Yimu’s corpse, at the way his body still trembled faintly from whatever torment he had endured, and felt a slow, rising heat coil in my chest. It wasn’t explosive. Not yet. It was worse than that.

“Z-Zhen R-Rang…” Zhen Ai’s voice shook as she stepped forward, her earlier composure completely shattered. “W-What are you doing here?”

Zhen Rang turned to her with a smile that might have been warm under different circumstances. Here, it felt wrong and twisted.

“Of course, I came to take you back,” he said. “Father would welcome you with open arms. Do you know? When he heard the Heavenly Domain Sect lost you, he immediately sent me after you. Father really loves you, doesn’t he?”

Zhen Ai’s eyes trembled, hope flickering where fear had once been. “Really?”

“Cleanse Spirits.”

The words left my mouth cold and sharp.

A ripple of energy washed over her, severing whatever unseen influence had wrapped around her mind. Zhen Ai flinched, clutching her head as confusion replaced that fragile hope.

I glanced at her briefly. “That isn’t nice,” I said flatly.

Willow swooped down, landing atop Zhen Ai’s head with a small thump. “Wake up, Zhen Ai. Focus,” she said firmly. “This is a dangerous situation.”

I didn’t take my eyes off Zhen Rang.

My spiritual senses screamed at me.

If I lined up everyone I had fought so far, it wasn’t even close. The old man from before would be at the bottom. Long Xue, the black-robed cultivator who had actually made me cautious, would be above him.

However, this man?

He didn’t belong on that scale.

He existed far beyond it.

“NO!” Zhen Ai cried suddenly. “I will come with you.”

Zhen Rang blinked, genuinely surprised. “Oh? I didn’t think it would be so easy. I thought you’d fight back.” He chuckled softly. “Come on, sister, let’s go home—”

“NO!” Willow snapped, feathers bristling. “Are you still under a mental spell? Why—”

“You don’t understand!” Zhen Ai cut her off, voice shaking. “My brother is a Soul Transformation realm cultivator—”

Zhen Rang’s expression didn’t change, but his hand lifted slightly.

Water qi condensed instantly, forming a razor-sharp beam that shot toward Willow.

She dodged.

Of course, she did.

Her small body twisted midair with impossible agility, wings beating as she shot upward at a speed that blurred her outline as if aiming for Zhen Rang.

I moved at the same time.

Grabbing her mid-flight, I flung her back into the air, away from Zhen Rang.

“Don’t waste your life,” I said, my voice low and steady. “He’s mine.”

Zhen Rang laughed, a genuine sound this time. “Ah, such a funny little thing,” he said, eyes glinting with something darker. “Do you even hear yourself? It really makes my blood boil—”

I didn’t let him finish.

My fist slammed into his face with everything I had.

Level 999 stats weren’t just mere numbers. They were my raw abilities, representing my base prowess. I snapped my wrist at the last second, twisted my torso, and drove the punch through him the way Roo had taught me.

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“YOU WRECKED MY PLACE!” I roared. “NO ONE GETS TO WRECK MY PLACE! OR I WILL WRECK YOU BACK, BITCH!”

Blood burst from his nose as his head snapped to the side.

“Wild Shape: Steppe Mammoth.”

Power flooded my body as I transformed, muscles swelling, bones reshaping, mass multiplying until the ground beneath me groaned in protest. My trunk lashed out, coiling around him before he could fully recover.

Then I threw him.

His body tore through the air like a ragdoll, vanishing into the distance as the force of it shattered what little remained of the clearing’s fragile silence.

I felt furious.

…

..

.

[POV: Zhen Rang]

Zhen Rang’s body tore through the sky like a discarded puppet before he halted midair with effortless control. The momentum bled away as his cultivation took over, suspending him high above the forest in perfect stillness. The wind curled around him, tugging at his robes, but he remained unmoved, as though the world itself had to adjust to his presence.

He tilted his head slightly, rolling his jaw.

“Pointy ears have a mean punch, huh?”

The taste of iron lingered on his tongue. He spat a thin stream of blood into the open air and wiped the rest from his nose with the back of his hand, eyes narrowing in quiet interest rather than anger.

That man… that so-called master of the forest.

No qi. Not even a trace.

And yet, that punch had drawn blood.

Zhen Rang chuckled under his breath, the sound low and thoughtful. He had done his due diligence. The Heavenly Domain Sect’s agents hadn’t simply vanished. He had found them. Dug them up himself. Inspected the corpses, studied the injuries, and traced the patterns of their deaths with the meticulous care of a hunter learning his prey.

Severed heads. Clean kills. Efficiency without flourish.

Also, plenty of cruelty if the crushed dantian was to go by.

What did Zhen Rang do with that information?

Of course, he took advantage of it.

The moment he confirmed the forest master’s absence, he burned everything that might go against him. Every thorny vine that blanketed the clearing had gone up in flames under his command, stripped away before they could become a nuisance. He layered an illusion formation over the destruction, weaving it carefully so that any casual inspection would reveal nothing amiss.

He had intended to ambush the man.

Instead, the man had seen through it.