Wang Yanping exhaled, a sound like a crumbling wall. The weight of the last few days seemed to physically compress him.

“Eighth Brother, the interior was a slaughterhouse. High-level beasts everywhere. We got separated from Yanlang almost immediately.” He paused, unable to meet Wang Yanfeng’s eyes. “We searched for days. His transmission talisman is dead silence. We swept his escape route twice. The odds of him being alive are… non-existent.”

Wang Yanfeng’s face went rigid. A younger brother, erased. They hadn’t been particularly close before the expedition, but months at sea—sharing danger, meals, and watch shifts—forged bonds that were not easily severed. He wasn’t made of stone.

He took a shaky breath, remembering there were outsiders present. He masked his grief with a stiff, brittle politeness. “And this Fellow Daoist is?”

“This is Fairy Ji Xiaotang,” Wang Hao introduced smoothly, stepping into the breach. “Moving forward, the Wang clan is in alliance with the Ji family to develop this ruin.”

Wang Yanfeng blinked, the political implications momentarily forcing his grief into the background. “Fairy Ji. I am Wang Yanfeng. It is an honor.” He gestured toward the shoreline, eager to retreat. “This is no place to talk. Let’s board the ship.”

“Eighth Uncle, wait,” Wang Hao raised a hand, his voice cutting through the damp air. “We aren’t done. There are still rats in the hole. We need to lock down the exit before they scatter.”

He turned his gaze to the huddled group of captives—cultivators from the three rival clans tied together like livestock.

“Release the Ji family members,” Wang Hao ordered, his tone flat. “Dispose of the rest.”

Panic rippled through the captives like an electric shock.

“No! Senior, please!” a Qi cultivator screamed, straining against his bonds until his wrists bled. “I’ll defect! I’ll serve you! I can be your dog, just spare me!”

They had seen Ji Xiaotang walk out with Wang Hao and assumed a general amnesty was in effect. The sudden death sentence shattered their delusion.

Wang Yanfeng didn’t hesitate. Grief demanded an outlet, and violence was the only currency he had left. He drew his blade, and within seconds, the pleading was silenced. The Qi Refining cultivators were cut down where they knelt, their blood staining the sand.

The liberated Ji family members scrambled behind Ji Xiaotang, trembling violently. They looked less like cultivators and more like frightened poultry.

“Rest in shifts,” Wang Hao commanded, stepping over a corpse without glancing down. “Watch the entrance. Nothing leaves alive.”

Three days later, the unstable island began to groan deep in its bedrock. The ruin was preparing to submerge.

Inside the barrier, the remnants of the Qi clan gathered at the exit. Qi Li’s face was grim, etched with the knowledge that this was a gamble with the devil.

“Listen to me,” Qi Li rasped, clutching three dark spheres in his hand. “I’m going out first to clear a path with the Sky Thunder Beads. The moment they detonate, you run. Scatter. If even one of you survives, report back to the family. Tell them everything. Tell them the Ji clan betrayed us.”

The Qi disciples nodded, clutching their artifacts with white-knuckled grips, their faces pale in the dim light.

“Go!”

Qi Li roared and dove through the swirling portal.

He emerged into the sunlight and was immediately greeted by three streaks of lethal spiritual light.

He twisted in mid-air, dodging the brunt of the ambush. His defensive artifacts flared, absorbing the residual energy of three Foundation Establishment strikes.

“Hah!” Qi Li landed, sneering at his attackers. “I knew you vultures would be waiting! Did you really think you could hold me?”

“Is that so?” Ji Xiaotang shot from the deck of the ship, her flying sword screaming toward him like a silver banshee. “Let’s test that confidence, old man!”

Qi Li’s eyes narrowed. In a fair fight, he would have enjoyed carving her up. But today, he was on the clock.

He parried her strike with his left hand, his right hand priming the Sky Thunder Beads. He just needed one clear throw to turn their formation into hamburger meat.

Cultivators from the Wang, Li, and Ji families closed the net. Qi Li saw his opening—a cluster of three early Foundation Establishment enemies. He wound up his arm, a feral grin splitting his face.

Crack.

A pain like a hot iron spike drove into his brain.

His vision went white. His spiritual connection to his limbs severed for a fraction of a second. The Sky Thunder Beads slipped from his numb fingers, rolling harmlessly on the ground.

In that moment of paralysis, a green light flashed.

The Child-Mother Green Light Sword punched through his chest, exiting his back in a spray of bright arterial blood.

“Why?” Qi Li gasped, looking down at the steel in his heart, his brain still reeling from the psychic assault.

Wang Hao floated down, landing softly in front of the dying elder. “If you had run immediately, you might have been a headache. But you hesitated. You wanted to kill us.”

Wang Hao had seen the murderous intent in the old man’s eyes and decided not to take chances. The Spirit-Splitting Cone had done its work perfectly.

Though, he noted with clinical interest, it hadn’t killed him outright. Divine Consciousness attacks aren’t instant death buttons against veterans, he mused. Good to know.

With Qi Li dead, the remaining Qi clan members were fish on a chopping block.

As the ruin began to collapse, the terrifying groan of sinking stone broke their resolve. They stampeded out of the exit in a blind panic, running straight into the waiting blades of the alliance. It was less a battle and more a massacre.

Minutes later, the entrance sealed, and the Pill Cauldron Sect vanished beneath the waves for another fifty years.

“It is done,” Wang Hao said, flicking blood from his sword.

The groups gathered on the beach for the final farewells.

“Fellow Daoists,” Ji Xiaotang said, bowing formally to the Wang and Li elders. “You are welcome to visit the Ji family on Giant Crab Island anytime. Farewell.”

She turned to leave, but Wang Hao called out with a grin. “Go on ahead. I’ll come by to pay my respects to Senior Ji in a few days.”

Ji Xiaotang froze. She shot him a glare that was equal parts annoyance and embarrassment, her cheeks flushing a deep red. I was being polite, you idiot! Why are you inviting yourself over?

The others missed the subtext, assuming it was standard alliance protocol. But Li Derong narrowed her eyes. The tension between those two was… peculiar.

“Right,” Wang Yanfeng clapped his hands, breaking the awkward silence. “Let’s divide the spoils.”

The Qi and Qin clans were extinct, but their assets remained. The Ji family took their share of herbs and departed, leaving the hardware—artifacts and ships—to the Wang and Li families.

The prize was the fleet: one medium-sized warship worth nearly half a million spirit stones, and one small scout ship worth a fraction of that.

“The value gap is too wide to just swap,” Wang Hao said, looking at the hulls. “How about this: we appraise the total value and split the difference in spirit stones. Whoever takes the big ship pays the other family 150,000 spirit stones.”

“150,000?” Li Dedao winced. “We don’t have that kind of liquidity.”

“Neither do we,” Wang Hao admitted. “But we have a mountain of demon beast materials and loot from the ruins. We can use that to balance the ledger.”

Li Derong and Li Dedao huddled for a quick conference. Taking the big ship would bankrupt them and leave them with no materials to trade. Plus, they didn’t have the manpower to crew a warship for hunting.

“We’ll take the small ship,” Li Derong decided. “We’d prefer the liquidity. It will look better when we return to Green Bull Market.”

“Done,” Wang Yanfeng agreed. “We owe you roughly 110,000 spirit stones after deducting the beast hides you need for talisman crafting.”

“Don’t rush the math, Uncle,” Wang Hao interjected. “We’ll settle the bill once we’re back at the market and offload some cargo. Is that acceptable?”

“Brother Hao’s word is gold,” Li Dedao nodded. “We trust you.”

Wang Hao smiled. He had a better plan than selling raw materials. He intended to refine the surplus Essence Condensing Fruits into Foundation Establishment Pills. Paying the Li family in pills would be better than cash; in Wanxiang City, those pills were harder to get than rare ore.

The final task was the personal loot.

They stripped the bodies of the Qi cultivators. Qi Li and his lieutenant carried eight storage bags between them. One bag was immediately identified. It was Wang Yanlang’s.

Wang Yanfeng took the bag with shaking hands, his face hardening as the confirmation of murder settled in his gut.

“We reclaim this one,” he said quietly. “The other seven are up for division.”