Severing Ties: The Sect Regrets My Departure

Chapter 269: I Heard You Were Looking For Me?

BOOM!

At the exact microsecond Guan Xuelan’s expression darkened, a tiny, seemingly insignificant fireball—no larger than a grain of rice—materialized soundlessly inches from her face.

Before she could fully register the anomaly, the rice-sized spark detonated. It expanded instantaneously into a towering, apocalyptic inferno, completely engulfing the Azure Mystic Supreme in a sea of blinding, superheated plasma.

Guan Xuelan’s reflexes were Supreme-tier. She executed a spatial step, flashing backward to escape the epicenter of the blast.

But the moment she reappeared…

A razor-sharp crescent of compressed blade aura, radiating a flesh-melting heat, was already screaming toward her throat. The Demon Emperor hadn’t just attacked; he had flawlessly predicted her exact evasion vector and launched a preemptive intercept!

Caught completely off guard, Guan Xuelan had no choice but to frantically deploy a barrage of defensive techniques, stumbling backward in a highly undignified retreat. She barely managed to deflect the blade aura, her pristine robes slightly singed.

As she finally stabilized her footing within a secure spatial pocket, the Flame Feather Demon Emperor’s mocking laughter echoed across the heavens.

“You dare to lose focus while engaged in a life-and-death struggle with this Emperor? I must say, it seems your title of ‘Supreme’ is heavily padded.”

His words were like a rusted dagger twisted directly into Guan Xuelan’s pride.

She had just narrowly avoided being decapitated, looking thoroughly disheveled in the process. The Demon Emperor’s taunt ignited a towering, white-hot fury in her eyes.

But the maddening reality was… she couldn’t do anything about it. She could only burn with impotent rage.

Her titanic clash with the Flame Feather Demon Emperor had been raging for a considerable time. The two apex predators had fought from the scorched earth before the Azure Mystic mountain gates all the way up into the stratosphere, exchanging world-shattering blows of raw law power and Supreme might.

Yet, the battle remained locked in a frustrating stalemate.

Technically speaking, Guan Xuelan’s raw cultivation base was superior to the newly ascended Flame Feather Demon Emperor’s. If this were a simple mathematical equation of energy output, she possessed enough sheer power to completely overwhelm him.

However, high-level combat was not a math problem.

In a true life-and-death struggle between titans, when raw power fails to establish absolute dominance, other factors dictate the victor. The true contest transitions into a brutal test of combat intuition, tactical adaptability, flawless timing, and psychological resilience.

And in these arenas, the ‘superior’ Azure Mystic Supreme was failing spectacularly.

Despite throwing every esoteric technique in her vast arsenal at him, she had failed to gain even a momentary advantage. In fact, she was the only one who had suffered superficial injuries.

“You may have reached the Supreme realm, Guan Xuelan, but do you honestly believe that title makes you invincible?” The Demon Emperor sneered, his golden eyes blazing. “This Emperor clawed his way up from the absolute bottom of the food chain! My path was carved through an ocean of blood! From the very day I condensed my first demon core, I have never known peace. Even on the day I ascended to the Emperor realm, I was forced to fight three reigning Demon Emperors simultaneously to prove my worth!”

“And you, Supreme Guan?” he asked, his voice dripping with condescension. “You have sat on your throne for centuries. In all those years, have you ever crossed blades with an opponent of equal standing? On the day you ascended to the Supreme realm, did you shed a single drop of blood in a life-and-death trial?”

Guan Xuelan’s jaw tightened. She couldn’t answer him.

Because the humiliating truth was… she hadn’t.

Neither on the day she achieved her breakthrough, nor during her centuries-long reign, had she ever engaged in a true, unbridled deathmatch with another Mahayana Supreme.

To put it bluntly: at the absolute pinnacle of cultivation, Guan Xuelan’s practical combat experience was virtually zero. Against lesser cultivators, she could simply rely on the overwhelming disparity in raw power to crush them like insects. No technique was required when an elephant stepped on an ant.

But now, facing a battle-hardened veteran who had literally fought for every breath he had ever taken, Guan Xuelan’s tactical inadequacy was glaringly obvious. Despite having more raw power, she was being ruthlessly, systematically suppressed and dictated to by the Demon Emperor.

It was utterly, profoundly humiliating!

Deep down, a tiny, pathetic part of her was actually relieved she had goaded the Demon Emperor into fighting in the upper atmosphere. If this embarrassing display of incompetence had occurred in full view of her disciples, she would have never lived it down.

“In the face of absolute power, your so-called ‘tactics’ are nothing but the pathetic flailing of a cornered beast!” Guan Xuelan finally snapped, refusing to concede. With a furious snort, she launched another devastating offensive.

She intended to prove that while her combat experience might be lacking, it was irrelevant. She could adapt on the fly. Raw, unadulterated power was the only absolute truth!

However…

Just as Guan Xuelan gathered her momentum, preparing to unleash a thunderous, sky-shattering technique to permanently silence the arrogant bird, a sudden, violent palpitation seized her heart.

The sensation was so jarring it felt like a physical blow.

The next instant, her perfectly ordered internal aura completely destabilized, spiraling into violent chaos.

“Hmph!”

The Flame Feather Demon Emperor, a predator forged in constant warfare, possessed instincts sharper than a scalpel. He didn’t need to know why she faltered; he only needed to see the opening.

Before Guan Xuelan could even begin to suppress the internal chaos, the Demon Emperor transformed into a streak of blinding crimson light, closing the distance instantly.

He delivered a brutal, unmitigated palm strike directly to her chest.

CRACK!

Guan Xuelan took the hit completely unguarded. The sheer kinetic force launched her backward like a cannonball. As she desperately fought to stabilize her tumbling form, a sickening metallic taste flooded her mouth, and she violently coughed up a spray of vibrant Supreme blood.

But the physical injury was secondary to the true catastrophe.

Following the strike, the oppressive, world-encompassing Mahayana aura that normally surrounded Guan Xuelan began to hemorrhage rapidly. She was like a punctured balloon. Vast, terrifying quantities of her foundational Spiritual Qi were suddenly, inexplicably violently venting into the atmosphere!

Even the battle-hardened Flame Feather Demon Emperor paused, his fiery eyes widening in genuine bewilderment. He stared at his own palm, then back at the bleeding Supreme.

Was my strike… actually that devastating?

But Guan Xuelan wasn’t looking at him. She completely ignored the Demon Emperor, completely ignored the searing pain in her chest, and completely ignored her hemorrhaging cultivation.

Her bloodshot eyes were locked with terrifying, murderous intensity on a point far in the distance.

She was staring toward Cloud Firmament City.

She could feel it.

The Supreme Source…

It had been taken!

This wasn’t the vague, unsettling premonition she had felt earlier. This was a brutal, physical severing. The Supreme Source had been utterly, irreversibly stripped from her karmic web! And because the Source was inherently linked to her foundation, its violent extraction was dragging a massive portion of her own Spiritual Qi down with it, causing the catastrophic leak!

Her suspicions were confirmed.

Her Supreme Source. Her singular, irreplaceable key to ascending to Immortality.

It was gone!

Without a fraction of a second’s hesitation, Guan Xuelan completely turned her back on the Demon Emperor, took a spatial step, and launched herself toward Cloud Firmament City with the speed of a dying star.

Yes, she had physically extracted the Supreme Source and planted it in the boy’s Dantian. Yes, she had publicly, repeatedly proclaimed it a ‘Fated Chance’ she was graciously bestowing.

But she was lying! It wasn’t a gift! It was a highly sophisticated execution method designed to murder the anomaly and plunder his secrets!

How was this happening?!

How could the apocalyptic energy she had sarcastically labeled a Fated Chance… actually be absorbed as one?!

Hate!

Fury!

Shock!

Guan Xuelan was so consumed by rage she felt like she was going to hemorrhage again. Only a single, manic thought remained in her fracturing mind.

Take it back!

I will slaughter him, rip him open, and take back my Ascension!

However…

The moment she accelerated, a towering wall of crimson flames erupted directly in her flight path, solidifying into the smirking form of the Flame Feather Demon Emperor.

“It appears the esteemed Supreme Guan has encountered a slight… personal complication?” The Demon Emperor drawled, his golden eyes alight with predatory glee.

“If that is the case…”

“I think today is the perfect day to test a theory. I want to see if I can actually…”

“Slay a human Supreme!”

While Guan Xuelan was burning with apocalyptic anxiety, hopelessly pinned down by a Demon Emperor who smelled blood in the water, the atmosphere down in Cloud Firmament City had descended into absolute, suffocating despair.

“The grand array is collapsing! It cannot sustain another bombardment. If we remain passive, at most two more volleys and the shield shatters completely. We must sally forth.”

“We must buy time for the engineers to patch the critical nodes.”

“This calamity was brought upon you because of my existence. I will lead the vanguard. My death squad and I will do everything in our power to bog down the Pagoda Eight Thousand Cavalry. But my forces alone are insufficient to stall an army of that size.”

“I need volunteers.”

“I need men willing to leave these walls and die with me!”

Inside the trembling city, Shang Zhongqing’s voice echoed through the streets, heavy as lead. As he looked at the terrified faces of the Rogue Cultivators surrounding him, his eyes were filled with profound apology.

He had been imprisoned within these walls for centuries. He had never once set foot outside.

Over those long years, he had planned meticulously. Especially after forging an alliance with that mysterious faction, he had developed dozens of intricate counter-strategies for the inevitable day his brother arrived to execute him.

But…

He had calculated for assassinations, political maneuvering, and surgical strikes. He had never, in his wildest nightmares, anticipated that Shang Guanyu would resort to such a blunt, psychotic, and utterly unhinged method. He was flattening a neutral city just to prove a point!

Shang Zhongqing’s meticulously crafted plans were rendered entirely useless in the face of absolute, overwhelming brute force.

Even so, to defend his home, he had spent the last agonizing ‘incense stick of time’ performing miracles. He had desperately mobilized the city’s disparate gangs, organizing defensive formations on the fly to intercept the localized breaches.

His tactical brilliance had worked. He had miraculously held the line against an elite imperial army for a full incense stick of time.

But… there is a limit to miracles.

He had reached the absolute end of his operational capacity.

The city’s grand array had been fundamentally compromised by the Supreme’s attack earlier. While the Rogue Cultivators were numerous and brave, they were a disorganized militia facing a perfectly synchronized, heavily armored war machine.

They could not hold the walls any longer.

Unless they launched a suicidal counter-charge to disrupt the enemy’s siege engines, the array would fall, and the city would be slaughtered.

He had to leave the city. He had to fight to the death to buy the engineers a few more precious minutes.

As his grim proclamation hung in the air, a heavy, suffocating silence fell over the gathered cultivators.

Then, after a long, agonizing moment…

A burly man carrying a rusted broadsword spat on the ground and stepped forward. “Fuck it! My name is Wen Guijiang, and my life ain’t worth a cracked spirit stone anyway! Dying today is as good a day as any. I’m with you, Prince! We kill one of those imperial bastards, we break even! We kill two, we make a profit!”

As Wen Guijiang stepped up, the dam broke.

One by one, Rogue Cultivators gritted their teeth, drew their weapons, and stepped forward to join the suicide squad.

“Cloud Firmament City has kept me safe from my enemies for sixty years! It’s time I paid my rent! If I die today, at least they’ll carve my name on the Cloud Firmament Hero Soul List in the plaza!”

“Decades ago, when my blood enemies tracked me here, it was the unified front of this city’s cultivators that forced them to back down, buying me a few more decades of life! Now that the city is bleeding, I’d be a coward to hide!”

“The fundamental law of Cloud Firmament: The moment you step through those gates, you are one of us! All past debts are void! If an enemy refuses to honor that and attacks the city, they declare war on every single one of us!”

“Don’t apologize to us, Prince! This psychotic royal bastard wants to butcher our home! Are we supposed to just sit here and wait for the blade? I’m going out there with you! Let’s show these shiny imperial lapdogs how alley rats fight!”

“…”

Cloud Firmament City was a holy land. To live within its walls was to be granted its absolute protection. Sieges and skirmishes with vengeful enemies who tracked bounties to the gates were a monthly occurrence.

Defending the city was the unspoken, eternal pact they all shared.

Naturally, not a single person present blamed Shang Zhongqing for bringing this apocalypse to their doorstep.

Because that, too, was the rule.

However…

Just as the massive suicide squad formed up, weapons drawn, preparing to charge out of the failing array and embrace certain death…

High above the battlefield, in the absolute zenith of the heavens…

A profound, indescribable, and entirely alien aura suddenly bloomed.

Millions of eyes, both inside the city and within the besieging army, instinctively snapped upward.

There, manifesting slowly amidst the rolling clouds, was the ethereal, awe-inspiring phantom of a towering Immortal Gate.

And as the illusory gates slowly parted…

A solitary figure stepped through, casually treading upon the empty air as if descending a grand, invisible staircase.

The figure walked down until he reached the lower clouds, hovering directly between the city and the army. He looked down, his calm, placid gaze locking directly onto Shang Guanyu and his Pagoda Eight Thousand Cavalry.

When he spoke, his voice wasn’t loud, but it rolled across the battlefield like thunder, drowning out the sounds of war.

“I heard…”

“You were looking for me?”