Chapter 127: Your "Big Brother" Is Still Alive, but He's Truly Dead

A bright moon hung suspended in the sky, spilling clear brilliance over heaven and earth.

Thousands of miles away, above the boundless ocean, fierce winds whipped up towering waves that roared without end.

Eight dazzling escape lights tore through the heavy night sky, streaking across the firmament at breathtaking speed. The spiritual aura carried by each escape light reached at least the Nascent Soul Early Stage.

Such elite combat power gathered in one place would normally be enough to suppress an entire territory and run rampant across the four seas and eight wildernesses. Yet today, all eight flew in frantic haste, a heavy weight of gloom and urgency frozen between their brows.

The leading white-robed escape light suddenly came to a halt.

Wei Tianhe hovered high above the sea, his robes snapping violently in the ocean wind. His eyes narrowed, his gaze piercing through thousands of miles of clouds and mist to lock fixedly onto the direction of the Yuqing Sect.

Behind him, the seven escape lights came to a halt at once. Their spiritual glows receded, revealing seven figures in unison.

Zhou Xuanzhen looked anxious. Just as he was about to ask, his mind suddenly seized with alarm. The spiritual power throughout his body violently destabilized, and his face turned as pale as paper.

At the farthest edge of the horizon, a mushroom cloud that blotted out the sky rose slowly, billowing violently outward.

Even thousands of miles away, the terrifying aftershocks ravaging heaven and earth still surged forward. Colossal swells churned endlessly across the sea as a violent shockwave slammed into them head-on.

"Such explosive power... it far exceeds what a full-power strike from a Nascent Soul Stage cultivator could ever achieve."

A Nascent Soul Early Stage cultivator cried out in shock, but catching sight of the rigid, bloodless Zhou Xuanzhen beside him, he clamped his mouth shut, not daring to say another word.

Zhou Xuanzhen trembled violently, his pupils shrinking to pinpricks as his gaze remained pinned to that horrifying mushroom cloud, his voice shaking uncontrollably with despair.

"Disaster! This is the sign of my Yuqing Sect's Protective Mountain Array being forcibly detonated! The sect must have suffered a catastrophe! If not driven to utter desperation, my big brother would never resort to that mutual-destruction secret art, Heaven and Earth Share Longevity!"

As his words fell, the faces of the other seven changed drastically, a sudden chill rising in their hearts.

Without another moment's hesitation, the eight escape lights soared into the sky once more, tearing through the surging currents of air as they flew at top speed toward the ruins of the Yuqing Sect.

In just a few breaths, they arrived above Yuqing Island. The scene that met their eyes made everyone draw in a sharp breath of cold air, their minds trembling with shock.

The Yuqing Immortal Palace, once grand, majestic, and shrouded in immortal mist, had been reduced entirely to a blackened ruin.

More than half of the spirit island had been forcefully overturned and torn apart. Its spirit veins, with a heritage spanning ten thousand years, were completely shattered and depleted. The continuous mountain ranges had collapsed, and thousands of palace halls were reduced to broken walls and rubble.

Charred, carbonized earth crisscrossed with thick layers of ice. Scalding steam and piercing cold churned together, leaving the area in a ruined, deathly silence.

A pungent, nauseating stench of blood mingled with the smell of burning, permeating every inch of the air and churning their stomachs to the point of retching.

Shattered fragments of magic artifacts, scattered and torn storage pouches, and the mangled corpses of disciples littered the ground.

Some corpses had been burned to charcoal by raging flames, while others were frozen into crystalline ice sculptures by extreme cold. Still others were torn into incomplete pieces, their eyes wide open in unresigned death. Everywhere one looked, there was only the dead silence left behind by a brutal massacre.

Staring at the horrific devastation before him, Zhou Xuanzhen trembled uncontrollably. His eyes swept wildly across the ruins, frantically searching for any lingering trace of life.

Suddenly, his entire body shuddered.

A faint yet unmistakably familiar aura drifted out from the deepest part of the ruins.

It was his older brother, Zhou Xuanqing! He was still alive!

Casting aside all caution and doubt, Zhou Xuanzhen blurred into motion, transforming into a streak of light that plunged directly toward the source of the aura.

High in the sky, Wei Tianhe remained suspended in place. His somber gaze swept across the scarred ruins, and an inexplicable surge of intense unease rose in his heart.

The power unleashed by the detonation of a Protective Mountain Array was utterly terrifying; even as a Nascent Soul Late Stage cultivator, he would hardly survive without relying on trump cards to protect himself.

For Zhou Xuanqing to survive, even gravely injured, defied all reason.

He immediately raised a hand and shouted a warning, "Fellow Daoist Zhou, wait! It's a trap!"

In the end, he was a step too late.

Zhou Xuanzhen had already touched down amid the rubble, coming to an abrupt halt.

Amid the shattered stones and ruined walls, Zhou Xuanqing leaned against the ground. His robes were tattered and soaked in blood, his aura weakened to the absolute limit. He appeared on the verge of death, clinging to his final fading breath.

"Big Brother!"

Zhou Xuanzhen cried out in grief as he rushed forward, leaning down and reaching out to touch the other's shoulder.

The instant his fingertips were about to brush the robes, Zhou Xuanqing, whose eyes had been lifelessly lowered, suddenly snapped them open.

Those were definitely not Zhou Xuanqing's gentle, steady eyes.

They were a pair of eerie, dark green pupils, cold as the abyssal pools of Jiuyou. Lifeless and rippleless, they held not the slightest warmth of humanity, only bone-chilling dread.

Zhou Xuanzhen's pupils shrank to pinpricks, warning bells screaming in his mind as an extreme chill of impending death instantly engulfed his entire body!

A flash of cold light erupted, far too fast for divine sense to perceive!

Spurt.

Blood erupted like a fountain!

A severed head flew into the air, tracing a gruesome arc beneath the bright moonlight. Hot blood geysered skyward from the neck, blooming in the night like a crimson lotus.

Zhou Xuanzhen's wide-open eyes remained frozen in sheer horror and disbelief; even in death, he had not realized what had just occurred.

The headless corpse swayed twice before crashing heavily onto the blackened ruins.

In the span of a single breath, a fatal instant kill.

The figure disguised as Zhou Xuanqing slowly straightened up. His face twisted and warped, shifting into the likeness of a young man.

It was a young, cold face, devoid of grief or joy.

He cupped his palm slightly, where a radiant sphere of teal light enclosing a Nascent Soul hovered quietly. The miniature infant shivered and struggled, yet an eerie power sealed it so thoroughly that not even the faintest sound could escape.

The youth lowered his eyes for an indifferent glance, tucking Zhou Xuanzhen's Nascent Soul into his sleeve without any expression. His movements were calm and detached, as if he had merely crushed an ant.

A paramount cultivator of the Middle Nascent Soul Stage had fallen just like that, his body perishing and Dao vanishing.

High in the sky, Wei Tianhe's pupils shrank violently, monstrous waves of shock crashing through his mind.

Behind him, the six Nascent Soul cultivators were ashen-faced and rigid with cold terror, their eyes filled with utter panic.

Not a single person had seen where that cold light came from, nor could anyone track the trajectory of Jiuyou's strike.

An instant kill against a Middle Nascent Soul Stage cultivator! Slain with an effortless gesture, like slaughtering chickens or butchering dogs!

Such terrifying combat prowess belonged without question to a supreme master of the Nascent Soul Late Stage!

"Jiuyou... it really is you! You're actually still alive!"

Wei Tianhe spoke in a low voice, his tone solemn to the extreme, every word laced with a deep dread he could not disguise.

Upon hearing that name, the remaining cultivators were struck dumb, their minds trembling in sheer disbelief.

That mad cultivator, whom the world had long assumed to have fallen and passed away in meditation, had actually reappeared among the living!

Yet Jiuyou should have been erased by the passage of time. Even if by some miracle he had survived, why did he look so young? Could that rumored Ten-Thousand-Year Longevity Fruit have fallen into his hands back then...

Above the ruins, the night wind howled, flapping Jiuyou's bloodstained green robes.

The moonlight poured down, making his pale face seem even colder. His eerie dark green eyes gleamed with a terrifying brilliance, like two clusters of netherworld ghost fires burning in the dead of night.

He slowly lifted his eyes toward Wei Tianhe high above. His voice was utterly calm, as if casually exchanging pleasantries with an old friend, devoid of the slightest murderous edge.

"Fellow Daoist Wei, it has been many years. I trust you have been well? Heh."

Yet not a single person dared let down their guard.

Wei Tianhe fell silent for a long time. His heavy gaze swept slowly across the shattered immortal palace, the brutally slain disciples strewn everywhere, and the corpses ravaged by fire and ice, before finally settling on Jiuyou's cold, detached face.

His tone was calm yet carried an unquestionable certainty—not an inquiry, but an established fact.

"The Yuqing Sect was destroyed by you."

The faintest smirk tugged at the corners of Jiuyou's lips as he parted them, treating the matter lightly and as a given.

"The Yuqing Sect was a great sect of the Righteous Path. If they willingly sacrificed the entire sect to help this old man achieve the Dao, what could be wrong with that? As for Zhou Xuanzhen, he cared so much about his big brother that I sent them to be reunited as a family. Consider it my way of repaying the kindness."

"Hmph. Fellow Daoist Wei, do you have any objections?"

Wei Tianhe took a deep breath of the freezing night wind, his heart sinking to the very bottom.

Behind him, the six Nascent Soul cultivators had already lost their courage. Their spiritual energy wound taut as they quietly retreated, instinctively keeping Wei Tianhe in front of them as though facing a mortal nemesis.

Looking at that solitary, bloodstained figure standing in the ruins, only a single thought remained in everyone's minds.

This man was by no means someone they could contend with!