Chapter 434 - 387: Am I Qualified Enough?

The movement was still very slow.

Slow enough for everyone to see the slender, fair hand emerge from beneath the deep blue great cloak.

Slow enough for everyone to see the five fingers spread and then form a loose fist, as if grasping something intangible yet immensely heavy.

Slow enough for everyone to think they had time to see clearly what would happen next.

However...

That right hand just casually—

gave a light wave.

No trajectory.

No afterimage.

No fluctuation of Magical Power.

None of the light, sound, or aura that a Foundation Establishment Cultivator’s attack should invariably possess.

Only the expression on the Netherworld Master’s face—a mixture of arrogance and astonishment that had yet to change—was frozen there forever.

The next instant.

WHOOSH—

A soft sound.

Like an old paper doll, licked by the flame of a candle in a mischievous child’s hand.

The Netherworld Master’s figure, starting from the top of his head, silently—turned to ash.

Like a scroll of ink wash painting soaked by an invisible rain, the ink bleeding from the paper’s grain, fading, dissolving.

In the end, not even a wisp of smoke or dust remained.

Only in the spot where he had stood, a faint, hair-thin, bright yellow gleam lingered in the empty air.

The gleam vanished in a flash.

So fast it was like an illusion.

But in that fleeting moment, all Cultivators at Foundation Establishment and above felt a tremor that originated from the depths of their Divine Soul—a shudder.

Dead silence.

Utter and complete dead silence.

The silence was so thick it was like the undying chill from the depths of the Black Abyss Rift Valley, freezing the million Cultivators along with their breaths, their heartbeats, and the circulation of their Magical Power.

The knuckles of Master Revolving Wheel’s hand, which gripped the bamboo scroll, had turned pale white.

His eyes, like twin orbs of Glowing Green Ghost Fire, flickered violently.

He had seen it.

He had seen Qi Yun raise his hand.

He had seen Qi Yun wave his sleeve.

He had even seen how that fleeting, bright yellow gleam had crossed the vast expanse of the void and, in a billionth of a second, landed on his martial nephew’s brow.

He had seen it.

He had seen the entire process.

But—

he couldn’t stop it.

With his Cultivation at Great Master Peak, with his Status as the Yellow Springs Netherworld Acting Sect Leader, with the Divine Thought he drove using a Secret Skill passed down for ten thousand years—

he couldn’t even form the thought to intervene in time.

By the time his awareness returned,

his martial nephew had already turned to ash.

And Qi Yun’s hand had already withdrawn back beneath his great cloak.

His movements were unhurried, his expression placid.

As if what he had just waved away was not a Foundation Establishment Middle Stage Master, not a member of the Direct Lineage of the Yellow Springs Netherworld.

But merely a speck of dust that had landed on his cuff.

「On the Black Rock Highlands to the east.」

San Si Master still wore his usual expression of a faint smile with downcast eyes.

But the ordinary-looking White Jade Pendant hanging at his waist was now vibrating gently, at an extremely subtle, almost imperceptible frequency.

That was the hum of a sword.

The hum of the Ancient Sword he had suppressed for over a hundred years, an Ancient Sword that had almost forgotten how to be drawn.

San Si Master lowered his gaze.

The thumb of his right hand, which had been hidden in his sleeve, gently pressed down on the sword’s hilt.

He pressed it steadily.

So steadily that no one noticed.

But he himself knew.

A thin, fine layer of sweat had already beaded in his palm.

「On the jet-black stone platform to the south.」

Lady Jiu Li’s hand, which had been propping up her cheek, had been lowered at some point.

Her languid, luminous phoenix eyes were now half-closed, her gaze crossing the vast expanse to fall upon the deep blue figure atop the cliff’s edge.

Her fingertips no longer tapped.

Her ten fingers were interlaced, resting gently on her knees.

Her posture was still graceful, still noble.

But behind her, the Nine-headed Red Gold Golden Simurgh had now folded all its wings and feathers, lowering its noble heads.

The feathers on its necks trembled slightly.

「Atop the cliff’s edge.」

Qi Yun retracted his gaze.

He looked toward the edge of the northern wasteland, at the old man dressed in a jet-black scholar’s robe, holding a dark yellow bamboo scroll, his gaunt face like that of a ghost from an ancient tomb.

He did not speak immediately.

He just watched quietly.

In the vast, cyan-gold depths of his eyes, there was no pride, no mockery, not even a ripple of emotion.

Only a bottomless calm, like a ten-thousand-year-old Cold Abyss.

After a long moment,

he spoke.

His words were like a Celestial Constitution forged from immense Profound Iron, falling character by character into the dead, almost frozen void:

"Fellow Daoist Revolving Wheel."

He paused.

His cyan-gold eyes remained calmly fixed on the old man, whose Glowing Green Ghost Fire eyes were flickering violently.

"I—"

He uttered the final three words, his tone not fluctuating in the slightest:

"Do I qualify?"

—

Above the Black Abyss Rift Valley, the Yin Wind, which had not rested for ten thousand years, finally began to flow again.

The wind swept past the faces of a million Demon Cultivators, all silent as cicadas in winter. It swept past the slightly pale knuckles of the Cyan Sect’s San Si Master, past the drooping feathers of the nine-headed Simurgh behind Fengduo’s Lady Jiu Li.

It swept past the old man at the edge of the northern wasteland, dressed in his jet-black scholar’s robe, clutching his dark yellow bamboo scroll, as silent as a ghost from an ancient tomb.

He stood there.

The green ghost fire in the depths of his eye sockets flickered erratically.

The hemp rope on the bamboo scroll twisted silently in his palm.

For a long time.

So long that the wind in the rift valley had turned from a low hum to a mournful cry.

He spoke.

His voice was hoarse, like the first breath of stale, heavy air escaping from a thousand-year-old ancient coffin as it’s pried open:

"Enough."

A single word fell.

The green ghost fire finally, slowly, subsided.

...