Chapter 70: Great Revelation

I was in a fantastic mood as I strolled through the pulverized remains of the inner gate, stepping over chunks of masonry like a modern tourist taking a leisurely promenade through an open-air museum.

Around me, the palace staff, court eunuchs, and silk-robed concubines looked like they had collectively witnessed the physical descent of the god of death. And frankly, who could blame them? If a guy in spotless white scholar robes casually walked up to your three-ton reinforced spirit-iron barrier, knocked twice for customer service, and then sent both doors airborne fifty yards down the hallway with an effortless bare-knuckle punch, you’d probably wet your satin trousers too.

Behind me, the dozen rebel scouts were utterly dumbfounded, staring at the cratered archway with their jaws dragging against the marble floor.

Bai Ling and Shen Qingxue, on the other hand, barely blinked. Qingxue took it in stride because her fanatical worship of her husband had already reached the "Master can sneeze and shatter the moon" tier, while Bai Ling merely tightened her grip on her short swords, treating my casual demolition job as just another regular day of dealing with an unfathomable immortal grandmaster.

I glanced sideways at Bai Ling.

Her amber eyes weren’t scanning the gold-leaf pillars or the ornate jade screens with the greedy awe of an impoverished rebel seeing luxury for the first time. Instead, her gaze was soft, burdened, and dripping with heavy, unmistakable nostalgia.

I paused, crossing my hands into my wide sleeves, and offered her an easy, knowing smile.

"Leader Bai," I asked casually, keeping my voice low. "Are you sure you really want to see this through to the end? There’s still time to turn around and let your boys do the sacking."

Bai Ling froze. Her sharp amber eyes snapped to my face, widening in momentary shock before she caught the playful, all-knowing gleam in my eyes.

She let out a dry, self-deprecating breath, realizing that trying to keep secrets from an ancient monster with Late-Stage Golden Core divine sense was like trying to hide an elephant behind a single piece of straw.

She clenched her calloused fists, her knuckles turning bone-white against her leather vambraces.

"I have to, Senior," she murmured, her voice laced with grim, unyielding resolve. "I started this fire three years ago. I have to be the one to extinguish the ashes."

"Fair enough," I chuckled, stepping aside and waving my sleeve with a polite ’after you’ gesture. "Then lead the way. You know the floor plan better than anyone anyway."

Bai Ling gave a sharp nod and immediately took point.

Shen Qingxue and I fell into step right behind her, flanked by the rebel scouts.

As we navigated the labyrinthine corridors, Qingxue’s dark obsidian eyes flickered between the corners of the palace and Bai Ling’s back. Bai Ling wasn’t searching for signs or guessing which hall held the administrative seat, she knew every blind corner, every ornamental arch, and bypassed every dead-end courtyard with the eerie familiarity of someone who had grown up running through these exact hallways as a child.

Qingxue noticed it immediately, her sharp, military instincts piecing the clues together, but being the obedient, well-mannered disciple she was, she kept her lips firmly sealed.

Our little parade met almost zero resistance.

The terrifying boom of the shattered gates had echoed across the entire estate, and the few royal guards who tried to block our passage, mostly mid-tier Body Strengthening brutes with gilded spears, were completely disorganized.

Bai Ling didn’t even draw her steel, she stepped through their clumsy formations with fluid, sweeping kicks and palm strikes, hurling four guards into ornamental fish ponds and sending another half-dozen crashing through wooden latticework.

Within five minutes, we reached the colossal double doors of the Grand Audience Chamber.

Bai Ling kicked the doors open with a thunderous BANG.

The vast hall was opulent to the point of vulgarity. Gilded dragon pillars held up an arched ceiling painted in pure lapis lazuli, thick crimson carpets soaked the marble floor, and the air reeked of burning musk and heavy, sour liquor.

Stationed in front of the raised dais was a formidable defensive line, nearly fifty heavily armored personal guards, every single one of them a hardened warrior at the Body Strengthening Realm, led by a stern-faced officer radiating the faint, pressurized hum of the First Layer Qi Condensation Realm.

And lounging atop the massive, gold-plated serpent throne sat the man himself.

Governor Yan.

He was a bloated, piggish man draped in shimmering yellow brocade silk, his round face flushed red with drunkenness, grease shining on his double chin. Lounging on his thick thighs were two young mortal women, barely out of their teens, their silk garments partially torn, weeping silently in shivering terror as his fat, ring-encrusted hands pawed aggressively at their flesh.

Standing like immovable iron statues on either side of the serpent throne were two tall, middle-aged men clad in dark-blue robes, their arms folded, radiating the heavy, suffocating spiritual pressure of the Early Foundation Establishment Realm.

The moment our group stepped over the threshold, Governor Yan blinked through his drunken stupor, his fat lips parting in sheer, disbelieving astonishment as his eyes locked straight onto the woman leading the charge.

"Bai Ling?!"

The fat governor barked out a harsh, rasping laugh, practically shoving the crying concubines off his lap as he slapped his thigh.

"Hahaha! Well, look at what the cat dragged in! Did your miserable little band of cave rats finally get butchered by my vanguard at Wolf Fang Gorge? Did you abandon your starving outlaws, tuck your tail between your legs, and crawl back to the capital to beg for my mercy?!"

Clearly, the carrier pigeons hadn’t reached his desk yet. He was still under the blissful, idiotic illusion that his eight-hundred-man extermination vanguard was currently roasting rebels over spitfires in the canyon.

Bai Ling’s amber eyes flared with pure, venomous disgust.

"Save your pathetic delusions, Yan," she spat coldly, the stone beneath her boots cracking under her sudden physical weight. "Your commanders are dead, your vanguard is buried beneath limestone, and today, you are going to pay for every drop of blood you have spilled in this principality!"

Governor Yan clicked his tongue, shaking his round head with exaggerated disappointment as he reached down to pour himself a fresh goblet of wine.

"Tsk, tsk, tsk. Is that any way to speak to your own elder brother, little sister?"

BAM.

The revelation detonated through the room like a hidden talisman.

Behind us, the dozen rebel scouts froze in absolute, paralyzed disbelief. Their eyes darted wildly between the bloated despot on the throne and the athletic, leather-clad woman who had led their resistance through blood and starvation for three agonizing years.

The rebel leader... was Governor Yan’s younger sister?!

For a split second, a flicker of dark suspicion crossed the scouts’ faces, wondering if the entire three-year rebellion had been some sick, aristocratic game. But the thought evaporated almost as quickly as it appeared. You don’t slaughter two hundred imperial soldiers in the dark and lead a suicide raid into the palace if you’re colluding with the tyrant.

Bai Ling’s hatred was too raw, too visceral to be faked.

Shen Qingxue stood beside me, her obsidian eyes flashing with sudden, sharp comprehension. The pieces clicked into place inside her mind, Bai Ling’s high-class military education, her intricate knowledge of the palace layout, and the deep, unspoken burden of betrayal she had carried on her shoulders.

I merely smirked into my sleeves. Classic xianxia family drama. It’s always the sibling.

"Shut your filthy mouth!" Bai Ling roared, her twin short swords finally clearing their scabbards with a deafening screech of steel. "You have no right to utter the word ’brother’ in my presence! Not after you poisoned our uncle, usurped the governorship, and turned our ancestral lands into a slaughterhouse!"

Governor Yan took a slow sip of wine, letting out an annoyed, weary sigh.

"Aiya, Ling’er, you used to admire me so much when we were children," Yan murmured, casually leaning back as his hands reached out to roughly grope the bodice of the crying girl beside him, tearing the delicate silk down her shoulder with crude indifference. "What happened to you? You grew up, and suddenly you became so self-righteous and insufferable. You think running a province is all about poetry and peasant smiles? Gold makes the world turn. Slaves buy spirit stones, and spirit stones buy the favor of the Prince in the royal court! I did what had to be done to elevate our clan!"

"You sold innocent children like cattle to foreign dynasties!" Bai Ling screamed, her voice shaking with fury. "You turned our borders into hell! The day you signed that slaver treaty with the cartels was the day my brother died, and the day I swore to tear your throat out!"

"A pity," Yan sighed, waving his flabby hand dismissively toward the floor. "You could never understand the burden of true power. But it doesn’t matter anymore. Since heaven was generous enough to deliver you straight back into my hands, I won’t let my precious little sister run away to the mud again."

His flabby face darkened, his drunken gaze turning cold and ruthless as he pointed toward our group.

"Guards! Break their limbs and slaughter the trash! Capture my sister alive!"

"Yes, My Lord!"

The fifty Body Strengthening shock troops roared, their heavy gilded spears leveling forward in a solid, unyielding iron wall, led by the Qi Condensation captain whose broadsword hummed with spiritual energy.

Beside me, Shen Qingxue’s posture stiffened.

Her knuckles turned white around the hilt of the Autumn Water Frost Sword. She wasn’t worried about the fifty mortal guards or the Qi Condensation captain, she had just decapitated three commanders hours ago.

Her anxiety stemmed entirely from the two dark-blue-robed cultivators standing silently beside the throne.

Foundation Establishment Realm.

An entire major realm above her. Between Qi Condensation and Foundation Establishment lay a vast, terrifying gulf of spiritual density, their liquefied spiritual pools had solidified into foundational spiritual pillars. To a Second Layer Qi Condensation disciple who had just depleted half her spiritual marrow, trading blows with two Foundation Establishment monsters was pure suicide.

She took a sharp, protective step toward my flank, her teeth gritting as she prepared to throw her life away to shield my front.

I couldn’t help but chuckle warmly, reaching out with my left hand to gently push her back behind my wide white sleeve.

"Relax, little wildcat," I smiled, stepping past her onto the red carpet. "You fought three rounds this morning and earned your gold star. Go help Sister Bai sweep the mortal trash."

I rolled my shoulders, cracking my neck with a series of satisfying pops, a bright, thoroughly shameless grin spreading across my face.

"As for those two middle-aged babysitters up there... it just so happens your Master has been itching to test some new toys."

I didn’t want to use my Late-Stage Golden Core pressure to instantly squish them into meat patties, where was the fun in that? An overpowered MC who one-shots every minor mob without even flexing his new gear is an MC who doesn’t understand the joy of combat testing.

With a subtle mental command, I clamped down on my spiritual core, forcibly suppressing my active aura down from Late Golden Core all the way to the Early Foundation Establishment Realm.

Then, with a gentle flick of my wrist, a dark, ominous spatial ripple tore through the air beside my hip.

HUM—!

From the void emerged a magnificent, pitch-black longsword.

The blade was forged from ancient abyssal black iron, its edge shimmering with an eerie, dark-purple spiritual luster that seemed to drink in the ambient light of the palace torches. The moment it materialized, the temperature in the Grand Audience Chamber plummeted by twenty degrees, and a suffocating, corrosive aura of ancient calamity washed over the red carpet.

The Nine Abyss Calamity Sword!

The Earth-Grade spirit weapon I had acquired through the system’s 10x critical multiplier after gifting Qingxue her frost blade.

"Oho, not bad at all," I whistled softly, giving the dark hilt a casual, one-handed spin. The balance was divine, feeling as light as a willow twig yet carrying the latent, cataclysmic weight of a subterranean mountain.

Seeing me draw a black blade and match their cultivation base, the two Foundation Establishment guards sneered, their eyes flashing with mockery.

"An arrogant brat playing the wandering hero!"

"Die!"

BOOM!

Both guards exploded from the dais simultaneously, their dark-blue robes snapping like sails as they crossed sixty feet in a split second.

The guard on the left drew a serpentine broadsword wrapped in raging gale-attribute spiritual qi, aiming a lethal, pressurized wind-blade straight for my collarbone, the guard on the right hurled a pair of brass spiked wheels saturated with heavy earth-attribute qi, spinning like sawblades to grind my knees into dust.

"Too slow, too stiff, zero aesthetic value," I chuckled.

I didn’t bother using complex footwork. I simply took a single, casual step forward and swept the Nine Abyss Calamity Sword upward in a lazy, backhanded arc.

CLANG! SKRRRRT!

The pitch-black edge met the serpentine broadsword and the spinning brass wheels at the exact same point of impact.

There was no deafening struggle. The moment the Earth-Grade blade made contact, the ancient abyssal properties embedded in the steel awoke. A wave of dark-purple corrosive sword-qi surged along their weapons like hungry leeches, instantly devouring their refined spiritual auras and biting straight into the metal.

Snap! Crack!

The high-tier mortal broadsword shattered into three jagged pieces, and both heavy brass wheels cracked right down the middle, their spiritual light completely snuffed out.

"What?!"

"My spirit weapon!"

Both Foundation Establishment experts stumbled backward, their faces twisting in absolute, horrified shock. Their hands were trembling violently, black, corrosive energetic frost already eating away at the flesh of their palms, completely halting their blood qi regeneration.

They had poured decades of blood into refining those weapons, yet this white-clad young man had cleaved them like cheap firewood with a single, effortless backhand.

I rested the dark, smoking blade lightly against my shoulder, looking at the two pale, sweating cultivators with an amused, thoroughly entertained smirk.

"Come on now, don’t look so depressed," I laughed, taking another leisurely step forward. "That was just the durability test. Now, let’s see how well your spiritual bodies handle the sharpness test."