Chapter 46

At this moment, Yu Youyou felt immensely happy in her heart.
The little one waved her tiny fists, watching the scumbag who had been caught like a turtle in a jar.
The shadow that Huangfu Zhou from the book had cast over Yu Youyou completely dissipated in the toddler's mind.
Behind her, the elderly emperor did not speak again, obviously feeling there was nothing more to say to a fool.
At this instant, Chu Xingyun narrowed his eyes and looked at those cultivators who, for reasons unknown, had joined forces with Huangfu Zhou and clearly harbored malicious intents toward the Chu imperial family. Showing no more courtesy, he raised his hand and struck with a sword.
Sword light swept across the entire Minghua Hall. Instantly, the auras of those cultivators shifted, bursting forth with even more formidable cultivation bases. Consciously avoiding the direction of Huangfu Zhou, they fled separately toward the outside of the hall.
Yet the restrictions within the Minghua Hall were far too powerful.
Upon colliding with the barriers, they immediately plummeted downwards, only to meet the oncoming sword light. Unable to resist, their physical bodies and dao foundations were instantly destroyed.
These several cultivators perished in the blink of an eye, not even lasting two breaths of time.
There were also a few junior members of the Chu clan present here, who were frightened out of their wits and fell to their knees, begging for mercy and confessing their wrongs.
However, Emperor Zhao merely waved a hand at these turncoats, showing no trace of softness.
Seeing Chu Xingyun pause, the emperor himself raised his hand, clutching a piece of jade pendant.
The jade pendant was inlaid with spirit stones; as its spiritual light flashed, several bolts of lightning descended from the palace dome, instantly reducing those juniors who had colluded with outsiders in an attempt to plot against Chu Xingyun to ashes.
That was also a part of the formation. Clearly, when Chu Xingyun originally set up the array, he had already considered how to enable mortals to possess the ability to fight against formidable enemies.
Watching as only one person remained in Minghua Hall, Huangfu Zhou trembled with both hands, his eyes filled with extreme hatred as he looked at Chu Xingyun and the others.
"Good, very good. Today I simply lost a move in chess."
Never had he imagined that he would be outmaneuvered by someone.
And then ridiculed and humiliated to boot.
Furthermore, seeing Chu Xingyun's terrifying aura, Huangfu Zhou's resentment grew even deeper.
Having possessed the strength of the peak Nascent Soul stage in his youth, he had expected to make a name for himself in the world of cultivation. Why, then, had Chu Xingyun had to emerge so abruptly?
Because of Chu Xingyun, he had remained a nobody in the cultivation world to this day.
"Hit him." Facing his vicious expression, the toddler hurriedly shouted loudly to Chu Xingyun.
However, she hadn't expected that a slightly younger Huangfu Zhou would be so easy to deal with, and even so gullible and self-righteous.
In the book, the Huangfu Zhou that Yu Youyou once admired had already developed deep scheming and considerable methods; otherwise, it would have been impossible for him to use Yu Youyou to plunge Chu Xingyun and Zhu Changshu into perilous situations.
Now that he was still naive and immature—just as Emperor Zhao had said, pitifully foolish—the toddler thought to herself that the book had never mentioned Huangfu Zhou ever suffering such a massive loss at Chu Xingyun's home.
Naturally, having suffered this loss, he would certainly never let others know that he had played the fool and capsized, and the Yu Youyou in the book had also been deceived by him.
Chu Xingyun had never laid eyes on Huangfu Zhou before this, yet he felt no surprise in the face of such malice.
The world of cultivation was fraught with bizarre happenings anyway; who knew what kind of lunatic might have a malfunctioning brain and harbor unprovoked hostility toward a stranger?

Regardless of whether it was for the Chu Dynasty or for his own little junior sister, who was full of secrets, Chu Xingyun had no intention of letting this person escape.
With an icy expression, he thrust out his sword, and a streak of sword light—one that made even Huangfu Zhou's Nascent Soul tremble—released from the blade.
It was an utterly ordinary stream of sword light, devoid of any flamboyant radiance or shadow, yet that straight and level strike locked down the entire space and everyone within it, leaving them to watch helplessly as the sword light arrived right before their eyes.
It was a sword light that threatened to annihilate body and soul. Huangfu Zhou was unable to move, fear evident in his eyes. Yet at that very moment, another beam of spiritual light suddenly plummeted from the vault of the sky, crashing fiercely into the formation array.
The entire Minghua Hall shook. Everyone raised their heads and felt a vast, overwhelming pressure pouring down from above. A golden hook shattered layer after layer of restrictions, easily snagging the horrified and bewildered Huangfu Zhou.
As the handsome yet venomous-looking young man was hooked, his entire body was abruptly jerked upward along with the golden hook, preparing to flee the scene.
Chu Xingyun let out a muffled groan. While protecting the emperor behind him and covering the toddler with one hand, he swung another sword toward the direction of the golden hook.
Dazzling white lights were hacked out along the golden hook, causing it to vibrate violently, yet it stubbornly persisted in hauling Huangfu Zhou upward toward the higher reaches of the cloudy sky.
The space in the cloudy sky tore open, and the golden hook vanished into the rift, taking Huangfu Zhou with it as he was about to be dragged inside.
"Ah!" Watching the scumbag trying to run away, Yu Youyou felt that the golden hook was simply too vile.
In the flash of lightning, the moment she reacted and saw Huangfu Zhou being hauled away, was this something a toddler could allow?
Enduring the immense pressure that had caused her eldest senior brother to let out a few muffled groans, she aggressively scolded, "Bad!"
A buzzing sound echoed relentlessly within her mind. Waving a tiny hand, she conjured a small spiritual bead from the palm of her hand. Guided by a sudden flash of intuition, she forcefully hurled the spiritual bead toward the cloudy sky.
Seemingly feeble and weak as the throw was, the spiritual bead flew with extreme swiftness. In the azure sky, it instantly transformed into a massive purple lightning snake, shooting straight into the high heavens and coiling tightly around Huangfu Zhou, whose lower body was still half-outside the spatial rift.
A miserable scream followed by a terrifying explosion echoed out. Blood burst forth in the cloudy sky as the young man's lower body was blasted to smithereens by the lightning snake.
The spatial rift vanished rapidly, and disappearing along with it was the scumbag, who had been screaming as the lightning snake coiled around him.
Blood stained the top floor of Minghua Hall.
Gazing up at the sky through the large hole damaged by the golden hook, the toddler saw that nothing more remained in the air, and she regretfully clenched her tiny claws.
Just a little bit more.
Since it was her first time tossing a lightning bead and she wasn't used to it yet, she had only managed to blow up half of the scumbag.
"Senior brother." Disregarding Huangfu Zhou for the moment, she turned her head and stroked Chu Xingyun's face with her little hand.
When the golden hook disappeared, Chu Xingyun finally spoke in a low, solemn tone, "Youyou, no need to worry, I am fine. That just now... was the might of the Immortal realm."
The Taigu Sect possessed an Immortal-tier expert holding down the fort; he was all too familiar with the power of the Immortal realm, and he knew instantly that the owner of the golden hook that had rescued Huangfu Zhou must be an Immortal-tier powerhouse.
However, that Immortal-tier expert should not have been physically present here, which was why they had used the golden hook to rescue someone across space through a spatial rift.
Thinking of the golden hook, Chu Xingyun murmured, "Dayan, is it?" Huangfu Zhou claimed to originate from the Dayan Dynasty and be a descendant of the Dayan Emperor. If an Immortal-tier expert had come to save him—and the golden hook that rescued him was even an immortal artifact impervious to a flying sword—that was, after all, understandable.
What he found strange, however, was that the Dayan Dynasty had always maintained a good relationship with the Taigu Sect and had no grievances with him, Chu Xingyun. Why would they make a move against his family?
For an Immortal-tier expert to make a move was by no means a trivial matter.
"If Dayan truly harbors designs against my Chu clan... he is, after all, a descendant of the Emperor."

"Bragging!" Although Yu Youyou regretted that the scumbag had managed to run away like that, she didn't believe Huangfu Zhou was someone capable of calling the shots in the Dayan Dynasty.
Although an Immortal-tier expert had manifested to save someone this time, it shouldn't be too big of a deal... In the book, Huangfu Zhou had eventually been crippled by Zhu Changshu, locked away in the Spirit-Extinction Realm where no one paid him any mind, left to fend for himself and rot.
This showed that the descent of the Emperor that Huangfu Zhou always kept shouting about was bragged about very loudly, but in reality, it was nothing much.
"He won't dare to come back for revenge." Just as Chu Xingyun worried that failing to kill the snake would leave future troubles, Emperor Zhao—who had been gasping for breath under the suffocating pressure—panted and spoke up.
He was already a very old man. After a long moment of trembling and consuming a few medicinal pills, he spoke in a hoarse voice to Chu Xingyun, "This kind of double-dealing brat harboring schemes knows of your terrifying strength. Now that his true identity has been exposed, he will never dare to risk being hunted to the death by you to take revenge on the Chu clan."
He paused again, speaking with difficulty, "As long as you remain alive and grow increasingly prosperous, he will only stay far, far away from the Chu clan."
Conspirators who only operated in the shadows would never dare to face the wrath of a strong expert directly.
The emperor let out a scoff and said softly, "As long as the Chu clan has you, we can enjoy at least a thousand years of peace."
His actions over the past two days made Chu Xingyun look at him with complex emotions.
The elderly emperor tossed out a medicine bottle and said, "This is the poison he gave me, and the spiritual pill he claimed could grant me a hundred years of longevity. How laughable. I do indeed desire longevity, but how could I consume something of unknown origin?"
The moment he laid hands on the soul-melting poison, Chu Xingyun's expression changed instantly, as he clearly knew this was a terrifying substance for cultivators.
However, the toddler scampered over, sniffing the medicine bottle with her little nose, and tugged at Chu Xingyun's arm while speaking timidly, "Fragrant."
Chu Xingyun: ......
Chu Xingyun's mouth twitched as he watched the toddler secretly wiping away her drool.
Could spiritual poison even be eaten?
"This is spiritual poison." Although the toddler thought it was edible, and Chu Xingyun habitually indulged her, granting whatever she wanted, he still didn't dare to let her eat this directly.
The little fellow seemed to know that Chu Xingyun wouldn't dare to be the slightest bit careless for fear of her coming to harm, so she didn't make a fuss. Obediently watching Chu Xingyun put away the spiritual poison, she said cutely, "Keep it."
Chu Xingyun coughed and turned his gaze to the so-called longevity-extending spiritual pill.
Although he wasn't as gifted in the Dao of alchemy as Zhu Changshu, he still possessed a fair understanding of pill-making. After taking a sniff, he sensed something was amiss. Upon sniffing more closely, his expression shifted drastically as he said, "It's actually this kind of thing."
To call this spiritual pill high-grade was technically correct; it was indeed high-grade, meant for cultivators to stimulate their vital blood in desperate situations.
Once consumed, it would cause one's entire body's vital blood to boil and surge, restoring a person to their most vigorous prime and rejuvenating the body to its peak, creating a sensation of overflowing vitality.
However, this was a spiritual pill that cultivators only used as a last resort in life-or-death battles, because the aftereffects upon consumption were unimaginably severe. Taking it casually would either kill you or leave you half-crippled.
Such was the case even for cultivators, let alone mortals.
After consuming it, a mortal would indeed feel for a brief period that they had returned to their youth and possessed boundless energy.
Yet once that timeframe passed, their vital essence would be completely exhausted.
"How vicious. It's clear he never intended to let the Chu clan survive at all."
Even if Emperor Zhao had trusted him and surrounded and killed Chu Xingyun, Huangfu Zhou had never planned to honor his promises; instead, he would have made a clean sweep and exterminated the entire Chu family.