Oh, Peiyuan...

In the distance appeared an old man clad in a plain hemp robe, his hair unkempt and frizzy. Taking merely three ordinary steps, he had already crossed the distance to stand before Youming. The aura radiating from him was actually that of the late Body Integration Realm. Sallow-faced and gaunt, with hollow cheeks, the old man kept his turbid eyes cast downward toward the ground. "The Ancestor! The Ancestor has actually come out of secluded cultivation!" "Hiss... It seems this intruder is terrifyingly strong to have forced even the Ancestor out!" "Hmph! Daring to run wild in our Liu clan—who does he think he is?!" All the elders stared at the old man with flushed, excited faces, their hearts surging with turbulent emotion. Many among them had never once seen this elder with their own eyes; they had merely heard that their clan possessed a mighty ancestor. If not for him emerging from seclusion today, more than a few would have assumed he had long since passed away upon some high mountain peak. Yet the old man's next action caused everyone's jaws to drop in sheer disbelief! Under the utterly stunned gazes of every descendant of the Liu clan, the old man fell straight to his knees before the black-robed man. Pressing both hands against the flagstones, he bowed low and spoke softly. "Liu Peiyuan of the Liu clan pays his respects to Blood Venerable Youming! Our younger generation failed to recognize Mount Tai. I pray... that the Venerable will not take offense." The crimson threads extending from Youming's fingers snapped. Sprawled across the ground, Liu Xiaochen hastily yanked his hand out of his mouth. Gasping violently for breath, his eyes were hollow and his entire body trembled uncontrollably... He felt as if he had just barely clawed his life back from the grave. Youming shifted in a flash to appear right in front of the old man. Scratching his cheek, he frowned and said, "Peiyuan, we haven't seen each other in little more than two thousand years, so how is it that you've withered like an old mongrel?" The old man swallowed hard and replied with utmost caution, "We are merely mortals struggling bitterly to seek the Dao. How could we ever compare to the Venerable..." Before the old man could finish speaking, Youming suddenly pursed his lips. His fingers gently caressed the old man's head, threading through the coarse strands of hair. Squinting his eyes, he slammed the old man's head violently against the ground! "Peiyuan, ah." *Bang!!* The blue flagstones shattered beneath the impact, and fresh blood poured from the old man's forehead! "Oh, you..." *Bang!!* The ground within a radius of ten zhang caved in slightly, and the flesh between the old man's brows split wide open! "You're making things very difficult for me." *Bang!!!* *Thud!!* The entire mountain shuddered faintly. The grand halls crowning the summit collapsed completely, sending massive boulders tumbling down the slopes. By now, the old man's facial features were reduced to a mangled mess of blood and torn flesh. Youming seized him by the head, tilting his own neck to look down at the old man, his voice eerily calm. "The Demon Abyss that your Liu clan was tasked with watching... seems to have been opened by someone." "Peiyuan, tell me... wouldn't you say this counts as a dereliction of your duty?" A deathly silence descended upon the entire Liu clan domain, broken only by the sporadic, ragged sounds of people gasping in horror. The few who had spoken boldly moments earlier now wished they could bury their faces deep into the dirt, their limbs quivering without stop. Liu Peiyuan's heart was shaken to its core. Squinting his swollen eyes into narrow slits, he croaked through a mouth overflowing with blood, "Blood Venerable... this matter... I truly knew nothing of this matter!!" Youming released his grip, letting the old man drop to the ground with a dull thud. Slipping his hands to his waist to wipe away the blood, he straightened up, looked around at his surroundings, and murmured, "What's more, your Liu clan didn't take the pact of the Ancient Clans remaining in seclusion to heart either, did you? Just now, when I tore through the domain barrier with the Blood Beast Profound Heavenly Formation, I clearly sensed several rather sizable breaches in your Liu clan's domain." Upon hearing this, Liu Peiyuan's pupils shrank to needlepoints! His tiny pupils quivered, and he swallowed involuntarily as he pleaded in terror, "No... Blood Venerable... that's impossible... We... I..." *Bang!!!* Youming dragged the old man's head up from the crater, glaring at him with open impatience. "Peiyuan... since when did you learn to talk back to me?" Youming's gaze chilled slightly as he murmured under his breath, "I seem to recall... back when you were my sword attendant... you never dared to act this way..." The old man's face turned as pale as paper. Pure terror gripped his soul, and his body shivered uncontrollably. The memories that had cast a shadow of dread over his entire life flooded back like a relentless tide. From that moment on, he dared not offer the slightest resistance, hanging his head and casting down his eyes in complete, abject submission. At the sight, Youming burst into manic laughter! Stepping forward, he stomped his foot onto the old man's face, grinding him down into the dirt. Reaching down to hoist his black robes slightly, he ground his boot into the old man's cheek with vicious force. The laughter ceased abruptly, replaced by the faint, sickening crunch of shattering bone beneath his foot. With a chilling expression, Youming gazed down into the crater at the old man, tilting his head as he murmured softly, "That's more like it. A dog needs to be obedient. If I say there are breaches, then there are." The atmosphere across the entire Liu clan domain was stifling to the absolute extreme! No one knew who this man was, but they all believed he was mad—the kind of mad where something was deeply wrong in the head. Yet none doubted his unfathomable power, nor did it lessen the sheer terror suffocating every single one of them. Once Youming uttered those words, the expressions of quite a few members of the Liu clan changed subtly. This was especially true for the Liu clan patriarch lying on the ground in agony. Liu Xiaochen felt as though an invisible hand had gripped his throat, choking off every breath and leaving him unable to make a sound. Every single matter the man had brought up was a closely guarded secret within the Liu clan, known to only a handful of individuals. Furthermore, those few were acutely aware of the catastrophic consequences should these secrets leak to the outside world. Thus, there was no way any of them would ever divulge such information! Liu Xiaochen raised his head slightly to look at the man, only for his eyes to collide directly with Youming's gaze. The shock nearly scared the soul right out of him, yet Youming merely offered him a radiant, beaming smile. A strange, sinister grin crept onto the corners of Youming's lips. As if realizing what was about to happen, the man kneeling on the ground suddenly screamed, "No!! Don't!!" *Swish!!!* Youming slowly extended a slender finger, and crimson threads erupted in an instant! In the blink of an eye, dozens of scarlet threads pierced clean through the body of a young man! The youth was dressed in a lavish azure robe, his face handsome as carved jade and his hair bound in a white jade crown. A flash of agony flitted across his dark eyes, and his complexion went paper-white. "Yunxuan!!!" Liu Xiaochen cried out in frantic desperation. Having experienced the horror of being puppeted by those threads firsthand, he was terrified of what Youming might do to his son. Yet the crimson threads merely punched through the young man's body before flying straight back. Beads of blood scattered through the air. Youming flicked out his tongue, licking the crimson droplets from the threads, and lightly closed his eyes. Liu Yunxuan knelt pale-faced upon the ground, trembling uncontrollably! Staring down at the blue flagstones, his eyes were brimming with unadulterated fear. In merely a breath's time, Youming slowly opened his eyes, a sharp glint flashing across their depths! With his hands clasped behind his back, he casually tapped the back of one hand with his fingers. That handsome, bewitching face retained its eerie smile as he tilted his head to look at the youth among the crowd. *Whoosh!* Liu Yunxuan suddenly realized that an irresistible force had seized him, instantly dragging him through the air to land directly before Youming!