The Danyuan Sect's grand array was not particularly formidable.
Even fully deployed, it could withstand only two or three attacks from a Foundation Establishment True Cultivator.
In terms of effectiveness, it fell short of the Lesser Five Elements Formation that Miao Wen had once gifted to Luo Chen.
An ordinary Foundation Establishment True Cultivator might have had to exert a little effort.
Yet with no one left to oppose him, Wang Yuan launched his assault at point-blank range, his vitality and internal force concentrated to the absolute pinnacle.
A single palm strike!
Merely a single strike!
*Rumble!*
The thunderous detonation echoed across ten li.
Under the watchful eyes of countless loose cultivators, brilliant spiritual light burst forth in all directions as massive swaths of the foundations across Mount Yuanhe shattered and tore apart.
Had Min Longyu been present, he would have remarked with utter contempt, "The connection to the earth pulse was far too shallow!"
The formation shattered!
Deep within the mountain, several late Qi Refining cultivators coughed up mouthfuls of fresh blood and dropped dead on the spot.
His eyes nearly tearing at the corners with rage, the Transmission Elder surged into the sky.
"Qi Refining Great Perfection?"
Wang Yuan's brow furrowed, and he casually flicked a burst of force outward.
The elder hastily summoned a defensive dharmic artifact.
Yet that bizarre phenomenon manifested once more.
A crimson star bypassed the man's body, suddenly looped back from behind, and pierced clean through between his brows.
Watching the old man plummet to the earth with unseeing, unyielding eyes, Wang Yuan gave a slight nod. *As expected, the application of overt force can become even more nimble and varied. The first style of the Blood God Tribulation Finger is finally taking shape.*
Having gleaned some insight, Wang Yuan raised his right hand high, then slashed it down with ruthless finality.
"Kill!"
With that single command, the experts from the Pill and Medicine Halls, along with fifty outer members, swarmed into Mount Yuanhe.
Among this strike force, the outer cultivators who had joined the Luotian Association only recently fought with the greatest vigor and ferocity!
Wang Yuan watched this unfold, harboring no intention of striking again.
Before departing that morning, Luo Chen had specifically cautioned the few of them.
In battles against opponents of equal cultivation, they could act without restraint.
Yet if they bullied the weak, they had to exercise strict discipline.
They were not to slaughter indiscriminately.
Otherwise, the Immortal City Law Enforcement Team would not simply sit by and watch.
Though unspoken, this was a rule known to all.
If Foundation Establishment True Cultivators were free to slaughter at whim, even the hundreds of thousands of Qi Refining loose cultivators in Tianlan Immortal City would not suffice to quench their blades.
Were Wang Yuan and the others to butcher low-rank cultivators excessively, they would easily be branded as demonic cultivators.
The Jade Cauldron Domain had long maintained strict prohibitions specifically targeting demonic paths.
Should anyone embark on such wanton massacres, every major sect would join forces to crush them!
Luo Chen had no desire to see his thriving Luotian Association branded a demonic faction.
Suppressing the violent impulse in his chest, Wang Yuan oversaw the overall battlefield from high in the sky.
Beyond keeping an eye on the broader confrontation, he also kept part of his attention fixed on Qu Lingjun, Ma Shoupu, Feng Xia, and the others.
Perhaps because their sect master was dead, perhaps because their grand array was breached, or perhaps because their promised reinforcement Shen Gongyi had already turned tail and fled, the disciples and members of the Danyuan Sect understood the truth clearly in their hearts.
The tides had turned; all was lost!
Add to that a Foundation Establishment True Cultivator eyeing them like a predator from the clouds, and they barely offered resistance before scattering in every direction to flee.
Some Luotian Association cultivators attempted to pursue them.
Yet under the stern reprimands of their respective squad leaders, they halted as soon as the pursuit passed beyond the perimeter of Mount Yuanhe.
The pressing priority was to gather and secure the wealth accumulated by this entire sect.
Amid endless wails of despair, the slaughter and blazing fires raged on without pause.
After this battle, the Danyuan Sect would be thoroughly wiped from the rolls of Tianlan Immortal City.
Those who managed to escape would never amount to anything significant, utterly incapable of posing any future threat to the Luotian Association.
***
Meanwhile, on the other front...
The War Hall cultivators led by Sima Xian were already hurtling toward their destination at breakneck speed.
Tianying Peak!
Yuzhen Daoist Temple!
Neither of these two places enjoyed the extensive connections of the Danyuan Sect.
They had received the news late and possessed few outside ties, failing to enlist any Foundation Establishment True Cultivators to bolster their defenses.
The moment Xing Zonghan appeared and forcefully shattered the grand array of Tianying Peak, a massive slaughter unfurled with tempestuous fury.
Unlike Wang Yuan, Xing Zonghan harbored a blood feud of clan extermination against the Ying family!
Consequently, after executing the Ying family head, Xing Zonghan showed no sign of stopping.
Dragging his heavily injured body forward, his spiritual sense swept out in all directions. Whenever he crossed paths with a ninth-layer Qi Refining cultivator, he struck with merciless, lethal brutality.
Wherever he passed, rivers of blood flowed, and practically none could withstand a single blow from him.
Watching this scene, Sima Xian's mind trembled in awe.
A Foundation Establishment True Cultivator was truly terrifying!
Yet remembering Luo Chen's instructions prior to their departure, Sima Xian maintained his composure.
"Men, follow me to charge up the peak and seize those seven eagle nests!"
"The Association Leader personally requested them!"
At his command, a squad formed entirely of eighth-layer Qi Refining cultivators from the War Hall followed close behind, hurtling frantically up Tianying Peak.
***
The Geng family!
Their estate lay extremely close to Danxia Peak, barely a few dozen li away.
At a cultivator's travel speed, reaching it in the time it took to finish a cup of tea was no exaggeration.
Their clan's compound closely resembled that of the Fu family in days past.
They had erected a massive fortified manor, gathering the clan together behind its defensive walls.
The outer perimeter of the manor was predominantly occupied by mortals.
The interior, however, was populated entirely by cultivators.
The deeper one went, the higher the cultivators' cultivation realms, and naturally, the higher their status.
A solitary figure walked on foot along the main road.
He moved neither briskly nor sluggishly, his eyes scanning all around as if observing his surroundings.
As he passed the sand-drying grounds, a robust Geng family mortal asked with sharp vigilance, "Who goes there? Why are you gawking around? What are you after?"
Min Longyu offered a faint smile. Without uttering a word, he continued forward.
Seeing him travel purely on foot instead of flying like an immortal cultivator, the Geng family mortals assumed he was merely an ordinary mortal and stepped forward in an attempt to block him.
Yet before they could draw near, a gentle force swept them aside.
"An immortal cultivator!"
"Senior, spare us!"
"This lowly one failed to recognize your greatness..."
Min Longyu could no longer hear the words trailing behind him.
His strides brought him to within a thousand paces of the fortified manor.
Several low-rank Qi Refining patrolmen of the Geng family advanced to interrogate him.
Meeting them were wisps of eerie spiritual qi drifting from Min Longyu's figure.
Wherever the spiritual qi brushed past, those Qi Refining cultivators collapsed unconscious to the ground.
By the time Min Longyu arrived a hundred paces before the grand gate of the fortified manor, figures at late Qi Refining had begun appearing atop the watchtowers one after another.
Among them were many dressed in luxurious robes, clearly members of the Geng family's upper echelon.
Looking down at Min Longyu, their expressions were thoroughly grim.
Without wasting words on pleasantries, a grand array unfurled across the estate.
Beholding the protective barrier radiating hazy yellow spiritual light, Min Longyu chuckled.
"Indeed, the mountains and earth pulses remain unaltered, and the layout of the grand array has not shifted in the slightest."
"To think you are still using the very formation arrayed by my Min family a century ago!"
Muttering to himself, his body drifted slowly into midair.
Under the gazes of several hundred Geng family cultivators, he tossed out small formation flags in every direction.
"What is he doing?"
"No idea. Completely baffling."
"No matter. Our Geng family's grand array is no cheap trinket; it is a genuine second-rank defensive formation! Even if a mid Foundation Establishment cultivator attacks, it can hold out for three full days!"
"I have already contacted a Foundation Establishment senior who shares old ties with our Geng family. At the latest, he will arrive by tomorrow to lend assistance."
"As long as we hold out for these two days..."
Just as the Geng family cultivators were murmuring amongst themselves, someone suddenly noticed that the grand array guarding the Geng manor was undergoing a bizarre transformation.
The hazy spiritual light was shifting from yellow to white!
"What is going on?"
"Elder, we've lost control of the formation!"
"Wait, we never activated the array's offensive core!"
"It's him! He's wresting away control of the grand array!"
Amid the mounting panic, someone finally realized where the problem lay.
Regrettably, it was already far too late.
High in the sky, Min Longyu used his spiritual sense as the guide and his spiritual power as the source of might, deploying thirty-six formation flags to counter-command the Geng family's grand array before pressing his hand down upon his familiar, weathered old compass.
Looking down at the massive fortified manor beneath his feet, Min Longyu uttered a soft command:
"Invert!"
In a single instant, the defensive array protecting the Geng family began to undergo an eerie transformation.
The barrier, which had already turned from yellow to white, plunged into pitch blackness in a heartbeat.
The originally clear sky looked as though it were smothered under suffocating storm clouds.
Inside the manor, numerous Geng family cultivators sensed that something was amiss and surged toward the sky clutching powerful dharmic artifacts.
A cold sneer touched the corner of Min Longyu's lips. He flicked his finger.
In the next breath, a savage, earthen-yellow spear condensed atop the grand array.
*Whoosh!*
In a mere flicker of motion, the spear pierced clean through the Geng family Qi Refining cultivator charging at the very front.
The immense momentum smashed him back into the fortified settlement, crashing through a building before pinning him rigidly to the ground.
This terrifying display caused the Geng family cultivators who were rushing the array to halt in their tracks instinctively.
"Watch out!"
A shrill shriek rang out.
When they snapped back to their senses, they were horrified to discover spear after spear manifesting across the sky.
Every single one was as savage and dreadful as the first.
Terror gripping their souls, the cultivators began fleeing in utter frenzy.
Yet how fast could Qi Refining cultivators possibly fly?
With a sweeping wave of Min Longyu's sleeve, every last spear lunged forward to claim its toll.
*Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!*
At this moment, spears rained down relentlessly over the Geng family manor.
Wails of agony, furious curses, and desperate pleas for mercy echoed without end.
Min Longyu appeared entirely deaf to it all. Standing alone, he manipulated the inverted grand array, reaping the lives of the Geng family cultivators one after another.
A century ago, he had not even been born.
The history of the Danxia Min family being besieged by formidable foes for a year, starved of supplies until they were ground down to death, was largely what his elders had instilled in him.
Yet once he restarted the Min family array on Danxia Peak, he had abruptly discovered that history might not have been as simple as the Min family survivors claimed.
With the Min family's extraordinary mastery of arrays, if they could hold out for an entire year, there was no reason they could not have held out for a second.
As long as they waited until the Golden Core grand sect that shared good relations with the Min family regained control of Tianlan Immortal City, the crisis would have resolved on its own.
The primary reason the array had been breached lay in that narrow valley where Geng Lie and Geng Shuzhen had gone.
It was they who had colluded with enemies from the inside, not only drawing in formidable foes but also shattering the array's foundation.
Even if that was merely speculation, the fact that all of the Min family's mortals had vanished after Min Longyu returned to Tianlan, with the mastermind pointing faintly toward the Geng family, spoke volumes.
Of course, all of this remained mere conjecture.
Yet it no longer mattered in the slightest!
Those were merely peripheral factors. What had truly brought catastrophic annihilation upon the Geng family was their foolish decision to offend the Luotian Association.
"How can someone else be allowed to snore beside one's own bed?"
"You awoke the slumbering beast that is the Luotian Association, yet you still dreamed of living in peace in your corner? Pure delusion!"
With a cold laugh, Min Longyu formed incantation gestures with increasing speed.
Following the earth spears, countless bricks and stones from the ground were drawn into the sky, condensing into massive floating boulders.
Those huddled in corners, gazing up at his solitary figure standing in the sky, felt their very souls tremble.
*A demon... He is a demon...*
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
No one knew how much time had passed.
The manor had fallen into absolute silence.
"Elder Min?"
"Elder Min!"
Min Longyu snapped awake from his daze.
Behind him, Murong Qinglian looked on with dread in her eyes. "What ought we to do about this?"
Min Longyu shook his head vigorously, his expression turning slightly grim as he surveyed the devastated, ruinous Geng family manor.
Years of arduous cultivation and wandering from place to place had caused a deep sense of repression to build within his heart.
Now having achieved Foundation Establishment and encountering his first major battle, he had become swept up in the slaughter, unable to restrain himself.
Before he had realized it, he had slaughtered an entire clan.
"My apologies. It seems I overdid it a bit."
Murong Qinglian forced a smile, though it looked strained no matter how one regarded it.
The havoc a formidable formation master could unleash was truly terrifying.
Even if a Foundation Establishment True Cultivator was powerful enough, slaughtering the entire Geng family would never have been this effortless.
At the very least, a few individuals ought to have escaped.
Min Longyu let out a sigh. "Go and gather the resources. The lethality of the array was aimed at cultivators, so much should remain intact."
"And what about you?"
"Me?" Gathering his spirits, Min Longyu admitted with some trepidation, "I'll head back and confess my fault to the Association Leader!"
Before departing, Luo Chen had specifically told them not to create too much slaughter.
Yet in a moment of carried-away passion, he had wiped out the Geng family, eradicating root and branch.
Except for... those mortals.
Min Longyu cast a glance at the Geng family mortals fleeing frantically in all directions, feeling somewhat disheartened.
After he departed, Murong Qinglian swiftly led her people into the ruins to collect their spoils.
Just as Min Longyu had said, his array had primarily utilized earth spears and falling boulders.
The Geng family's wealth remained largely preserved.
Storage bags, dharmic artifacts, stockpiles of spirit rice, sprawling mounds of mineral materials, and within their treasury, even more than a hundred thousand spirit stones kept in reserve.
It seemed that over these years, without the towering mountain of the Min family pressing down upon them, the Geng family had flourished considerably!
Murong Qinglian shook her head as she watched the massive piles of spirit stones being packed into crates.
"Over the years, Danxia Peak and Biyou Valley were practically gifted to the Geng family to use for free. Accumulating this much wealth is only natural."
"Still, this is too little."
"The lion's share ought to be in the storage bags of the two Foundation Establishment True Cultivators, Geng Lie and Geng Shuzhen."
As she murmured to herself, a subordinate approached and whispered something into her ear.
"There are still surviving cultivators?"
Murong Qinglian hesitated for a brief instant, her expression swiftly hardening into ruthless resolve.
"Dispose of them. Leave not a single one alive!"
She had already thought the matter through.
This spiritual land of the Geng family was simply too close to Danxia Peak.
When dealing with neighbors harboring treacherous intentions, it was far better to eradicate root and branch.
Min Longyu had not erred in the slightest!
As for the Association Leader, he was still far too benevolent.
***
Atop Danxia Peak...
Luo Chen idly turned several storage bags over in his hands—those of Hu Changxi, Dan Yuanzi, and the Geng siblings that Min Longyu had turned in earlier.
It was truly a stroke of fortune that Geng Shuzhen's storage bag had not been destroyed beneath that sudden eruption of earth fire.
Regrettably, however, these two bags could not both belong exclusively to Min Longyu.
While Min Longyu's control of the grand array had been meritorious, the vast quantity of spirit stones required to activate the array and the toll extracted from Danxia Peak's spirit pulse had all been borne by the Luotian Association.
Naturally, the spoils of war had to be handed over.
Merits would be rewarded later, but for now, it was best to consolidate everything under a single ledger.
Beyond these gains, cultivators from the Merit Hall and Gold Hall were continuously hauling diverse resources back from outside.
The Foundation Establishment True Cultivators who had joined the siege against the Luotian Association were by no means lone hermits.
Behind them lay factions they had nurtured for decades or even centuries.
Having operated for so long, they naturally possessed substantial fortunes.
"Report!"
"The Danyuan Sect has fallen!"
"Tianying Peak has fallen!"
"Yuzhen Daoist Temple has fallen!"
"The Geng family has also fallen."
Wave after wave of good tidings arrived.
By the time Min Longyu returned, the news of the Geng family's defeat had already reached Luo Chen's ears.
Faced with this string of victories, Luo Chen remained utterly placid throughout.
With their enemies' leaders dead, dispatching Foundation Establishment True Cultivators against them naturally resulted in an unstoppable sweep.
"Things on Tianying Peak were quite brutal. Xing Zonghan killed far too excessively—not only did he slaughter all of the Ying family's ninth-layer Qi Refining cultivators, but he has also been relentlessly hunting down their low-rank disciples."
Zhou Yuanli's expression was grave, tinged with concern as he asked, "Association Leader, could this stir up trouble for us?"
Luo Chen's face remained calm. "No matter. He is not a member of our Luotian Association. We simply need to sever ties with him afterward."
A realization dawned upon Zhou Yuanli.
Since the man dared to act in such a manner, he naturally had to be prepared to bear the consequences.
The Luotian Association had already helped him achieve his vengeance; drawing a clear boundary could hardly be considered betraying an ally.
Xing Zonghan surely understood this in his heart as well.
After Zhou Yuanli took his leave, Min Longyu stepped forward to confess his fault.
Regarding Min Longyu's slaughter of the Geng family, Luo Chen merely sighed.
"What is done is done!"
Belatedly realizing the weight of his actions, Min Longyu was somewhat worried.
It was not that he feared being branded a demonic cultivator, but rather that he feared drawing serious trouble upon the Luotian Association.
Sensing his anxiety, Luo Chen shook his head.
"It is no great issue; do not take it to heart. However, during the coming period, try to avoid acting alone without my orders."
Though Min Longyu did not know whence Luo Chen drew such confidence, seeing him willing to shoulder the pressure on his behalf moved him deeply.
Amid that warmth, curiosity got the better of him. "Association Leader, what should we do next?"
"What do you mean, 'do what'?" Luo Chen countered.
Min Longyu scratched his head. "The Li family is wrapping up the Hu clan, and we have dealt with the Danyuan Sect, Tianying Peak, Yuzhen Daoist Temple, and the Geng family. Yet there is still one person."
He paused, his expression turning solemn. "Lu Rong was an elder of the Divine Craft Sect. His death is going to be troublesome."
To his surprise, Luo Chen merely offered a faint smile upon hearing this.
"It is not merely Lu Rong alone. Wei Tuo of Mount Xuchen also offended me."
"With me, there is no such thing as debts dying with the deceased."
Min Longyu's mouth fell slightly agape in shock.
*Could the Association Leader be planning another massive move?*
Reaching into the pile of storage bags, Luo Chen picked up Geng Shuzhen's and proffered it before him.
"This counts as your personal spoil of war."
"That... wouldn't be appropriate, would it?" Min Longyu said sheepishly. "I merely borrowed the power of the Luotian Association."
"There is nothing inappropriate about it. Everyone receives a share; only the remainder goes into the public treasury."
Luo Chen tossed the storage bag into his arms.
Then, clasping his hands behind his back, he paced out of the great hall.
Gazing toward the distant mountains beyond, his expression grew profound.
Moving forward, it was no longer suitable to make major moves.
The commotion they had caused previously was already substantial enough, but because of Tantai Jin's appearance, Luo Chen knew that everything remained within the other man's threshold of tolerance.
Now, the only thing left to do...
Was to wait!
Chapter 287