"Mu Chen! Let me tell you something! The person you have in your hands is the current Crown Prince of the Celestial Eagle Empire! He is the Celestial Eagle Emperor’s only son! If our Crown Prince dies here, every single person in the Xuanling Empire will be slaughtered by the Celestial Eagle Empire! The one responsible for getting everyone killed will be you! Think about the consequences before you do anything!"

The voice of the Eldest of the Zhou Family trembled. A single question echoed in his mind: ’How did Mu Chen find He Long hidden within the Shadow Concealing Dust? Even a Martial Venerable can’t see through it, and Mu Chen is only a Five-Ring Martial Spirit. How could he possibly have found him? Did the Crown Prince somehow reveal himself?’ He just couldn’t figure it out.

But how could he possibly know? Shadow Concealing Dust was, in essence, a high-level illusion item. It tricks an observer’s vision, allowing the user to escape from danger. Mu Chen’s Purple Sky Demon Pupils, however, were an Ultimate Eye Skill capable of seeing through any Illusion Technique in existence. Before them, not only was Shadow Concealing Dust useless, but even the most powerful ultimate illusion would be rendered inert. In Mu Chen’s eyes, He Long had been on the field the entire time, hiding in the very patch of grass that Ice Prison Cold Mist had left untouched.

But Mu Chen was in a state of Demonization; there was no way he would obediently listen. A grin spread across his lips, and with a sinister chuckle, he slowly tightened his clawed hand in front of the three Zhou brothers. His sharp nails dug into He Long’s flesh. Crimson blood trickled down He Long’s cheek, dripping onto the grass below—DRIP, DRIP—splattering into a vibrant red blossom.

"AHHHH!"

Fear had already consumed He Long. When faced with mortal danger at the height of terror, a person’s first reaction is to fight back with everything they have—to fight the fear itself!

He Long desperately bombarded Mu Chen’s arm with Primordial Power. Wave after wave of energy radiated from Mu Chen’s body, blasting into the distance. But Mu Chen seemed to feel none of it, his smile never wavering as he endured the assault.

The three Zhou brothers had lost all their previous composure. "Mu Chen, how dare you!" they roared in unison.

Ignoring their own injuries, they shot toward Mu Chen with the speed of a thunderbolt, desperate to snatch He Long from his grasp. But would Mu Chen give them the chance? The answer was no. Seeing the three men charge, a mocking expression flickered in Mu Chen’s eyes. The black aura around him surged violently, converging on his black Dragon Arm. In the next instant, his palm was enveloped in a black light, as if accumulating some immense power.

Seeing this, the three Zhou brothers grew even more frantic. If the Crown Prince died, not even death could atone for their failure.

"Hah!"

The three accelerated again. They were only a few dozen meters away from Mu Chen when he suddenly spun around, aiming the hand that gripped He Long’s head directly at them. A black light of Primordial Power erupted.

"Elemental Power Cannon!"

BOOM!

A black beam shot from Mu Chen’s hand. It moved so fast that the Third Son Zhou was pierced through without any chance to resist. At the same time, He Long’s body went limp. It fell with a soft THUD onto the grass in front of Mu Chen, his neck now an empty ruin. The man who had been perfectly intact moments ago was now just a blood-soaked corpse.

The eyes of the Eldest of the Zhou Family and the Zhou Family’s Second Brother bulged as they stared at the corpse in its golden robes on the ground. It felt as if their minds were about to explode.

"Mu Chen! I’ll kill you!"

The Eldest of the Zhou Family roared, moving with superhuman speed. He appeared beside Mu Chen as if he had teleported, his Fist Stab erupting with a dazzling, blood-red light as he slammed it toward Mu Chen’s chest. Simultaneously, the long saber of the Zhou Family’s Second Brother reached the nape of Mu Chen’s neck. Caught in a pincer attack, Mu Chen faced certain death. But just then, he moved. He moved like a thunderbolt. With a black Flash of Thunder, a blinding light seared everyone’s vision, leaving them temporarily sightless. Only Mu Bingling saw what happened within that black lightning.

Mu Chen held his fan in one hand. The Eldest of the Zhou Family and the Zhou Family’s Second Brother seemed to be frozen in mid-air, completely still. With a light twirl, Mu Chen’s Profound Jade Fan whistled through the air and pierced through both of their bodies. In an instant, the two living men were reduced to a pile of shredded flesh.

What appeared to be a single slash from Mu Chen had in fact contained hundreds of strikes, shredding the Eldest of the Zhou Family and the Zhou Family’s Second Brother to pieces in that one instant. As for Mu Chen, after he killed the two men, the black Martial Ring at his feet abruptly vanished. The dark aura enveloping him seemed to lose its anchor and rapidly dissipated from his body. Without the support of the black energy, the Dragon Scale Armor on his left arm receded, revealing fair human skin, while the Face Armor on his face dissolved into wisps of black aura and vanished.

"ROAR!"

Having lost the black power, Mu Chen’s expression twisted in agony. He let out a final roar at the sky before collapsing to the ground with a heavy THUD. His red hair faded away, revealing his original ice-blue locks. Had anyone listened closely, they would have heard that his breathing was incredibly faint, like a candle in the wind, ready to be extinguished at any moment.

Carrying with it countless negative emotions, the black aura shot toward the sky. It instantly made contact with the Barrier set by Elder Mu, but the Barrier—one capable of stopping even a Martial Emperor Strong Person—cracked with a loud BANG under the aura’s corrosive touch.

Unimpeded, the black aura flew into the sky and scattered in all directions, vanishing without a trace in the blink of an eye. No one could find any sign of it.

It was only after all this that everyone else’s vision returned. The scene that greeted them was of two piles of fresh, shredded flesh and a headless corpse on the ground... and Mu Chen, pale and collapsed.

"Mu Chen!"

"Brother Mu Chen!"

"Chen’Er!"

In that moment, everyone present forgot the gore of the scene and rushed to Mu Chen’s side. Mu Bingling gathered the collapsed Mu Chen into her arms and slowly channeled a wisp of her Primordial Power into his body. The result left her stunned. She couldn’t sense a single trace of Primordial Power within him; it was as if it had all vanished completely.

’How could this be?’

Mu Bingling grew frantic and quickly poured more of her Primordial Power into his body. But the moment her power entered him, it vanished without a trace, as if sinking into a quagmire.

Lingyun was the next to arrive. After examining Mu Chen’s condition, she too was left speechless with shock. Even if a cultivator at the Five-Ring Martial Spirit Realm completely exhausted their Primordial Power, one should still be able to sense their Martial Artist Realm. But now, not only was Mu Chen’s Primordial Power gone, but his Martial Artist Realm was also undetectable. In their experience, this only meant one thing: he had been crippled. ’Has Mu Chen truly been crippled?’

It was no wonder Lingyun and the others came to this conclusion, for they knew nothing of the "Broken Ring." The so-called Broken Ring was an exceedingly difficult Secret Technique for a Martial Artist to master. It was not a common technique created through some moment of enlightenment. Rather, it was a latent Secret Technique hidden deep within every person’s consciousness. Only when the body is pushed to its absolute limit will the subconscious mind unlock its shackles and release the proper method for its use, just as it had for Mu Chen moments ago.

"Broken Ring," also known as Explosive Ring, drastically raises one’s Martial Artist Realm at the cost of permanently lowering it by one full rank. The degree of enhancement varies from person to person. But such a heaven-defying Secret Technique also comes with an immense backlash. Imagine a Five-Ring Martial Spirit using Explosive Ring on one of their Martial Rings to attain the Martial Artist Realm of a Second-Ring Martial Emperor. Their own reserves of Primordial Power would be insufficient to sustain a Second-Ring Martial Emperor’s combat strength, forcing them to continuously overdraw their power to keep fighting.

Once the battle is over and the effect of Explosive Ring fades, the user is inevitably left in a state of extreme Primordial Power depletion, plunging them into a long period of weakness. The duration of this period depends on how high their Martial Artist Realm was pushed; the greater the enhancement, the longer the weakness. During this time, no matter how the user cultivates, they will be unable to retain any Primordial Power. All the power gained through Cultivation is used to repay the deficit from overdrawing their reserves. Until that debt is fully repaid, the user will be like a cripple, unable to wield even a sliver of Primordial Power. This was why Lingyun, Qin Yuan, and Mu Bingling had come to their mistaken conclusion.

Just as everyone was overcome with anxiety, two figures suddenly appeared in the sky. One was Xuan Yin, and the other was Wu Changqing. Seeing the chaos and the signs of a massive battle below, Wu Changqing was the first to descend. "Qin Yuan," he asked, "what happened here? The commotion was heard throughout the entire Xuanling Empire."

Qin Yuan looked up at Wu Changqing and said, "It’s a long story. We should get Mu Chen settled first. I’ll explain everything in a moment. And Emperor Xuan Yin, the Ninth Princess... she..."

Xuan Yin, who had just landed, froze. A terrible premonition flooded his heart. "What happened to her?" His expression darkened.

Qin Yuan sighed. "To shield Mu Chen from an Assassin’s blow, she... has already..."

"What?" Xuan Yin’s eyes filled with disbelief. He shook his head as he looked at Qin Yuan. "You’re lying to me, aren’t you? How could Jiu’Er die? No! It’s impossible!"

His words grew frantic until he finally erupted. "Where is Jiu’Er’s body? If something happened to her, where is she? Is it... them?"

Xuan Yin’s gaze swept the area before locking onto the two piles of shredded flesh. His pupils instantly turned red. Qin Yuan quickly intervened, "Calm down! That isn’t the Ninth Princess! Those are two of the four Guardian Elders from the Celestial Eagle Empire. As for the Ninth Princess’s body... it’s over there." 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Qin Yuan pointed to a spot, but when everyone turned to look, they found nothing but a patch of dried blood. There was no one there.