Villain System in a Cultivation World-Chapter 6: Hand that Embraces the Moon

Qin Ting stood unyielding at the heart of the Battle Stage, his presence an unshakable pillar amid the storm of chaos. His face, serene as a still lake, bore an indifference so profound it seemed divine—as though a god or demon had deigned to descend from the celestial heights to tread the mortal earth. His eyes shimmered with a cold, fathomless gleam, twin stars untouched by the tumult swirling around him.

With a subtle flick of his right hand, he bent the world to his will. Above, the sky shuddered and darkened, the bright day yielding to an endless expanse of velvet night in an instant.

From the depths of that artificial twilight, a crescent moon rose—a silvery arc, vast and dreamlike, its glow spilling over the stands in a cascade of ethereal light. It felt at once remote and intimate, a celestial whisper that stirred the souls of all who beheld it.

His fingers curled as if to pluck the lunar orb from the heavens, and the air quivered in response. High above, a spectral arm unfurled across the firmament—a colossal, alabaster limb, its scale defying comprehension. The crowd's breath caught in unison as the titanic hand reached skyward, its silhouette stark against the star-dappled void. It was a vision to rend the spirit from the body, a marvel that gripped the heart and refused to let go.

Radiant and boundless, the hand spanned the sky in a fleeting heartbeat, its fingers grazing the moon's edge with a tenderness that belied its immensity. Then, with a grace that mocked its grandeur, it closed around the crescent, cradling it like a fragile gem in a giant's palm. The moon hung captive, its luminous gleam a prize seized by mortal might.

A chorus of shouts erupted from the stands, voices trembling with reverence. "The Hand that Embraces the Moon!" a disciple cried, his words nearly swallowed by the swelling uproar. "It's no myth—Senior Brother Qin has truly ascended to the Divine Spirit Realm!"

Guided by the phantom hand, the captured moon began its descent, drifting earthward with a serene, almost hypnotic slowness. The onlookers watched, spellbound, as it glided down, a celestial marvel brought low. Then its pace quickened, the crescent swelling in the sky, its light sharpening into a blade of inevitability aimed squarely at the stage below.

Song Changge stood rooted in place, his wide eyes fixed on the approaching orb. With every passing second, it loomed larger, its brilliance consuming the horizon until it filled his world—an unstoppable force bearing down with relentless intent. Fear clawed at his chest, a cold, suffocating tide that snuffed out every ember of resistance. His hands twitched, fumbling for a way to defend himself, but no technique rose to meet the threat; his spirit buckled beneath the crushing weight of Qin Ting's dominion.

'He's going to crush me,' Song Changge thought, his teeth grinding as panic surged through his veins like wildfire. 'I can't stop this—no skill, no weapon, nothing!'

He swallowed hard, his pride locked in a desperate struggle with the primal urge to live. To yield would be to cast his honor into the dirt, stripping him of all standing within the Xuantian Sect. His master's favor would fade to ash, his name reduced to a sneered footnote among his peers. Yet as the moon hurtled closer, its searing glare scorching his vision, the choice crystallized: disgrace or oblivion.

"I—" His voice scraped free, a ragged whisper trembling on the edge of collapse, as if the weight of his own defeat had robbed him of breath.

Qin Ting's eyes flashed, narrowing into a sneer sharper than any sword. Surrender? Now? Far too late. His gaze crackled with intent, a storm-given form, and the air atop the Battle Stage thickened into an icy, unyielding shroud. Song Changge's next words died in his throat, choked by an invisible force that pinned him like prey beneath a predator's talon.

He stood paralyzed, staring upward as the moon swelled in the night sky—a silver specter blooming with ominous elegance. Despair flooded his chest, a dark current drowning pride and reason alike. Fear gnawed at his marrow, regret a bitter tang on his tongue. 'Why did I challenge him?' he wondered, his mind spiraling into the abyss of his own recklessness. 'What madness drove me to cross Qin Ting?'

For years, Qin Ting had ruled the Xuantian Sect like a shadow sovereign, his will an unspoken decree among the True Disciples. One by one, they had bowed before him—Feng Qianhan's frigid resolve thawing into silence, even the elusive Senior Brother Jiang carving a wide berth around his path. Only Song Changge had dared to stand against him, fueled by a reckless fervor he could no longer define. 'I thought I could topple him,' he lamented inwardly, 'but I've only carved my own grave.'

At that moment, a voice shattered the stillness—Elder Zhang, the stern enforcer of the sect's laws, who had observed the duel in stoic silence until now. "Enough!" he roared, his command a thunderclap steeped in authority. "Song Changge has yielded. This ends here!"

Qin Ting's lips twisted into a cold, unyielding smirk. Yielded? The word rang hollow against the elder's earlier inaction. When Song Changge's Array Diagram Sacred Weapon had cornered Qin Ting, teetering on the brink of triumph, Elder Zhang had stayed mute. Now, with victory secured and Song Changge shattered, he sought to play the mediator?

'Hypocrite,' Qin Ting thought, his contempt a smoldering coal. 'You'll not steal this from me.'

Far from relenting, his spiritual power flared—an unseen torrent that seized the moon's radiant phantom above. Its glow blazed brighter, accelerating with ferocious intent, a celestial hammer poised to pulverize the broken figure below. The Battle Stage quaked, the air snapping with the promise of ruin.

Elder Zhang's eyes widened, a flicker of shock piercing his granite composure. He had assumed his decree would quell the tempest, not fan its flames. Qin Ting's resolve was clear: not just to win, but to obliterate Song Changge from existence.

Within, Elder Zhang cursed his own bias toward Jiang Zhongbai. Throughout the duel, he'd kept a wary eye on Song Changge, knowing the youth fought under Jiang's banner. Yet he'd never fathomed such abject failure. Song Changge had reached the Divine Spirit Realm—a rare feat—and wielded a sacred weapon forged of celestial essence. Still, he'd crumbled before Qin Ting's might. Worse, Elder Zhang had underestimated the prodigy's genius. At eighteen, Qin Ting had stormed into the Divine Spirit Realm, his talent a blazing inferno that defied the heavens themselves.

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Now, he stood motionless, eyes locked on the battlefield as the luminous crescent plummeted, its silver sheen cloaking the scene in an otherworldly veil. Time slipped away like sand—if he didn't act, disaster would strike.

His voice boomed across the arena, sharp with command and edged with urgency. "How dare you! Would you slay a fellow disciple before the sect's very eyes?"

With a swift motion, Elder Zhang flung his hands skyward. The air thrummed as twin spectral hands materialized above—massive, translucent, and radiating power. Known as the Heavenly Support Hands, this divine art was his crowning glory, honed over decades.

He urged them upward, willing them to catch the moon and halt its devastating fall.

But reality defied him. The colossal hands met the moon's radiance—and faltered. For a fleeting instant, the lunar orb hung suspended, its brilliance mocking his effort. Then cracks splintered across his sacred technique, the Heavenly Support Hands shattering into a cascade of flickering runes and fading whispers of the Dao, lost to the wind.

A collective gasp erupted from the crowd below, the air thick with their stunned disbelief. Elder Zhang was no untested fledgling; he had tempered his power in the Divine Spirit Realm across decades, his name a cornerstone of strength among the sect's elders. Yet now he stood, a towering figure humbled, his vaunted might crumbling before Qin Ting's relentless onslaught. The truth crashed down like a thunderclap—his storied skill couldn't even stall the young man's advance.

The disciples gazing up from the stands were transfixed, their eyes wide with reverence. To them, Qin Ting was no mere prodigy; he was a deity descended from mortals, his presence commanding awe. The young women, in particular, stared with unguarded admiration, their gazes alight with wonder. Qin Ting hailed from a lineage of renown, his bloodline steeped in prestige, and now he stood as a paragon of heaven-defying talent. How could anyone not be captivated?

High above, the night sky unfurled its vast canopy, presided over by a luminous moon that hung like a silver sovereign. Its ethereal light spilled downward, pooling in a radiant halo atop Song Changge's head, bathing him in an otherworldly glow. For a fleeting moment, that brilliance seemed to crush the last embers of his dwindling spirit, snuffing out the flicker of hope he'd clung to in the darkness.

Yet the illusion splintered as Elder Zhang's towering silhouette emerged, a sudden anchor amidst the storm. His presence alone hauled Song Changge back from the precipice, a lifeline cast into the void.

A feral spark flared in Song Changge's eyes—wild, desperate, an ember roaring to life against the suffocating tide of defeat. 'I won't fall here,' he vowed silently, teeth gritted as he summoned his cultivation technique. Power surged within him, a torrent of will and defiance, though it sputtered feebly against the overwhelming force pressing down.

High above, Elder Zhang thrust a hand skyward, his fingers tracing arcane patterns in the air. A shimmering cascade of energy erupted from his palm, shaping into a colossal, radiant hand that blazed upward—a defiant shield hurled against the moon's unrelenting glare.

But the moment that radiant palm grazed the moonlight, it unraveled—fraying into delicate tendrils of light that dissipated like embers on a dying wind. Song Changge had no chance to brace himself. The moon's unyielding glow swallowed him whole, its crushing weight descending with merciless precision. Beneath the onslaught, the Battle Stage trembled, then buckled entirely, the force of the impact gouging a jagged crater into the earth.

This was no common arena. Forged from enigmatic spirit stone quarried from outer space, the Battle Stage was famed for its near-indestructible resilience. Yet Qin Ting, wielding the divine art known as Hand That Embraces the Moon, had shattered it with effortless grace. The raw power of that strike pulsed through the air, a resounding echo of his unmatched supremacy.

A soft breeze swept through, stirring the haze of dust as the moon's brilliance faded, its silver light bleeding into the night until only shadows remained. At the crater's heart, Song Changge lay motionless—his fate a fragile thread, suspended between life and death.

Qin Ting surveyed the devastation below, his chiseled features cold and unyielding, not a flicker of concern in his piercing gaze. 'As I thought,' he mused silently, 'Elder Zhang's meddling granted him a fleeting stay of execution. I couldn't end him outright.'

Still, the result pleased him. Song Changge's body might cling to life, but his spirit lay in tatters—his Dao Foundation sundered beyond repair. His journey as a cultivator had crumbled to dust, leaving behind a broken husk of unfulfilled promise. To Qin Ting, he was already a footnote, unworthy of further consideration.

Elder Zhang's face contorted, fury and incredulity warring across his weathered visage, his eyes darkening with each passing moment. He had intervened personally, wagering his own pride to shield his disciple, only to watch helplessly as the disaster unfolded.

His stare fixed on Qin Ting, a venomous undercurrent simmering beneath his composure. "Qin Ting!" he snarled, his voice a guttural roar laced with outrage. "You dare strike down a fellow True Disciple before the entire sect? You'll face the Court of Justice for this—follow me, now!"

A faint, mocking smile tugged at Qin Ting's lips, his demeanor unruffled, his words laced with a razor's edge. "Elder Zhang, has time dulled your wits?" he replied, his tone deceptively light yet sharpened with steel. "Senior Brother Song issued the challenge himself. The terms were plain: victory or defeat, we each bear the consequences. Even the Xuantian Sect honors such rites. His ruin was his own doing—his weakness speaks for itself."

The smile faded, his expression icing over as his voice dipped into a frigid sneer. "As for hauling me to your Court of Justice? Tell me, Elder—do you truly possess the authority to command me?"