"Ah Tie," Bai Rourou said, "that old ghost on Azure Mist Mountain has discovered us. We don't have much time left."
As Bai Rourou's voice fell.
A golden light gleamed in Li Yaotie's eyes. He let out a cold snort. "It's enough."
The spatial fissure before him began to tear open!
From within that pitch-black spatial fissure, waves of Nascent Soul Qi emanated. The very moment these auras appeared...
BOOM!
Thunder surged forth in the vast sky; it was a lightning tribulation that could no longer be suppressed, bolt after bolt crashing down.
From within the spatial fissure, joyous laughter erupted.
"Hahaha! It's been nearly two hundred years! The Tian Xing Cultivator Abode is finally open! We no longer have to wait to become Tian Xing's new cultivation cauldrons!"
"Finally escaped that hellhole! Wonderful, truly wonderful."
"Let me go, you brutes! You bastards!"
"..."
This chorus of wild laughter made both Li Yaotie and Bai Rourou furrow their brows.
The next moment.
A figure used a secret technique to instantly burst out of the Tian Xing Cultivator Abode.
Disheveled and grimy-faced, it was, to everyone's surprise, none other than the Wuwen Scholar, the very same one who had been repeatedly robbed by the Li family inside the Abode.
At this moment, he seemed utterly deranged.
The moment the Wuwen Scholar saw Li Yaotie, the one who had opened the Abode, his face became a mess of snot and tears.
Heedless of anything else, he threw himself forward and hugged Li Yaotie's thigh.
"Senior!" he wailed, "Quick, close the Abode! They're not human, they're beasts! Hardly any of them are normal! You have no idea how many years I've suffered in that place!"
"Close it, quickly!" he pleaded. "If you let them out, the entire Eternal Sun Prefecture... no, the entire Azure Dynasty will know no peace!"
Li Yaotie looked down at the terrified Wuwen Scholar, stunned into silence for a long moment.
He hesitated before asking, "They... who are they?"
"Who else could it be?" he cried. "The Li family's seven fiends, and all those other lunatics from the Li clan! They're not human!"
The Wuwen Scholar's face was contorted, and a few simple words could not possibly do justice to all the suffering he had endured in the Tian Xing Cultivator Abode over the years.
However, his gaze quickly turned vacant. Li Yaotie put an arm around Bai Rourou, and his calm voice fell upon the scholar's ears like the low whisper of a fiend.
"What a coincidence," he said. "I'm the father of those seven fiends you mentioned. And all those others? They're my juniors."
"..."
The Wuwen Scholar looked as though he had been struck by lightning.
He glanced at the massive physiques of Li Yaotie and Bai Rourou, then stiffly twisted his head back to stare at the open entrance of the Tian Xing Cultivator Abode.
Those seven fiends, tall as bears and covered in demonic tattoos, emerged.
Their hands were laden with storage rings, and each one shouldered a massive totem. An overwhelming, oppressive aura radiated from every one of them.
In their other hands, they gripped numerous long chains. The other ends of these chains were fastened to collars fitted around the necks of many captured geniuses.
"Now that we've captured you," one of them roared, "let's see who in your clans still dares to disobey!"
"This Tian Xing Cultivator Abode is nothing but a piss-ant little place," another jeered. "You really think you can fight our Li family?"
"This Great King is out! Hahaha!"
"..."
A valiant and heroic female war god, clad in blood-red armor, emerged like a phantom of blood. Her twin swords slashed through the sky. Before the man behind her could even react, she had already passed him, her blades drawn back. A crimson light shot to the heavens as pieces of a corpse rained down.
She murmured icily, "I told you that you could not escape this Tian Xing Cultivator Abode. Why did you have to make the futile attempt?"
"Third Uncle, Third Aunt."
A young and handsome Daoist priest emerged. Holding a horsetail whisk, with the pitch-black cube floating by his other hand, he possessed the transcendent bearing of an immortal master, utterly detached from the mortal world.
He addressed Li Yaotie and Bai Rourou, "This nephew has safely led our clansmen out of the Tian Xing Cultivator Abode. I only hope we can make it in time for the family to exact its great revenge."
"Kill them all! Hahaha! I want to see blood! Tian Xing and Baimei, and all those from Eternal Sun Prefecture who oppose us—they all have to die! Hahaha!"
The man bound in chains like a chrysalis was laughing maniacally, saliva drooling from the corners of his mouth.
Two men on either end of the chains held him down firmly.
One of them, who carried a zither on his back, cursed through gritted teeth, "Damn you, Tianming! You claim you haven't fallen to the demonic path, so how did you end up this insane? You're even crazier than your old man!"
Another man, carrying a tortoise shell on his back, was drenched in sweat, terrified that the bound Li Tianming might escape.
"Big Brother, hold him down!" he panted. "This kid is even more terrifying than Tian Xing!"
"Hahaha, time to fly my kite!"
One of Li Tianming's hands was free from the chains, and in it, he gripped a thin string. Tethered to the string was none other than Nangong Yazhi, the one who had once besieged Li Yunlin.
This "Heaven's Favored Daughter" of the Nangong family of the Hundred Treasures Pavilion now flew in the sky, her eyes vacant, completely at Li Tianming's mercy.
Li Tianming had warned her: if she dared to fall, he would show her the true meaning of 'torture'.
"...Sigh."
A young girl of ordinary appearance, dressed in a long pink robe with a matching pink bow on her back and her hair in twin ponytails, glanced at these incorrigibly unruly elders. She let out a world-weary sigh.
"In the blink of an eye, it's been nearly two hundred years," she murmured. "I can finally get away from them."
But scarcely had her words faded.
The exceedingly handsome man beside her suddenly seized her hand.
He glanced left and right in terror, then fled like a gust of wind, dragging the captured Li Changyao behind him so that she swayed numbly in the air like a dishrag.
"Run, elders, run!" he shrieked. "I suspect there's a trap here! Baimei is coming! Quick, go find the Old Ancestor!"
Li Changsheng's panicked shouts still echoed in the air as he, dragging Li Changyao along, shot past the Seven Ironclads, the Three Thieves, Li Yunlin, and Li Tianyue.
He also passed the couple, Li Yaotie and Bai Rourou, who had clearly been looking forward to a heartfelt reunion with their long-lost children, but whose faces now showed not a trace of joy, only utter disdain.
"..."
The Wuwen Scholar stared blankly at this bizarre family, feeling as though the very sky above Eternal Sun Prefecture had grown dim.
"How... how can they possibly be a single family?"
This group of people swiftly headed towards Qilin Mountain, like fierce beasts finally freed from their cages!
BOOM! BOOM!
Thunder raged, and it was the lightning tribulation for those who had just emerged from the Tian Xing Cultivator Abode!
Li Tianming's crazed laughter echoed.
"You all have to die!" he shrieked. "Hahaha, we're out now! You're all going to die!!!"
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