Chapter 30

Chapter 30: The Immortal Lord’s Inheritance
Mu Zi Xu’s eyes flooded with fear. He tried to wrench himself free—only to realize he couldn’t move at all.

Spatial Confinement.

The thought hit like ice water. His breath turned ragged, his mind racing. What did Immortal Lord Mo Yang want with him?

Beside him, Wang Yang’s pupils constricted. He lunged on instinct, trying to pull Mu Zi Xu back, but no matter how he strained, only the two Spirit Beads in his eyes trembled, sliding a fraction as if that was the only part of him still allowed to live.

Terror washed over them, helpless and absolute.

They could only watch as that enormous hand descended and settled on Mu Zi Xu’s crown.

Immortal Lord Mo Yang’s expression was cold. Under his palm, a mysterious pattern unfurled—lines and sigils spreading outward, then sinking through flesh and bone as if Mu Zi Xu’s skull were nothing more than paper.

It pierced straight into the sea of consciousness.

There, Mo Yang built a bridge.

A connection snapped into place, threading his will back to the Inheritance Hall.

Mu Zi Xu’s eyes flew wide. The light inside them drained away, leaving them empty, vacant—puppet eyes, strung to someone else’s fingers.

*

Inside the Inheritance Hall, Song Wan Ning ground the spirit-tablet fragments into powder, then burned the dust to nothing with pill fire.

When the last wisp of ash vanished, not a single spirit tablet remained. Only bare stone stretched across the hall, and Ye Chu Xue lay unconscious on it.

The blast hadn’t spared her. Blood streaked her face and soaked her clothes, what little fabric remained. Torn to rags, she looked wretched—pitiful enough to fool anyone who only saw the surface.

Song Wan Ning walked over, slow and steady, her eyes cold as winter metal.

She had intended to keep Ye Chu Xue alive, a treasure-hunting rat to lead her through the inheritance. But what just happened had changed everything.

No matter what she did, no matter how hard she fought for it, the inheritance treasures still went straight to Ye Chu Xue.

If Song Wan Ning couldn’t benefit from it, then Ye Chu Xue wouldn’t either.

Quick. Clean. One stroke, and she’d be done with the annoyance.

She lowered her gaze to Ye Chu Xue’s throat.

In her last life, Ye Chu Xue had loved to stand on the moral high ground. She’d called Song Wan Ning spoiled, willful, accused her of treating lives like grass. She’d stirred trouble between Song Wan Ning and Gu Qing Yuan again and again, preaching that Song Wan Ning didn’t deserve him because her hands were stained with too much blood.

And that ridiculous sermon—“everyone is equal”—Ye Chu Xue had repeated it until countless low-level cultivators worshiped her for it.

Song Wan Ning’s lips curled, sharp with contempt.

In the Cultivation World, strength was king. Mortal morals and petty rules meant nothing in the face of absolute power.

She had cultivated without rest, clawed her way through nine deaths and one life to reach Nascent Soul Stage and stand as a True Lord. Why should she be “equal” to people who could barely protect themselves?

If they didn’t like it, they could chase after her.

Or they could lie down and accept it.

And if Ye Chu Xue was truly so selfless, why had she never shared the treasures she obtained?

What was the point of screaming fake slogans all day?

How laughable.

Yet the sect had eaten it up. They’d placed Ye Chu Xue on a pedestal, and if Song Wan Ning so much as breathed wrong, she became the villain.

The irony was almost exquisite.

Fine.

If that was the game, she would end it.

Ye Chu Xue first. Then Gu Qing Yuan and his three disciples.

Not a single mastermind who had harmed the Song Family in her last life would be allowed to escape.

Her hand lifted.

Her sword rose with it.

Sword light split in two—cold, ruthless arcs that shot for Ye Chu Xue’s throat and heart at the same time. Song Wan Ning didn’t intend to leave even a sliver of life behind.

But in the next instant, another flash of sword light swept in—quiet, effortless—and erased her killing move as if it had never existed.

Not even the smallest ripple stirred.

Song Wan Ning’s expression tightened. She retreated without hesitation, feet sliding back across the stone.

A blurry black figure stood between her and Ye Chu Xue.

The face was indistinct, like a shadow cut from the night, but the aura was unmistakable—towering and straight as a pine, pressure rolling out in waves that made her bones hum.

A sword hung at the figure’s waist. Even she could hear it, a low tremble in its scabbard, as if it had been waiting to sing.

Sword cultivator.

Song Wan Ning’s gaze darkened. Killing intent surged around her, violent and sharp.

So that was it. The Heavenly Dao’s darling. Even now, someone had come to save Ye Chu Xue.

Heaven truly adored her.

Song Wan Ning tightened her grip.

If a god blocked her, she would kill the god.

If a Buddha blocked her, she would kill the Buddha.

She would not let the Heavenly Dao have its way.

She drove forward, sword thrusting straight at that black figure. Her killing intent rushed out like a primordial beast finally unchained.

Immortal Lord Mo Yang’s lips lifted, the movement so faint it was almost imagined. He raised one hand.

And with that simple gesture, he suppressed everything—killing intent, sword light, the storm inside her chest—as easily as pressing a flame beneath a palm.

Light and shadow twisted.

Song Wan Ning blinked, and the world changed.

She stood in a wasteland.

Desolation stretched in every direction, dunes piled like frozen waves while fierce wind drove sand across the ground in hard, stinging sheets.

Ahead, a figure descended from the sky like a deity, robes and hair moving in the wind as if the heavens themselves carried him.

A single sword strike fell.

The heavens shattered.

Killing intent erupted—dense enough to crush the world. Sand boiled upward. Rocks and clods of earth burst apart. The sky split like cloth, and within that tear, stars seemed to crack and explode into dust.

Space itself flickered, bending, warping. For a heartbeat, through a twisting spatial tunnel, she saw half-shadows—figures that did not belong to this world, silhouettes from elsewhere, as if countless realms brushed against each other at the edge of that blade.

Song Wan Ning was nothing more than a grain of sand amid that catastrophe, rising and falling with the shockwave.

Rootless. Drifting. Unable to find an edge, unable to anchor herself to anything real.

In the haze, she forgot where she had come from, and where she was supposed to go.

Only that world-shaking sword remained.

…

When she opened her eyes again, she was back in the Inheritance Hall.

The scene was familiar, yet it felt as though ages had passed. She couldn’t tell how long she’d wandered in that vision, what she’d endured. She only knew the weight of it—the absolute smallness it had forced into her bones, as if she were a single drop lost in an endless sea.

Deep in her sea of consciousness, a nameless book floated quietly, pulsing with killing intent.

Song Wan Ning steadied her breath. Understanding settled, heavy and sharp: the person before her was the one who had granted her this inheritance.

Shock. Confusion. Suspicion.

She didn’t lower her guard for even a heartbeat.

Who knew what he wanted.

Immortal Lord Mo Yang raised a brow, studying the girl in front of him. Now he understood why the Sword Spirit had said she was his kind.

Her face was stunning—too young, too delicate for what lived behind it. Yet on that face sat killing intent and viciousness that contradicted every soft line.

To enemies, ruthless enough.

To seniors, arrogant enough.

To herself, relentless enough.

Walking the Killing Dao suited her perfectly.

Mo Yang didn’t find her attack improper. If anything, his gaze held pure appreciation.

They stared at each other, the air between them strange, taut—and somehow, in its own way, harmonious.

In the end, Song Wan Ning spoke first.

“Are you with the Medicine King Sect?”

Was he here to stand up for that person from the Medicine King Sect? Or to protect Ye Chu Xue?

Immortal Lord Mo Yang’s expression didn’t shift. “Once, I was a fellow disciple with him. That is all.”

“Not close,” Song Wan Ning said, the words edged. “Then you came for her?”

She flicked her chin toward Ye Chu Xue’s unconscious body, already calculating—if she went all out, how many chances did she have?

Mo Yang didn’t even glance at Ye Chu Xue. “No.”

“No?” Song Wan Ning’s smile was thin. “Then why are you here?”

She didn’t believe him. The Heavenly Dao loved to play favorites. She distrusted anyone who carried that same kind of malicious “fairness,” especially a stranger who appeared at the worst possible moment.

Immortal Lord Mo Yang looked at her for a long moment.

“For you.”

“For me?” Song Wan Ning let out a short laugh.

She was someone the Heavenly Dao had abandoned. Someone still came for her?

“You needn’t doubt,” Mo Yang said, voice even. “I am from the Immortal Realm. I am not controlled by the Heavenly Dao of this world.”

He explained with rare patience, as if he feared she might slip away the moment he turned his back. And she was suspicious by nature—he could see it in the way her shoulders stayed braced, her sword angled to strike.

When he finished, his eyes burned with a quiet intensity.

“I cultivate the Emotionless Killing Dao. The inheritance in your sea of consciousness is my own creation.”

He paused, then asked plainly, “Now, are you willing to enter my sect and cultivate the Emotionless Killing Dao?”

“Emotionless Killing Dao?” Song Wan Ning lifted one corner of her mouth.

“I’m not willing.”