“You three, with your pathetic looks, d-don’t… don’t seem like chosen ones at all,” Wang Qiang said, squinting his small eyes at Zhang Yanfeng, Zhang Shirui, and Zhang Boyi, his sleazy gaze dripping with disdain.
“You…” Zhang Shirui’s face darkened with displeasure at the insult.
“Ahem…” At that moment, a cough suddenly rang out.
It was the Blood-devouring Demon Clan Leader.
The message couldn’t have been clearer—a blatant reminder to Zhang Shirui to mind her manners.
Though Zhang Shirui was usually domineering, there were people she feared, and the Blood-devouring Demon Clan Leader was one of them.
After his warning, no matter how much she despised Wang Qiang, Zhang Shirui could only swallow her anger.
“What, not happy?”
“Got a p-problem… problem with what I said?” Wang Qiang, the ultimate provocateur, wasn’t done.
He clearly knew Zhang Yanfeng and the others were already furious with him, yet instead of backing off, he kept poking at them.
Faced with such a shameless Wang Qiang, Zhang Yanfeng was grinding his teeth in rage but didn’t dare show it. Instead, he forced a smile and said, “No, we wouldn’t dare.”
“Good, as long as you d-don’t… don’t dare.”
“Listen up, you three. Whether your Blood-devouring Demon Clan gets Lord Qin Kunlun’s inheritance d-depends… depends on you.”
“Follow me,” Wang Qiang said, gripping his token and pointing it at the void. The dark barrier gate reappeared.
“Brother, c-come… come in,” Wang Qiang said to Chu Feng before stepping into the dark gate.
Chu Feng followed, with Zhang Yanfeng and the others close behind.
Passing through the dark gate, Chu Feng and the others entered another space.
At a glance, it was clear this was a specially crafted space.
Chu Feng, Wang Qiang, Zhang Yanfeng, and the other two stood on a cliff overlooking a valley below.
At the center of the valley was an emerald-green lake.
“This lake?”
Seeing the emerald lake, Chu Feng’s expression shifted.
It wasn’t just him—Zhang Yanfeng, Zhang Shirui, and Zhang Boyi’s faces also changed.
They all sensed the aura of the Void Divine Tree in the emerald lake, and it was far more potent than what they had felt inside the Void Divine Tree—several times stronger, at least.
But it wasn’t just the lake…
The valley was vast, and the lake occupied only a small portion of its center, less than a tenth of the area.
The remaining nine-tenths were filled with stone pillars.
The pillars varied in size, the largest towering a hundred meters, the smallest just over a meter tall.
But their appearance was identical, covered in intricate patterns and runes.
Though the pillars seemed unremarkable at first glance, the runes were so complex that even Chu Feng couldn’t decipher them.
And their arrangement, while appearing chaotic, was meticulously deliberate—a formation, an extraordinarily intricate one.
To others, it might seem like nothing special.
But in Chu Feng’s eyes, the formation’s brilliance was evident. It was something he, at his current level, couldn’t even begin to create.
This wasn’t a matter of time—it was simply beyond his ability. Even given tens of thousands of years, he couldn’t craft it.
Not unless… his World Spiritist techniques reached that level.
“Looks like they prepared thoroughly,” Chu Feng thought, realizing that both the lake and the stone formation were likely meant to aid Wang Qiang and the Blood-devouring Demon Venerable.
“Indeed thorough. That o-old… old thing spared no effort for this day,” Wang Qiang said.
“Thoroughly prepared? Besides that lake, I don’t see anything special,” Zhang Shirui remarked, sounding disappointed.
She wasn’t to blame—she couldn’t perceive the formation’s sophistication.
“W-what… what are you looking at? Get to work!”
“Go d-down… down there and activate that formation,” Wang Qiang said to Zhang Yanfeng and the others.
“Activate the formation? How?” Zhang Yanfeng asked.
“You d-don’t… don’t even know how to activate a formation? Got no brains?”
“With your l-level… level, you call yourselves chosen ones? I say you’re d-dog… dogshit ones,” Wang Qiang said, adopting a lofty tone, scolding the three like they were his children, without holding back.
“Are you the one with no brain? This is our first time here. We don’t know anything, okay?”
“You don’t explain, so how are we supposed to know how to activate the formation?”
“If we knew everything, what would we need you for?”
Zhang Shirui finally snapped, unable to endure Wang Qiang’s bullying any longer. Her outburst was fierce.
“Oh, ho! Y-you… you little girl, g-got… got some guts now, daring to t-talk… talk back to this young master?”
Wang Qiang was caught off guard, not expecting Zhang Shirui to be bold enough to curse him.
“Talk back? What, I can’t speak the truth?”
“You look ugly enough as it is, and you stutter like that. You’re not even fully developed, yet you’re out here acting as an envoy? Have you no shame?”
Zhang Shirui pointed at Wang Qiang, unleashing a torrent of insults.
“Y-you… you… y-you… you…”
“What ‘you’?”
“With such precious heaven-and-earth energy in this world, a moron like you is absorbing it? That’s practically a crime. I’m begging you, give us normal people a chance to live. Idiots like you shouldn’t even be alive.”
“If I were you, I’d have jumped into a cesspool and drowned myself long ago. How do you have the nerve to live in this world, wasting resources meant for other martial cultivators?”
Wang Qiang tried to retort, but Zhang Shirui’s verbal assault was so rapid that he couldn’t get a word in, left with no room to fight back.
“Damn it, you’re forcing my hand!”
Suddenly, Wang Qiang roared, and his pressure surged forth.
Though his pressure didn’t directly target Zhang Shirui, it was, after all, the pressure of a peak Exalted, just below the Martial Supreme realm.
When it was released, it altered the very air of the space.
Feeling Wang Qiang’s formidable power, Zhang Shirui froze.
She wasn’t foolish—just hot-tempered. Her earlier outburst had been impulsive, but Wang Qiang’s pressure snapped her back to reality.
No matter how you sliced it, Wang Qiang was a peak Exalted, and with the Blood-devouring Demon Clan Leader absent, if Wang Qiang decided to act against her, she’d be powerless.
But the more you fear something, the more it comes to pass—especially since Zhang Shirui didn’t yet understand just how shameless Wang Qiang could be.
“Little girl, acting all t-tough… tough, huh? Daring to curse this young master?”
“If I don’t teach you a lesson, you won’t know h-how… how fearsome I am.”
“Come on, I dare you to curse me one more time.”
“Believe me, I’ll t-take… take you right here in front of your two brothers!”
Wang Qiang was utterly shameless. He wasn’t actually angry, but he played the part convincingly—terrifyingly so.
And that stern-faced Wang Qiang genuinely intimidated the usually fearless Zhang Shirui.
