The day before...
***Flashback***
( Continuation from ch 24 )
---
Zhao Yung's eyes shimmered, not with pity, but with something colder, as ancient sages used to describe it as; Clarity forged in betrayal.
"I was once like you, Elder Wang. Dutiful, blind, loyal to names carved in jade tablets and stone steles... I believed if I bled righteously, the heavens would watch... How foolish of me, they only watched me fall. Buddha has no eyes, no ears... The world is far rotten than one could imagine and someone has to cleanse it,"
He turned his palm skyward, letting snow gather in the crease of his hand only for it to vanish before touching skin, consumed by the strange qi that coiled around him like a withered flame.
"I, too, once begged my family to act. But they only smiled, called it internal family affairs... In front of power, everything bends,"
Elder Wang remained silent, but his breath grew rough.
His fingers tightened around the talisman. The veins in his neck pulsed, as though his body could no longer contain the poison of memory.
"Your sect won't help you... The sect is merely a distract, have you ever thought of betraying it?" Zhao Yung continued, voice a low whisper that slipped into the ear like incense smoke in a sealed room. "l
"They fear the Zhao name more than they respect you. What are your decades of service to them? An old dog's bark, tolerated but ignored... You may not want to hear it but it's the truth,"
He bend now before Elder Wang, robes pooling like nightfall on the snow, eyes still gleaming with that glacial wisdom only hatred could polish.
"You still wear the sect's emblem on your sleeve," Zhao Yung said, gesturing to the blood-stained sash,
"But does it not feel heavy now? Like shackles tied to a corpse?"
Elder Wang's lips parted but no words came. His heart, buried beneath so many layers of pride and protocol, now beat like a war drum in a windless cave.
Zhao Yung did not press further, not yet.
He let silence speak for them, and when it stretched just long enough to become a pact, he finally opened his mouth.
"There are others. Not all sects bow to the Holy Land. The Broken Blade Sect, The Misty Lake Peak, Even the Bone-Crushing Bandits at the southern gorge, they all have grievances against the Supreme Holy Peak, let's unite and crush it,"
Elder Wang's eyes sharpened slightly, "Young Master speak of bandits and minor sects… Rebels,"
Zhao Yung smiled, "No. I speak of men who, like you, have nothing more to lose. The Holy Land grows fat, bloated on faith, power, and the blood of others. But empires fall not from celestial strikes, Elder Wang... they fall when the ignored, the overlooked, the insulted, bind their grief into rope and pull..."
He rose to his feet, and behind him, the pine tree let fall a single brittle cone cracked, hollow, long past seed-bearing.
Zhao Yung's voice was calm, like moonlight over a forgotten battlefield.
"You do not need to swear loyalty to me. You do not need to soil your honor. Just act once. Strike when the moment arrives, and reclaim your name, your son's dignity, your place in the scrolls of history..." His voice was like the symphony of heaven's mandate.
Yet, the sinister smirk hidden within the veil of words remained unnoticed.
"And when the Holy Land burns, even if the heavens do not weep… the mortals will remember,"
He stepped back into the snow, the shadows of distant clouds crawling across his shoulders like silent conspirators.
Elder Wang's breath fogged the air.
He could still hear the ghosts of his disciples crying in the wind.
He could still see the stain of blood at the hem of his robe, he could still remember the way Zhao Fan had walked past him, not with hatred, not even disdain, but indifference, like a dragon ignoring the worm it had crushed without thought.
That memory stung more than a thousand sword wounds.
He lowered his head.
"...When?" Elder Wang asked.
Zhao Yung turned once more, his smile now thin and sharp.
"Tomorrow... When the sun rises, the fate of the Supreme Holy peak shall be sealed,"
The words did not echo like in novels as Zhao Ying isn't mentally handicapped unable to fathom that even the trees have ears.
Instead, his words settled, like snow upon a grave, silent yet irreversible.
...
By the hour of the ghostly rooster, just past the third incense stick of the Rat Hour, the people gathered within a withered formation array deep in the Hollow Bamboo Vale.
It was a cursed land abandoned by spirit beasts, where even the moonlight trembled before it touched the soil.
The mist there was thick with qi poison fog, but inside the protective barrier laid by Zhao Yung's own hands, the air was still, completely normal like an autumn wine.
...
A crooked table stood in the center, its surface etched with a glowing ink formation map. It was a top-down replica of the Supreme Holy Peak, pulsing softly like the veins of a dying dragon.
Seated around the table were the chosen few...
Elder Wang, eyes smoldering with repressed fury.
Gu Zhen, a bully man, and leader of the Bone-Crushing Bandits, legs crossed, a large heavy blade across his lap like a sleeping beast.
Mu Shiyue, from Misty Lake Peak, silent but alert, a sealed ice lotus floating above her shoulder.
Li Bai, of the Broken Blade Sect, expression unreadable beneath his straw hat, looking like a true rouge sword cultivator holding a century-old katana.
Zhao Yung stood alone, behind the map, his silhouette flickering as if he were half-shadow, half-man.
He began chanting his plan.
"The Supreme Holy Peak is built atop a five-layered formation," Zhao Yung said, sweeping his sleeve across the map.
Glowing ridges emerged, concentric lines forming a spiritual fortress.
"Each layer was designed by the founding ancestor,"
He tapped the outermost ring.
"The first one is The Alchemy Pavillion area, the weak point of the sect, we shall attack from here with the help of Elder Wang," Zhao Yung pointed his finger towards Elder wang.
Everyone looked at Elder Wang and nodded.
"The sect doesn't have much power, the only four powerhouses are Great Elder Tai, Great Elder Huang, who are an Emperor level powerhouse, Sect ancestor who is a Great Emperor level powerhouse and Zhao Fan, who is a Holy Emperor level powerhouse..."
"Our first target is Zhao Fan, with the help of Cultivation suppressing Soul talisman, we can easily erase his existence... Snap*"
Zhao Yung snapped his finger.
Two Great Emperor realm powerhouse, materialized before their very eyes.
"They are Jin, and Lin, twin brothers who are both Great Emperor level powerhouse, with this and the help of your respective sects, we can easily bully the Supreme Holy land,"
"Furthermore, in case some weird defensive array is triggered, I have already secured the Saint-Tier anti-array array,"
An anti-array array is an array that suppresses the other arrays.
Zhao Yung had made a full plan to destroy the sect, as if it had no right to even exist.
Zhao Yung knows that this seemingly mediocre sect has something, that the Zhai family wants that's why ancestors have Sect Zhao Fan here.
"If fellow daoists have some questions, you may ask..."
"No!"
"No!"
"No!"