Dual Cultivation: Gathering SSS-Rank Wives in the Cultivation World

Chapter 703: Chapter 703- An Elder Brother

The dagger descended.

Then the sky screamed.

Not a sound. Not a voice. Not thunder. The sky itself, the atmosphere, the spiritual energy in the air, every molecule of qi in a fifty-mile radius, vibrated at a frequency that made bone resonate and teeth ache. The sound was not heard. It was felt. In the marrow. In the dantian. In the soul.

The clouds split.

Not parted. Split. Torn open like silk under a blade, the white cumulus shredding outward from a central point. Through the gap, a light descended. Not sunlight. Not moonlight. Not the golden glow of spiritual energy. Something else. Something that carried weight. Gravity. The air around the light compressed, the moisture condensing into a visible shockwave that expanded outward in a sphere.

The shockwave hit the forest.

The trees shattered. Not fell. Not broke. Shattered. The ancient pines, trunks three feet thick, exploded into splinters. The canopy vanished. The forest floor cratered. The ferns, the moss, the stones, everything in a hundred-foot radius was pulverized into dust.

Lin Zhao was thrown. His body, Core Formation cultivation and all, was picked up by the shockwave and hurled through the air like a leaf in a hurricane. He hit a tree trunk, the impact cracking the wood. He slid down. His dagger fell from his hand. His eyes, wide, streamed with tears from the dust.

Xu Ran, on his knees, was at the epicenter.

He should have been destroyed. The shockwave should have reduced him to paste. But it hadn’t. The energy, the devastating force that had shattered ancient trees and cratered the earth, had passed through him like water through a net. His body, poisoned, meridians sealed, dantian locked, had been untouched.

Something was shielding him.

The light hit the ground.

The impact was silent. No explosion. No crater. The light simply touched the earth, and the earth accepted it. The dust settled. The splinters fell like rain. The silence that followed was the most profound silence Xu Ran had ever experienced. A silence that had texture. Weight. Presence.

In the center of the clearing, where the light had landed, something stood.

It was humanoid. Vaguely. The shape was right, two arms, two legs, a head. But the proportions were wrong. Too tall. Eight feet, maybe nine. The shoulders were too wide. The arms too long. The fingers, visible at the ends of the hands, were tipped with claws. Not nails. Claws. Curved, dark, the length of a short sword.

The body was not solid. It was condensed energy. Spiritual qi compressed to such density that it had become visible, tangible, physical. The color was dark. Not black. Dark. The color of deep space. The color of the void between stars. The surface rippled, the energy shifting, flowing, the form not entirely stable, not entirely physical.

Its face, if it had a face, was a suggestion. Two depressions where eyes should be. A ridge where a nose might be. A line where a mouth could be. The features shifted, moved, reformed. The face of something that was not human but was wearing the shape of one.

It turned. The void-like head swiveled. The eye-depressions found Lin Zhao, still against the tree, his body broken, his eyes wide with a terror so absolute it had transcended fear into something beyond.

The thing moved.

Not walked. Not stepped. The space between it and Lin Zhao ceased to exist. One moment the demon was at the center of the clearing. The next it was in front of Lin Zhao. No transition. No movement. Just absence and presence.

Lin Zhao screamed. The sound was cut short. The demon’s claw, dark and curved, had pierced his chest. Not through the heart. Through the dantian. The golden core, Lin Zhao’s cultivation base, the spiritual energy he had spent fifteen years accumulating, was crushed. The claw closed. The core shattered. The energy dissipated.

Lin Zhao’s body fell. His eyes, wide, vacant, stared at the sky. His mouth was open. No sound came out.

The other three. The branch family disciples on the ground, injured but alive. The demon found them. One by one. The claws moved. The bodies dropped. Not dead. Their dantians were destroyed. Their cultivation bases, their spiritual energy, their years of training. Gone. They would be mortals for the rest of their lives.

The demon turned back. Its eye-depressions found Xu Ran. Still on his knees. Still poisoned. Still dying, the spiritual suppression eating his meridians, the blood in his throat.

It moved. Stood before him. The void-like body, eight feet tall, loomed.

Its hand, the one not covered in Lin Zhao’s blood, extended. One claw. The tip touched Xu Ran’s chest. Over his heart. The claw pressed. Not cutting. Not piercing. Pressing.

The energy entered him.

Not demonic. Not spiritual. Something else. Something that tasted of the upper realms. Something that carried the weight of a world Xu Ran had never seen. The energy flowed through the claw, through his skin, through his meridians. The poison, the purple suppression, the meridian-sealing toxin, was burned. Not neutralized. Burned. The energy was so dense, so pure, that the poison simply ceased to exist. Evaporated. Gone.

His meridians opened. His dantian flared. His Core Formation qi, sealed moments ago, surged. The energy, the healing force, flowed through his body. The cut on his side closed. The crack in his rib mended. The blood in his throat dissolved.

He gasped. His lungs expanded. His eyes, blurred, cleared.

He looked up at the demon. At the void-like face. At the eye-depressions that held no eyes but somehow saw.

"Who..." he whispered. "What are you?"

The demon spoke.

The voice was not human. It was not sound. It was vibration. Resonance. The words formed in the air, in the spiritual energy, in Xu Ran’s mind simultaneously.

"I am your elder brother."

The words hit him harder than the shockwave.

He stared. At the demon. At the void-like body. At the claws. At the face that was not a face.

"Elder... brother?" he whispered.

The demon’s form shifted. The energy, the condensed void, began to compress. The height reduced. Eight feet became seven. Seven became six. The shoulders narrowed. The arms shortened. The claws retracted, becoming fingers. The void-like surface solidified, gaining color, gaining texture, gaining skin.

The face formed. Features emerged from the shifting energy. A young face. Eighteen, maybe. Soft. The kind of face that looked harmless. The kind of face that people overlooked. Brown hair, plain. Brown eyes, unremarkable. A thin build. Average height. The body of a boy who had never been remarkable, never been noticed, never been worth a second glance.

The demon became a boy.

The boy collapsed.

He fell forward. His knees hit the cratered earth. His hands caught himself. His arms trembled. His breath came in gasps, shallow, rapid, the breathing of someone who had just exerted an impossible amount of energy and was paying the price.

"Elder... brother..." The boy’s voice was thin. Exhausted. The voice of an eighteen-year-old who had just transformed from a demonic entity and was running on fumes. "Are you... all right?"

Xu Ran stared. At the boy. At the face. At the plain, unremarkable features that he had seen a hundred times before. In the academy. In the hallways. In the back of the classroom. The boy who sat alone. Who never spoke. Who was never called on. Who was never bullied, not because he was feared, but because he was beneath notice.

"You..." Xu Ran whispered. "You’re... you’re from the academy. You’re in my class. You sit in the back."

The boy nodded. His brown eyes, exhausted, found Xu Ran’s face. "My name is Lau. I... I am your elder brother, Ran."