Cultivation of immortality begins with an eighty-year-old eunuch.

"Hahaha! Lin Daoya! Your Heavenly Saint Sect's fate is sealed. Why don't you obediently hand over the sect's last key to open the secret realm? If you do, I might show mercy and spare your remnants a complete corpse!"

In mid-air, an old man dressed in a crimson Taoist robe, whose cultivation had reached the early stage of the Void Refinement realm, was standing on a flying sword burning with raging flames, laughing maniacally with a ferocious expression on his face.

Behind him stood three cultivators at the late Nascent Soul stage, each exuding a fierce aura and their eyes filled with mockery.

On the steps of the main hall.

A middle-aged man with disheveled hair and covered in blood was leaning on a broken sword, struggling to stand. He was only at the early stage of the Nascent Soul realm, and there was a hole the size of a bowl in his chest, from which black blood was gushing out, clearly indicating that he had been afflicted by some kind of insidious spell.

This person is none other than Lin Daoya, the current sect master of the Heavenly Saint Sect!

"Crimson Flame Sect...you've gone too far!"

Lin Daoya coughed up a mouthful of blood, his eyes filled with endless sorrow and determination. "Ten thousand years ago, my Heavenly Saint Sect was a great sect that produced a Nascent Soul Grand Perfection senior, and even had the potential to break through to the Void Refinement realm! If our Ancestor Yuan Lingzi hadn't disappeared back then, causing the sect's lineage to be severed, how could you bunch of petty villains have the chance to run rampant in my Heavenly Saint Sect!"

"Yuan Lingzi?" Upon hearing this, the Crimson Flame Sect Ancestor laughed even more arrogantly. "Hahaha! A dead man from thousands of years ago, you think you can scare me? Even if he were to rise from the dead right now, he'd still be nothing more than a Nascent Soul cultivator at the peak of the Nascent Soul stage. Before me, a Void Refinement stage cultivator, he'd have to grovel like a dog!"

"Old man, enough nonsense!" a Nascent Soul cultivator from the Crimson Flame Sect shouted impatiently. "Sect Master, why waste time arguing with him? Just search his souls, seize the keys, kill all the men, and use the women as cultivation vessels!"

"You...!" Lin Daoya's eyes widened in fury. He abruptly raised his broken sword, turned around, and looked at the group of trembling disciples behind him who still gripped their magical weapons tightly. He roared fiercely, "Disciples of the Heavenly Saint Sect, heed my command! Today, we will only die in battle! We will never be slaves!"

"To die in battle! I will never be a slave!"

The hundreds of surviving disciples, their eyes red, let out a desperate and tragic roar.

"Stubborn fools! Since you want to die, I'll grant your wish!"

The patriarch of the Crimson Flame Sect snorted coldly and slowly raised his right hand.

The fire elemental energy between heaven and earth gathered wildly, transforming into a giant flaming hand a hundred feet in size, carrying a terrifyingly high temperature that could scorch the heavens and boil the seas, and slammed down fiercely towards the main hall of the Heavenly Saint Sect!

A strike from a cultivator at the Void Refinement stage is simply beyond the ability of these Nascent Soul and Spirit Transformation cultivators to withstand!

Lin Daoya closed his eyes in despair.

The Heavenly Saint Sect, a foundation built over ten thousand years, is destined to perish in his hands today.

however.

Just as that blazing giant hand was about to fall!

"Noisy."

Two words, bland, indifferent, and devoid of any human warmth, suddenly rang in everyone's ears.

The sound wasn't loud.

But the moment it landed, the hundred-foot-long flaming giant hand, like a snowflake under the scorching sun, silently disintegrated in mid-air, turning into a gentle breeze that brushed against everyone's faces!

"Who goes there?!"

The Crimson Flame Sect's patriarch's expression changed drastically, and he abruptly looked up at the void.

Suddenly, a bluish-gray figure appeared silently in mid-air in front of the main hall.

He was a fair-skinned, beardless young man with his hands behind his back. His eyes were as calm as an ancient well, without the slightest leakage of spiritual energy. He just quietly watched them.

"You're playing tricks! Get down here now!"

Although the patriarch of the Crimson Flame Sect felt a sudden unease, having been accustomed to dominating the Great Yu Empire, he simply didn't believe that any powerful figure could emerge from this remote and impoverished place. He roared, his hand forming a magic seal, and a top-grade spiritual treasure-level flaming flying sword, drawing a blinding bolt of fire, hurtled straight towards Chen Fan's face!

Chen Fan kept his hands behind his back, not even glancing at the flying sword.

"Early stage of void refining..."

Chen Fan lowered his eyelids slightly, a mocking sneer curling at the corner of his lips. "Just now, you said that if Yuan Lingzi were to rise from the dead, he would have to grovel before you like a dog?"

Before he could finish speaking...

Chen Fan simply blew a breath lightly in the direction of the Crimson Flame Sect's patriarch.

"call……"

The formidable, top-grade spiritual treasure flying sword, upon contact with this breath, didn't even utter a mournful cry; it instantly turned into iron powder finer than sand!

Immediately afterwards, the airflow continued its upward momentum and blew directly onto the Crimson Flame Sect Ancestor!

"No……!!!"

The patriarch of the Crimson Flame Sect let out an extremely mournful scream.

Before everyone's horrified eyes, the physical body of a powerful cultivator at the Void Refinement stage was like a weathered sand sculpture, crumbling, peeling away, and turning into nothingness from the soles of his feet!

Including his primordial spirit, it was completely erased in the blink of an eye, leaving not a trace in this world!

"The sect leader... the sect leader is dead?!"

"He...he blew the Void Refinement Ancestor to death with a single breath?!"

The remaining three Nascent Soul cultivators from the Crimson Flame Sect were so terrified that their legs went weak and they plummeted from mid-air, crashing to the ground with a thud.

The entire room fell silent.

The hundreds of disciples of the Heavenly Saint Sect who were prepared to die stared wide-eyed, completely unaware that the magical artifacts in their hands had fallen to the ground.

Lin Daoya was completely stunned, staring blankly at Chen Fan, his mind a complete blank.

Chen Fan slowly lowered himself onto the blood-stained steps.

He didn't look at the three Crimson Flame Sect cultivators who were kowtowing repeatedly, but instead focused his gaze on Lin Daoya.

"You are the current sect leader of the Heavenly Saint Sect?" Chen Fan asked calmly.

Lin Daoya jolted awake, scrambling to his knees as if by magic, his voice trembling uncontrollably: "This...this junior is Lin Daoya, the thirty-seventh sect master of the Heavenly Saint Sect! May I ask...may I ask your honorable name, senior? Thank you for saving my life!"

"Our Chen Fan."

Chen Fan looked at him calmly, "You don't need to thank us. We're not here to save you; we're here to pay off a debt."

"Pay...pay the debt?" Lin Daoya was stunned. The Heavenly Saint Sect had been in decline for thousands of years. How could it allow such a powerful figure who could kill a Void Refinement stage cultivator with a single breath to owe a debt?

Chen Fan didn't explain; he simply flipped his wrist.

Amidst the shimmering golden light, a perfectly preserved, crystalline skeleton slowly floated in mid-air.

The skeleton still exuded the lingering aura and Daoist charm of a Nascent Soul cultivator at the Great Perfection stage. Hanging from the skeleton's chest was an ancient jade pendant, engraved with two ancient seal characters—"Heavenly Saint".

The moment Lin Daoya saw the jade pendant, he felt as if he had been struck by lightning.

"This...this is the Grand Elder's identity jade pendant! This is...the Ancestor Yuan Lingzi?!"

Lin Daoya burst into tears, rushing forward and kneeling before the skeleton, sobbing uncontrollably, "Ancestor! It really is you! You've been missing for three thousand years, and finally... finally you've returned!"

Behind them, the remaining disciples of the Heavenly Saint Sect also knelt on the ground, their mournful cries echoing throughout the main peak.

Chen Fan watched this scene quietly, his eyes showing no emotion, and simply said softly:

"If you are entrusted with something, you must do it faithfully. Back in the Boundless Sea, we received his karma and promised to send his remains back to his homeland and bury them in the back mountain of the Tiansheng Sect."

"Now, the remains have been brought here. This karmic debt is settled."