Villain? No, I'll catch up with the protagonist after passing the civil service exam.

As the smoke and dust gradually dissipated, the pungent smell of lime mixed with the rusty smell of broken old pipes permeated the air.

That old six-story residential building now looked like a cheap biscuit that had been chewed by a dog. Half of the building had completely collapsed, and the exposed steel bars pierced the night sky like twisted tentacles. Large pieces of concrete slabs crashed onto the road, creating deep craters.

Lu Jingyan stood at the edge of the ruins. The golden shield in front of him, after blocking a palm strike powerful enough to split mountains and shatter rocks, turned into specks of light and dissipated.

He casually brushed the dust off his shoulder, his movements as relaxed as if he were taking a stroll in a freshly cleaned living room. There was no relief at surviving a disaster, only extreme heartache over the damage to public facilities.

"Captain Lu! Are you alright?"

Zhao Tiezhu, carrying a riot shield, led several SWAT officers as they scrambled over. Seeing Lu Jingyan unharmed, his heart, which had been in his throat, finally settled. He turned to look at the half-collapsed building, his eyes nearly popping out of their sockets.

"My goodness! Is this guy a human mortar? He slapped the building down with one blow?!"

"Evacuate the crowd, set up a cordon, and contact the Urban Construction Bureau and the fire department to assess the damage."

Lu Jingyan calmly issued instructions, then took out a notebook with a leather cover from his pocket, and a ballpoint pen. He began to make on-site investigation records in front of the ruins, seemingly oblivious to the presence of others.

From deep within the ruins, a sound of tumbling bricks and stones suddenly came.

Chen Beixuan crawled out of the pile of rubble with disheveled hair. His once elegant and spotless blue robe was now torn in several places and covered in mud and grime, making him look like a beggar who had just rolled in the mud.

He stared intently at Lu Jingyan, who was completely unharmed, his eyes filled with disbelief and shock.

"This is impossible! Absolutely impossible!"

Chen Beixuan roared hysterically, his five-hundred-year-old Dao heart cracking severely at this moment. "This palm strike of mine contains the Qi of the Nine Heavens' Supreme Purity; even a mountain should be razed to the ground! How can you, a mere mortal with no cultivation, possibly withstand it?"

"The primordial energy of the Nine Heavens? Call it whatever you like, but in the face of modern physics, forces are reciprocal."

Lu Jingyan didn't even look up, the pen tip scribbling across the paper, making a soft rustling sound.

"The kinetic energy of your palm strike was deflected by my blast-proof field, directly causing this building to collapse. Mr. Chen, you're in big trouble."

He closed his notebook, tapped the pile of ruins with the cap of his pen, and spoke in a serious tone as if he were reading a prosecution document in court.

"Although this building is an empty building slated for demolition, fortunately no one was injured. However, its ownership still belongs to the Municipal Construction Group, and the surrounding high-voltage cables and underground water pipes have also suffered varying degrees of damage."

"Your slap not only caused serious dust pollution, but also directly destroyed at least two thousand square meters of building area."

Chen Beixuan stood there, completely bewildered, unable to understand what this mortal was babbling on and on.

What urban construction group? What dust pollution?

He's a Celestial Venerable! It's only natural for him to smash a city with a single slap. When does he need to concern himself with these trivial worldly matters?

"Endangering public safety by dangerous means, causing significant losses to public or private property."

Lu Jingyan raised his head, pushed up his gold-rimmed glasses, and a cold glint flashed behind the lenses as he delivered his final verdict.

"Chen Beixuan, according to Article 115 of my country's Criminal Law, you will face a sentence of ten years or more imprisonment, or life imprisonment..."

He paused, his voice suddenly turning cold, like a blade scraping through bone.

"Or the death penalty."

"death penalty?"

These two words were like two poisoned steel nails, piercing deep into Chen Beixuan's brain. He was stunned for a moment, as if he had heard the funniest joke in the entire Three Realms.

"Hahahaha! Mere mortal laws dare to attempt to judge me? This is utterly ridiculous!"

Chen Beixuan laughed wildly, his laughter filled with extreme humiliation, absurdity, and rage.

He, a venerable immortal, once shattered stars with a single sword strike, and all the geniuses of myriad races would kneel and beg for mercy before him. Yet today, a mere mortal policeman is pointing his finger at him and using legal provisions to sentence him to death?

"I have roamed the universe for five hundred years, slaughtering countless people and leaving rivers of blood! The number of lives I have taken is greater than the number of ants on your desolate planet!"

Chen Beixuan pointed at Lu Jingyan, his expression extremely arrogant, "You ant, how dare you presume to judge me with your few pages of tattered paper? Do you even have the right!"

Faced with such an extremely childish villainous speech, Zhao Tiezhu rolled his eyes as he listened from the side, thinking that this person was probably a severe delusional patient who had just escaped from a mental hospital.

Lu Jingyan was not frightened at all; instead, he quickly turned to a new page in his notebook.

"Slaughtering across the fields? More lives have been lost at your hands than ants?"

His pen moved again. "Intergalactic serial murders? This has risen to the level of crimes against humanity. Since you have voluntarily confessed to the major crimes you had overlooked, I will immediately report to Interpol and the United Nations Security Council and request that you be placed on a global arrest warrant."

Lu Jingyan closed the notebook and looked at him coldly.

"But before that, you have to pay the compensation for damaging municipal facilities. Add the fines for environmental pollution, and the preliminary estimate is over 80 million."

"If you don't have money, you'll spend the rest of your life inside working on a sewing machine to pay off your debts. Someone like you who calls himself a 'cultivator' must have great stamina. You should be able to work as hard as ten adult laborers working on a sewing machine. Getting a reduced sentence isn't a dream."

Operating a sewing machine?! And you expect to be the work of ten people?!

Chen Beixuan was so angry that he trembled all over. The true energy in his dantian surged wildly like boiling magma, and his internal organs were about to explode with rage.

This is a blatant trampling of his status as a Celestial Venerable! It is the ultimate insult to his path of cultivation!

"That brat has gone too far!"

Chen Beixuan's eyes instantly turned bloodshot, and he completely abandoned his so-called superior demeanor. He no longer cared about being ethereal or any backlash from the Heavenly Dao.

He wanted to use the most extreme violence to completely erase this despicable policeman, along with this filthy city full of rules and regulations, from the map!

"If I don't skin you alive today, you bastard spouting nonsense, then all my five hundred years of cultivation will have been for nothing!"

Chen Beixuan roared and suddenly formed an extremely complex and ancient hand seal in front of his chest.

As the Dharma seal took shape, a terrifying energy that made one's heart tremble erupted from his body without reservation, soaring straight into the heavens!

The once clear night sky was suddenly whipped into a fierce wind within seconds.

Thick, dark clouds churned and gathered rapidly like spilled ink, swallowing up all the starlight and moonlight. The entire provincial capital was instantly plunged into suffocating darkness, the air pressure so low it was hard to breathe.

"Boom—!"

A deafening rumble of thunder echoed from deep within the clouds.

Blinding silver lightning flashed wildly through the dark clouds, as if countless thunder dragons were roaring and howling in the clouds, carrying a violent aura that threatened to destroy everything in the world.

The strong wind whipped up sand and gravel from the ground, made police sirens blare, and uprooted trees along the roadside.

"You all like to talk about rules, don't you? Today, I'll teach you what it means to be unpredictable by divine might!"

Chen Beixuan's feet slowly left the ground, hovering in mid-air.

Bathed in flashing lightning, his robes fluttered wildly, like a world-destroying demon god wielding punishment. He looked down at Lu Jingyan, who resembled an ant below, and roared a fury that echoed through the heavens:

"Mortals! I'll show you what a true heavenly tribulation is!"