The Return of the Condor Heroes: Starting with a Suicide Note and Conquering All Realms

Inside the main hall, the candlelight was dying down.

Of the twelve bronze lamps that burn eternally, only the three closest to the shrine are still struggling to stay lit.

The dim yellow flames were tossed about by the airflow, casting distorted, ghostly shadows across the carved beams and walls.

The huge portrait of Patriarch Chongyang was cut into three pieces by knife marks, and half a bolt of silk hung down, covering the broken bronze incense burner on the incense table.

In the center of the hall, a rosewood folding fan opened and closed rhythmically.

"Slap. Slap. Slap."

Huo Du sat on the futon reserved for the sect leader, his legs crossed, his face half-covered by a folding fan, revealing a pair of slender eyes that shone brightly.

He was dressed in fine clothes, with gold-threaded cloud patterns embroidered on the collar, a feature unique to Mongolian royalty. He was spotless, with not a single drop of blood on the tips of his boots.

Behind him, six burly lamas in red robes stood in a row like iron towers, each holding an iron rod. Fresh blood still clung to the rods.

On the left side of the hall, the remaining twenty or so Quanzhen disciples leaned against the wall. The old Taoist priest leading them had white hair and beard, his robe was soaked in blood, and his right arm was hastily wrapped with a cloth strip, still bleeding.

Hao Datong. The only surviving elder of the Seven Masters of Quanzhen.

"Master Hao, I will ask you one last time."

Huo Du put away his folding fan and tapped the fan ribs against his knee.

"Hand over the handwritten outline of the 'Complete True Internal Kung Fu Manual,' and I will immediately withdraw my troops. The Complete True Sect will then raise the Mongol banner, and I will speak favorably of you before the Great Khan, ensuring you continue to be your immortals."

He paused, then pointed with his folding fan at the corpses lying haphazardly on the ground.

"You won't hand it over? Then this prince will have no choice but to arrange the rest of you in this same way."

Hao Datong was trembling all over. Not out of fear, but out of extreme rage.

"You brat, Huodu! Even if I die in this hall, I will never let my ancestral legacy fall into the hands of you Mongol barbarians!"

"Oh." Huo Du raised an eyebrow, his smile playful. "A tough nut to crack."

He raised his chin, and a red-robed lama stepped forward, holding an iron rod to the neck of a young Taoist priest.

The young Taoist priest gritted his teeth, veins bulging on his forehead, but three knife wounds on his body made it impossible for him to even stand up straight.

"One incense stick's time." Huo Du held up one finger. "If you still don't speak after one incense stick's time, this prince will let you watch your disciples..."

He didn't finish speaking.

Because the door is gone.

It wasn't pushed away, it wasn't kicked away.

The door frame, the threshold, and the two fist-thick iron bolts embedded in the threshold were all reduced to flying wood chips.

The golden palm wind, like a solid wall, surged forward through the wood chips, sweeping across the hall with dust and wood scraps. The three remaining ever-burning lamps were extinguished with a series of "poof poof poof," only to be rekindled by the pure yang energy carried within the palm wind.

Flames shot up three feet high.

The main hall was as bright as day.

A burly figure stood against the light.

Guo Jing brought his hands to his waist, and the powerful Subduing Dragon True Qi condensed into a visible pale golden halo on his body. He wore no armor, carried no weapons, and was only dressed in a gray cloth robe that was wrinkled by the river wind.

But it was this figure in gray cloth that caused the six red-robed lamas in the hall to take a step back at the same time.

"Who are you, you scoundrels, raiding the ancestral temple of Taoism in the dead of night?"

Eight characters.

The sound wasn't loud, but each word carried the low-frequency vibrations of the Dragon-Subduing True Qi, like muffled thunder rolling across the ground. The piles of broken tiles and wood in the main hall bounced inch by inch from this sound wave.

Huo Du's smile froze for a moment.

He slowly stood up, unfolded his folding fan again, and covered half of his face. Behind the fan, his narrow eyes quickly contracted and then widened.

He was assessing the visitor.

"And you are...?"

"Guo Jing".

After the two words were spoken, the hall fell silent for three breaths.

Huo Du's folding fan closed three times faster than it opened.

Guo Jing, the Northern Hero. The last pinnacle of martial arts prowess in the era of the Twin Eagles. The Eighteen Subduing Dragon Palms, the Nine Yin Manual, the Ambidextrous Technique, and the Empty Fist—any one of these techniques would be enough to dominate the world.

Huo Du's eyes darted around twice, then he unfolded his folding fan again, his tone now three parts polite and seven parts probing: "So it's you, Master Guo. I've heard so much about you. My private matters with the Quanzhen Sect are none of your concern, Master Guo, who has come all this way."

"Private matters?" Guo Jing glanced at the corpses scattered on the ground, his voice turning somber.

Huo Du saw his gaze, and the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.

But Mongolian princes have their own pride.

Huo Du put his right hand behind his back and silently twisted his thumb and forefinger together. Inside his sleeve, three steel nails coated with deadly poison, warmed by his body heat, slid into his fingers along his wrist bone.

"Master Guo, I respect you as a hero and will give you face."

Before he could finish speaking, he flicked his wrist.

Three poisoned nails were released silently, tracing three distinct arcs: one to the chest, one to the throat, and one to the brow. The angles were tricky, the force precise; the moment the weapons were launched, a nauseatingly sweet and metallic stench filled the air.

The Quanzhen disciples inside the hall exclaimed in unison.

Guo Jing remained unmoved.

He didn't even raise his hand.

His right palm merely flicked half an inch at his waist, and an extremely pure Dragon Subduing True Qi formed an invisible iron wall across his chest. The three poisoned nails struck the Qi wall, their speed dropping to zero, hovering for a fleeting moment, and then...

It bounced back along the same path.

The speed doubled.

Huo Du's expression changed drastically. He fell backward violently, his back almost parallel to the ground. The first poisoned nail grazed his nose, shaving off three eyelashes. The second nail pierced the wooden pillar behind him, sinking three inches deep.

He didn't dodge the third one.

It wasn't that he couldn't dodge it; it was that the aftershocks of the Dragon Subduing True Qi arrived before the poisoned nails. That extremely powerful and yang palm wind, like an invisible giant hand, struck Huo Du's chest from a distance of three zhang.

"puff!"

Huo Du sprang to his feet, a chilling cracking sound echoing from his sternum. He spat out a mouthful of blood mist, his body flying two zhang backward before slamming his back heavily against the base of the shrine.

The folding fan flew out, bounced three times on the ground, and broke into two pieces.

The entire room fell silent.

The six red-robed lamas looked at each other in dismay. Even all six of them combined couldn't have withstood that attack.

"Master Hao," Guo Jing said, not looking at Huo Du, but turning to the old Taoist priest leaning against the wall, "how many of your men are still alive?"

Hao Datong was in tears, his voice trembling: "Thirty-seven disciples died... The survivors are all here."

Guo Jing closed his eyes briefly, his chest heaving twice.

He turned back towards Huodu. This time, he took a step.

With each step, the stone bricks beneath his feet emitted a dull thud. It wasn't that they were being crushed, but rather that the Dragon Subduing True Qi naturally overflowed with each step, compressing the surrounding air to its limit.

Huo Du propped himself up on the base of the shrine, wiped the blood from the corner of his mouth, and a sinister glint flashed in his eyes.

"Let's do it!"

Six lamas suddenly sprang into action, their iron rods whistling through the air. Two went straight for Guo Jing, while the other four split into two groups, bypassing the main battle and heading straight for Yang Guo and Lin Yuan outside the palace gates!

If capturing the leader fails, then take the hostages.

Outside the palace gate.

Yang Guo gripped the tree branch tightly, gritted his teeth, and stood in front of Lin Yuan. The two lamas suddenly grew larger, their iron rods, carrying a foul stench, hurtling straight towards the boy's face.

Lin Yuan staggered backward behind Yang Guo, slipped, and fell heavily to the ground.

Support yourself with both hands on the ground.

This is the correct posture.

Ten fingers pressed against the cold stone brick floor.

Within the dantian, the dark red inner flames flowed silently. The heat did not travel along the surface of the meridians, but instead silently descended along the deepest part of the Hand Yangming Large Intestine Meridian, seeping from the fingertips into the cracks of the stone bricks.

There was no fire. There was no sound. There was no fluctuation of true energy.

The laws of physics once again became his accomplice.

The extremely compressed, high-temperature heat flowed forward along the brick seams at a speed of three zhang per breath, precisely reaching the feet of the two lamas at the forefront.

The heat did not attack the entire brick, but instead focused on an extremely tricky spot—the lime mortar embedded in the brick seam directly below the lama's right knee.

The water of crystallization in the mortar was instantly vaporized, causing irreversible thermal stress cracking of the internal structure. The supporting surface of the stone brick silently collapsed less than an inch on the side with the most concentrated stress.

One inch is enough.

"Crack!" The lama at the front lost his footing with his right foot. His knee twisted fatally inward due to the momentum of the full sprint. The sound of tearing ligaments was drowned out by the sound of the iron rod cutting through the air.

"what!"

The lama screamed and fell to the ground, the iron rod flying out of his hand. The second lama, who followed closely behind, was unable to stop in time and was tripped by his companion's body. The moment his knee hit the ground, the residual heat from the same crack in the brick instantly burned the meridians on the outside of his kneecap.

Two burly lamas knelt down one after the other, letting out a bloodcurdling scream like pigs being slaughtered.

Guo Jing, who was inside the hall, glanced at it and assumed it was the aftershock of his palm strike, so he didn't pay any attention to it.

He unleashed both palms simultaneously, his true energy surging like a tidal wave, sending the two lamas charging at him flying out of the hall, along with their clubs, and embedding them in the courtyard wall.

Huo Du's face turned completely green.

Of the six men, four were killed in the blink of an eye. The remaining two lamas stood in front of him, their iron rods trembling, unable to even assume a proper defensive stance.

"Guo Jing! Don't think the Mongol army won't trample Zhongnan Mountain!" Huo Du clutched his chest and retreated, speaking rapidly, "I will remember this humiliation! The Quanzhen Sect dared to take you in; the Great Khan's iron cavalry will turn this mountain into scorched earth sooner or later!"

Guo Jing stopped in his tracks.

It wasn't fear, but rather a reluctance to push things too far. The shadow of the Mongol cavalry sweeping south loomed over the entire Song Dynasty. Killing Huo Du was easy, but the chain reaction it would trigger was something the Quanzhen Sect couldn't withstand.

"roll."

Guo Jing uttered only one word.

Without saying a word, Huo Du grabbed the two crippled lamas and, with his remaining men, staggered out of the side door of the main hall and fled.

The sound of boots crunching over splinters of wood and bloodstains grew fainter and fainter, eventually disappearing into the direction of the back mountain.

Inside the main hall, the remaining Quanzhen disciples all knelt on the ground.

"Thank you so much, Master Guo, for saving my life!"

Hao Datong stepped forward, leaning on his broken sword, tears streaming down his face, and bowed deeply to the ground.

In the shadows outside the palace gates, Lin Yuan slowly got up from the ground and dusted himself off. Yang Guo supported his arm; the boy's hand was still trembling, but his eyes were filled with the excitement of surviving a disaster.

"Brother Lin, Uncle Guo is amazing! He sent that Mongolian dog flying with just one punch!"

"Mmm." Lin Yuan nodded weakly.

He lowered his head and quietly tucked his right hand back into his sleeve. The tips of his five fingers were faintly red, the slight burns from releasing the Sovereign Flame, which would be repaired by the dragon blood within a few breaths.

Deep within his dantian, the replenishment cycle of the Quanzhen internal energy was quietly operating. The wisp of Monarch Flame that had just been consumed had already been replenished by 30%.

The efficiency was higher than expected.

Lin Yuan raised his head, his back hunched, and slowly moved into the main hall.

Hao Datong was recounting the night's attack to Guo Jing, and the old Taoist priest choked up several times as he spoke of the carnage. Guo Jing clenched and unclenched his fists repeatedly, and the veins on his forehead throbbed a dozen times.

Lin Yuan leaned against the doorpost, his gaze passing over Hao Datong's hunched back and landing on the tattered plaque hanging deep inside the main hall.

The three large characters on the plaque are written with powerful strokes.

Chongyang Palace.

Lin Yuan slowly lowered his eyes.

The martial arts heritage of Chongyang Palace, the network of connections within the Quanzhen Sect, the Tomb of the Living Dead at the foot of Zhongnan Mountain...

And that scoundrel named Zhao Zhijing.

"Master Hao," Guo Jing said in a deep voice, "I have come here to entrust my two children to the Quanzhen Sect."

He turned to the side and pushed Yang Guo and Lin Yuan in front of him.

Hao Datong's cloudy gaze swept over the two boys. One was clever and stubborn, the other sickly and pale.