After a thousand years of cultivation, he returns at the pinnacle!

Liu Ruyan was not fully recovered from her injuries. She was recuperating in the hospital when she heard from the guards at home that her father was going to invite Jiang Chen to their home tonight.

Although there is no direct evidence so far that Jiang Chen was responsible for the explosion that night, Liu Ruyan's sixth sense as a woman led her to believe that Jiang Chen was behind it all.

That night, his eyes were cold and bloodthirsty, devoid of their previous gentleness.

She knew even better that her father's invitation to him tonight was by no means well-intentioned, and that he would ensure Jiang Chen's demise.

Therefore, Liu Ruyan dragged her still-recovering body home just to see Jiang Chen make a fool of himself.

As a result, he didn't get to see the joke, nor did the person show up; instead, he was scolded by Jiang Chen.

A fickle woman is better off without!

Could Jiang Chen really say something like that?!

Would the kind person who used to accompany me on campus every day, chatting about the future, really say such a thing?

"Jiang Chen, you shameless bastard!"

Liu Ruyan's voice was sharp and piercing. She shook off the maid who was supporting her and staggered into the reception room.

But she had only taken two steps when a tearing pain shot through her lungs. She clutched her chest, her face turning deathly pale, and she began to cough violently.

The cough was hollow and broken, as if she were coughing up her lungs, showing that the explosion had seriously injured her.

"Like smoke!"

Liu Mingxuan immediately stood up, took a few steps to his daughter's side, supported her swaying body with one hand, and channeled gentle ice-type spiritual energy into her with the other to help suppress her injuries.

Liu Ruyan leaned against her father's chest, coughing for a while before she could catch her breath. She raised her head, her once bright eyes now bloodshot, filled with deep-seated hatred and the haggardness brought on by weakness.

Her face was so pale it was almost transparent, her lips were bloodless, and fine beads of cold sweat were seeping from her forehead.

She wore a thick coat over her white hospital gown, but you could still tell she had lost a lot of weight; her collarbones were prominent, and her shoulders were pitifully thin.

Even so, her gaze toward Jiang Chen was still full of resentment and malice.

"You...you still have the nerve to call me a promiscuous woman?!"

Her voice was hoarse and broken, and with each word she spoke, her chest ached.

"Jiang Chen, do you know how many people died that night?! Seventeen! Seventeen living, breathing classmates! They were classmates we spent every day with, and you actually dared to kill them?!"

Her eyes were red, whether from anger or sadness, Jiang Chen could see the fear in her heart clearly.

"And you, you murderer, how can you stand here so nonchalantly, saying you don't want it anymore?!"

Jiang Chen looked at the disheveled woman in front of him, but his heart remained completely unmoved.

Having cultivated immortality for a thousand years, he had witnessed too many life and death, and he had also seen too many people like Liu Ruyan who only knew how to shirk responsibility and complain about fate when faced with problems.

Seeing his daughter's determination to pursue the truth even though her injuries had not yet fully healed, Liu Mingxuan suppressed his anger.

But he was, after all, a man who had been famous in Jiangzhou for twenty years. He took a deep breath and forcibly suppressed the urge to take action on the spot.

He slowly raised his head, and his gaze toward Jiang Chen was no longer just filled with anger, but also with scrutiny and apprehension.

This boy was so calm.

Calm Point doesn't seem like a seventeen or eighteen-year-old, much less like someone who is "incapable" and ridiculed by the whole world.

"Jiang Chen," Liu Mingxuan's voice was low and icy, "I'll only ask you one question—that night, did you do it?"

Jiang Chen did not answer.

He simply watched the father and daughter in front of him quietly, his gaze as calm as if he were watching a play that had nothing to do with him.

Liu Ruyan felt a jolt at that gaze, but a deeper resentment welled up within her. She struggled to straighten herself from her father's embrace, clutching her chest, and spoke slowly and deliberately:

"Jiang Chen, stop pretending. I'll never forget the look in your eyes that night—that wasn't the look a human being should have!"

"And Lin Feng, he told me himself that his talent is ruined! S-rank lightning talent, ruined! Who else could it be but you?!"

Her voice became shrill with excitement, which aggravated her injury, causing another violent coughing fit.

Liu Mingxuan gently patted his daughter's back, but his gaze remained fixed on Jiang Chen.

"Jiang Chen." He spoke, his voice returning to calm, but beneath that calm lay a deeper chill.

"I know you have no evidence, and I have no evidence either. But some things don't need evidence."

He paused, slowly released his hand from his daughter's, and took a step forward.

As this step was taken, the temperature in the entire reception room plummeted.

Frost spread visibly across the ground, walls, and ceiling, freezing into ice several inches thick with every breath.

That was the aura of an S-class Awakened, enough to terrify an ordinary Awakened.

I'm giving you one last chance.

Liu Mingxuan's voice seemed to come from the deepest hell.

"Admit it, or—"

He paused for a moment, a cold smile curving his lips.

"Your mother's name is Jiang Xueqin, right?"

Jiang Chen's expression finally changed.

It was not fear, nor anger, but a very subtle, almost pity-like fluctuation.

"She sold vegetables at the East City Market for three years, then worked in a textile factory for eight years, and now she stays home to take care of your father." Liu Mingxuan's tone was flat, as if he were stating the weather today.

"Your father, Jiang Tianyi, broke his leg fifteen years ago at a construction site in the north of the city. Although it healed, it still hurts on rainy days. He now works as a security guard at a small company, earning 2,800 yuan a month."

He leaned forward slightly, looking down at Jiang Chen.

"An ordinary family, ordinary parents, as ordinary as they come. Imagine, if something unexpected suddenly happened to such ordinary people—"

Before he could finish speaking, Jiang Chen smiled.

The smile was faint, so faint that the curve was almost invisible, but it made Liu Mingxuan's heart skip a beat.

"Patriarch Liu," Jiang Chen said, his voice still calm.

Jiang Chen's gaze slowly shifted from Liu Mingxuan's face to the huge floor-to-ceiling window behind him. Outside the window was the lake that the Liu family owned exclusively, bathed in moonlight, its surface shimmering.

What you just said is all correct.

He said softly, "My mother did sell vegetables at the market and work in a textile factory. My father did break his leg and now works as a security guard."

He withdrew his gaze and looked at Liu Mingxuan again.

"But do you know what they're most proud of?"

Liu Mingxuan remained silent.

"They raised a good son."

Jiang Chen's lips curled up slightly, and there was something in that smile that Liu Mingxuan couldn't understand at all.

"The bombing you mentioned was indeed carried out by me."

Jiang Chen calmly admitted everything.

The moment these words were spoken, the air in the entire reception room seemed to freeze.

Liu Ruyan's eyes widened, her face instantly filled with disbelief replacing the resentment on her face. She opened her mouth, but no sound came out.

Liu Mingxuan frowned, and the chill emanating from his body seemed to freeze for a moment.

"You...admit it?"

His voice was tinged with obvious doubt. How could this boy, who had been so calm just moments before, reveal everything because of a single threat?

"Yes, I admit it." Jiang Chen stood with his hands behind his back.

He looked at Liu Mingxuan without a trace of fear in his eyes.

Liu Ruyan finally came to her senses. Her hand trembled as she pointed at Jiang Chen, her voice sharp and piercing:

"You...you monster! Seventeen people! Seventeen living, breathing people! How could you do that?!"

Jiang Chen looked at her, his gaze eerily calm.

"No, not seventeen people, but nineteen, only two survived."

"Wh-what...?"

Liu Ruyan looked at the young man in front of her in surprise. His eyes were exactly the same as the ones she had seen in the private room back then!

Those were cold, emotionless eyes, as if he saw him as nothing more than a corpse.

Liu Ruyan's face turned deathly pale, and she subconsciously took a step back.

But she stopped after taking only half a step back.

Because her father was behind her, and she had more than twenty Liu family guards by her side.

Moreover, she couldn't believe that someone ridiculed by the whole world as powerless could harm her in the slightest while surrounded by so many awakened individuals.

She took a deep breath, suppressing the fear in her heart, and raised her head again to look at Jiang Chen.

In that gaze, resentment and fear remained, but now there was an added layer of hysterical madness.

"Jiang Chen!" Her voice was shrill and piercing.

"You think you can scare me by saying these things?! Do you think I'm still that little girl who follows you around and obeys your every whim?!"

"What gives you the right to be so arrogant in front of me when you're powerless?!"

She became more and more agitated as she spoke, and a sickly flush rose on her pale face.

"Didn't you say you let me off the hook last time? Fine, then come on! I want to see what you can do to me!"

She opened her arms wide, her eyes filled with a maniacal laugh.

"Come on! Let me see if you, this murderer, can still—"

Before the words were finished, all sound abruptly ceased.

Liu Ruyan still had her arms outstretched, and the crazy smile on her face hadn't even faded yet.

She opened her mouth, as if she wanted to say something, but no sound came out of her throat, because the blood mist on her chest bloomed like cherry blossoms.

What did Jiang Chen do, and when did he make his move?!

No one knows any of this!

"you......"

Liu Ruyan finally uttered a broken syllable, but this was also the last sound she made in this world.

Her body began to sway, and the light in her eyes quickly dimmed.

In her final moments, what she saw was not anger or hatred, but Jiang Chen's eyes, devoid of any emotion.

There was no hatred, no pleasure, and none of the emotions she had hoped for in those eyes.

Only endless indifference.

It was as if she wasn't a person, not the girlfriend he had once loved, and not even comparable to an ant on the street.

It is not a speck of dust.

A speck of dust that can be brushed away.

The blood on the floor stained the white hospital gown red.

"Like smoke!!!"

The next second, Liu Mingxuan's roar shattered all the glass in the reception room.