Brother Who Determines the Fate of the Nation: My Great Emperor's Cultivation Level Exposed by

The crimson light in the palm of the leading Blood Fiend Sect disciple reached its peak, turning the entire solitary peak blood red.

Su Xuan gripped the iron sword in reverse, took a half step back with his right foot, and braced himself on the ground.

A sharp whistle came from afar.

The crimson light in the palm of the leading Blood Fiend Sect disciple suddenly paused, remaining dormant.

He turned his head to look in the direction of the mountain pass, and his ears twitched slightly.

The second whistle was more urgent than the first.

"withdraw."

The Blood Fiend Sect disciples behind him were stunned.

"Senior brother?"

"I said let's retreat." The leader withdrew the crimson light from his palm, and the playful expression on his face disappeared, replaced by a solemn look that Su Xuan couldn't understand.

"Orders have been issued that everyone must immediately evacuate the Qingyun Sect's territory without delay."

No one asked a single question.

At almost the same time, more than a dozen Blood Fiend Sect disciples summoned their flying swords, ascended into the air, and their blood-red figures disappeared into the northern horizon within a few breaths.

The crying on the lonely peak abruptly stopped.

Everyone was stunned.

gone?

They just left like that?

An outer disciple slumped to the ground, his whole body trembling violently, repeatedly muttering the same sentence.

"They're gone... really gone..."

Some people started to cry, some knelt on the ground and kowtowed to thank heaven and earth, and some fainted.

Su Xuan did not let go.

The iron sword was still in his hand, its dulled blade reflecting the last rays of the setting sun.

too fast.

From the encirclement to the retreat, there wasn't even half a cup of tea's time in between; it was as if something was urging them to leave.

With three cliffs blocking their escape route, three hundred lives lay on the chopping block. The leading disciple had even condensed his spiritual power; killing him would be no different than crushing a grasshopper.

give up.

Why?

Su Xuan glanced in the direction of the mountain pass but did not move.

A brief string of relieved comments flashed across the live stream chat in the Dragon Kingdom's chat room.

"He's alive! Su Xuan is alive!"

"I was so scared just now, my hands were shaking."

"Wait, something's not right. The Blood Fiend Sect members, who were in a bloodthirsty frenzy, suddenly retreated. There must be something wrong."

The images on the screen gave no one a moment to breathe.

The stone beneath Su Xuan's feet trembled.

It was very light, like something deep underground had turned over.

He looked down at his feet.

The second tremor came, ten times stronger than the first.

The entire solitary peak trembled violently, and loose rocks tumbled down from the summit, crashing into the misty valley hundreds of feet deep.

Su Xuan knelt on one knee, inserting his iron sword into a crevice in the rock to steady himself.

Some screamed and shrank back towards the center of the peak, while others clung to the stone pillars beside them.

Then he saw it.

Light seeped out from the cracks in the stones beneath our feet.

Crimson light.

One after another, streams of water gushed out from the cracks in the rocks, from the soil, and from beneath the entire surface of the Qingyun Sect.

The crimson patterns began to spread from the foot of the solitary peak, spreading in all directions along the ridge, along the ruins, and along every crack.

In less than ten breaths, the entire ground of the Qingyun Sect was covered with scarlet patterns.

Su Xuan stood up and turned to look down the peak.

The corpses were moving all over the mountains and fields.

The body of an outer disciple lay beside the broken wall, its skin visibly caved in.

The muscles shrank, the bones protruded, and finally the whole person collapsed into a skin as if all the air had been drained out.

A wisp of dark red liquid emerged from the skin, detached from the corpse, and hung in mid-air.

The second one.

The third one.

Ten bodies. One hundred bodies.

Within a radius of several miles of the entire Qingyun Sect, the bodies of all the cultivators who died in battle, whether disciples of the Qingyun Sect or the Blood Fiend Sect, all desiccated at the same time.

Dark red blood essence was drawn from each corpse, converging into streams of blood that flowed along the ground in the same direction.

The back mountain.

Su Xuan saw the direction clearly. All the blood-red streams eventually flowed into the area directly beneath the main peak of the back mountain, where the scarlet array patterns were most dense, intertwining to form a huge vortex-like pattern.

Blood and qi surged to the sky.

A suffocatingly strong fishy smell surged up from the foot of the mountain, and the survivors on the isolated peak covered their mouths and noses, dry heaving, while some vomited outright.

At the very center of the vortex, a crack appeared in the void.

A hand reached out from the gap.

Thin, pale, with blackened nails, and every finger bent, he looked like a dead man who had crawled out of his grave.

That hand braced itself against the edge of the void, slowly pulling outwards.

A person emerged from a crack in the void.

The tattered Taoist robe hung on his body, half of it torn into strips, revealing the dry skin underneath.

His hair was sparse and gray, hanging loosely over his shoulders. His cheeks were deeply sunken, his cheekbones were high, and his eyes were deep-set with cloudy, yellowish pupils.

He floated in mid-air, surrounded by a faint gray mist that carried the scent of decay and death, which could be smelled from hundreds of meters away.

But the spiritual pressure emanating from him caused Su Xuan's knees to bend.

The pressure was dozens of times stronger than that released by the leader of the Blood Fiend Sect earlier. All the survivors on the isolated peak were pressed to the ground, and several low-level servant disciples began to bleed from their seven orifices.

A line of text appeared in the upper right corner of the sky screen.

[A heretical immortal, nearing the end of his lifespan, his cultivation already reduced to eighty percent, yet still far surpassing the Golden Core stage.]

A wandering immortal.

The same word was displayed in the live stream chat of the Dragon Kingdom.

"What level is a Loose Immortal?"

"Eighty percent destroyed, yet still far surpassing the Golden Core stage? What does that even mean?"

The old man floated above the whirlpool, looking down at the withered corpses scattered across the mountains and the dark red river of blood that was converging there, and let out a laugh.

The laughter wasn't loud, but it was extremely penetrating, reaching the ears of everyone on the solitary peak.

"Three hundred years."

He spread his arms, his withered fingers grabbing at the air, and a wisp of dark red essence blood flew up from the blood river, swirling around his fingertips.

"Three hundred years ago, I personally planted the first seed of hatred between the Qingyun Sect and the Blood Fiend Sect. I killed an inner disciple of the Qingyun Sect and framed the Blood Fiend Sect. I also killed the son of an elder of the Blood Fiend Sect and framed the Qingyun Sect. For the next three hundred years, the enmity between the two sects grew deeper and deeper. Every conflict and every life lost was fueled by my actions."

He smiled, put the wisp of blood into his mouth, and sucked on it.

"Today's battle resulted in the deaths of 4,732 people: 2,900 from the Qingyun Sect and 1,832 from the Blood Fiend Sect. Just right. Not one more, not one less."

On the solitary peak, the inner disciple with a missing arm leaned on his broken sword, trembling all over.

"You...you instigated a war between the two sects just to..."

"For this."

The old man pointed downwards to the scarlet array patterns beneath his feet.

"The Heaven-Defying Blood Sacrifice Array. Using the essence and blood of thousands of cultivators as a catalyst and the resentment of the living as a medicinal ingredient, it forges one of the ten most powerful physiques in the cultivation world, unparalleled throughout the ages."

He paused, a near-manic fervor rising on his gaunt face.

"Asura Body"

A line of explanatory text appeared on the sky.

[Asura Physique: One of the ten strongest physiques in the cultivation world. Upon mastery, the physical body can live as long as heaven and earth, and the combat power can easily overwhelm those of the same level. Historically, only three people have been born with this physique, and each of them was an unparalleled powerhouse who suppressed a region.]

The live stream room in China was quiet for two seconds, and then the chat exploded.

"This old man planned for three hundred years just for this?"

"Over four thousand lives, two sects—that's his medicinal ingredient?"

"Isn't this cultivation world too corrupt?"

"The key is this Asura Body. It's one of the ten most powerful physiques, and once mastered, the physical body can live as long as heaven and earth. Can something like this really be artificially created?"