I Am the Fated Villain Chapter 1276:
Previously on I Am the Fated Villain...
1637. The Night of Annihilation
The atmosphere tonight is exceptionally chaotic. For Han Feng, the weight of being rescued feels like a crushing burden, a suffocating despair that seems to flatten his very soul.
The imperial capital, usually a beacon of prosperity and noise, has fallen into an eerie silence. Not a single merchant or traveler can be seen. It is likely they have already been dealt with. By the time this night ends, every trace of this location will be wiped from existence, leaving no witness to the events that transpired.
“The Champion Marquis provoked someone he shouldn't have. For the time being, he must remain ignorant of the capital’s fate, which means you all must perish in silence. Do not hold a grudge against me.”
“Since the dawn of time, the shifting of power and the cycles of glory have always been this merciless.”
Suspended in the sky, the masked figure looked down upon the group, his voice freezing and devoid of any human warmth. Behind him, several practitioners continued to intone ancient scriptures. The prayer beads in their grip radiated a piercing light, weaving an invisible shroud over the area that seemed to devour the very fabric of time and space.
These beads were consecrated by an expert of the Grand Dao realm, creating a restricted domain that even the masked man himself would struggle to breach.
Chu Bai and his companions had not yet reached the Dao realm. Despite their desperate struggles, they found themselves utterly trapped.
“The Champion Marquis has shed blood and sweat to expand the borders of the Immortal Chuhao Earth. To think he is being betrayed and sabotaged by a petty villain at a time like this is truly gut-wrenching,” Wu Xuan remarked venomously. He had already deciphered the hidden meaning behind the masked man’s words.
The Immortal Chuhao Earth is fractured into various cliques. The Martial faction, spearheaded by the Divine Generals and the Champion Marquis, has been locked in a perpetual power struggle. The sovereign, Chu Gucheng, has traditionally maintained a precarious balance between these groups without taking a side.
In days past, the Divine General faction and the Champion Marquis’s men fought bitterly over the geniuses of the Capable and Extraordinary Mansion. Wu Xuan was now convinced that the perpetrators behind this ambush belonged to the Divine General faction.
With the Heavenly General having perished on the front lines, the remaining Divine Generals were without a head. They were undoubtedly looking to appoint a successor soon. Eliminating the influence of the Champion Marquis while he was away from the capital was the perfect strategy to secure their dominance.
It was clear to Wu Xuan that the Divine Generals were seizing this chance to crush their rivals and ascend. However, one detail still puzzled him. Once a member of the Capable and Extraordinary Mansion attains the Dao realm, they receive an imperial seal from the Immortal Chuhao Earth, granting them a prestigious, if ceremonial, position.
Wu Xuan attempted to activate his imperial decree, hoping to harness the collective will of the capital’s citizens to repel the invaders. To his horror, the decree remained dormant, unable to summon even a flicker of the people's power. His heart sank instantly.
“The Duke remains the Duke; nothing has changed there. The only necessity is ensuring he remains oblivious to the capital's affairs for the duration.”
“Your existence only serves to threaten the stability of the imperial city and the tranquility of the Immortal Chuhao Earth.”
The masked man’s eyes were cold as he surveyed Han Feng and the others. Their expressions of rage, hopelessness, and defiance meant nothing to him; he viewed them as mere insects.
The network of spies the Duke maintained in the capital had been systematically eliminated over the last few days. While many officials sensed the shift in the wind, they stayed silent. They could feel a massive shadow looming over the Duke’s interests, a force that seemed to have the tacit blessing of the ruler, Chu Gucheng.
In the current climate of the Immortal Chuhao Earth, it appeared Chu Gucheng had been forced into a corner where silence was his only option. He needed to lock down the situation to prevent internal chaos from tearing the realm apart.
Chu Bai, Han Feng, and the rest trembled, their complexions turning ghostly. They had pinned their hopes on the masters from the House of Celestial Experts, believing the mission was secure. They never imagined that the faction targeting the Duke would be so brazen.
The masked man moved the moment he finished speaking. His billowing sleeves stirred the very essence of the Great Dao, making it feel as though the heavens were collapsing to grind Chu Bai and his allies into dust.
Beyond his own Cultivation, he unleashed a weathered, ancient mirror with jagged edges. As it flew through the air, it belched a strange fog that mimicked a vast galaxy, casting beams of light that blurred the boundaries of reality.
“A genuine Dao-level ancient mirror... they even brought such an exotic relic. They truly intend to leave no survivors,” Wu Xuan said, his face twisting in shock. A wave of visceral terror washed over him.
He could sense the devastating aura of the mirror. Its surface shimmered with a starlight that represented the peak of Dao refinement, capable of unmaking anything in its path.
Space itself dissolved and vanished wherever the light touched. Wu Xuan felt a bone-chilling dread, the unmistakable scent of approaching death.
He realized then that his plan to stall for time was futile. He no longer possessed the strength to shield Chu Bai, Chu Kui, or any of the others.
“The heavens have truly forsaken us...”
Han Feng, Chu Kui, Bi Xin, and the rest were paralyzed by despair. Chu Bai was no different, frantically trying to reach the spirit of the Sun-shooting Bow, begging for the power to stop the impending doom.
“It is too late. If you had entrusted the Sun-shooting Bow to Wu Xuan earlier and allowed him to command it, there might have been a sliver of hope,” the spirit of the bow remarked with a hint of sorrow.
Despair finally took hold of Chu Bai’s heart. The situation had spiraled far beyond his control, and he was consumed by regret. If he had known the stakes, he would never have acted so recklessly. Now, his impulsiveness had doomed them all.
The firmament seemed to splinter. The masked man remained a statue of indifference, his robes expanding like a miniature cosmos filled with swirling stars and light.
A crushing pressure descended, causing the void to buckle. Chu Bai and the others felt their skeletons groaning under the weight, their Dantians and Meridians on the verge of rupturing. They were moments away from being reduced to a bloody mist.
Wu Xuan bore the brunt of the force. He coughed up blood as he was hurled backward, smashing through the astral projections. A jagged hole was torn through his midsection by the mirror’s radiance; even a Dao-level expert could not endure such a strike. Dark blood sprayed out, refusing to clot. In a heartbeat, he was crippled and stripped of his ability to fight.
Meanwhile, in a serene courtyard within the imperial capital, Gu Changge sat before a flawless, jade-like mirror. A faint smile played on his lips as he set down his wine cup.
He reached out a finger, and the image reflected in the mirror suddenly distorted, as if the very laws of the universe were shifting. The glass shattered into jagged pieces, and his finger vanished into the rift behind the shards.
“Tonight is indeed quite lively,” he mused softly.
His hand extended into the hazy depths of the mirror's dimension, reaching for something far away. Nearby, the spirits of the Eternal Spirit and the Scavenger Book manifested as blurred forms, watching the display with profound shock.
On the outskirts of the capital, within the zone of the strange mist, the midnight sky suddenly buckled. A slender, translucent finger, shimmering like jade and wreathed in chaotic Qi, emerged from the abyss. Compared to this digit, the stars themselves looked like mere specks of sand.
It was as if the hand of a god had reached down; a single touch threatened to shatter the entire world.
The masked man’s cold facade broke instantly. He stared at the manifestation, his eyes wide with horror.
“Which senior has graced us with their presence?”
He shouted, redirecting the force of his sleeve away from Chu Bai and toward the descending finger. However, a titanic explosion of energy met his resistance.
As the jade-like finger descended, the masked man’s sleeve disintegrated. His arm followed, bursting into a spray of blood and bone fragments. The reality around them felt like a flimsy paper screen being shredded by the finger’s arrival.
The figures chanting behind him were struck by a backlash like a divine thunderbolt. Blood leaked from their eyes and mouths as their prayer beads fractured. The beads shattered into fine dust, and the resulting shockwave caused the practitioners to disintegrate instantly. They vanished into nothingness without even a chance to scream.
The oppressive mist vanished in a heartbeat, and the restrictive domain pulled back like a receding tide.
Chu Bai, Chu Kui, Bi Xin, and the others from the Extraordinary Sages House stood frozen, wondering if they were trapped in a dream. Even the broken Wu Xuan watched in utter disbelief, his frame shivering.
“Who is the senior that saved us?”
With one arm destroyed, the masked man’s face was twisted in agony and terror. His previous arrogance had vanished.
In that brief clash, he realized he was facing someone far beyond the Ancestor Dao level. He couldn't fathom which Ancestor Dao powerhouse would interfere. The prayer beads had been reinforced by such a being specifically to hide this area from detection. How had this mysterious entity found them? And why interfere now?
The crystalline finger ignored his cries, continuing its steady, relentless descent like the hand of a deity.
The sheer power surpassed what the world could sustain; the Great Dao began to warp, and the river of time seemed to boil. The ancient mirror was reduced to powder in an instant.
For the first time, the masked man knew true hopelessness. He was paralyzed, unable to even twitch.
The crushing force landed on him, his skull splintering with a sickening crack. His mask shattered, revealing a pale, clean-shaven face frozen in a mask of pure horror.
“Is it him?”
From the sidelines, Wu Xuan and the others were shaken to their core as the masked man’s identity was revealed. They could hardly process what they were seeing.
“This cannot be...”
As members of the Extraordinary Sages House, Chu Kui and Bi Xin held high status and often crossed paths with powerful figures. Seeing the face behind the mask filled them with a new kind of dread.
The finger in the sky reached its destination. Regardless of the masked man’s terror, it pressed down on his head. With a soft sound, the entire space was purged, leaving absolutely no trace of his existence behind.
With the threat eliminated, the jade finger vanished as quickly as it had appeared. The world returned to its natural state. The night was dark and the silence was absolute.
“How terrifying...”
The ease with which a powerful master was crushed like a common bug left Han Feng and Chu Bai trembling. They felt utterly insignificant.
Against the masked man, they had felt like ants. But compared to that finger, even the masked man was nothing more than a speck of dust to be brushed away.
Before they could process their fear, the sky blurred again. A massive hand reached out from the void, snatched the group up, and pulled them through space.
Their vision spun, and when it cleared, they were standing in a peaceful courtyard.
The garden was filled with rare divine bamboo and immortal flora, with purple mist winding through ancient trees under the fading light of the horizon.
A young man dressed in white sat at a stone table, his back turned to them. He was drinking quietly, one hand holding a wine cup while the other leafed through an ancient scroll.
Bathed in the moonlight, he seemed to radiate a soft light, appearing almost translucent, as if he belonged to a higher plane of existence. He possessed an aura of supreme elegance.
The group, including the Dao-level Wu Xuan, stood in a daze, still reeling from the transition.
“We thank the senior for our lives.”
Wu Xuan was the first to find his voice. He bowed deeply, realizing this young man was their savior. He couldn't forget the sight of that hand casually erasing their enemy.
The others followed suit, bowing in gratitude. Yet, they felt a nagging sense of familiarity, as if they had encountered this man before.
Wu Xuan’s eyes suddenly widened with realization. “Could you be... Young Master Gu?”
Having attended Chu Gucheng’s birthday feast, Wu Xuan had seen the guest of honor from afar. This was Gu Changge, the enigmatic leader of the Fating Alliance, a man whispered about with fear throughout the Xiyuan civilization.
Wu Xuan never dreamed that Gu Changge would be the one to step in and save them tonight.
“There is no need for such formality. It was a trivial matter,” Gu Changge replied with a light smile, turning to face them as he set aside his scroll.
“It really is Young Master Gu...”
Chu Kui and Bi Xin were stunned. They had heard the terrifying rumors—the man linked to the black disaster, the leader of the Fating Alliance. To see him now, looking so refined and scholarly, and to owe him their lives, felt surreal.
Chu Bai’s sharp eyes caught sight of the golden scroll. It wasn't filled with text, but with moving images. Though the pictures were faint, he recognized the very scene they had just escaped.
Had Gu Changge watched their struggle through this artifact and decided to intervene on a whim?
Before he could confirm his theory, Gu Changge moved the scroll out of sight.