While Lian Huiling was still reeling from the shock she received, she knew better than to stay passive. Her only way out of this predicament was to fight her way out. However, she knew she was no match for this man as the gap between realms was much too hard to overcome.

While some Heaven-Sent Genius may be up to the task, she wasn't one of them. Granted, her talent was much better than the average rogue cultivator, but she wasn't particularly special within her clan. At best, she would rank in the top twenty within her age group.

She knew she couldn't win but didn't want to die. Yet, she wondered why Hou Ping had reined in his blow. Were he to want her dead, she would have had no chance of survival. Yet, all she received from that blow were some inconsequential internal injuries.

While Lian Huiling debated her next course of action, Hou Ping continued with his task. The body in his hands jerked as he pierced its Qi Centre with his remaining free hand. Soon after, the body trembled as dark lines appeared on its pale skin. The lines pulsed slightly, making for a macabre sight that Lian Huiling could barely stand witnessing.

Then, after a moment, Hou Ping retrieved his hand, and the body crumbled as if into sand. All that remained from Hou Ping's victim was a small mound of dust lying at his feet and two crystals nestled in the crux of his hand.

One of those crystals, a red one, pulsed as if it were a beating heart. Lian Huiling could feel an embryo of life within while a strong scent of blood permeated the air. The other was a deep blue yet somehow clear and could easily be mistaken for Spirit Crystals. Except for the depth of its colour and the fact that she witnessed it being extracted from a man's body, Lian Huiling could swear it was an exact match for the countless Spirit Crystals she had seen before.

Without bothering with her presence, Hou Ping swallowed the blue crystal in a single gulp. Then, his eyes shone with a blue light as Lian Huiling felt the pressure the man exuded increasing. Soon after, Hou Ping’s white lotus spun faster as a new ring of light threatened to emerge from the orb. Yet, it stopped midway as if lacking energy.

Lian Huiling was stunned. This was incomprehensible. Never in her wildest dreams would she believe what she had seen if anyone had told her this tale. This went against everything she ever knew about cultivation. How could a man plunder another’s cultivation so freely?

This was akin to a devil’s technique. Were this to spread, it would plunge the world into chaos. None could resist the allure of what this method provided. Years of gruelling cultivation could be easily exchanged for the mere will to dirty one’s hand.

While she, too, wished to acquire that technique, Lian Huiling was savvy enough to know that nothing came without consequences. She was a businesswoman and knew everything had a price. While she might be tempted to pay that price, she knew that this technique wasn’t hers to obtain.

Despite her talents, she knew she wasn't some heaven-defying child of luck but another woman like any other, doing her best to survive. In fact, simply being exposed to this technique's existence was nothing more than a calamity. Lian Huiling doubted that Hou Ping would let her go free after displaying this technique.

As she expected, Hou Ping was the first to make a move. Without the slightest change in his expression, he punched forward, hoping to strike the woman he was once intimate with. While Lian Huiling previously doubted why he would enact this slaughter, she now knew. In the face of this technique, one could discard any number of things only to glance at what it could provide.

Hou Ping's punch was overwhelming, not something she could contend with. Still, she would do her best to survive. She activated her Core Qi, circulating it at high speed within her meridian. The lotus above her head spun rapidly, dispersing a thin purple mist. The mist bathed the room in its dull glow, yet it did nothing to stop the incoming strike.

Hou Ping's punch ripped through the air, creating shockwaves that dissipated much of the purple mist. Yet, Lian Huiling's lotus was unrelenting, as if its reserves of mist were bottomless. Still, nothing could stop Hou Ping’s charge.

The Qi propelled from Hou Ping's strike flew forward to its target so fast that Lian Huiling could barely comprehend what was happening. Even the Qi-enhanced neurons within her brain couldn't keep up with the speed of that strike. She desperately willed herself to dodge, yet her body couldn't follow what her mind begged her to do.

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The strike finally collided with the centre of her being, creating a deep imprint within her abdomen. Unable to withstand it, her body began to crack as the Qi-laced strike wreaked havoc within her meridians.

In an instant, deep black crevasses appeared all over her skin as her body barely held itself together. Yet, Hou Ping's strike was unrelenting, and her body was feeble. As if to further break through her defences, the strike rotated on its axis, forming something akin to a maelstrom within the depth of her Qi Centre.

Unable to withstand the force of this strike, her body began to crumble from the inside out. She opened her mouth to scream, yet nothing escaped as her lungs had already collapsed under the pressure. Soon after, blood flew to her extremities as if she had been spun into a centrifuge. Her eyes swelled from the increased blood pressure before they exploded into a fountain of gore and fluid.

Her body was next as it collapsed piece by piece, starting from the point of impact to her extremities. Surprisingly, as her blood escaped from every open pore, it turned into the same fine mist spewed from her lotus.

Purple particles permeated the air, spreading to every recess of the room. Soon, all visibility was gone, and all that remained was the unsteady purple lotus rotating as if in defiance. Unfortunately, Lian Huiling's body had collapsed into purple particles, and her lotus would soon join her. As if on cue, the lotus exploded in a purple rain shower, covering every inch of the room.

Despite being the architect of his former lover's demise, Hou Ping's expression remained stagnant, as if he had already buried all his emotions. All that remained was a thirst for power and a deep-seated fear of the one who had granted him this fate-defying technique.

Hou Ping waved his hand, removing the purple tint that covered his golden armour before donning his helmet and masking his features. Unlike his usual armour, which denoted his rank, he wore the generic kind, hoping to blend into the crowd as he made his exit without ever looking back.

Minutes after he left, Lian Huiling emerged from a corner of the room. Space waved and split, revealing her body. It wasn't that she was adept in the Dao of space, quite the contrary. This was but an illusion created by the purple mist spread in the atmosphere.

Purple wasn’t a colour commonly found in lotuses. In fact, Lian Huiling was the only one to possess such Spiritual Roots in her clan. As rare as they were, not many knew the extent of its ability. In fact, only her father was privy to its intricacies.

While every set of Spiritual Roots possessed an elemental affinity, not many made full use of it as a compatible cultivation technique was needed to harness its full power. For common elements such as fire or water, techniques were a dime a dozen, found on street stalls everywhere.

Although Cultivation techniques had their own rank—as most everything did—most wouldn't bother to find something fully compatible with their Spiritual Roots, as such a thing didn't exist in the first place. Only by creating it on one's own could it be achieved.

As such, all the cultivation techniques found in the great libraries of every clan and sect were once created in the same vain, trying to harness the full power of their creators' Spiritual Roots. As they were disseminated throughout the ages, they lost some of their specificity, becoming more broad and accessible. This, in turn, made them less potent and more prone to rejection.

In Lian Huiling’s case, her Spiritual Roots were of the mirage element, something mostly unknown and esoteric. It was regarded as one of the three high elements, alongside space and time. While her clan had access to most of the records found within the Western Region, information on mirage element techniques was few and far between.

Even using the Qin Family's information network, what they uncovered was fragmented at best. For a long time, Lian Huiling's father worried that his daughter wouldn't be able to cultivate. Using a technique unsuited to one's element could endanger one's life in case of rejection, such as Qi Deviation.

Using the fragments he received and hiring the brightest of scholars, after long years of research, they were finally able to piece together the technique that Lian Huiling now used. Although it was rudimentary at best, it still soared high above those of the more common elements.

Using her Spiritual Roots, Lian Huiling could disseminate a small purple powder that would attach itself to any Qi it encountered and corrode it into something she could influence. While its influence was limited—she couldn't just make her opponents' Qi Centre explode, killing them instantly—she could influence its flow slightly, showing a different reality, something akin to an illusion.

Still, her technique was far from perfect. As long as one was aware of its existence or their control of Qi was far superior to hers, they could resist the mirage. Still, she was confident that no one under the Nascent Soul Realm could see through it.

She had been proven right. Hou Ping hadn’t suspected anything. As soon as she received the first blow, she had begun disseminating her spores within the room, tampering with his senses. Although she knew she couldn’t beat him in a fight, as the armour he wore was too difficult to breach without ample preparations, she could observe her target and report to her father. This was the most sensible answer she had come to.

While she wished nothing more than to slay him, she knew her limitations well. She couldn't risk a failed ambush, as once he recognized what her means were, they would become ineffective. She wouldn't dare to gamble at such a critical time. Besides, she treasured her life very much. She knew from Hou Ping's last strike that she would have been shown no mercy.

While the sight of her death was still fresh in her mind—Lian Huiling was still inexperienced and couldn’t target anyone specific with her mirage—she thought back to the technique she had witnessed and the white lotus that hovered over him. She had never heard of a lotus devoid of any colour.

Thinking back to all she knew, she could infer an answer, but that answer made her shiver. This wasn't something that was supposed to exist in this world. Much less since Hou Ping's original colour was blue. The ability to change one's innate element was unheard of.

As the space element was black in colour, Lian Huiling speculated that only its opposite would be white. There was only a single option that made sense: Void. Yet, the void element was but a legend, something that was supposed to be even higher than the three high elements, able to swallow anything endlessly. It matched well with what she had witnessed, yet one question remained. How did Hou Ping—this mere rogue cultivator—get his hands on such an unfathomable technique?

She could ponder such questions later. For now, she needed to let her father know of the threat that loomed over them. This had been a long day, and it was far from ending.