"Wei Zhao..." Lengleng knew there was no escaping death, and she closed her eyes with perfect composure. Wei Zhao's face surfaced in her mind—she wanted to carve him deep into her very soul. In this life they had met but were fated never to be together; they could only meet again in the next.

Crack! The crisp snap of breaking bone made Lengleng's heart lurch instinctively—yet to her astonishment, she felt no pain at all. Instead, it was Bing Wushuang who suddenly let out an agonized roar: "Aaaah!!!"

The entire crowd was struck dumb. Lengleng hurriedly opened her eyes, and the scene before her left her stupefied as well. Bing Wushuang's position had not changed, and Xin Yi'an had not lifted a finger—only Lin Dongfang, who by all appearances had been frozen stiff and immobile, had somehow at some point laid a hand on Bing Wushuang's ice claw, a bland, utterly unconcerned smile still hanging on his face.

By now that ice claw of Bing Wushuang's had been bent backward into a grotesquely twisted arc—one glance was enough to make the scalp crawl. Small wonder he was in such agony that his veins bulged and his face contorted savagely.

"That trick of yours, crushing people out of thin air—not bad at all. What's it called?" Lin Dongfang clapped his hands and crawled out of the ice pit as if nothing had happened.

"I'll kill you!" Bing Wushuang, forcing down the searing agony, conjured an ice sword out of thin air in his other hand and looked for all the world like a madman about to lunge at Lin Dongfang. But what no one could have anticipated was that he suddenly turned the blade and thrust it straight at Lengleng on the ground.

"Despicable! Shameless!" Qiu Lingshan and the others cursed furiously. Even Xin Yi'an could not stomach it. He had previously thought that although Bing Wushuang was cold and heartless, he was at least honorable and upright—who would have imagined he could sink to such shamelessness? Simply because he feared Lin Dongfang, he chose to cut down the defenseless Lengleng. The man had utterly disgraced the face of every Golden Core expert.

Bing Wushuang, however, could not have cared less what anyone thought. In fact, he did not consider such a tactic shameless in the slightest. Since Lin Dongfang was more dangerous than he had anticipated, and he had already lost a hand, the best course now was to strike at the enemy's weakness—to attack where the enemy must rescue. And Lengleng, right there at his feet, was the perfect decoy.

In his design, so long as Lin Dongfang came to Lengleng's rescue, he would have his opening—enough to kill the man with a single strike!

Yet Lin Dongfang's response caught him utterly off guard. Lin Dongfang's reaction was simple: no anger, no fury, the same bland smile still on his face—and without even a glance, he simply threw a punch.

Boom! Striking last but landing first, Lin Dongfang's fist slammed into his abdomen ahead of the ice sword. Bing Wushuang violently spewed a mouthful of blood, his whole body curling up like a shrimp, unable to make another move, and he staggered and collapsed to the ground.

Even if he were beaten to death, he could never understand it. The old man clearly had not the slightest ripple of true qi about him—so why was his fist so terrifyingly fast and powerful, powerful enough to effortlessly crush a Golden Core expert like himself?

Bing Wushuang's face went ashen. He was not dead yet, but he knew he was finished—because that earth-shattering punch from Lin Dongfang had shattered his dantian outright...

"All right, everyone, get back to what you should be doing. No slacking off—hurry up and build the houses. At the rate you're going, who knows how many years it'll take to finish?" Lin Dongfang waved a hand at the dumbstruck crowd, not feeling in the least that finishing off Bing Wushuang was any earth-shaking event. His manner and bearing were as ordinary as if he had merely stepped on a stinkbug.

Never mind Lengleng and the others—even Xin Yi'an was stunned for a long while before he finally squeezed out: "This man is a god..."

"Girl, you just stay here for now. Whether you go or stay, it has to wait until that rascal comes back and you've talked it over. What do you say?" Lin Dongfang said as he helped Lengleng to her feet.

"Yes, thank you, Senior." Lengleng nodded again and again in gratitude. Although Lin Dongfang had struck down both Bing Wushuang and Xue Jianming, it was precisely because of that that her situation was now rather precarious—this was virtually a complete break with the Xuejian Sect. Even if she went back now, she would inevitably be branded a traitor. Anyone else in her shoes would already be frantic with worry.

Yet Lengleng's heart was strangely calm at this moment. Lin Dongfang was right—no matter what, she had to wait for Wei Zhao to return first. He was her anchor now.

And so this sudden storm was snuffed out by Lin Dongfang in a matter of minutes. The crowd exchanged glances for a moment, then quickly went back to normal, each returning to their own business. After all, they had all witnessed Lin Dongfang's last display of power—it too had been a one-sided crushing, the only difference being that this time the opponent had been far stronger.

In everyone's eyes now, Lin Dongfang was every bit as unfathomable and overwhelmingly powerful as Wei Zhao. So long as either one of them was holding down the fort, there was nothing to fear even if the sky fell.

"Uh... Senior Lin..." Xin Yi'an called out to Lin Dongfang somewhat awkwardly. With his early Golden Core cultivation, apart from the Nascent Soul old monsters of the various sects in the Primordial Alliance, there was scarcely anyone left who could bear being addressed as "Senior" by him. By rights, even if Lin Dongfang was the grandfather Wei Zhao spoke of, he still would not have qualified—at most they would have treated each other as peers, and even that was already a great face given to Wei Zhao, his martial grand-uncle.

But now, Xin Yi'an called him "Senior Lin" with complete willingness. Even Bing Wushuang had been effortlessly finished off by the man—if one spoke of his true strength, it was at least peak early Golden Core or above. That one "Senior" was certainly no injustice.

"Oh? Something the matter?" Lin Dongfang turned to look at him, his tone neither warm nor cold. If Xin Yi'an had thrown everything into blocking the attack earlier regardless of the consequences, he might have regarded him differently. But as it was, Xin Yi'an's image in his eyes had taken a hit—such a person was not worthy of complete trust. If he had truly pinned his hopes on this one, Lengleng would long since have been carried off, and he himself would long since have been a corpse.

Xin Yi'an, however, did not notice this at all. He took it instead for the bearing of an expert—after all, masters were never easy to approach. So with respect tinged with a certain restraint, he said: "I wonder how these two should be dealt with? Senior Lin, will you give the order?"

Only then did the crowd remember that two people were still lying on the ground. Bing Wushuang had not only been crippled of one hand but had his dantian shattered by a single punch; he could not even crawl up now. As for Xue Jianming, he simply lay motionless, not even known to be alive or dead.

How to deal with these two was in fact Xin Yi'an's own responsibility—not only because he was the supervising martial uncle in charge of this trial in the secular world, but even more because this was the territory allotted to Qingyun Pavilion of the North Island!