Chapter Sixteen: The Celestial Heart Realm

"You... you let him go right now." The young woman, seeing her junior brother subdued by the man before her, felt a wave of panic. Though her cultivation was the highest among her group, she was still a young woman without any elders from her sect backing her up. At a loss for what to do, her cheeks flushed red as she could only demand that he release her companion.

"Hmph!" Ling Yufei snorted coldly. "I've already told you it was a misunderstanding. I wasn't planning to fight, but your people have gone too far. I taught him a lesson so he'd learn not to think he can bully just anyone he pleases." As he spoke, Ling Yufei exerted some force and shoved the young Nascent Soul cultivator forward.

With his nascent soul sealed in his dantian, he was now no different from a mortal. Stumbling from Ling Yufei’s push, he nearly fell.

"Senior Sister..." The boy’s face burned with embarrassment as he stood up and lowered his head before the young woman, seeming unconcerned about his sealed nascent soul. Perhaps he believed that finding someone with a higher cultivation than this so-called thief to undo the seal would be no trouble at all.

"You... You stole from us, destroyed the materials we've cultivated, and now, without a trace of shame, you’ve injured one of us. Do you think a single word—‘misunderstanding’—can resolve this?" The young woman's face was flushed with anger. Though she knew full well she was no match for the man before her, anyone would be furious to see centuries of painstakingly cultivated treasures ruined in an instant.

Ling Yufei was momentarily at a loss. He wasn't afraid of fighting—these people together could not match even one of his hands. Still, he was in the wrong. It was no wonder the young woman’s face was red with fury; if someone had destroyed centuries' worth of his own precious materials, he would have torn the culprit apart.

"Ahem... Well, I thought the materials were unowned. Now that I know they belong to you, of course, I will return them," Ling Yufei replied candidly. With a flick of his wrist, all the materials he had gathered flew towards the young woman, landing at her feet. Yet at that moment, the flesh on Ling Yufei’s face seemed to twitch, and his eyes remained fixed on the pile of treasures. To hand over such valuables so easily was truly a bitter pill to swallow.

"Return them?" To Ling Yufei’s surprise, hearing the word "return" only made the young woman angrier. She pointed a finger directly at his nose. "Return? And just how do you intend to return them? The materials you stole and destroyed had not yet fully matured, but even so, we have cultivated them for hundreds of years. In a few more centuries, they would have been ready to craft true immortal artifacts and pills. Now, thanks to you, they can only be used for lesser spirit tools. Tell me, how do you plan to make that right?"

"Immortal... Immortal artifacts..." Ling Yufei was stunned at her words. Immortal artifacts—what did those words represent?

A dream! The dream of every cultivator.

"So? Speak up! What can you possibly do to make amends?" The young woman, oblivious to Ling Yufei’s expression, continued her tirade, her words sharp and relentless.

Ling Yufei endured her scolding. Though he was at fault, as a sect leader, being berated by a young woman at the Void Fusion stage was hard to tolerate.

"Fine. Fine! I have no way to make amends!" Suddenly, Ling Yufei’s expression darkened. "Since you insist on treating me as a thief and a bandit, then that’s exactly what I’ll be!" With a sweep of his arm, the pile of materials before the young woman vanished into thin air. "If I’m to be a bandit, a thief, then I’ll take your things. Let’s see what you juniors can do to stop me!"

With his cultivation at the late Tribulation Transcendence stage, Ling Yufei didn’t take these ten or so juniors seriously at all. If he hadn’t been in the wrong, he wouldn’t have wasted words with them. Now that negotiations had collapsed, he accepted the role of villain. With those words, he turned and strode away; in just a few steps he had disappeared completely, leaving the eleven cultivators, led by the young woman, standing stunned, watching his retreating figure vanish.

"What do we do now? How am I supposed to answer to our elders?" The young woman looked around at the wreckage, finally slumping to the ground in despair, tears brimming in her eyes and threatening to fall.

The other ten cultivators were equally silent, including the boy whose nascent soul had been sealed. All were now as dispirited as wilted eggplants, their earlier arrogance utterly gone. Their minds were filled with only one question: how would they explain this to their elders?

"What happened here?" Just as they were at a loss, a booming voice rang out from above. In the next instant, the figure of a burly man with a green beard appeared before the young woman.

"What’s happened here, Yanling? Why is this place in such a state?"

"Father!" the young woman cried, throwing herself into the man’s arms and sobbing as she recounted everything that had transpired.

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"Big Brother, this is truly a remarkable place! So many spirit herbs and top-grade materials for forging artifacts!" Meanwhile, in another valley, a newly arrived group was excitedly examining their surroundings. Whenever they found something useful, they plucked it and slipped it into their spatial rings without hesitation.

"Be careful, everyone. I have a feeling something is off here. Even in the Immortal Realm, such things would have been taken long ago. It wouldn’t be this easy for us to find them." The man addressed as Big Brother, a third-level Golden Immortal, walked along with his immortal sense scanning the area, paying little attention to the treasures at hand.

"Where... have you come from?" A sudden voice startled the two dozen Celestial and Golden Immortals, making them shudder.

"Who’s there? Show yourself!" Li Wei called out loudly, though there was fear in his heart. In this utterly unknown environment, for all his power as a third-level Golden Immortal, his full immortal sense could not detect the speaker—proof that their cultivation was much higher than his own.

"Who I am is unimportant. What matters is where you have come from, and why you are here." The next moment, Qin Shuang’s figure appeared abruptly before them.

He had materialized without a sound, unnoticed by any of them—a clear sign his cultivation far surpassed theirs. Not even a sixth-level Golden Immortal could achieve this; the group judged Qin Shuang to be at least a seventh-level Golden Immortal, if not higher.

"Senior, we are immortals from Falanke Star in the Tianxin Realm. We came here because of Ruan Lingyu!" The third-level Golden Immortal, quick-witted under pressure, immediately stepped forward and cupped his fists in salute.

"Tianxin Realm, Falanke Star?" Qin Shuang frowned slightly. The name Tianxin Realm sounded familiar, as if he had heard it somewhere before.