Already tens of kilometers away, the ice-type Soul King had only just finished teleporting away again when he decided to look behind, only to be bewildered by what he saw.

Despite being so far away, the ice-type Soul King was still able to see through the pitch dark skies to see that his companion had....been killed!

“What....what happened?!”

The Soul King simply couldn’t believe anything that happened within the last few minutes. He had to abort the mission and flee for safety, but he had distinctly warned his companion ahead of time to run away. Furthermore, his companion had moved to leave not too long after he did, so....how did he die in less than half a minute?!

“Blast!!”

He really wanted to go back and check just how this situation came to be, but the people chasing after him would definitely catch up to him then--several of the Soul Kings were already on the verge of catching up to him right now. So with a snort, he turned around and continued to flee....

......

Zheng Kai stared blankly at the dissipating fiery maelstrom in front of him, and then the chunks of frozen ice as it fell to the ground. With each chunk that fell, moderate amounts of blood dripped down to the ground, though Zheng Kai found it hard to register that.

What....had just happened?

He could only vaguely remember Bai Yunfei yelling out loud and pointing a finger at the escaping Soul King. Then he remembered seeing the Soul King freeze up, and then the permafrost mastiff chasing after it with a bolt of elemental ice.... After that, two brilliant flames flew out from Bai Yunfei to smash into the Soul King, and then the Soul King was frozen and shattered into pieces....

All those events had only taken a short few breaths in time, but even then, they were taking place far too fast for Zheng Kai to catch up.

If his eyes wasn’t leading him astray, then....the earth-type Soul King had been killed just....like that?!

Zheng Kai found it a little hard to believe. The ones who had appeared out of nowhere to attack and force the two of them into such dire straits had been forced to run away while the other one was killed when he attempted to run?!

As he thought, Zheng Kai’s mind wandered over to the words Bai Yunfei roared a second ago.

“Stop!!”

Things, as it were, was going exactly like Bai Yunfei demanded. The man had stopped, though the remaining pieces of his body were falling down to the ground rather than stopping in place...

He shook his head before looking to Bai Yunfei, only to see him drop the ground in exhaustion.

“Brother Bai!”

He cried out in fright. Flying over to him, Zheng Kai checked for Bai Yunfei’s pulse, only to see that Bai Yunfei had only been knocked out. His face was pale with fatigue, and a black serpentine-like wisp of smoke was trailing out from under his skin. His eyes were closed shut in seeming pain as his soulforce circulated through his body. He was no longer holding onto the power of a late-stage Soul Exalt, and the elemental energy around his body was also weakened now that Bai Yunfei wasn’t producing any more of it.

“Whoosh....”

Four separate noise of people descending down from the skies was heard as Soul Kings began to drop in onto the place, looking around the area before finally to the two soul cultivators remaining there.

“Xiao Zheng, what happened?”

A voice spoke out from Zheng Kai’s side. Recognizing that voice, he spun around to see a purple-robed young man appear nearby. “Brother!!”

This young man was Zheng Kai’s older brother and the eldest son of the head of the Zheng, Zheng Cheng.

Zheng Cheng had a grim expression on his face as he registered the hole in his younger brother’s wrist, “What happened here?”

“I’m....I’m not very sure, we were just suddenly attacked....” Zheng Kai hurried to explain, “Brother! Please check up on brother Bai, he was hit by the ice-type Soul King and is severely hurt!”

Zheng Cheng raised an eyebrow at that before finally turning to look at Bai Yunfei. The expression on his face hardened a bit at Bai Yunfei’s state. He moved to press his right hand against Bai Yunfei’s shoulder, but the moment his hand touched, Zheng Cheng brought his hand back as if zapped by lightning. At the same time, Bai Yunfei uttered a faint groan of pain.

“Is this....elemental darkness?!” Zheng Cheng hissed in surprise, his mind racing to think of the possibilities. “No! This isn’t ordinary elemental darkness, this is....the Soul Refining Palm of the Soul Refining School!!”

He was only here to check up on Bai Yunfei’s condition, but the diagnosis he made had been said aloud accidentally, prompting the other Soul Kings to take notice of what was said.

“What?! The Soul Refining School?!” Zheng Kai gasped, “But....but how! Brother, please save brother Bai! What do we have to do to treat his wounds?”

Zheng Cheng grew silent for a moment to think of how to respond, “We can’t treat him here, we have to take him home and ask grandfather for assistance!!”

Knowing how important Bai Yunfei was, Zheng Cheng couldn’t simply ignore him to fend for himself. The wounds Bai Yunfei had weren’t light by any means, but Zheng Cheng didn’t have any method of treatment for him, and his father would most likely not either. That left only grandfather.....

Zheng Cheng turned his head towards the gray-robed elder behind me, “Uncle Qin, could I rely on you to take care of matters here? Coordinate with the Capital guards to investigate the place. Pay attention to anything that might lead to whom those people were.”

𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞

The elder nodded his head, “Rest assured, young master, I will do my best here.”

......

Zheng manor. The western courtyards where Bai Yunfei’s room was.

Still unconscious, Bai Yunfei was laid on top of his own bed, though his face didn’t look comforted at all. It was still twisted in pain and drenched with sweat. His face was equally parts pale and equally red, though black smoke would occasionally rise up from him.

Five people stood in front of his bed. Fortunately, the room was large enough to accommodate them all.

The one pacing anxiously around the perimeter of the room was Zheng Kai, and the one next to him was his brother Zheng Cheng. The two males in front of them looked to be in their forties, meaning one of them had to be their father and head of the Zheng, Zheng Shiqiu. The other male was a tawny middle-aged man and brother to the head of the house.

In front of them four was a white-haired elder who was peering down at Bai Yunfei carefully. He was the previous head of the Zheng and Zheng Kai’s grandfather, Zheng Tianya.

In the corner of the room, the permafrost mastiff laid there weakly on the ground, white light surrounding its body as it tried to heal the nasty-looking wound on its fur. To the side, a small blue-eyes wyrm was currently biting onto the Fire-tipped Spear without letting anyone close to it, its eyes filled with humiliation. During the battle, the wyrm had been the only one trapped by the enemies and rendered essentially useless--this was something the wyrm did not like.

As for Xiao Qi, the bird was on the rafters of the roof to stare down at Bai Yunfei, its eyes filled with concern and sadness....

The room was extremely silent. Zheng Tianya stood in front of Bai Yunfei’s bed for a moment longer before finally drawing his right hand back away from Bai Yunfei’s shoulder to stand back up.

“Grandfather, how is brother Bai doing? Is he in danger?” Zheng Kai immediately leapt at the chance for more knowledge, pleading with his grandfather for information.

A look of grim concern was on Zheng Tianya’s face when he did, “Not to worry, he’s not in any mortal danger. The strength behind the Soul Refining Palm was major and should’ve killed Bai Yunfei by all rights considering. But this is an extremely strange situation, his regeneration rate isn’t any slower than an early-stage Soul King....”

He sighed after that. “But nonetheless, recovering from such an injury won’t be simple. His soul was damaged. Even after he wakes up, Bai Yunfei will be impacted by such an injury, and that’ll be the troublesome part for him....”