ACSP: Chapter 223: Pulling one hair moves the whole body!
Zhao Dingtian pulled out his phone and glanced at the screen, the ambitious smile on his face instantly freezing in place.
A flash of sheer astonishment flickered in his eyes, rapidly fueled by a roaring wave of fury. His brows knit tightly together, forming a deep, rigid ridge across his forehead.
"How preposterous! Has the Nangong Family eaten the heart of a bear and the gallbladder of a leopard? How dare they openly provoke my Zhao Family!"
He stood up abruptly, slamming his teacup onto the heavy wooden table with enough force to shatter the silence. Tea splashed violently over the rim, pooling across the polished tabletop, but Zhao Dingtian paid it no mind. He turned on his heel and strode out of the hall with murderous intent.
Outside, several dark, heavy clouds had drifted across the sky, swallowing the sunlight and plunging the courtyard into a dim, ominous twilight.
Standing dead center in the courtyard, Zhao Dingtian threw his head back and unleashed a roar that reverberated across the entire estate: "Assemble!"
His voice echoed like thunder, carrying an unquestionable, absolute majesty that shook the very air.
Before the echoes could even fade, the elites of the Southern Pavilion came rushing over from all directions, converging on the courtyard like a tidal wave. Their faces were twisted with rage; every single one of them had just received the high-priority emergency distress signal on their devices.
Zhao Dingtian looked over the sea of gathered clansmen. Without wasting a single breath on words, he swept his large sleeve through the air, turned, and led the army rapidly toward Zhao Quan's coordinates.
At the exact same time throughout Magic City, all the Southern Pavilion clansmen who had been scattered across the metropolis handling outside affairs dropped what they were doing the moment the alert hit their phones.
Zhao Quan was not just Zhao Dingtian's direct grandson; he was the most brilliant, promising rising star among the Southern Pavilion's younger generation. His life and death were inextricably tied to the future dominance of their entire faction. If he fell today, the loss to the Southern Pavilion would be catastrophic.
Across the streets of Magic City, countless ordinary citizens and rogue Contractors watched in shock as hordes of Zhao Family elites mobilized in broad daylight, rapidly converging on a single coordinate. Sensing that a massive storm was brewing, curiosity got the better of them. In order to witness the truth firsthand, a massive crowd began to trail the mobilization, surging toward the dungeon square.
Meanwhile, on the local Magic City digital forums, the internet was already exploding as real-time, high-priority hot posts began to surface one after another:
[EXTRA! EXTRA! The mighty Zhao Family has been openly provoked by hidden experts secretly cultivated by the third-rate Nangong Family!]
[SHOCKING NEWS! A mysterious expert from the Nangong Family just executed Wang Mang of the Wang Family in a single move! He is currently locked in a deadly standoff against Young Master Zhao Quan of the Zhao Family Southern Pavilion!]
[Could it be that the Nangong Family wants to overthrow the Zhao Family's rule in Magic City and replace them?!]
[Discussing the romantic figures of the past and present, look to the present — The rise and counterattack of a third-rate family! (Paid Video · Exclusive Footage)]
As these sensationalized posts flooded the forums one after another, the entire population of Magic City was thrown into a frenzy. For a time, every major family faction, hidden syndicate, and independent rogue cultivator turned their undivided attention toward the unfolding crisis.
An endless stream of people from all corners of the city began to converge like a tidal wave toward the square where Zhao Quan was trapped.
As the old saying goes, pulling a single hair moves the entire body. Because of a single spark ignited on Zhao Quan's side, the entirety of Magic City was now stretched taut with a suffocating, electrifying tension—like the heavy, dead silence just before a catastrophic storm breaks.
...
Meanwhile, inside the main estate of the Nangong Family, Patriarch Nangong Lifei stared at the paid video playing on the forum, his mind completely numb with dread.
"Damn it! Who exactly are these three guys?!" he roared, slamming his fist onto his armrest. "When the hell did our family ever cultivate hidden experts of this caliber?!"
"Slander... This is an absolute, malicious frame-up!"
Nangong Lifei hissed through gritted teeth. His fury was so intense that a thick network of veins bulged violently across his forehead, twitching like tangled earthworms locked in a bitter struggle—a sight that was thoroughly chilling to behold.
The clansman who had delivered the report kept his head bowed as low as possible, barely daring to breathe, utterly terrified by his patriarch's explosive rage.
Nangong Lifei took a deep, ragged breath, desperately forcing his racing heart to calm down. Raising his head, he glared at the trembling subordinate and ordered in a dark, heavy voice: "Go immediately and track down the accounts posting these threads. Damn them all... by publishing this garbage, they are deliberately trying to drag our entire Nangong Family into a pit of raging fire!"
"Understood! I will investigate them immediately!" the clansman squeaked, nodding frantically as he turned to flee the room.
"Wait!"
Nangong Lifei's voice barked out, halting the man dead in his tracks.
"Before you do that... summon every able-bodied member of the clan to the courtyard. And prepare our most valuable, heaviest gifts." Nangong Lifei closed his eyes, his voice trembling slightly with suppressed fear. "This matter has exploded far too fast. Regardless of whether these mysterious powerhouses have anything to do with us, our stance must be made explicitly clear right from the start. The Zhao Family is an absolute titan—they are not a force our meager clan can afford to offend."
A few minutes later, Nangong Lifei personally led dozens of his family's top elites out of the estate. Bearing chestfuls of extravagant peace offerings, they rushed at breakneck speed toward Zhao Quan's coordinates.
Back at the plaza, as the small army of Zhao clan guards mobilized by Zhao Quan clamped their perimeter around Jiang Chen and his group, the ambient temperature outside the secret realm instantly dropped to a freezing point.
Jiang Chen could effortlessly sense the suffocating wave of murderous intent rolling off the surrounding guards. But none of it compared to the dense, venomous malice radiating from Zhao Quan himself.
"Originally, I intended to get along with your Zhao Family in a peaceful, civil manner," Jiang Chen murmured, looking at Zhao Quan with complete, detached indifference. "But looking at the reality of things, you people of the Southern Pavilion are nothing more than a localized gang of parasitic bullies."
"And as for allies like that? I have absolutely no use for them."
The moment the words left Jiang Chen's mouth, the dormant killing intent in his own eyes finally broke the surface.
In that exact fraction of a second, Zhao Quan's breath hitched. He felt an overwhelming, primal terror wash over him, as if he had suddenly been pinned beneath the gaze of a colossal, bloodthirsty prehistoric beast. Every single hair on his body stood straight up on end.
It was the unmistakable, terrifying sensation of staring death dead in the face.
'The sheer psychological pressure this guy is exerting on me... it's actually heavier than my grandfather's?! How is that even statistically possible...?'
Zhao Quan subconsciously swallowed hard, a cold sweat breaking out across his neck.
His grandfather, Zhao Dingtian, was a towering Level 98 Contractor. On top of that, his grandfather's contracted character was a highly classified, hidden legacy role, granting him combat prowess easily comparable to a peak, high-tier Shadow-level powerhouse. In the entire expanse of Magic City, his grandfather was virtually peerless.
He hadn't expected that a guy who looked even younger than himself would ever be capable of making him feel this crushing sense of dread.
'An illusion. This has to be an absolute illusion! This guy looks so young—he's either a rookie who just completed his contract ceremony this year, or a Contractor who awakened last year at best. Even if his family pumped him full of endless rare resources, he'd be Level 60 or 70 at the absolute max. How could he possibly be more powerful than my grandfather...?'
Zhao Quan took a deep, ragged breath, forcibly clamping down on the instinctual terror clawing at his heart. His panic rapidly twisted back into a venomous, defensive sneer. Glaring viciously at Jiang Chen, he spat, "What a joke! With the pathetic, meager foundation of a third-rate clan like the Nangong Family, you actually dream of 'peaceful coexistence' with us? Wake up! Since you dared to cross me today, your entire family is finished in Magic City. I'm going to make you watch with your own eyes the exact cost of offending the Zhao clan!"
The moment his threat cut through the air, the elite Zhao family guards tightened the trap.
They moved without a shred of hesitation. Their target wasn't restricted to Jiang Chen alone; Ronan, Li Dala, and the terrified Nangong twins were all simultaneously swept into the fatal kill zone.
A vanguard of Zhao operatives specialized in high-tier Taijutsu lunged first. Striking like phantoms, they tore across the plaza toward Jiang Chen's group at speeds completely invisible to the naked eye, the sheer velocity of their charge producing a piercing, whistling gale.
Simultaneously, the rear line of tactical spellcasters orchestrated their backup. The moment the vanguard closed in, the fingers of the Escape Technique masters blurred in perfect synchronization, weaving complex, rapid successions of hand seals. The coordination between the front-line strikers and the rear-line artillery was seamless—a flawless execution honed through countless bloody battles.
However...
At the exact microsecond the Zhao family's coordinated assault reached its peak, a wildly smug, chaotic grin split across Li Dala's face.
In the very next heartbeat, he casually raised a single hand, snapping his fingers into a one-handed seal as a single, devastating word slipped from his lips:
"—Explode!"
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