The outer sect elders barely registered in Lu Chen's mind.
"Lu Chen!" another elder snarled. "Divine Core Realm or not, you have no right to throw your weight around in this sect!"
Lu Chen's eyes narrowed. His voice dropped — soft, unhurried, the kind of quiet that made people nervous. "So you're all set on stopping me?"
Wang Wuji's expression hardened. "Something doesn't add up, Lu Chen. We can't let you walk out of here — not like this. You were at the fourth level of Body Forging. Now you're standing here in the Divine Core Realm?" He shook his head slowly. "That's not a breakthrough. That's an impossibility."
"And that's before we get to the trail of dead disciples you left behind." Wang Wuji's eyes were cold. "You're coming with us to the Outer Sect Outer Discipline Hall. No harm will come to you — an inner sect elder will decide your fate. But you are coming."
The message was clear enough. These men had no intention of letting him leave.
Lu Chen didn't waste another breath. He moved.
The seven elders facing him were no pushovers:
Three at the peak of the first level. Two at the third. One at the fourth — and Wang Wuji himself, standing at its peak.
Boom.
True Yuan detonated outward from Lu Chen's core. Vast. Boundless. A pressure so crushing it seemed to warp the sky itself.
"Surround him! Suppress him NOW!" Wang Wuji roared.
All seven Divine Core Realm experts lunged as one. The air went thick with their combined auras, and above them, the clouds bled red.
"Seven against one — Lu Chen's done!"
"Those are veteran Divine Core cultivators! Even one-on-one, Lu Chen would be hard-pressed!"
"How did he even reach the Divine Core Realm?!"
Below, hundreds of outer sect disciples craned their necks upward, faces drained of color, as those seven monstrous auras pressed down on them like a collapsing sky.
Across the outer sect — in the Resource Hall, the Outer Discipline Hall, and beyond — the elders who had stayed back watched from a distance, arms folded, eyes sharp.
"Not just the Divine Core Realm — the fourth level, all at once?" one muttered. "A hidden genius? Some kind of special physique — not quite Shen Qing's level, but not far off?"
"Impossible," another scoffed. "The Grand Elder would have known. He and Shen Qing were the ones who brought Lu Chen back. There's no way something like that slipped past him."
"Then none of this makes any sense!"
"I don't know. But his cultivation level and his actual combat power — those might be two very different things."
They watched. None of them moved to help. Seven on one was already disgraceful enough.
Up above, the seven elders poured everything into a single strike. Their combined True Yuan coiled and compressed into a seven-tiered pagoda of raw power — a colossal construct that swallowed miles of sky and came crashing down toward Lu Chen like a collapsing mountain.
Heaven and earth seemed to hold their breath.
"Break."
Lu Chen's voice was flat. Utterly calm.
The Divine Core in his dantian spun, and True Yuan surged through him in a torrent, every drop of it flooding into his right fist. No flourish. No incantation. He threw a single, plain punch — the kind that looked like it should accomplish nothing.
But techniques weren't equal. The cultivation method Lu Chen practiced was mid-grade Earth-rank. The elders' combined technique? High-grade Mysterious-rank at best. The gap between them wasn't a step — it was a cliff face.
BOOM.
The sound was like the world cracking open. The massive seven-tiered pagoda — a construct that had blotted out miles of sky — shattered. Fissures raced across its surface like broken glass, True Yuan exploding outward in every direction, and then the entire structure collapsed into nothing.
"What—?!"
All seven elders lurched backward, faces pale.
"He — he actually repelled them?!"
"Those are seven Divine Core Realm elders! How?!"
"That power — what is that?!"
"How did Zhang Shuo and the others ever think picking a fight with him was a good idea?! They were signing their own death warrants!"
The watching disciples shook where they stood. Everything they thought they knew about Lu Chen was being rewritten in real time.
The spectating elders were less composed now.
"No technique," one said slowly. "He didn't use a single martial skill. It's the method — the grade of his cultivation technique must be..."
"Lu Chen," Wang Wuji said, staring as if seeing him for the first time. His voice had lost its edge. "You've cultivated a high-grade technique."
Wang Wuji himself trained in a perfected, peak-grade Mysterious-rank method — and this man had just shattered their combined pagoda with raw True Yuan alone. The quality of his energy was on another level entirely.
"Don't let it go to your head," Wang Wuji snapped, though the waver in his voice betrayed him. "We weren't serious. Not yet."
A blood-red saber appeared in his grip, its edge singing with cold light. Around him, the other six elders drew their weapons in unison. Playtime was over.
Lu Chen glanced at the array of blades. A slow smile crossed his face.
"Weapons?" He almost sounded amused. "You think I'm unarmed?"