Task Complete, Zhao Qian's Lineage, All Expelled!

The fire dragon's impact was a self-destructive plunge, its form dissolving into a blazing sea of fire the precise instant it slammed into Zhao Zhou.

Dragon head, dragon body, dragon tail-all were utterly annihilated against him.

When the roaring flames finally subsided.

Zhao Zhou was left enveloped by a lingering ring of fire. He remained frozen in a cross-legged sitting posture, lying quietly amidst the ash.

By this time.

His flesh had been burned pitch-black, his features completely unrecognizable. He was entirely devoid of life aura-he had been killed thoroughly!

Ning Fan raised an eyebrow. He had not expected it was possible to kill disciples inside the Burning Heaven Cauldron. He had assumed it would be like his encounter with Personal Disciple Qingbo.

In the outside world, the moment a technique reached a lethal threshold, the participant would be protected and swept away by the Yin Yang Tower.

But it made sense.

The interior of the Burning Heaven Cauldron was a completely isolated space. It was only logical that the restrictive formations of the Yin Yang Tower could not penetrate it.

"Zhao Zhou!"

"Senior Brother Zhou!"

Several sharp cries rang out. Zhao Chuang, Zhao Feixing, and the remaining Zhao family disciples suddenly sensed the absolute erasure of Zhao Zhou's presence. Their eyes widened in pure horror.

Their faces were pale with disbelief.

Ning Fan had actually cut down Zhao Zhou so cleanly and decisively, even tearing away his very life?

A cold wave of terror rippled through the survivors.

Did this not mean Ning Fan could just as easily slaughter every single one of them?

"Ning... Ning Fan!"

"How dare you!"

"If you dare continue this, our Zhao family will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"

Zhao Chuang, having barely deflected the fire dragon pursuing him, glared at Ning Fan with bloodshot eyes. Though his words were a threat, to Ning Fan's ears, they sounded entirely hollow-nothing more than the desperate blustering of a cornered beast.

"Then you are next."

A trace of frost flashed through Ning Fan's eyes. In the next instant, his figure blurred, charting a straight line toward Zhao Chuang.

Zhao Chuang's pupils shrank. Without a shred of hesitation, he turned and fled, lacking even the basic courage to face Ning Fan alone.

Yet, he had completely misjudged his opponent's speed. Enhanced by the Three Thousand Flame Movement, Ning Fan's movement had reached an absolute, terrifying extreme.

Boom!

Enveloped in a mantle of fire, Ning Fan resembled a descending meteor as he appeared instantly behind his prey. By the time Zhao Chuang threw a frantic look over his shoulder, all he saw was a flame-wrapped fist expanding to fill his vision.

Thud!

A sickening, muffled crunch echoed. Ning Fan's fist smashed squarely into Zhao Chuang's face, instantly obliterating his skull beneath the sheer kinetic force.

A mist of blood exploded outward, spraying across the immediate area. Before a single drop could touch Ning Fan's body, the intense heat of his aura instantly vaporized the fluid with a sharp, violent hiss.

The headless corpse collapsed heavily to the floor, kicking up a small cloud of dust.

"Zhao Chuang?!"

Seeing Zhao Chuang and Zhao Zhou perish back-to-back, whether it was Zhao Feixing or the remaining lackeys, their expressions dissolved into unmasked panic.

How could this be?

Where was the protective mechanism of the Yin Yang Tower? Why hadn't it intervened? Were they truly going to let this god of slaughter butcher everyone present down to the last man?

"Ning... Junior Brother Ning."

"There must be a misunderstanding between us. This Senior Brother was merely acting on higher orders. I beg Junior Brother Ning Fan to spare my life!"

Zhao Feixing openly pleaded, casting aside all pride.

Ning Fan merely met his gaze with an impassive countenance. Whether to strike, and how heavily to execute his judgment-he had weighed it all clearly in his mind.

It was simple.

Those who live by the sword must be prepared to die by it.

Had he fallen into the hands of these men, his fate would have been countless times worse. Since they would have shown him no mercy, why should he offer them useless pity?

Ning Fan flicked his wrist. The fire dragon that had just cornered Zhao Chuang instantly pivoted, hurtling directly toward Zhao Feixing.

"Ning Fan!"

Zhao Feixing shrieked, but his cries were abruptly cut short. With his cultivation level, managing two independent fire dragons simultaneously left him with absolutely no breath to spare for arguments.

Ning Fan shifted his cold gaze to the remaining Zhao family disciples.

Whoosh!

His figure flickered again, slicing through the air with a whistling gale. He materialized instantly before one of the ordinary disciples, his Spirit Marks fully flaring with spiritual light as he drove a straight punch forward.

One strike completely impaled the cultivator's torso.

Ning Fan's bare arm tore straight through the disciple's chest and abdomen, stopping only when his elbow met the flesh.

When he pulled his hand back, a deathly gray pallor had already settled over the disciple's features, and the youth collapsed hard onto the stone floor.

Where his heart had been, a bowl-sized, cauterized black hole stood empty, its edges completely charred.

Ning Fan moved like a phantom across the battlefield.

Wherever his shadow fell, a Zhao disciple dropped dead. These twelve ranking and ordinary disciples were simply incapable of matching his raw strength.

In a mere dozen breaths, all twelve had been systematically slain by his hands. Within the vast expanse of the Burning Heaven Cauldron, only Ning Fan, Yun Qingyao, and Zhao Feixing remained.

"Ning Fan, you... you madman!" Zhao Feixing's voice shook violently.

Whether it was driven by absolute fury or consuming terror no longer mattered to Ning Fan. He raised a hand and made a sweeping gesture, commanding the six remaining fire dragons within the cauldron to lock onto Zhao Feixing's position-a total of eight draconic entities converging in a brutal pincer movement!

Instantly, Zhao Feixing's defenses fell into complete disarray. If he dodged one dragon, he was clipped by the next.

If he parried another, a third would crash into him immediately after.

He was granted no reprieve, no time to gather his spiritual power, and no room to breathe.

Boom!

Finally, the moment Zhao Feixing's concentration faltered from sheer exhaustion, a fire dragon smashed directly into his spine. The colossal kinetic force launched him high into the air. Left without any leverage in midair, he became nothing more than a broken rag doll, thrown violently back and forth as the dragons took turns battering his airborne frame.

Thud! Thud! Thud! Thud!

In a final, synchronized strike, the eight fire dragons converged into a single point, slamming heavily into Zhao Feixing's chest. The catastrophic impact nearly threw him clear out of the cauldron's internal boundary.

Crash!

His body plummeted from the heights, crashing against the ground as a mound of mangled flesh, utterly stripped of any recognizable human form.

Ning Fan's gaze swept across the interior of the Burning Heaven Cauldron. Aside from himself and Yun Qingyao, there was not a single heartbeat left.

Three personal disciples of the Zhao family, along with fifteen ranking and ordinary disciples.

All had perished.

Ning Fan flipped his palm, producing the paper list that Zhao Tanye had secretly slipped to him. The ledger contained roughly thirty names of various cultivators.

Naturally, Ning Fan did not recognize every single one of them. However, the most critical targets-Zhao Qingbo, Zhao Zhou, Zhao Chuang, and Zhao Feixing-had now been thoroughly "expelled."

Being dead certainly counted as being removed from the competition, he reasoned.

Ning Fan shrugged.

As for the lesser disciples, between the initial ambush and this battle, he had personally expelled or killed over twenty of them, which aligned almost perfectly with the numbers on the ledger.

"This should suffice to fulfill the request of that Zhao family Dao Lord."

What Zhao Tanye had asked of him was to ensure that Zhao Qian's lineage suffered a catastrophic showing during the Peak Competition, providing her with the political leverage needed to launch a internal purge within the clan.

Four personal disciples eliminated and over twenty ordinary disciples wiped out.

This result would undoubtedly leave that calculating woman deeply satisfied.

Ning Fan raised his hand, a small wisp of flame dancing on his fingertips. He touched it to the paper slip, allowing the fire to instantly consume the list, reducing the evidence to fine ash.

88.181.249.5

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