The people in the room had no idea Ling Xiao was right outside. Chunlan giggled and said, "Still won’t admit it? Look at all your scars, they’re horrifying to even look at. I can’t imagine how much you must have suffered. You finally managed to escape, but instead of running off to hide, you risked your life to travel a thousand miles overnight just to bring the Young Master this news. So loyal and devoted... Tsk tsk, and you still say you don’t want his heart to ache for you?"

The sound of the girls’ giggling drifted from the room, and a smile touched Ling Xiao’s lips. But an instant later, a hint of killing intent surfaced in the depths of his eyes. He turned and walked away.

Shushan’s Library Pavilion housed a vast collection of Cultivation Techniques and Secret Manuals, divided into five major categories: Alchemy, Artifact Refining, Sword Skills, Heart Methods, and Arrays! Any one of these categories contained no fewer than several thousand different techniques!

Every Inner Sect Disciple was expected to be proficient in at least a few techniques from each of the five categories. Some, with more eclectic tastes in their studies, even achieved proficiency in nearly all of them!

Of course, Ling Xiao was hardly that capable. In each category, he *only* knew a few hundred techniques and was proficient in a mere few dozen. Even so, he was still considered one of the more knowledgeable disciples among his peers back then.

Among these, Ling Xiao had mastered the most techniques in Alchemy, Sword Skills, and Heart Methods, and he was most proficient in them. As for Artifact Refining and Arrays, firstly, his power had been insufficient. Artifact Refining required a massive amount of True Essence, a feat only possible for those at the Nascent Soul Stage or higher.

Secondly, both Artifact Refining and Arrays required a large number of Crystal Stones. Back then, Ling Xiao was so broke his pockets were cleaner than a freshly washed face. Where was he supposed to get Crystal Stones to experiment with?

When he first arrived in this world, Ling Xiao was just as poor. He almost couldn’t even afford enough "food" to supply the clown... Thankfully, his luck finally turned. He obtained a huge number of Magic Beast Crystal Cores from the High Priest, allowing him to rapidly squander over twenty thousand of them like some nouveau riche.

If converted into money, the amount would probably be enough to make even the King faint. Just as that old King was casual about granting titles, this rascal Ling Xiao was just as cavalier about how precious Magic Beast Crystal Cores were!

Ling Xiao carefully sifted through his memories about Arrays. A fierce and sinister name suddenly surfaced in his mind: the Blood Slaughter Celestial Sword Array!

From its name alone, the great Array sounded bloody and evil, but it was actually created by an early senior from Shushan. That senior’s Daoist name was Qingyang. He had a Dao Companion who was said to be the most beautiful woman in the entire Cultivation Realm at the time! Daoist Qingyang himself was a dragon among men, his power formidable. The two were inseparable and deeply in love, becoming the envy of all who saw them.

Then one day, the couple went out together in search of Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures. In that era, the Cultivation Realm wasn’t like it was in later ages, where such rare Spiritual Objects were exceedingly scarce; finding them was still relatively easy.

The two planned to gather more Heavenly Materials and Earthly Treasures so they could enter a long period of secluded cultivation upon returning to their sect. However, they accidentally trespassed onto the territory of an immensely powerful clan and were intercepted. They announced they were from Shushan, but the other party, coveting the beauty of Qingyang’s Dao Companion, tried to forcefully keep her.

The couple was, of course, enraged. After a fierce battle, Qingyang’s Dao Companion sacrificed her physical body to protect her lover. But the enemy was so vicious that they didn’t stop there—they captured her soul and brutally annihilated it!

Qingyang’s Dao Companion had sacrificed herself to save his life, but having lost his beloved, Qingyang was plunged into a deep depression. A bitter resentment festered in his heart. The powerful clan was no weaker than the Shushan Sword Sect at the time, and a direct confrontation would have led to mutual destruction. Unwilling to implicate his sect, Qingyang never even revealed the identity of his enemies.

For the next thousand years, Qingyang’s cultivation stagnated completely!

He spent all his days studying the art of Arrays. The Shushan Sword Sect possessed a total of 7,895 Arrays, and of those, over three thousand... were created by Qingyang alone! This just goes to show the extent of his obsession.

Finally, one day, after organizing all the Arrays he had developed, Qingyang announced he was going out to travel the world. Who in the sect could have possibly imagined that after a thousand years—a time long enough for seas to turn into mulberry fields—Qingyang had still not forgotten the hatred from that fateful day and was still single-mindedly bent on avenging his beloved!

The entire life savings of Qingyang and his Dao Companion amounted to over one thousand High-grade Crystal Stones, over five thousand Middle-grade Crystal Stones, and over ten thousand Low-grade Crystal Stones!

Upon finding that powerful clan once more, Qingyang exhausted every last one of his Crystal Stones, using them to envelop the clan’s entire territory. While he was setting up the Array, no one would have ever imagined that a massive clan with a population of over a hundred thousand people could be completely trapped by a single formation.

After setting up the Array, Qingyang used his own Essence Blood as a catalyst and his True Essence as fuel to activate the massive formation. Standing at the Array’s core, he issued a warning to the clan: his quarrel was only with those responsible. If they handed over everyone who had participated in the ambush a thousand years ago, he would not harm anyone else, as long as they did not interfere.

Every clan had Arrays, and experts in the art were common. Countless people immediately began to mock Qingyang, sneering that the humiliation he suffered a thousand years ago wasn’t enough and that he had returned for more. No one believed a mere Nascent Soul Stage cultivator could deploy any truly powerful Array. Besides, even if they had believed him, the clan would never have handed over the attackers for the sake of its own pride. Many of those who had participated in the original ambush were now pillars of the clan. If they were simply surrendered, the clan would never be able to hold its head high in the Cultivation Realm again.

So, no one paid any attention to the crazed Daoist. Instead, they dispatched several Soul Emergence Stage experts to capture Qingyang and hand him over to the Shushan Sect. After all, in the thousand years that had passed, the Shushan Sword Sect had become a behemoth in the Cultivation Realm, an existence their clan could no longer afford to provoke.

With a cold sneer, Qingyang activated the Array. In an instant, the clan’s entire estate was razed to the ground! Amidst a sky filled with blood-red light, countless flying swords materialized from all directions, relentlessly slaughtering everyone within. No Cultivator, regardless of their level, could withstand the assault. Finally, the clan’s strongest expert, a late-stage Tribulation Crossing master, emerged from seclusion, only to discover that over half of the clan had already perished in the Sword Array.

With a peaceful resolution now impossible, the late-stage Tribulation Crossing master tried to break the Array. He never imagined that after absorbing the Essence Blood of so many, the formation had grown terrifyingly powerful. It trapped him inside. Though the Array couldn’t kill a Tribulation Crossing expert, that same expert was utterly unable to escape!

He could only watch, helpless, as his entire clan of over a hundred thousand people was annihilated by the great Array. By the end, the formation had evolved, now brimming with a fiendish aura. Sinister winds howled, endless wails echoed from within, and ghostly, malevolent gales swirled without rest. It had become a true Array of ghosts!

The evil energy radiating from the place soared to the heavens, attracting countless people to investigate. They discovered the terrifying great Array. After innumerable, high-level masters of the Righteous Path joined forces to finally break the formation, they found two people inside: the Tribulation Crossing expert, now driven completely insane, and Qingyang, who had been dead for a very long time.

Only then did the members of the Shushan Sword Sect realize that this clan must have been the one that killed Qingyang’s Dao Companion. Everyone sighed with deep sorrow. The Array, which grew more powerful the more lives it claimed, was thus named the Blood Slaughter Celestial Sword Array!

Every Inner Sect Disciple who was granted permission to study these Arrays was given a stark warning: unless it is an absolute last resort, *never* deploy the Blood Slaughter Celestial Sword Array. It harms others, but it also destroys the user!

Later, in more recent times, this malevolent Sword Array was improved by Ling Xiao’s master. Its power was no longer as terrifyingly absolute, but in exchange, the caster no longer needed to guard the Array’s core; the formation would operate on its own. Anyone who entered without the caster’s guidance could only wait to be pierced by ten thousand swords!

As Ling Xiao recalled the proud look on his master’s face after improving this Sword Array, he quickly set up Crystal Stones around his residence. On the surface, nothing appeared to have changed, and it would remain completely ordinary until the moment of activation.

A Low-grade Crystal Stone from the Cultivation Realm was roughly equivalent to a Tier Five Crystal Core; a Middle-grade Crystal Stone, a Tier Six or Seven Magic Beast Crystal Core. As for a High-grade Crystal Stone, it was worth at least a Tier Eight Magic Beast Crystal Core or higher. When it came to Top-grade Crystal Stones... Ling Xiao had only heard of them, never seen one. ’I suppose the Crystal Core of a Tier Nine Magical Beast in this world might be comparable, right?’

There might not be many attackers tonight, but he had heard from Feng Ling that the Sword Emperor was possibly a third or even fourth-rank master, along with at least two Sword Grandmasters. Ling Xiao gritted his teeth and used over a thousand Tier Five Magic Beast Crystal Cores and more than thirty Tier Six Magic Beast Crystal Cores. Once activated, his inner residence would become a living hell!

Ling Xiao thought for a moment more, then used another ten thousand-plus Crystal Cores—ranging from Tier Two to Tier Four—to encircle the entire Viscount’s Mansion, creating a defensive Black Tortoise Bewitching Array. Better to be safe than sorry. Who knew if the Southern King might lose his mind and send an entire army to attack? In any case, as long as the Array wasn’t activated, the Magic Beast Crystal Cores wouldn’t be wasted.

Once Ling Xiao had finished all his preparations, he gathered everyone in the mansion, including the servants. He warned them to stay in their rooms once night fell and not to go anywhere. No matter what sounds they might hear, they were not to be afraid, and they were not to come out and gawk.

The servants had long been trained by Chunlan and Qiuyue to be extremely obedient, so how could they dare defy a direct order from the Young Master, Ling Xiao? By the time he had finished arranging everything, the sky was already cloaked in twilight. Ye Zi stood beside him and said softly, "Everyone is very confused; they have no idea what you’ve been so busy with all day. I saw you... it looked like you were placing Magic Beast Crystal Cores all over the place? We may be rich now, but you can’t be so ostentatious. Those people are coming for you. They certainly won’t let you off just because they see a few valuable crystal cores!"

"Hahaha," Ling Xiao couldn’t help but laugh. He had already sent most of the others away, including Mo Qing and Ling Wu, to prevent the city’s nearly-extinguished noble families from seizing the opportunity to cause trouble should a battle break out tonight.

"Don’t worry," he said. "I’m not showing off. Tonight, you can just sit back and enjoy the show with me!"