CHAPTER 139: 139- LIN’S FAMILY PLAN [1]

Lin Estate, Coldwind City.

In a dimly lit chamber within the heart of the estate, shadows clung to the high walls like watching spirits.

Around a polished obsidian table, a group of elders had gathered, faces tense, voices rising in sharp, overlapping waves.

"You tampered with the main branch’s mission, Lin Xi!" one elder barked, his fist slamming onto the table with a crack that echoed like a warning bell. "What were you thinking? Interfering with a sanctioned escort?"

"You’ve endangered everything we’ve built," another snapped, his voice tight with fury. "The main clan will not let this stand. This... this isn’t just bold, it’s suicidal!"

"Our name will be ashes," a third hissed, face pale beneath her painted forehead. "You’ve doomed the entire family!"

Matriarch Lin Xi sat at the head of the table, her posture regal and unmoving, hands folded with surgical precision.

Her sharp eyes flicked between each speaker, silent and cold, cutting through their outrage like a blade through silk.

Just then, like a candle snuffed by an unseen wind, the argument died mid-sentence.

An overwhelming force, an invisible crushing weight slammed down on the room.

It wasn’t physical pain, but a suffocating pressure that seized the mind and spirit, locking breath in throats and freezing tongues.

Lin Xi alone remained upright, her knuckles white on the armrests, her spine ramrod straight against the onslaught.

Around her, the elders didn’t merely slump; they fell, collapsing onto the polished floor like puppets with severed strings, unconscious or paralyzed.

Divine sense.

Raw, immense, and utterly focused, pinning the whole room down like a butterfly beneath glass.

It was cold, precise, and radiated with controlled fury.

Lin Xi didn’t have to guess who did it.

There was only one presence in Coldwind City capable of this... and only one reason could explain why it would be directed at her with such lethal intent.

The confirmation came faster than thought.

BOOM!

The intricately carved ceiling didn’t just shatter; it vanished.

Tons of stone and timber didn’t fall, they were hurled upwards and outwards in a cataclysmic eruption of dust, splinters and screaming air.

Daylight flooded the ruined chamber, harsh and exposing.

Through the swirling debris, a figure descended.

Not with the usual flamboyant arc of sword-flight Fang Yuan was known for, but on a column of pure, roiling qi.

He dropped like a meteor given human form, landing silently amidst the wreckage on the cracked floor, his boots not even disturbing the dust settling around them.

Fang Yuan stood there.

His sword in his hand, yet the air around him hummed with a sharper edge than any blade.

His expression was granite carved by a glacier, utterly devoid of the rare cheerfulness Felicia had glimpsed hours before.

His eyes, dark and fathomless, locked onto Lin Xi with an intensity that felt like physical daggers pricking her skin.

The sheer, unadorned power radiating from him was terrifying.

Lin Xi’s throat constricted. Her earlier composure evaporated.

A single, reflexive gulp traveled down her dry throat, audible in the sudden, ringing silence that followed the explosion.

The cold sweat that beaded on her brow felt like ice.

Danger wasn’t just present; it had shattered her world and stood amidst the ruins, waiting.

Then, his voice cut through the settling dust.

"Tell me," Fang Yuan commanded, the words dropping like stones into the abyss of her fear, "how do you wish to die?"

The crushing pressure of Fang Yuan’s divine sense held the ruined chamber in a vice.

Lin Xi’s mouth opened, a silent gasp then snapped shut, jaw clenched against the terror.

With a visible, shuddering effort, she forced words past the constriction in her throat, her voice cracking like dry timber: "Clan Head Fang Yuan! Can I talk to you?!"

Fang Yuan expression remained carved from ice.

Slowly, deliberately, he raised his sword.

The air around the blade hummed, gathering a light so intense it seemed to bleach the color from the world.

His lips barely moved, but the words echoed with chilling finality.

"Tyrant Light Sword. First Form – Divine Line."

A thread of pure, annihilating light coalesced along the blade’s edge, aimed unerringly at Lin Xi’s heart.

Death was a breath away.

"FANG RUÌ!" Lin Xi screamed, the raw sound tearing her throat. "She’s alive! I swear it! She’s unharmed and in perfect health!"

The blinding thread of light twitched.

And it deviated, avoiding her outright.

It lanced through the prone forms of the unconscious elders where they lay scattered on the cracked floor.

There was no sound, nor explosion. It just dissipated into the air.

Five lives, snuffed like candle flames in a hurricane.

The air filled with the faint, acrid smell of ozone and something charred.

Fang Yuan’s sword lowered a fraction. His eyes, colder than the void between stars, locked onto hers.

"Where. Is. She?"

Lin Xi scrambled to her feet, limbs trembling like saplings in a gale.

Sweat plastered strands of hair to her temples, her fine robes clinging damply.

Peak Golden Core? Before a nascent soul realm master, she was less than dust.

"Please," she rasped, gesturing frantically towards a side passage, "follow me, Clan Head!"

She led him on unsteady legs through the smoke-choked ruin of her hall, down a corridor, into her private chambers.

The air here was thick with the scent of sandalwood.

There, on a low divan, peacefully and breathing softly, lay Fang Ruì.

Fang Yuan’s gaze snapped from the girl to Lin Xi, a flicker of genuine surprise tightening his features for a microsecond.

This chamber... was able to shield from my divine sense? The implication hung unspoken but potent.

Lin Xi, misinterpreting his sharp look as condemnation, babbled, dropping to her knees.

"Clan Head Fang Yuan, spare me! I knew nothing of the main branch’s attack! I swear! I only found her... I hid her here... I saved her!"

Her eyes darted back towards the ruined hall. "The elders... they wanted to hand her over! That’s why we were arguing! That’s why—"