Rejected By The Sect, Claimed By The Immortal Jade

Chapter 8: Collecting The Debt

The nine dragon chains shattered.

Not one by one. All at once.

When Ye Honglian stood up fully, the entire Demon-Sealing Cave collapsed behind her. The 800-year-old sealing formation that 12 Nascent Soul ancestors had built together was torn like paper by her bare hands.

The black lotus on her chest bloomed completely — nine petals, each petal containing a screaming soul of a Nascent Soul cultivator she had devoured 300 years ago.

Outside the cave, the night turned red.

Sect Master Ling Tian, who was half-step Soul Formation, actually took a step back. His white scholar robe fluttered violently. For the first time in 50 years, he felt death.

"Ye Honglian! You... you broke through! You were supposed to be sealed until you died!"

Ye Honglian didn't look at him. She looked down at Ye Fan.

Her nephew. White-haired at 18, two broken arms, Foundation Establishment Early, but with eyes that had endured three years of humiliation and still didn't kneel. Just like her sister — Ye Fan's mother — 20 years ago.

She gently touched Ye Fan's white hair. Her hand, which could crush mountains, was trembling.

"Who stole your root?" she asked again, her voice soft, but the sky above the back mountain turned blood-red with her anger.

Ye Fan pointed. Not at Elder Mo. At the boy on the ground whose legs had given way.

Liu Hao.

Liu Hao was crawling backwards on his butt, piss staining his inner disciple robe. The golden root inside his chest — Ye Fan's original Heavenly Root — was not just cracking now. It was screaming, trying to rip itself out of his flesh and fly back to Ye Fan.

"No... no! Master! Save me! Grandpa Mo! Save me! This root is mine! Elder Mo gave it to me! It's mine!"

Elder Mo didn't move to save him. Elder Mo was already quietly stepping back towards Sect Master Ling Tian.

Ye Honglian smiled. It was a beautiful smile, but it made every elder present feel their souls freeze.

"Yours?"

She raised one finger.

The golden root inside Liu Hao's chest  which Elder Mo had spent three years and 49 precious pills to fuse  exploded out.

SPLURT!

Not a clean removal. A brutal, bloody extraction. Liu Hao's chest was torn open, his ribs broken, his meridians shredded. The golden root, covered in his blood, flew into the air, pulsing, finally free.

Liu Hao screamed , not like a human, like a pig being slaughtered. His cultivation, which was entirely built on that stolen root, collapsed instantly.

Qi Condensation Level 7... Level 5... Level 2... Level 0... Mortal.

His black hair turned white in seconds, his face aged 40 years. He became a withered old man in a young man's robe, lying in a pool of his own blood, unable to even scream anymore.

The entire sect was dead silent. Inner disciples who had bullied Ye Fan for three years fell to their knees, vomiting from fear.

Ye Fan walked over. His broken arms hung useless, but he kicked Liu Hao over with his foot.

He looked down at the man who had crushed his jade yesterday, who had taken his fiancée, who had lived as a genius on his stolen life.

"Liu Hao," Ye Fan said softly, his gold and black eyes cold. "How does it feel? To be trash?"

Liu Hao tried to speak, but only blood bubbled from his mouth.

Ye Fan didn't kill him. He turned to Ye Honglian.

"Auntie, don't kill him. Let him live like this. Let him be the trash he called me for three years. Let every disciple who laughed at me see what happens to fake geniuses."

Ye Honglian laughed, a laugh that made the mountain tremble. "Good. You have the heart of my Ye Clan. Cruel to enemies, loyal to family."

She flicked the bloody golden root towards Ye Fan. It floated in front of him, beating like a heart, recognizing its master.

"Take it back. It has always been yours."

Ye Fan opened his mouth. The Devouring Root behind him, even without Lingxiao controlling it, roared and swallowed the golden root whole.

BOOM!

The second root fused with the first. Black-gold Devouring Root + Golden Heavenly Root = ?

A new root was born. Half black-gold vortex, half pure golden sun, rotating around each other like yin and yang.

His aura, which had been weak Foundation Early after the Soul Formation strike, exploded.

Foundation Establishment — Middle Stage!

Foundation Establishment — Late Stage!

Foundation Establishment — Peak!

One stolen root returned, and he jumped two small realms instantly. His two broken arms healed with a crack, bones reforming with golden light.

He clenched his fists. Power - real power that was truly his for the first time in three years flooded him.

He turned. One enemy down. One to go.

He looked at Elder Mo.

Elder Mo, who had raised him, who had called him grandson, who had dug out his root with his own hands that night while Ye Fan's mother begged.

Elder Mo was now kneeling in front of Sect Master Ling Tian, begging.

"Sect Master! Save me! I did everything for you! I massacred the Ye Clan for you! I stole the root for you! The jade..."

Sect Master Ling Tian looked down at Elder Mo with disgust, like looking at a used rag.

"Mo Qianji, you have served for 100 years. You know too many secrets."

He raised his hand. A white sword light flashed.

Elder Mo's head flew off before he could finish his sentence. His kind grandfather face was still frozen in disbelief and betrayal.

He had massacred a clan for this man. And this man killed him like a dog to silence him.

The head rolled to Ye Fan's feet.

Ye Fan stared at it. The man who had haunted his nightmares for three years was dead. Not by his hands. By his master's hands.

He felt nothing. No satisfaction. Only emptiness, and a colder anger towards the man in white.

Sect Master Ling Tian killed Elder Mo, then looked at Ye Honglian and Ye Fan, his face calm again, as if he had just killed a chicken.

"Ye Honglian, you have been sealed for 300 years. You are weak. I have already sent a message to the Upper Realm. The Profound Sword Sect's ancestor , a true Void Refining expert  will arrive in one hour. You cannot kill me in one hour."

He smiled at Ye Fan.

"And you, Ye Fan. You have two choices. Give me the shattered jade and your aunt's Red Lotus core, and I will let you and your sister leave and become rogue cultivators. Refuse, and when my ancestor arrives, he will extract your souls and refine you into pills. Your aunt will be sealed again for another 300 years."

He thought he had won. He had an ancestor.

Ye Honglian was about to laugh and tear him apart anyway, even if it meant both dying, when Ye Fan stepped forward, his new twin roots spinning, his white hair fluttering.

He held up the dim, shattered jade pieces.

"Sect Master Ling Tian," Ye Fan said, his voice calm, but carrying across the whole mountain so every disciple heard. "You want this jade?"

"Yes."

"You ordered my clan's massacre for this jade?"

"Yes. The strong take from the weak. That's the law."

Ye Fan nodded. Then he did something no one expected.

He smashed the shattered jade pieces together in his hands and crushed them into powder.

"No!"

Ling Tian screamed, his calm mask shattering, lunging forward.

But it was too late. The powder didn't fall. It was swallowed by Ye Fan's Devouring Root.

Inside his mind, the sleeping Lingxiao suddenly jolted awake, screaming in terror and ecstasy:

"BOY! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?! THAT'S MY SOUL CORE! YOU SWALLOWED MY SOUL CORE! YOU...."

The jade powder turned into a flood of memories  not Lingxiao's, but the jade's own memories for 10,000 years — flooding into Ye Fan's mind.

And one memory, crystal clear, showed the Profound Sword Sect's founding ancestor kneeling in front of a Ye Clan ancestor 800 years ago, swearing:

"We, the Ling Clan, will protect the Ye Clan for 10,000 generations. If we betray them, let our bloodline be devoured."

Ye Fan opened his eyes. They were no longer gold and black.

They were pure white, with a black lotus spinning inside, just like his aunt's.

He looked at Sect Master Ling Tian and smiled.

"Sect Master, did you know? Your Ling Clan's bloodline oath is still inside this jade. And I just swallowed it."

Ling Tian's face turned snow-white. His Nascent Soul body started cracking, black lotus patterns appearing on his skin.

"The bloodline curse... you activated the bloodline curse... IMPOSSIBLE!"

Behind Ling Tian, every single elder and disciple with the Ling surname started screaming as black lotuses bloomed on their chests.

The 800-year-old oath the sect was built on had been broken  and now it was collecting its price.