Beicang Qiong’s answer brought a befuddled still to the clamorous crowd. He’d ascended to the void realm after getting beat up by senior brother Lu?

Senior brother Lu Yun?

Many turned to Lu Yun in surprise, and Ling Ruyu’s disbelief was writ clear on his face.

“Hahaha!” The Ling scion threw his head back and brayed with laughter. “I didn’t expect the Beicang Clan to put Lu Yun on a fake pedestal just for the sake of two cultivation holy lands. Ludicrous, what a joke!”

Beicang Qiong shrugged and didn’t say anything further.

The crowd didn’t join in Ling Ruyu’s ridicule, and the Ling scion noticed the awkward atmosphere after a while. He shut his mouth with an embarrassed expression.

Someone suddenly floated to the forefront of his mind.

Qing Han.

There was no way Lu Yun was capable of helping Beicang Qiong ascend to the void realm, but Qing Han was a definite possibility. The dao sovereign certainly had the ability to do so. He’d restored the entirety of the void realm. The only thing holding him back from ascending was his cultivation, which hadn’t yet reached peak transformed spirit realm.

After running through the idea, Ling Ruyu quickly calmed down. He hadn’t forgotten what he was here for—the fortress ship!

There were many means of transportation in the world of immortals, but fortress ships remained the premier option.

The art of creating fortress ships had been excavated from an ancient tomb by the Ling Clan. It could be said that the best fortress ships in the world came from their clan, and even the master refiner clan, the Zhurongs, fell short in this area.

Now, however, Ling Ruyu saw a fortress ship that was several times more powerful than the Ling Clan’s work. He couldn’t not do anything about that. As the clan’s most talented genius, he could naturally recognize the ship—its foundations were Ling handiwork, after all—but it’d become much more powerful after significant remodeling.

That, the clan wouldn’t tolerate or accept.

The Ling Clan enjoyed a special status in Nephrite Major and considered themselves to be above mundane matters. When Dusk Province showed the potential to become a cultivation sacred land, almost all of Nephrite Major and half of the immortals in the world wanted to kill Lu Yun and replace him, but the Ling Clan had avoided involvement in the matter from beginning to end.

……

“Please return my clan’s ship, senior brother Lu.” Ling Ruyu’s expression hardened.

“Hahaha! Do you have no shame at all, Ling Ruyu?!” Beicang Qiong was unusually loud, his tones covering half of the island.

Among the six degenerates, with the exception of the petite beauty, Jing Dichen, everyone had been influenced by the Deaf Prince after long-term exposure and were used to shouting everything.

Beicang Qiong approached Ling Ruyu and crooked a finger at him. “Come, come, let me smack you across the face and check how thick your skin is.”

Livid, Ling Ruyu met Lu Yun’s gaze with a scoffed, “Are you returning the ship or not, Lu Yun?!”

“The ship is right there,” Lu Yun finally spoke up. “Take it yourself if you want it so much.”

“Little bastard!” huffed a peerless immortal behind Ling Ruyu. “How is the young master supposed to claim the ship if you don’t deactivate the formation on it?”

“Isn’t that supposed to be your clan’s ship?” With a casual wave of his hand, Lu Yun stowed away the fortress ship he’d offered the Ling Clan. “If that’s the case, there must be one of your restrictions at the heart of the vessel. As a core Ling genius, you should know how to control it. Activate the restriction. You’ll be able immediately to destroy the formation then.”

Lu Yun’s tone was calm, but the implications of his words hit everyone hard.

Ling-crafted fortress ships could be found all over the world of immortals. In addition to the Nephrite court, they also supplied ships to all of the major factions in the world. In fact, half of the thousands of ships moored at the Immortal Sky harbor were manufactured by the Ling Clan. But Lu Yun had said there was a restriction on every ship!

“Utter nonsense!” Ling Ruyu hurriedly denied, his expression tense. “Why would there be restrictions in our ships?!”

“If there isn’t, what proof do you have that the ship is yours?” Lu Yun’s face darkened. “I had a ship that once belonged to you. Senior brother Chen Xiao took it from an elite of the Ling Clan. So let me ask you this, why didn’t you ask for the ship back when senior brother Chen Xiao first took it from you?

“You demand its return only when I’m refining treasures on Immortal Sky Island?” He stalked toward Ling Ruyu, his presence growing increasingly powerful and weighing heavily on Ling Ruyu’s heart like a mountain.

Ling Ruyu panicked, backing away as Lu Yun advanced. To his horror, the void realm cultivation he was so proud of was as flimsy as a piece of paper when facing the mountainous presence radiating from the guardian of the Dao Flower.

Even the power of the land coursing through him that he was so proud of was crushed by this presence. Not scattered or stripped, but crushed!

Lu Yun could crush the power of the land!

It was only at that moment that Ling Ruyu finally understood the true depths of Lu Yun’s strength.

“Die!” shouted a peerless immortal behind the Ling scion when he saw his master being suppressed by Lu Yun. Sword energy shot out of his mouth and pierced straight at Lu Yun.

Violence may be prohibited on Sky Immortal Island, but the Ling Clan was influential and they owned a merchant guild that could rival the Panorama Pavilion. Naturally, they didn’t think much about the pavilion’s rules.

“It’s you who should die.” a chilling voice enunciated from behind the peerless immortal. An enormous hand wrapped around the immortal’s neck and crushed it to pieces.

“What?!” Shock and horror gripped Ling Ruyu. How dare someone kill a peerless immortal of his clan in broad daylight!

Before he could react, a giant foot descended from the sky and stepped on him, grinding him into meat paste before he could even scream. His spirit and soul were completely pulverized; he was deader than dead.

Everyone looked on with sheer disbelief.

Ling Ruyu, top genius of the Ling Clan, one who’d ascended to the void realm and pioneered his own void realm methods, had died from a single stomp!

And despite all that, no one could even determine who the foot belonged to.

“It’s a dao immortal! The person who killed Ling Ruyu and the Ling peerless immortal is a dao immortal!” a shrill shriek broke the silence, waking the Ling immortals from their shock-induced stupor.

“Young lord!!” They lunged at Lu Yun with reckless abandon, but—

Bam!

Another foot dropped from the sky and crushed them all.