"You!"
That single sentence from Li Yun left Lei Xuankong and the others looking dark enough to drip ink, because they understood the situation perfectly.
If they refused to redeem their spiritual artifacts, Li Yun truly would sell them to someone else, and once that happened, getting those treasures back would become far harder.
Anyone willing to buy artifacts straight from Li Yun while knowing who originally owned them would certainly not be frightened of Lei Xuankong’s group, so threatening the buyer afterward would accomplish almost nothing.
If their treasures ended up in the hands of people they could not intimidate, they would have no one but themselves to blame.
"Fine. I’ll pay."
Chang Tianyu was the first to give in. He snorted coldly, took out his points token, and transferred ten thousand points to Li Yun.
"I’ll pay twelve thousand points for now." Wei Cangming’s expression was even gloomier. "I’ll pay off the remaining eight thousand little by little."
Every word seemed to cost him physical pain. The others only had to pay ten thousand points apiece, which amounted to perhaps one or two months of hard work, but Wei Cangming had lent Han Juefeng two spiritual artifacts.
Redeeming both the Nether Soul Bell and the Myriad Ghostfiend Banner required twenty thousand points, so his loss was far heavier than anyone else’s.
"Li Yun, I’ll have to pay part of mine later as well."
Jiang Canghe, Qin Fenglie, and several others quickly followed, and their attitudes were noticeably less confrontational than Wei Cangming’s or Chang Tianyu’s.
Having seen Li Yun’s methods with their own eyes, they might still resent him, but they had already given up any thought of provoking him further. Losing both the bait and the fish once was painful enough, and doing it twice would simply be stupid.
In fact, their resentment was slowly turning toward Lei Xuankong instead. If he had never proposed this scheme, none of them would have suffered such enormous losses in the first place.
Watching their attitudes shift, Lei Xuankong felt the chill in his heart deepen.
’Li Yun is trying to make sure I can never establish myself here.’
He understood exactly what was happening.
After today, finding anyone willing to work with him against Li Yun would be extremely difficult, because anyone considering such an alliance would remember what had happened to Han Juefeng and everyone who backed him.
They had gained nothing at all. Their treasures had been seized instead, and now they were being forced to spend huge sums of points just to recover what was already theirs. Li Yun’s response had not only wrecked their scheme but had also destroyed Lei Xuankong’s credibility.
Even knowing all this, Lei Xuankong had to swallow the fury burning inside him, because the Qianyuan Five Thunder Seal mattered far too much to lose.
"Li Yun." His voice came out hoarse. "I’ll pay the ten thousand points." He clenched his fists. "But I’ll need some time to gather them."
Li Yun glanced at him with complete indifference.
"There’s no need to gather anything."
Lei Xuankong froze.
"I’m keeping the Qianyuan Five Thunder Seal," Li Yun continued calmly.
"You!"
Lei Xuankong felt a sweetness rise in his throat and nearly spat blood from sheer rage. Everyone else had at least been offered the chance to buy their treasures back, yet Li Yun refused to sell his at any price. The insult was obviously deliberate.
Unfortunately for Lei Xuankong, Li Yun had no interest whatsoever in his anger. His gaze moved instead toward Han Juefeng, who still lay nearby with the look of a thoroughly beaten man.
"Han Juefeng." Li Yun’s voice turned cold. "You lost the wager. Shouldn’t you be keeping your end of the agreement now?"
Han Juefeng’s expression changed in an instant.
"No." He shook his head frantically, his disheveled hair falling across his face as panic swallowed every trace of his earlier arrogance. "No, Li Yun. I know I was wrong. I should never have gone against you, and I should never have agreed to that plan. Please spare me. As long as you let me keep my cultivation, I’ll do anything you ask."
His voice grew more desperate with every word. "I can become your follower. I’ll serve you from now on. Li Yun, please."
For a cultivator, losing one’s cultivation could be more terrifying than death. Every bit of strength built up through years of suffering would vanish, status would disappear, and the future would collapse.
Someone who had once stood above countless ordinary people would suddenly be weaker than the lowest cultivators around him, and Han Juefeng could not accept an ending like that.
Li Yun only looked at him calmly.
"If you knew you couldn’t bear the consequences, why did you make the wager at all?"
Then he turned away, because whether Han Juefeng willingly crippled his own cultivation no longer mattered. He had sworn the wager on his martial heart, and now that he had lost, the oath would take effect on its own.
His cultivation foundation would gradually begin to collapse, and worse still, he would stay fully conscious through the entire process.
He would feel his essence qi draining away, feel his realm sinking, and feel years of cultivation disappearing while he remained completely powerless to stop it. For someone like him, that might hurt far more than having his cultivation destroyed in a single stroke.
"Brother Li, congratulations."
As Li Yun stepped down from the arena, Huang Tianlin, Huang Tianze, and Bai Yuchen came over at once.
The battle had been an overwhelming victory, since Li Yun had crushed Han Juefeng’s scheme and also earned the right to collect sixty thousand points from everyone who had contributed spiritual artifacts. Even with part of it being paid off gradually, the profit was astonishing.
"Brother Li, that was impressive." Mu Tianque approached as well, wearing his usual gentle smile. "I hope we can trade a few moves someday."
He cupped his hands politely. "I still have matters to handle, so I’ll take my leave here."
"Take care, Brother Mu."
Li Yun returned the greeting, though as Mu Tianque walked away, a strange light flickered briefly in his eyes and vanished so fast that nobody around him noticed.
Mu Tianque had just helped him, and by any reasonable measure Li Yun should have felt nothing but gratitude. Yet for some reason, whenever he looked at the man, something felt off.
The sensation was hard to put into words, since there was no obvious killing intent, hostility, or malice anywhere in it. Even so, something about Mu Tianque kept Li Yun’s instincts on guard.

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