Chapter 284: Showing Off

Yu Xuan and Sisu arrived near Liji, who immediately swung a clawed strike toward Yu Xuan’s throat.Yu Xuan flicked her forehead.

"Hey. Are you trying to murder your own senior brother? Or attack your sister by mistake?"

Liji froze mid-attack, startled, then backed away to regroup as several Snowy Phantoms closed in on them from all sides.

"What’s your kill count?" she demanded, ignoring Yu Xuan entirely as she turned to her twin.

"Tensss," Sisu replied proudly.

Liji clicked her tongue, then looked at Yu Xuan with narrowed eyes.

"My count is thirteen. Senior Brother Yu, if we continue like this, we might end up being the ones paying for the party."

Yu Xuan’s mouth twitched.

...This brat.

He rubbed his temples.

"Little girl, let me show you how we’re going to win. You’ll thank this senior later."

"I am NOT LITTLE!!" Liji roared, preparing to rush another Phantom charging toward them, but.

Snap.

Yu Xuan didn’t even look. The Snowy Phantom disintegrated instantly, leaving behind a floating core that drifted into his hand.

Liji stood there, dumbfounded.

"Watch closely," Yu Xuan said, voice calm, posture leisurely, absolutely dripping with the aura of a veteran expert showing off.

A golden barrier shimmered into existence around the twins, enveloping them safely. He made sure they could see everything he was about to do but would remain untouched.

After all.

Yu Xuan wanted them to witness how a proper senior brother operated.

And to build a reliable image of himself.

At least for now.

He exhaled softly.

Outside his visible range, dozens no, hundreds of Snowy Phantoms had gathered, circling like wolves waiting for them.

Yu Xuan lifted a single hand.

With a thought — [Telekinesis] activated.

BOOM.

An invisible domain exploded outward from him, expanding like an unseen tide.

Everything it touched... stopped.

Literally stopped.

The howling blizzard froze mid-air like a painting.

Snowflakes hung suspended.

Whipping winds went silent.

And the Snowy Phantoms trapped within the domain howled in raw confusion.

"HUU—?!"

"HUUUU?!"

It was the first time in their entire existence that the eternal snowstorm had ceased.

To them, the world itself had gone wrong.

Yu Xuan didn’t give them time to adjust.

He flicked his fingers.

The frozen snow all around shifted, sharpened, and crystallized into thousands of icy blades hovering in the air like an army waiting for orders.

Then.

Swish! Swish! Swish!

A rain of razor-thin shards plunged downward.

"HUUUU—!"

"H—!"

Their cries were cut short, buried instantly under waves of snow as cores shot upward in dozens, flying toward Yu Xuan like iron drawn to a magnet. They gathered neatly at his feet glittering pale-blue spheres stacked into a small hill.

This massacre continued for nearly a full minute.

Inside the golden barrier, Sisu and Liji could only stand there with jaws dropped so wide their cold breath fogged the barrier.

In their minds, a single thought echoed:

This senior... is more reliable than clouds blocking sunlight.

But Yu Xuan was not done.

Not even close.

His eyes glinted with mischief and competitiveness.

"Let’s do something more," he muttered.

Then deliberately, fully aware that it was supposed to be impossible here to fly due to restrictions.

Yu Xuan rose into the air.

He floated upward into the raging snowstorm that no one else could fly through, standing against the blizzard like a sovereign of winter.

The twins, safely protected inside the golden barrier, suddenly felt... odd.

"Senior Brother Yu... is he showing off?!" Sisu whispered, her forked tongue flicking out in disbelief.

Liji wanted to deny it, but the man floating inside a restricted blizzard like he owned the weather.

Then, a half-opened eye manifested on Yu Xuan’s forehead.

His spirit sense erupted outward, swallowing the entire blizzard without resistance.

And suddenly:

Everything inside the storm, every snowflake, every gust of wind, every lurking Snowy Phantom froze, as though time itself had hiccuped.

Then, with a low hum...

The entire snowstorm began to turn.

Clockwise.

Slowly at first.

Then faster.

And faster.

FWOOOOSH—

The twins felt their scalps go numb.

Yu Xuan was controlling the snowstorm.

Wind and ice bent like obedient children, moving according to his will as the massive storm tightened and shrank.

Its diameter collapsed inward rapidly, dragging every Snowy Phantom screaming into its spinning heart.

A colossal snow tornado formed, and the anomaly was so immense that cultivators far away raised their heads in alarm.

"HUUUU!"

"HUUU—!"

The cries of countless Snowy Phantoms echoed through the Gate, chilling even the bones of those outside the region.

Then.

The tornado lurched upward.

And like a silk thread being reeled in, it followed Yu Xuan’s finger, hovering above it as though he were controlling a puppet.

A storm the size of a mountain sat at the tip of one man’s finger.

Cores, hundreds of pale icy cores detached from the spinning storm and floated neatly around him like a field of stars.

Yu Xuan laughed lightly, enjoying the dumbstruck expressions of the twin sisters.

"He... he’s definitely showing off..." Sisu muttered, stunned.

"He’s insane..." Liji added, equally stunned yet deeply impressed now.

Then Yu Xuan pointed a single finger upward.

A small black flame flickered into existence.

He touched the tornado.

fwoom—

The blue-white storm turned black.

Then it burned.

Silently.

Instantly.

As if space itself erased it.

A faint, invisible shriek rippled between Heaven and Earth, a dying protest of a consciousness that had been residing within the storm.

The blizzard collapsed completely.

Yu Xuan descended gracefully, landing on the snow with a mountain of shimmering cores behind him and two speechless junior sisters in front of him.

He brushed snow off his robe and sighed in satisfaction.

’As expected... the snowstorm had a mind of its own. I’ll certainly meet the true mastermind soon.’

He glanced at the twins.

Both nodded at him dumbly.

Yu Xuan smiled.

"Come on, let’s move to another area."

They obeyed immediately.

After all.

When your senior brother can casually bend weather, turn a blizzard into a toy, and burn the storm alive arguing with him was simply not an option.

Even the twins, who moments ago were boasting about their kill count, now followed Yu Xuan with the quiet obedience of frightened kittens.

Yu Xuan, naturally, acted as if this were completely normal.

With a mountain of icy cores tucked neatly inside his storage ring, he led them toward another region.

Along the way, he lectured the twins with all the seriousness of a veteran elder.

"Look, if you’re hunting you must be efficient. Don’t waste energy. Don’t waste chances. Don’t waste cores. And for heaven’s sake stop destroying the loot when you kill monsters."

The twins nodded like students being scolded by a strict teacher.

"Yes, Senior Brother..."

"We will not crush the coressss anymore..."

Yu Xuan nodded in satisfaction.

Good. His image of a reliable senior brother was solidifying nicely.

***

Elsewhere — The Snowstorm’s Former Domain

After Yu Xuan left, the region that once housed a vicious blizzard became nothing but a quiet field of pale snow.

Then.

Crunch...

A figure staggered into the clearing.

A man, though barely recognizable as such wearing the disciple robes of the Heaven Immortal Sect.

But his eyes were dull.

Unfocused.

Patchy white fur crept along his arms.

His fingernails had become claws.

His breath steamed like a beast’s snarl.

"GRRRRR—"

He glared at the empty space with mindless hatred.

His body trembled.

Then.

His head snapped toward one direction.

The direction Yu Xuan had gone.

With a beast-like growl, he bolted forward, vanishing into the snow.

***

Elsewhere — Another Group Arrives.

Four disciples appeared near the same area, each wearing the unruly air of people who had... acquainted themselves in prison.

They stared at the barren land in shock.

"Damn it... no loot left!"

"Who the hell cleared an entire zone alone?!"

"Hehe... shouldn’t we look for the person who did this? They must be half-dead by now from the effort."

The fourth disciple adjusted his sleeves and said thoughtfully,

"We should observe first, assess from a distance, then loot... I mean, approach."

The others nodded with sinister camaraderie.

"Right!"

"Hehe... I hope our prey is a good one."

Their eyes gleamed.

If only they knew the "prey" they were chasing had eaten blizzards for breakfast.

And, they were already acquaintances.

***

Yu Xuan and the twins arrived near a large lake.

"Senior Yusss, please stop," Sisu finally pleaded.

"Yes, we understand we’ll save resources," Liji added, rubbing her temples.

After Yu Xuan lectured them about efficiency, he somehow drifted into... completely unrelated topics.

Philosophy, economics, discipline and much more.

"Cough, cough. Don’t mind my mindless rambling," Yu Xuan said, slightly embarrassed.

If only he knew...

These twins were older than him by several years.

If they told him that, Yu Xuan would probably cough blood and scold them a lot.

He only did this because he genuinely believed he was kindly educating two young, poor, impressionable juniors on how to save resources and survive the cruelty of the world.

Perhaps his "reliable senior brother" image still needed more polishing.