My Journey to Immortality Begins with Hunting-Chapter 690 – A Hundred Battles Later, Still the Man I First Met - Part 1

Chapter 690 – A Hundred Battles Later, Still the Man I First Met - Part 1

In the depths of late autumn, the trees rustled with a dry whisper as the wind swept through them.

Li Yuan sat quietly beneath the thick shade, sharp eyes scanning his surroundings. Everyone he saw registered as ordinary humans.

But the wind carried more than dead leaves. It carried the faint, decadent scent of indulgence from deep within the palace.

“Keep her in the well. Don’t bring her out until her face is unrecognizable.”

“Princess Yi? What Princess Yi? That’s Sovereign Ye’s new consort. Treat her like royalty, feed her like a queen. No mistakes.”

“Make way, make way. This way, please.”

A man dressed like a court painter walked forward, led by an imperial attendant.

He was taken to a palace hall that just barely edged into Li Yuan’s field of vision.

Moments later, the palace lit up. Through the windows, one could glimpse the swaying shadows of dancing girls, their elegant figures spinning with graceful ease.

But soon the dance turned into something else. The women began to peel away their layers, and the painter, seated to the side, worked frantically, his brush flying across the paper.

A spring painting. He’s actually having erotic art made inside the harem? Li Yuan was speechless.

He didn’t move. He didn’t act. He just watched and waited.

He was the patient type, exceptionally so. Until he was sure of his target, he would not take a single step. One wrong move could ruin everything.

He needed to see if this Divine Sovereign was truly transcendent because only rulers of that caliber were worth killing.

And this one? This Sovereign Ye...he was unique. And Li Yuan had learned to associate unique with insane.

In the new world order, if someone wasn’t of your kind, they were your mortal enemy.

That meant, if Sovereign Ye turned out to be transcendent, Li Yuan wouldn’t need a reason to kill him. The act would justify itself.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Midnight.

A shadowy figure appeared, entering the palace grounds. Li Yuan’s gaze caught the glowing 180~460 above the man’s head.

The man stormed into the royal bedchamber and barked, “Attendants!”

Li Yuan’s heart surged, like a blind cat coming across as a dead rat. Was the guy really transcendent? What were the odds? It seemed following his gut really paid off!

Soon, more attendants arrived, addressing the man as Divine Sovereign.

There it was, the confirmation. This was Yang Ye, the successor to Yang Jiang.

The man had no clue someone was watching from the tree outside. He simply said, “Summon Master Rong. And have the new concubine brought in.”

Tonight, he wanted to see what the new spring painting looked like.

If he wanted to provoke the Tang Sect into an all-out war against the Divine Dominion, these paintings needed to be shocking, plenty of them, and scandalous enough to enrage even the most composed patriarch.

He intended to send them far and wide, letting commoners across the land feast their eyes on a different side of the revered and untouchable lady, lewd, debased, and utterly stripped of dignity.

But he didn’t trust the painter, Master Rong, to go far enough. So he decided to demonstrate the poses himself.

He and Princess Yi would act out the scenes while Master Rong painted. Later, he’d simply have her face replaced with that of Lady Yu.

Soon enough, Master Rong arrived with a scroll tucked under his arm, hurried and flustered.

Princess Yi was already awake.

Her face was ashen, completely drained of color. The moment she understood what was about to happen, her spirit nearly collapsed.

But when she laid eyes on Sovereign Ye, something in her gaze shifted. Her pupils dilated, dazed, like she was staring at another world entirely.

And then...she knelt beside him willingly, ready to begin the performance.

Master Rong stood to the side, diligently sketching each scene as it unfolded before him.

Sovereign Ye gripped Princess Yi and burst into wild laughter, completely lost in his depravity.

Now and then, he’d call for the scroll, examine the artwork mid-act, and offer his critiques like a patron admiring a piece of fine calligraphy.

Outside the window, Li Yuan had seen enough.

That’s about it for tonight. Nothing new from here on out, and dawn’s just around the corner. Time to end this.

He was in a good mood. Time to wrap this up and clock out. With a slight twitch of his body, he vanished into the shadows like a bolt of black lightning. At the exact moment a drifting cloud swallowed the moon, he shot across the palace grounds and landed silently at the main gates.

Two guards, ears pressed to the doors and enjoying the sounds from within, sensed something.

But it was too late.

Li Yuan casually flicked two tiny stones their way.

Crack! Crack! The stones shattered their skulls. The guards collapsed without a sound.

Inside the palace, Sovereign Ye suddenly froze mid-thrust.

As a transcendent, he instantly sensed something off beyond the walls.

His first reaction? Amusement.

An assassination? Oh please. If you’re sending an assassin, at least make it a woman, ha!

He was a transcendent now, a living god on this land. Who could possibly kill him?

Instead of dodging or defending, he went even harder, louder, bolder, showcasing his madness right there in front of the painter, like a man utterly convinced of his invincibility.

Whoosh! A shadow blurred across the room. In a flash, someone stood directly before him.

Sovereign Ye’s lips curled into a smirk. It was arrogant, charming, and confident. His golden eyes lit up with a soft pink glow, his power manifesting.

This was his infamous eye skill, a transcendent illusion that lured people into a haze of lust, drowning them in a dream of their greatest desire.

The moment someone met his gaze, they’d fall headlong into fantasy. Their senses would warp. Logic would dissolve. In their mind, Sovereign Ye would become the one person they loved most.

They wouldn’t question it. The illusion was perfect. Reality bent around desire.

Using this forbidden art, Sovereign Ye had lived like a god among mortals. Ever since ascending to the throne, he had taken the idea of acting on desire to its extremes. Inspired by the doctrine of unity of knowledge and action from the Ink School, he’d left a trail of madness in both the slums and the mansions of nobles alike.

Whenever his body and mind felt drained, he would return to the palace to breathe in the Qi of the Mountains and Rivers, using the breathing method to replenish his strength.

But this time, as he unleashed his Eyes of Crimson Lust, what he saw stopped him cold.

Golden eyes stared back at him. Eyes like a dying sun sinking behind the western hills. Eyes heavy with the weight of a soul that had walked too far.

Suddenly, a wave of exhaustion slammed into him. His limbs turned to lead. His body sagged under the weight of weakness.

His eyes fluttered shut. His thoughts spiraled into despair.

He couldn’t understand what was happening. Who was this man? Where had he come from? What was this power?

And then before he could react before he could scream before even the fear fully bloomed, a fist tore through the air and collided with him like a meteor.

BOOM!

Half of Sovereign Ye’s body exploded into mist and gore. Everything below his chest vanished in a flash.

Li Yuan had deliberately left the upper half intact.

Ever since becoming transcendent in this new era, Li Yuan’s martial arts had undergone a quiet transformation. Where once he was known for his mastery of the blade, now he wielded something far more devastating, his bare hands.

And this fist? It was still a hand, after all.

That hand now reached out, effortlessly grabbing Sovereign Ye by the collar, lifting his half-destroyed body off the ground at a slant like a butcher holding up a gutted carcass.

Li Yuan wore a mask. His voice, rasping and dry, cut through the silence.

“Any last wishes?” he asked, almost casually. “Better speak now, won’t have time later.”

He wasn’t really curious. He just wanted to see if the dying sovereign would spill something useful.

But Sovereign Ye only twitched. Blood poured freely from his seven orifices, streaming from the torn remains of his body in a grisly cascade. It dripped onto the polished floor with wet slaps, mingling with shredded entrails, snapped bones, and chunks of what might once have been vital organs.

Then his mouth opened wide.

From deep in his throat came a scream, raw, broken, so full of pain it no longer sounded human.

His head lolled to the side.

And then...silence.

Sovereign Ye was dead, completely, irrevocably dead.

Li Yuan paused, surprised. He stared at the pool of blood spreading beneath him.

It was just...blood. Ordinary blood.

No hidden essence. No hint of illusion. Just dead flesh and spilled guts.

It was clearly not shadow blood.

Compared to the old transcendent era, the so-called powerhouses of this new age were fragile, disappointingly so.

Their strength came from the land, from borrowed might drawn from the mountains and rivers. It wasn’t a transformation of the body itself, not a reshaping of life from the inside out.

It made Li Yuan think again of the heavenly seal of the Age of the Ancient Gods. Back then, immortals could level mountains and stir typhoons. Yet even then, they could still be killed with a sword. In contrast, even a fifth rank Human Soul cultivator could survive a destroyed heart.

He casually crushed Sovereign Ye’s skull with a flick of his hand.

Then, grabbing the nearest oil lamp from the table, he dumped it over the mangled body. Oil and flame followed, and the corpse began to burn.

Only then did he turn to the woman still lying on the floor, her naked body slowly regaining clarity in her eyes.

From earlier, he’d picked up that her name was Princess Yi.

Her gaze cleared fully now. She looked down at what was left of Sovereign Ye, his lower half a charred ruin, his head obliterated, then looked up at the masked man standing before her.

Her pupils dilated in pure horror.

A scream tore from her lips. Legs bare and trembling, she scrambled backward in blind panic, dragging herself away from the carnage.

Li Yuan grabbed a discarded skirt from nearby and tossed it to her.

“Don’t be afraid,” he said gently. “I’m not the bad guy.”

He pointed toward the door.

“Go. Shout that there’s an assassin.”

Princess Yi clutched the skirt like a lifeline and bolted. She ran, fumbling to put it on as she went, tripping through corridor after corridor until finally she found others. She seized the arm of the first person she saw and stammered through her sobs.

“An assassin, there’s an assassin! The Divine Sovereign...the Divine Sovereign—”