"Timeās up. Whateverās left, we leave behind for the Zhangs to choke on." Zhang Jianyuan let out a heavy sigh, but he didnāt hand the ring back to Zhang Lingtian. Instead, he slid it onto his own finger with practiced ease.
Zhang Lingtianās eyes flickered with a sharp light, but he immediately buried his gaze, looking down at his feet to hide his expression. "Father, whatās the plan?"
"We move. Now," Jianyuan said firmly. "If we wait for the rest of them to hit their breaking point, the Ancestor is going to have eyes on every single person in this compound. If that happens, weāre grounded for good."
That whole performance back in the meeting hallāthe big speech, calling the Allianceāit wasnāt because he actually thought the Alliance was coming to save them. It was a smoke screen. He needed to keep the clan stable just long enough to buy himself a window to vanish. If he hadnāt given them hope, the place would have descended into a riot, and the Ancestor would have locked the whole estate down tight.
"Genius, Father," Lingtian complimented, though his voice was flat.
The two slipped into the backyard where a sleek, compact aircraft sat waiting. It was barely two meters wide and five meters long. Lingtianās eyes lit up the second he saw it. This wasnāt some off-the-lot commuter; it was a cutting-edge piece of tech, supposedly five times faster than anything else in the sky.
With this, their survival rate just jumped to ninety percent.
Jianyuan hopped into the pilotās seat, gestured for his son to buckle up next to him, and thumbed the ignition.
Whirrrā
With a faint hum, the craft shot upward like a rocket. In under two seconds, they were a hundred meters in the air.
The Zhang estate was currently a powder keg. Everyone was on edge, and since the vibe was "impending doom," nobody was exactly out partying. The whole manor was deathly silent. Even though the aircraft wasnāt loud, the sound ripped through the quiet like a chainsaw.
When the clan members looked up and saw who was on that shipāand where it had taken off fromātheir hearts collectively hit the floor. The Head of the Family was ditching them.
From the depths of the manor, a roar erupted that shook the windows: "YOU FILTHY ANIMAL!"
But rage doesnāt stop a jet engine. Everyone, including the fuming Ancestor, was helpless. The craft was already a silver streak bolting toward the north. It was moving so fast that even if the Ancestor burned his life essence to give chase, heād just be eating dust.
In a heartbeat, the ship cleared the estateās perimeter, fading into the dark.
Then, the world split open.
The shrill, metallic ring of a blade echoed across the sky. A massive arc of white light slashed upward from the ground, slamming directly into the hull of the aircraft.
The Zhang family didnāt need to guess. That was the grim-faced kid. But instead of fear or anger, a weird sense of satisfaction washed over them. A traitor is always more hated than an enemy.
Jianyuanās ship was built tough, though. And since Wang Yue couldnāt use his signature "Level 8 Gale" without blowing his cover, his generic blade technique lacked the raw power to cleave the ship in half. The strike hit home, but the hull held.
Still, it did the job. The impact stripped ninety percent of the shipās momentum. It began to wobble violently in the air, looking like it was about to drop like a stone.
Wang Yue wasnāt letting them off that easy. He kicked off the ground, leaping dozens of meters into the air, and swung a second time.
He was twice as close now, meaning the strike would be twice as lethal. The ship was already damaged; this hit was guaranteed to turn it into scrap metal.
But before the blade-light could connect, a muffled thud echoed from the craft. A tiny, one-man escape pod ejected from the nose of the ship. It ignited with a burst of speed three times faster than the original vessel, vanishing into the night like a shooting star.
Wang Yue blinked, caught off guard. By the time he regained his footing to give chase, the super-compact pod was long gone.
He let out a short sigh. He didnāt bother chasing it. Even with his Level 7 cultivation and his God-Speed leg techniques, he couldnāt outrun a specialized escape thruster.
Grumbling, he turned his attention back to the primary aircraft.
Luck was a funny thing. The massive recoil from the escape podās launch had actually jerked the main ship backward just enough to make Wang Yueās second strike miss.
But inside the cabin, Zhang Lingtian didnāt feel lucky. He looked miserable.
Heād suspected his old man might toss him under the bus if things got hairy, but he hadnāt expected to be dumped that fast. Still, the kid wasnāt a total pushover. He immediately leaned out and shouted down to Wang Yue.
"Senior! Wait! Donāt kill me! Iāll trade seventy percent of the Zhang familyās resources for my life!"
Seventy percent?
Wang Yueās interest piqued. He drifted back to the ground. "Get down here and weāll talk." At the Mortal Shedding realm, he couldnāt fly for long.
Lingtian knew the game was up. He landed the ship, crawled out, and stood before Wang Yue with his head bowed, looking like a kicked puppy. "Iāll give you seventy percent of our cultivation resources. Just let me live."
"Seventy percent?" Wang Yue chuckled. "That guy who just bolted was Zhang Jianyuan, right? If you really had seventy percent of the loot, you think heād leave without it?"
"Youāre right, Senior. He did take my spatial ring," Lingtian admitted. "But there wasnāt much in there. Most of the real hoard is hidden elsewhere. If you promise to let me go, Iāll give you the coordinates right now."
Meanwhile, miles away, Zhang Jianyuan finally let out a massive breath of relief. Heād made it. He raised his right hand, looking at the spatial ring heād swiped from his son.
Heād lost everything else, but with this, he could buy his way into the Kong family in the Capital. This was his "start-over" fund.
A moment later, Jianyuanās face twisted. He burst into a fit of hysterical, angry laughter. "Haha... good. Very good! Thatās my boy!"
The ring was packed to the brim, alright. But only the top layer was actually valuable. Everything underneath was worthless scrap metal and junk.
Given Jianyuanās paranoid nature, he usually would have double-checked, but the pressure had been too high. He couldnāt check it in front of his son without looking like a prick, and then the attack happened.
A perfect storm of coincidences, and heād been played like a fiddle by his own flesh and blood.