"You seem to be in a very bad mood," said Haoran, leaning back into the woven frame of a comfortable rattan chair.

He stretched his legs out casually, occasionally flicking his wrist to toss a small handful of golden spiritual seeds toward the immobile, paralyzed figure of Elder Mu sitting nearby.

Within seconds, a fluttering flock of colorful sparrows descended upon the old man’s motionless form, chirping brightly as they aggressively pecked the fallen seeds from his shoulders, lap, and the surrounding ground.

Ye Hongyan nodded in agreement from her spot at the side, her sharp, elegant brows furrowed tightly into a deep frown.

"Yeah," she admitted, letting out a frustrated sigh that carried days of pent-up irritation. "My father has been constantly trying to call us back for a banquet. Apparently, that man learned about our relationship and wanted to meet you."

"Then we should just meet the man," said Haoran nonchalantly, tossing a few more seeds directly onto Elder Mu’s head, sending the flock into another flurry of feathers and hungry squawks.

"Urgh," Ye Hongyan cringed, the mere thought bringing a visible wave of disgust to her face. "Can we not? I don’t want to meet him. Just thinking about his overbearing, controlling nature makes my stomach turn."

"Well, that’s up to you," Haoran shrugged, entirely unbothered by the familial drama.

He dusted off his hands and shifted the topic to something far more pressing for their current ambitions.

"Also, I remember Sky Cloud saying that all the land in the academy dimension is already taken. How would we even get a city?"

Ye Hongyan hummed, pausing for a moment to organize her thoughts on the complex mechanics of the academy’s territory system.

"You see, to fully claim the city, you need to put the mandate on top of a monument located at the center of the city," she explained, gesturing softly in the air to illustrate her point. "Usually, it’s hidden away in the most secure, deeply guarded place of a faction’s base—often protected by ancient grand formations. However, now that there’s literally no open space available to build a brand-new city from scratch, you can only take over another city. You have to march in, destroy their existing mandate monument, and replace it with your own."

"Oh? Now that sounds interesting," said Haoran, a dark, amused chuckle escaping his lips as he stroked his chin.

The prospect of violent conquest suited his taste far better than bureaucratic expansion.

"Yes," Ye Hongyan continued, her tone matter-of-fact. "As for the defeated factions, once you’ve successfully shattered their mandate, their fate is entirely in your hands. If you capture them, you can either banish them from the region entirely, turn them into working slaves to pay off their debt, or simply absorb and incorporate them into your own faction. It’s completely up to you."

Haoran nodded thoughtfully at that, a slow, scheming grin spreading across his face. "Any city will do?"

"Yes," Ye Hongyan answered, though her expression darkened with a grave warning. "But it will be exceedingly hard. Any faction that actually manages to possess and maintain a city is guarded at minimum by a powerful Nirvana Rebirth student. To make matters worse, some of these territories were even established and are quietly supported by Profound Saint realm elders who were once senior members of that particular faction in their younger days."

"It doesn’t matter," Haoran smirked, his eyes flashing with arrogance.

His confidence wasn’t unearned. As long as the opponent wasn’t a world-blessed protagonist wrapped in thick layers of plot armor, Haoran had never once put them in his eyes—even if they happened to be revered Saints or feared Supremes.

To him, they were merely larger stones waiting to be crushed underfoot.

"Well, you are certainly confident," Ye Hongyan said, a small, affectionate smile briefly gracing her lips.

But just as quickly, her demeanor turned deadly serious, her gaze locking onto his with absolute intensity.

"But you must be careful and not attack the Sky Reaching City. The faction ruling it is directly from the Heavenly Dao Pavilion, and they are extraordinarily difficult to deal with."

"Heavenly Dao Pavilion?" Haoran frowned, the unfamiliar name echoing in his mind. "I have never heard of them. What are they?"

Ye Hongyan opened her mouth, ready to explain, but then immediately closed it, a sudden flash of real hesitation and fear flickering across her face.

"Nevermind," she murmured hastily, shaking her head. "They have one of the greatest Seers in the entire realm. Their divination capabilities are terrifying—they can observe anyone that simply mentions their name and immediately know their past, their present, and even their future. This private residence of mine is currently concealed by a powerful Rank 10 concealment array, so unless they are actively and explicitly searching for me, they wouldn’t notice me casually mentioning them. But if I really sit here and tell you detailed things about their inner workings, then they will definitely notice the karmic thread and trace it back to us."

Haoran frowned deeply at that revelation, Heavenly Dao Pavilion... are they somehow directly related to the actual Heavenly Dao itself?

The thought raised immediate suspicions in his mind.

But how come his grandmother had never once mentioned a faction this potent to him during his upbringing?

If they possessed such terrifying, omniscient capabilities, surely she would have warned him to watch his back.

"You should ask your mother or aunts," said Ye Hongyan, noticing the gears turning endlessly in his head. "They definitely knew about it, and they surely have arrays to completely block the scrying of the Seers."

Haoran nodded, "I will ask them."

Ye Hongyan hesitated for a moment, but in the end, she added. "You should especially ask Feng Yuyan, as she was once relentlessly hunted down and almost permanently imprisoned by them if Chu Xueyu and Leng Shuang hadn’t arrived just in time to rescue her."

Haoran frowned even harder, his jaw tightening as he processed the fact that his own aunt had clashed with this mysterious force in the past and was almost captured.

That’s Feng Yuyan! Someone who can go into another empire’s capital, wrecked havoc, and still get away!

Ye Hongyan stared at his troubled expression for a long moment before shaking her head softly, trying to deflate the growing tension. "Anyway, don’t think about them for now. They like to keep to themselves anyway, acting as distant observers rather than aggressive conquerors."

"....Mm," Haoran just hummed softly in response, casting his gaze back toward the helpless Elder Mu and the fluttering birds.

On the surface, he seemed to drop the subject entirely, letting the ambient sounds of the courtyard wash over him.

But deep down, no matter how hard he tried to push it aside, he couldn’t stop thinking about them.

A faction that could peer into his past, present, and future was not just a potential rival—it was an intolerable threat standing directly in his path.

Ye Hongyan stared intently at Haoran, her sharp, perceptive eyes locking onto the subtle shift in his expression.

She caught that familiar, unyielding look in his gaze—a flicker of intense curiosity mixed with relentless calculation.

Having spent enough time around him, she knew that look all too well; once an idea took root in his mind, he wouldn’t simply let it go or stop pondering its implications.

She let out a soft, heavy sigh, the sound carrying a weight of ancient secrets and lingering caution.

"Haoran," she began, her voice dropping into a lower, more deliberate register, "although I can’t tell you much about them, there is something crucial I can tell you."

Haoran perked up instantly. Every muscle in his body seemed to tense with anticipation as he stared back at her, his eyes taking on a deeply serious, hyper-focused gleam.

He didn’t interrupt, choosing instead to hang on her every word.

"The last Immortal who ascended thirty thousand years ago was from the Heavenly Dao Pavilion," said Hongyan, her usual playful or composed demeanor entirely vanishing, replaced by a look of utter, deadpan seriousness. "You know how the Heaven’s Will appeared once every ten thousand years, right? It was a natural, immutable cycle of the world—a cosmic grand alignment that allowed the pinnacle of cultivators to vie for supreme authority."

She paused, letting the historic weight of her next words settle between them.

"But ever since that specific individual ascended, the Heaven’s Will never appeared again. Three whole cycles came and went in complete, agonizing silence. It was as if the cosmic order itself had been severed or put on hold. And only now, after thirty agonizing millennia, did it finally show signs of appearing once more. Because of that unnatural anomaly, the major forces of the Cultivation world firmly believe that the Heavenly Dao Pavilion must’ve done something to meddle with the natural order... but no one can prove anything."

Haoran frowned deeply, his mind instantly racing through the grand chessboard of the world’s most powerful factions.

One name immediately surfaced at the forefront of his thoughts.

"The Shen Clan didn’t do anything?" he asked, genuine disbelief tinged with skepticism lacing his tone.

As the heir of the Shen Clan, he knew just how much of a tyrant the Shen Clan is.

They were not a force that abided by the trivial concepts of trial, jury, or concrete proof. If they even suspected a faction of threatening the balance of power, robbing them of opportunity, or pulling the strings behind a world-altering catastrophe, they would unleash devastation first and ask questions never.

Even if they lacked definitive evidence, as long as they harbored the slightest suspicion, they would definitely pursue it to the absolute end.

"They did," Ye Hongyan sighed, rubbing her temples as if the mere memory of those historical records brought on a headache. "The Shen Clan didn’t hesitate. They mobilized their war Profound Arks, unsealed their slumbering Supremes, and waged a full-scale, catastrophic war against the Heavenly Dao Pavilion. And, as expected of the supreme overlords of this era, the Shen Clan was winning... but..."

"But?" Haoran frowned, his brow furrowing even further. "What could possibly halt the Shen Clan when they had the upper hand?"

"But they couldn’t kill anyone," said Ye Hongyan, looking genuinely perplexed, her eyes reflecting a profound, lingering confusion that had baffled scholars and strategists for generations. "The Shen Clan always won the battle on every single battlefield. They crushed armies, destroyed their branches, and shattered entire galaxy clusters. Yet, for some completely inexplicable reason, they could never actually kill anyone important from the other side. Every time a core elder or a key genius of the Heavenly Dao Pavilion was cornered, an absurd coincidence would occur. A sudden spatial rift would swallow them, an ancient relic would spontaneously activate to whisk them away, or an unseasonable cosmic storm would intervene. In the end, demoralized by the sheer, nonsensical absurdity of it all, the Shen Clan gave up and withdrew."

Haoran froze at that revelation. A cold realization washed over him, turning his blood to ice.

’This... Heavenly Dao protection? Are you telling me the people from that pavilion are all protagonists?!’

His mind churned at lightspeed as he processed the absurd, yet undeniably familiar pattern.

Winning every battle but failing to inflict any permanent casualties on key figures? Surmounting impossible odds through sheer, statistical anomalies of luck?

It was the classic, maddening hallmark of plot armor.

’Did protagonists actually rally together and form a transcendent power that can compete with the behemoth that is the Shen Clan?’

The idea sounded utterly insane at first glance, but the more he chewed on it, the more horrifyingly logical it became.

’This... This is definitely possible,’ Haoran thought, his heart thumping heavily against his ribs. ’After all, there are protagonists with systems like Lin Feng, who possesses a Sect Master System tailored specifically to gather, nurture, and hoard absurd talents under one banner.’

If a system like that existed in the present, why couldn’t one have existed in the distant past?

’If there was another protagonist with a similar golden finger, and who was born thousands of years ago, he would definitely mature without someone like me around to hunt him down.’

Haoran felt a chill run down his spine. Up until now, the protagonists he had encountered were mostly greenhorns—arrogant trash from small towns, newly awakened protagonist with fresh cheats, or hot-blooded fools still stumbling through their early growth phases.

They were predictable, emotional, and above all, vulnerable.

He could outsmart them, set traps for them, and harvest their luck before they ever reached their true potential.

But a fully matured protagonist... someone who has survived decades, centuries, or even millennia of trials, maxed out their golden finger, mastered their cheat, and overcome countless death flags... they are on a completely different level than the greenhorns he had been hunting down.

A matured protagonist wouldn’t just possess terrifying cultivation; they would have a fully fleshed-out arsenal of ancient artifacts, divine techniques, endless backup plans, and an ironclad domain of great fortune.

They would be immune to standard schemes, capable of turning any desperate situation into a miraculous turnaround.

And if someone like that had achieved immortal ascension thirty thousand years ago, what kind of legacy had they left behind?

’And if they really did form an organization...’ Haoran swallowed hard, his eyes narrowing into sharp slits as the dark reality hit him.

If the Heavenly Dao Pavilion was indeed an ancient stronghold built by and for protagonists—a literal sanctuary of fortune-favored monsters, bound together by systemic power and stacked plot armor—then it wasn’t just a rival power.

It was an existential threat.

A single protagonist was a chaotic variable; an entire sect composed of them, backed by thirty thousand years of accumulated luck and protection, was an untouchable, living nightmare.

Haoran took a slow, deep breath, forcing his surging emotions into cold, calculating logic.

The game he was playing had just expanded exponentially, and the board was far more dangerous than he had ever imagined.

’I need to inform mother about this, now.’