Chapter 200 Principal and Interest
The sky suddenly changed color as a blinding blue-purple lightning bolt cleaved the heavens.
Amidst the deafening thunder, the entire Zhong family compound trembled.
"ah!"
The elder suddenly let out a shrill scream.
To everyone's horror, his eyeballs appeared to have been gouged out by invisible claws.
Fresh blood gushed down from his sunken eye sockets, leaving two hideous bloody streaks on his face.
The Second Elder's arms withered and dried up at a rate visible to the naked eye.
His once strong arms were reduced in the blink of an eye to two thumb-sized lumps of flesh, hanging limply from his shoulders, swaying ridiculously with his struggles.
"My legs! My legs!"
The Third Elder collapsed to the ground.
His legs looked as if his marrow had been drained, his skin clinging tightly to his bones, resembling two withered tree branches.
The Fourth Elder's body began to shrink strangely, and in the blink of an eye, he went from a seven-foot-tall man to a three-foot-tall dwarf.
Mr. Zhong collapsed to the ground like a lump of mud, paralyzed from head to toe, with only his eyes still able to move in terror.
The entire Zhong family mansion echoed with wails, resembling a living hell.
Only Zhong Zhengxuan stood unharmed in the center of the crowd.
She stared at it all in a daze, a hint of realization in her eyes.
"I see……"
Zhong Zhengxuan looked down at her trembling hands, her fingertips now gathering a familiar spiritual light.
The dormant memories are awakening, resonating with the aura emanating from Lu Yao.
She saw herself walking on the waves amidst the blue sea and sky, her long whip like a red dragon emerging from the sea.
On Broken Soul Ridge, nine stone tablets stand majestically...
"you……"
Zhong's father was bewildered and watched helplessly as his clansmen suffered one after another from the backlash of the poisonous oath.
The First Elder was completely blind, the Second Elder's arms had withered, and the Third Elder's legs had decayed.
Only Zhong Zhengxuan was completely unharmed.
Suddenly, a thought shot into his mind like a venomous snake.
Could it be that this daughter isn't his child at all?
Otherwise, why was she the only one to escape the poisonous oath?
Once this thought took root, it quickly grew wildly in his mind.
A venomous glint flashed in Zhong's father's eyes, "You bitch... that whore your mother..."
"Smack!"
A loud slap interrupted his thoughts.
Zhong Zhengxuan squatted down, grabbed her father's collar, and sneered, "Old man, don't insult my mother with your filthy thoughts."
"You unfilial daughter! I've raised you for so many years..."
"Raised me?" A cold glint flashed in Zhong Zhengxuan's eyes. "You stole my spiritual root and ruined my path of cultivation. Is this what you call the grace of raising me?"
"Why is the oath ineffective against you?" Father Zhong roared hysterically. "Unless you are not even a member of the Zhong family!"
“Perhaps it is because…” Zhong Zhengxuan slowly stood up, and a blue spiritual light suddenly emanated from his body. “I am the one who made a poisonous oath with your ancestors.”
Zhong Zhengxuan... no, now she should be called Chu Xuanji, suddenly chuckled.
The laughter began softly, then grew louder and louder, finally transforming into a long, earth-shattering roar:
"I, Chu Xuanji—am back!"
Lu Yao could no longer hold back and rushed forward, tears streaming down her face: "Master!"
In fact, Lu Yao recognized Zhong Zhengxuan's eyes the moment she first saw him.
Even after reincarnation, the gentleness and determination in Master's eyes never changed.
Lu Yao flipped through Zhong Zhengxuan's resume and became even more certain that she hadn't mistaken him for someone else.
He spent three years stationed in a remote mountainous area, pushing forward the Spring Bud Project under pressure, enabling tens of thousands of girls to return to school, and is currently promoting the Anti-Domestic Violence Act.
Even if she is reincarnated into the Zhong family, she is still the kind-hearted Chu Xuanji at heart.
When Lu Yao learned about the Zhong family's past of stealing her master's spiritual root, she had to clench her fists tightly to suppress her killing intent.
Seeing her master's familiar smile, Lu Yao finally dropped her pretense.
The aloof and powerful Grand Preceptor, as seen by others, rushed into the embrace of the one who had waited for a thousand years like a wronged child.
Tears soaked Chu Xuanji's shoulder. "Your unfilial disciple... actually made you sacrifice your immortal path..."
Chu Xuanji gently embraced her, her fingertips lightly stroking Lu Yao's hair, just as she often did a thousand years ago.
"Silly child..." she sighed softly, "If it were you, wouldn't you do the same for me?"
Lu Yao raised her head in her arms, her eyes blurry with tears as she met her master's smiling gaze.
A thousand words choked in his throat, finally turning into a trembling "Master..."
Chu Xuanji gently wiped away the tears on her face with her fingertips. The two of them smiled at each other, all their worries and longings contained in this silent gaze.
The Zhong family members watched this scene with deathly pale faces.
The First Elder collapsed to the ground, his empty eye sockets staring at the sky: "The Goddess... really exists? And she was reincarnated... into our Zhong family?"
"This is the cycle of cause and effect." Chu Xuanji held Lu Yao in her arms, her gaze sweeping over the Zhong family members scattered on the ground, a smile that seemed both sad and happy curving her lips. "I was reborn as a daughter of the Zhong family so that you would have to return everything I gave you."
As soon as she finished speaking, her body was filled with a surge of spiritual light.
The spiritual energy flowed like rivers flowing into the sea, transforming into countless points of light that were separated from each member of the Zhong family and merged into Chu Xuanji's body.
The elders' cultivation vanished like smoke, and they aged decades in an instant.
The young men collapsed to the ground, reduced to mere mortals.
The gold paint on the vermilion pillars peeled off layer by layer, revealing the rotten wood core.
The treasured Buddhist artifacts turned to dust on the display shelf.
Even the numbers in the Zhong family's account are rapidly decreasing to zero...
“This marksmanship…” Zhong Zhengxuan waved his hand casually, and the fishermen’s marksmanship he had taught them back then was pulled out of the Zhong family’s memory.
"This mental cultivation technique..." She tapped her fingertip lightly, and all the techniques she had secretly learned vanished into thin air.
"And this clan's most treasured artifact..."
Chu Xuanji took the Earthly Fiends Reversed Heaven Book from Lu Yao's hands.
"The Zhong family..." her voice was icy, "Knowing that this book is dangerous, they are unwilling to even do the most basic maintenance of the seal."
My fingertips traced the nearly worn-out runes on the spine of the book; those marks that should have been reinforced regularly were now blurred and indistinct.
Over the years, the evil ideas in the book have continuously bewitched Zhong Zhengming.
Those evil spirits had long regarded the Zhong family as a breeding ground, just waiting for the day when the seal would completely fail.
The Zhong family's glory over the centuries was a blessing bestowed upon them by her.
Now, it's time to recoup the principal and interest.
Lu Yao stood quietly beside Chu Xuanji, watching the Zhong family members frantically try to grasp at the dissipating spiritual power, wealth, and power... as if trying to catch sand through their fingers.
"let's go."
She grabbed Chu Xuanji's arm, and the two of them rose into the air, looking down from the clouds.
As the last ray of blue light was drawn away from the Zhong family's earth veins, the entire mansion collapsed with a deafening roar.
A cloud of smoke and dust billowed into the sky, and the thousand-year-old family was annihilated.
...
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