Strongest Scammer: Scamming The World, One Death At A Time-Chapter 783: Repelled?!

The presence drifted closer, intrigue deepening.

"And here I believed Soul Cultivation unsuitable for my sect. Other than a few juniors who failed to leave behind legacies, I thought the path had ended."

It circled the lotus from afar, observing the way the soul sea subtly responded to its presence. The waves bent inward protectively, as if guarding their core.

"This is no crude soul art," the presence murmured. "This is refined, structured and purposeful. Finding a Soul Cultivation Technique of this level in my world... Impossible." He knew.

It moved closer.

Eighty meters.

The lotus remained closed.

Fifty meters.

The air, if such a thing could be said to exist here, grew heavy.

One hundred meters.

That was as far as it got.

SCREECH!

The sound tore through the soul space like a blade.

It was not loud in the conventional sense, but it carried force. Raw, piercing, and absolute. The ancient presence halted mid-motion, its condensed form trembling for the briefest instant.

The lotus awakened.

SHUA.

Its petals unfurled violently, one after another, revealing a radiant core. Eight colors burst outward simultaneously, interweaving into a brilliant halo that lit up the entire soul sea.

The sea responded.

GUSH!!!

Waves surged upward, towering like mountains, crashing inward toward the lotus as though answering a call.

The ancient presence felt it then.

Hostility.

Not confusion. Not fear.

Pure rejection.

The lotus turned.

It did not have eyes, yet the ancient presence felt itself being seen. Judged. Measured.

And found wanting.

From the lotus surged energy.

It was red.

But not the red of fire.

Not the red of blood.

This was something else entirely.

WHOOSH!

A river of emotion erupted forth, vast and overwhelming, sweeping across the soul sea toward the intruder.

Rage!

The Eight Emotions Energy of Anger.

It was not wild. It was not chaotic.

It was distilled and refined.

Layer upon layer of fury compressed into its purest form. Rage stripped of impulse, hatred stripped of ego, leaving behind only raw emotional force.

The ancient presence had witnessed wars that had wiped out sects and kingdoms. It had stood amid oceans of corpses. It had slaughtered cultivators by the tens of thousands without blinking.

And yet, this...

This made its essence shudder.

The river struck.

There was no explosion, no impact in the physical sense.

Instead, the presence felt something far more terrifying.

It felt emotion.

Not its own.

But imposed.

A weight of fury so vast it threatened to overwrite thought itself. It was anger without target, rage without release. An eternal scream that had been compressed into silence.

For a fleeting instant, the ancient presence understood.

This lotus was not a passive core.

It was a sovereign.

And it did not tolerate intrusion.

The force flung the presence backward.

BOOM!

It was expelled violently, ripped out of the soul sea and hurled back through layers of existence. Flesh, blood, meridians, dantian. It tore free from Han Yu’s body in an instant.

The ancient presence reformed in the hall, mist billowing wildly as it stabilized itself.

For the first time since its creation, its expression was not composed.

Shock was plainly visible on its otherwise featureless face.

Its glowing red eyes burned brighter, not with anger, but disbelief.

"...What," it whispered.

It looked down at Han Yu again, this time not with curiosity, but with something far closer to awe.

"That lotus," it said slowly, reverently. "Is no mere cultivation method."

Its voice dropped.

"It is a will."

The ancient presence hovered in the air, its misty form still rippling from the force that had expelled it moments ago. If there had been blood in its veins, it would have been boiling. If there had been breath in its lungs, it would have been ragged.

And yet, instead of anger, instead of caution, what filled it was exhilaration.

It stared at Han Yu’s unconscious body, its glowing red eyes narrowing slightly, not in hostility, but in fascination.

"To be repelled..." the ancient presence muttered softly, almost tasting the words. "By a soul construct."

The implication of it was absurd.

Even in this fragmented state, even reduced to a shadow of its former existence, it knew its own weight. This was not merely a lingering will or a weak remnant. It was the Founding Will of the Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect’s founder, condensed, preserved, and sustained by the Inheritance Stelae itself.

In its prime, it had shaken heavens.

In its decline, it could still crush Immortal Ascension Realm cultivators as easily as snapping brittle twigs.

And yet just now, it had been driven out.

Not by a cultivator.

Not by a technique.

But by a soul construct.

A lotus.

A lotus belonging to a disciple who had not even reached the Nascent Soul realm.

The contradiction was so vast that it should have inspired fear.

Instead, the ancient presence threw back its head and laughed.

"Haha... HAHAHA... HAHAHAHAHAHA!"

At first, it was a low chuckle, vibrating through the mist like distant thunder. Then it grew louder, richer, until it echoed throughout the entire hall. The blood flames trembled, the runes flickered wildly, and the Stelae itself seemed to hum in response.

"Yes... yes..." the ancient presence roared, its voice filled with manic delight. "YES! THIS IS IT!"

Its laughter boomed again, unrestrained, unashamed.

"THIS is the kind of person I have been waiting for!"

For countless years, it had watched.

It had observed disciples kneel before the Stelae with reverence, desperation, arrogance, or blind faith. It had seen geniuses and fools alike extend their spirit sense, only to be swallowed by the abyss of judgment.

Most failed.

Those who succeeded were rewarded. Techniques, insights, fragments of power. They left stronger than before, convinced they were special.

And they were.

But never like this.

The ancient presence had never once felt threatened by any of them. Never once had its will been resisted. Never once had it been denied access.

It had chosen to remain silent through all of them.

Because none were worthy of its attention.

And now...

Now there was a disciple whose potential it could not even quantify.

That alone was unprecedented.