Chapter 422: Face to Face with the Ghost

The jagged rock, humming with violet electricity, tore through the sky like a railgun slug. It didn’t just hit the Taoists; it erased them. The impact turned the two flyers into a mist of red vapor and shredded silk. Amidst the falling debris, a sleek, reinforced smartphone—the high-tech communication device used by the Celestial elite—tumbled through the air.

Ethan leaped, catching the device mid-air before landing heavily on the cracked highway. The screen was cracked, but the holographic projection was still active.

The Ancestor’s face hovered in the air, his features distorted by a grief that was rapidly curdling into a genocidal rage. For the first time, the two titans looked directly at each other.

"So," Ethan said, wiping a smear of blood from his cheek and looking into the hologram with a mocking smirk. "You must be the old man. I’d say it’s a pleasure, but you look like you’ve already started decomposing."

The Ancestor’s voice was a rasping growl that seemed to vibrate the very air around the phone. "Ethan... You have spilled the blood of my lineage. You have extinguished the light of my son. There is no corner of this earth, no sanctuary in the heavens, where you can hide from what I will do to you."

Ethan let out a dry, sharp laugh, stepping over the charred remains of a Taoist’s boot. "Hide? Old man, I’m the one who came looking for you. Your son died like a dog, begging a piece of paper to save him. Is that the great Celestial heritage? Paper toys and desperate screams?"

"You speak with the arrogance of a child who has found a wooden sword," the Ancestor hissed, the background of his projection flickering as his aura began to melt the room he was in. "I will flay the skin from your bones and use your soul to light my lamps for a thousand years."

"You don’t have a thousand years," Ethan countered, his eyes glowing with a predatory amethyst light. He leaned closer to the camera, his voice dropping to a lethal whisper. "I can see the gray in your soul from here. You’ve got half a foot in the grave already. Honestly, I thought about coming to kill you myself, but looking at you... it might be more humiliating to just let you rot. In ten minutes, you’ll probably be a corpse anyway. Why should I waste the energy?"

The Ancestor’s face turned a purplish hue. "I will march my entire sect across the continent! I will burn your ’Royal group’ to ash! I will—"

"You’ll do nothing but die," Ethan interrupted, his thumb hovering over the ’End Call’ button. "Tell your ’Scavenger’ friend to prepare a double funeral. I’m coming for the coast, and anyone standing in my way is just more fertilizer for my garden. See you in hell, old man. Or don’t. I don’t really care."

Click.

Ethan crushed the phone in his palm, the electronics sparking one last time before going dark. He stood in the silence of the wasteland, the wind howling through the ruins.

[ Master, ] Crul’s voice resonated in his mind. [ That was... provocatively unwise. The Ancestor’s spiritual resonance suggests he is at the true Spirit Core realm. If he mobilizes now, we are not yet prepared for a direct confrontation of that magnitude. ]

"I know," Ethan said, looking back toward the smoking horizon where his convoy was slowly reorganizing. "But a man like that doesn’t move when he’s angry. He moves when he’s desperate. I want him coming at me blind with rage. It makes him easier to trip."

Back in the fortified stronghold of the *Celestial* Union, the Ancestor stared at the empty space where Ethan’s holographic image had just been. His hand, gnarled like an old root, trembled with a rage so potent that the air in the chamber felt like a vacuum.

"Arrogant... little... brat," he hissed through clenched teeth.

He didn’t waste another second. He picked up a secure, black-line terminal and dialed a frequency that hadn’t been used in over a decade. The screen flickered to life, revealing the Ancestor of the Scavengers.

"Your son is dead too, isn’t he?" the Scavenger Ancestor growled, his voice a gravelly rasp.

"He is," the Celestial Ancestor replied, his voice cold and hollow. "Ethan has crossed the line. He isn’t just a nuisance anymore; he is a virus. If we don’t excise him now, he will devour everything we’ve built."

The Scavenger Ancestor let out a dark chuckle. "I’ve already spoken with the Deacon of the Union. He’s been preparing the ’secret’ mechanism. It’s a taboo, even for us. If we activate it, the collateral damage to the region will be... significant."

"I don’t care about the region!" the Celestial Ancestor roared. "I want that boy’s head on a spike. I want his ’Royal’ army turned into a mountain of carrion!"

"The Deacon is already in position," the Scavenger Ancestor continued, his eyes gleaming with a sinister light. "I’m waiting just outside the perimeter" He told me the trap is set, but it requires a ’trigger’ of massive spiritual energy to bridge the gap between this world and the abyss. He didn’t give me the specifics—the Deacon keeps his secrets close—but he said that once Ethan steps foot back onto his home turf, the earth itself will turn against him."

"A taboo mechanism..." the Celestial Ancestor muttered, his rage cooling into a sharp, lethal focus. "The Deacon has always been obsessed with the forbidden. If he’s the one overseeing it, then Ethan won’t just die. He’ll be erased from history."

"Exactly," the Scavenger Ancestor replied. "We don’t need to march our armies across the wasteland. We just need to wait for the Deacon to pull the tether. Let the brat think he’s won. Let him walk right into the maw of the abyss."

The Celestial Ancestor leaned back, a ghostly, satisfied smile touching his lips. "Inform the Deacon. Whatever he needs—sacrifices, mana stones, lives—he has my full backing. I want the last thing Ethan sees to be the total collapse of everything he loves."