Dual Cultivation God Returns Chapter 1024: More meaningful...

"Release Young Master Bo immediately!!!", shouted the Iron Claw Group members while drawing their weapons—a sharp claw-shaped gauntlet encasing the left hand and arm up to the shoulder, normally hidden beneath a loose, removable sleeve, paired with a massive single-edged blade retrieved from Spatial Rings for the right hand. They struck identical poses: left gauntlet arm thrust ahead with claws partially spread, while the heavy blade stayed pulled back, tilted with its keen edge upward and aimed forward.

"Who said you are free to move?", Nie Xiwang declared in an icy tone as she lifted from the porch, suspending herself above the ground at porch height, while 20 golden swords materialized around her, all directed at the Iron Claw Group and inching closer, compelling them to fall back step by step.

Meanwhile, Tiezhu Bo twisted in agony, barely managing words, "Y-You-... do you know who I a-... aaaahrg!"

"Wrong answer", Wu Long stated icily, as faint lightning sparks flickered around the finger he gripped on Tiezhu Bo’s hand, electric surges racing through the young master’s body while veins swelled across his skin from the excruciating torment.

"Do-... do you have any idea who you are dealing with?!", yelled one Iron Claw Group member standing behind the young master, his gaze locked on the razor-sharp tips of the golden swords gleaming under the frigid moonlight and the soft glow of nearby stone lanterns.

Roughly three swords menaced each of them. Their claw gauntlets typically granted superiority against armed cultivators by seizing blades outright and mastering them—the signature style that once elevated their Leader to fame. Yet even if they clutched one and parried another with their blade, a third remained poised to slash freely.

Even worse, adopting a more orthodox fighting approach would prove futile with their Young Master held captive.

They pinned hopes on their Young Master deploying his own gauntlet, still concealed under the lengthy sleeve, to break loose, but he appeared totally pinned down.

"In the mood to answer yet?", Wu Long inquired, idly shifting his gaze upward with patient expectation, his eyes clashing with those of the half-masked Ko Gunwen.

Ko Gunwen flinched from that piercing stare, jolted from his stunned trance, as the unfolding chaos stirred a haunting echo of his personal ordeal.

"D-Daoist Wu, we apologize for our transgression...", Ko Gunwen uttered cautiously, drawing a startled look from Wu Long.

He had braced for the youth to hurl demands and threats, yet this unexpected twist delighted him, prompting a curious head tilt and spark of intrigue in his gaze.

Noticing this, Ko Gunwen pressed on, "...the young man you’re holding, while guilty of disturbing you, is an important figure, and a guest of our city. With powerful and important backing. It would be in all of our interests if we could find a compromi-..."

"K-ko Gunwe-... y-you idio-... k-k-kill this... fuckin-... aaaaargh~!!!", Tiezhu Bo strained to swivel his head slightly, shooting Ko Gunwen a sideways glare with bloodshot eyes bulging in fury, before arching back with another wave of searing pain.

"You think he will back down if I let him go?", Wu Long questioned Ko Gunwen in a remarkably even, nearly cordial voice, "Seriously. Think about what will happen next. What will he do after? Will he learn a lesson? Will he let this go? Would I have peace of mind just because I let him go like this?"

Ko Gunwen swallowed nervously, baffled why Wu Long, who dismissed lecturing Tiezhu Bo on repercussions and craved only the answers he sought, now directed these queries at him.

His mind drifted to his own past trial.

At first, fury, humiliation, and despair overwhelmed him. Beyond that, the fallout proved brutal—his father abandoned him utterly. He forfeited every possession.

Yet gradually, an inner shift took root.

Once he mustered calm to stare into the mirror, the lingering palm print confronted him like an unrelenting beacon, a stark emblem of defeat that at last compelled reflection on its origins.

No diversions to pleasures or finger-pointing at others could evade it now, for the mark blazed plainly on his face.

Though veiled by the half-mask from his third brother, the sensation lingered beneath, inescapable no matter what.

This confrontation forced him to stare down the errors of his past, along with the flaws in his nature that spawned them all, compelling him to reckon with his sheer idiocy and unbridled hubris.

That hubris was completely demolished. Mere shards remained, steadily disintegrating day after day as he finally glimpsed his true self.

Clarity began to dawn in his mind, sharpening with every passing day. True advancement was still distant, yet he'd managed that vital initial stride—the one so few ever dare: owning up to his defects and pitfalls.

Facing Wu Long’s query, this realization sparked a notion in him: could Tiezhu Bo experience something similar?

‘No’, the grim response reverberated sorrowfully through his thoughts.

Though he desperately wished to affirm Wu Long’s words—perhaps just to prevent the scene from spiraling worse—he found it impossible.

Tiezhu Bo stood apart, a fact he grasped intimately after years of close acquaintance.

He understood that even if Wu Long could slap a matching imprint on Tiezhu Bo’s cheek like the one stinging his own, or etch some other tangible scar from tonight’s chaos as a bold warning, it would prove futile.

The result wouldn’t match at all.

Tiezhu Bo hadn’t fallen from his father’s grace, teetered nowhere near utter collapse, and differed profoundly from the core anyway.

Their friendship had molded much of Ko Gunwen’s conduct right from the outset, after all.

Tiezhu Bo’s relentless counsel—that you must ‘crush bugs to show strength’ and ‘not allow them to raise their heads’—which Ko Gunwen loved repeating since it echoed his father, the Iron Claw Group’s chief, had forged his hostility toward the younger brother he viewed as a rival.

Watching Tiezhu Bo strut freely through Iron Claw City, Ko Gunwen copied that arrogance more and more, craving his companion’s praise.

Until that fateful night in the Crow King’s Nest, when a stranger’s harsh reality smashed into his skull like a iron fist, snapping him from his delusion.

"Haa~, see? Even you don’t think he’ll drop this", Wu Long chuckled with a faintly disappointed sigh, though his gaze lingered on Ko Gunwen with keen curiosity.

For an instant, witnessing this startling nascent shift in Silver Wing City’s Young Master, he wondered if the same could happen to Iron Claw City’s Young Master, whom he now compelled to kneel.

‘Hmm, perhaps that task we gave Ko Fuan to bring his brother to our side is going to be more meaningful than a simple strategic move’, Wu Long pondered.