The moonlight was cold, painting the corpses of the assassins in shades of silver and black. Lu Feng stood among them, his servant’s robes unstained. The shattered remnants of the poisoned dagger lay at his feet, pathetic refuse. On his neck, the simple jade seal pulsed with a faint, almost imperceptible warmth, having absorbed the killing blow without a scratch. For three years, he had been a ghost. A shadow in the Ye family household, enduring scorn to repay a debt. They saw a weakling, a worthless son-in-law, a dog to be kicked. They never saw the slumbering dragon. Tonight, Ye Yao’s foolishness had not just kicked the dragon. It had tried to pierce its scales. Lu Feng’s eyes, once placid pools of indifference, were now frozen abysses of slaughter. A terrifying killing intent, suppressed for a thousand days, began to leak from his very being. The air grew heavy, the temperature plummeting as if winter had descended in an instant. “Blood Shadow Tower,” he whispered, his voice devoid of all emotion. “For daring to draw a blade on me, your name will be erased from this world. Tonight.” He did not walk. He simply vanished. *** The headquarters of the Blood Shadow Tower was a fortress hidden within the city's most lawless district, a sprawling compound of black stone and menacing gargoyles. It was a place that made even city guards turn their heads and walk away. Here, death was a commodity, and its merchants were kings. At the towering iron gates, two guards clad in black leather stood watch, their eyes scanning the shadows. They were cultivators of the fifth-rank Qi Condensation stage, enough to intimidate any common martial artist. Suddenly, a figure appeared from the darkness. A young man in cheap servant’s clothes, walking with a lazy, unhurried gait. He carried no weapon. His hands were empty. One guard barked out a laugh. “Lost, little servant? This isn’t a place for your kind. Scram before we decide to use your head for archery practice.” The other guard sneered. “Look at his face. Utterly blank. A complete fool. Kill him. His presence offends me.” The first guard drew his saber, its edge glinting. “You heard him, boy. A pity you had to die for being stupid.” He lunged. Lu Feng didn’t even glance at him. He simply raised a hand. An invisible pressure, a wave of pure, condensed sword-qi, erupted from his palm. It was not a physical strike. It was a pronouncement of doom. *BOOM!* The two guards, their sabers, and the ten-foot-tall iron gates behind them were simultaneously blasted into fine dust. Not rubble. Not twisted metal. Just a cloud of atomized particles that drifted away on the night breeze. An alarm shrieked through the compound. The nest had been stirred. From every shadow, assassins poured into the main courtyard. Dozens of them, then a hundred. All clad in black, their faces hidden behind demonic masks, their blades dripping with poison. They moved with silent, deadly grace, surrounding the lone figure in the ruined gateway. Their leader, a man with a golden mask signifying his elite status, stepped forward. His Inner Qi flared, a palpable aura of menace. “Who are you? To dare attack the Blood Shadow Tower is to seek a death by a thousand cuts!” Lu Feng’s eyes were cold. He bent down, his movements unhurried, and plucked a single fallen leaf from the ground. He held it between two fingers. The assassins watched, confused. Was this a joke? A final act of insanity? The golden-masked leader laughed, a harsh, grating sound. “Has he gone mad? Kill hi—” His words were cut short. Lu Feng infused a sliver of his true essence into the leaf. It instantly hardened, glowing with a terrifying internal light. Then, he flicked it. *Swish.* The sound was almost gentle. The leaf vanished, becoming a blur of green light that carved a perfect, horizontal arc through the air. It passed through the necks of the first rank of assassins, then the second, then the third. It circled the entire courtyard in less than a heartbeat before fluttering back into Lu Feng’s hand, its divine energy spent. For a moment, there was absolute silence. Then, one by one, heads began to slide from shoulders. A hundred of them. A hundred fountains of blood erupted in the cold moonlight. A hundred bodies collapsed to the ground, their blades not even fully drawn. Lu Feng dropped the now-ordinary leaf and began to walk forward, his path paved by corpses. Panic, a foreign concept to these trained killers, seized the few survivors. They screamed, throwing daggers, shooting poisoned needles, trying to flee. But an invisible wall of sword-qi surrounded the courtyard. Every weapon that approached Lu Feng disintegrated into ash. Every assassin who tried to escape slammed into the barrier and fell back, their meridians shattered. He walked into the main hall. Inside, ten figures waited. The Gold Assassins. Each one was a peak-level expert, masters of killing who could take down a minor sect leader on their own. They stood amidst a web of hidden traps and mechanisms. “He’s here,” one hissed, his knuckles white around his twin hooks. “Hold the formation! No matter who he is, he cannot withstand the Ten Directions Killing Array!” Lu Feng didn’t pause. He stepped over the first pressure plate. A volley of crossbow bolts, each forged from cold iron and capable of piercing steel plate, shot out from the walls. They stopped a foot away from him, hanging in mid-air as if frozen in time, before turning to dust. He kept walking. Poisonous gas billowed from the floor. It parted around him like water flowing around a stone. He reached the center of their formation. The ten Gold Assassins roared, unleashing their ultimate attacks from all sides. Blades, claws, chains—a storm of lethal intent. Lu Feng merely sighed, a sound of utter boredom. He picked up a discarded iron sword from the floor. It was a cheap, rusted thing. But in the hand of a Sword God, a blade of grass could slay dragons. One flash. A single, blinding flash of light that filled the entire hall. When the light faded, Lu Feng stood in the same spot, the rusty sword held loosely at his side. The ten Gold Assassins were frozen in their attack poses, their eyes wide with disbelief. A thin, perfect red line appeared on each of their necks. *Thud. Thud. Thud.* Ten heads hit the floor in near-perfect unison. Lu Feng continued his stroll, stepping over their bodies and heading for the ornate doors at the far end of the hall. He kicked them open. Inside, seated on a throne of polished bone, was the Tower Master. He was a hulking man with a scarred face, his aura that of a seasoned Grandmaster. But now, his face was pale, his hands trembling. He had felt the life forces of his entire organization extinguish like candles in a hurricane. “Who… who in the god’s name are you?” he stammered, his bravado gone, replaced by primal fear. Lu Feng’s eyes locked onto him. “The one who has come to collect your life.” The Tower Master roared, a desperate surge of courage born from terror. “You think you can kill me? I am a Grandmaster! I will show you the power of the Blood Fiend’s Shadow!” His hands swelled, turning black as he channeled all his true essence. A monstrous claw of dark energy materialized, screeching as it shot towards Lu Feng, powerful enough to tear down the entire hall. Lu Feng watched its approach with disinterest. He raised one finger. A tiny, brilliant wisp of golden light, smaller than a grain of rice, condensed at his fingertip. It was pure, distilled sword-qi, the essence of a Sword God. He flicked it. The golden light shot forward. It met the massive demonic claw and didn’t even slow down. It passed straight through the dark energy, causing the entire technique to implode in a harmless puff of smoke. The wisp of light continued its path, unerringly striking the Tower Master’s shoulder. *CRACK!* The sound of shattering bone and rupturing meridians echoed in the chamber. The Tower Master screamed, pinned to his throne by the minuscule mote of light, his cultivation instantly crippled. Terror, absolute and soul-crushing, consumed him. This was not a martial artist. This was a divinity of the sword. A being from a realm he couldn't even comprehend. Lu Feng took a slow step forward, his voice like the grinding of glaciers. “The client. Give me the name.” The crippled Master sobbed, his body convulsing. He would say anything to stop this torment, to live one more second. “Spare me! Please, spare me! I’ll tell you everything!” Lu Feng’s gaze did not soften. “Speak.” The Tower Master’s voice was a desperate, broken whisper. “We were only hired! We were given a secret map to your residence, a guarantee that you were nothing but a powerless servant!” He looked up, his eyes pleading. “The man who supplied it… he is the most respected figure in the martial world! It was the Alliance Leader! The Master of the Divine Sword Manor gave us the contract to kill you!”

Erasing the Blood Shadow Tower