Cold marble bit into Jin Lei’s cheek, the metallic tang of his own blood pooling on his tongue.
Heavy footsteps echoed through the grand ancestral courtyard, each strike sounding like a heavy mallet hitting a drum.
"You are a stain on our lineage," a freezing voice declared from above.
Jin Lei tried to lift his head, but a heavy boot pressed down on the back of his neck, grinding his face deeper into the dirt.
Uncle Jin Huo stood over him, his crimson robes rustling in the crisp autumn wind.
Surrounding them, dozens of Jin Clan disciples watched in absolute silence, their expressions a mix of cold amusement and disgust.
Nobody spoke up for him.
No one dared to challenge the decision of the High Council.
For seventeen years, Jin Lei had trained day and night, believing his hard work could overcome his slow cultivation.
Today, those illusions had been utterly shattered.
During the Bloodline Awakening Ceremony, the ancestral stone had remained completely dark when he touched it.
A dormant bloodline, they called it.
Trash-tier, they whispered.
In a clan where power was everything, a member without an active bloodline was worse than a common beggar.
They stripped him of his jade pendant, his robes of the main lineage, and his dignity in a matter of minutes.
"Uncle," Jin Lei rasped, his voice raw from screaming against his restraints. "Please. Just let me stay as a servant. I can still work."
Jin Huo scoffed, a sound devoid of any familial warmth.
"Our clan does not keep useless dogs, even as servants," the older man replied, his tone utterly flat.
With a brutal kick, Jin Huo sent him sprawling across the courtyard floor toward the center of a massive stone platform.
Runes carved into the obsidian tiles began to glow with a sickly, violet light.
Sparks of unstable spiritual energy hissed in the air, smelling of ozone and charred copper.
This was the Exile Array, a one-way teleportation formation designed to dump criminals and failures into the desolate Lower Realm.
Jin Lei struggled to push himself up, his arms shaking violently under his own weight.
His fingers clawed at the stone, leaving bloody streaks behind.
He looked up, meeting his uncle’s gaze through a messy fringe of black hair.
Jin Huo’s eyes held no anger, no hatred, and worst of all, no regret.
There was only a vast, empty indifference.
"Your existence ends here, Jin Lei," Jin Huo said, turning his back on his own flesh and blood. "Do not attempt to survive. It will only make your death more painful."
Humiliation burned hotter than any physical wound, a searing ache settling deep in Jin Lei's chest.
His own family had discarded him like garbage.
Despair washed over him. Jin Lei, face pressed into the frigid dirt, watches through a blur of tears as his uncle, Jin Huo, casts a final, dismissive glance before the teleportation array flickers, banishing him from the Jin Clan's pristine courtyards into the desolate, beast-haunted Lower Realm. The profound abandonment burns a hole in his chest, a wound far deeper than any physical blow.
---
Violet light exploded around him, blinding and violent.
Space itself seemed to tear open, ripping his body from the physical world and throwing him into a chaotic vortex of pure energy.
Screaming was impossible; the pressure of the void crushed the air right out of his lungs.
Every bone in his body felt like it was being ground into dust by an invisible mortar and pestle.
Time lost all meaning as he tumbled through the dark, turbulent currents of the spatial corridor.
Images of his past flashed before his eyes—moments of hope, of intense training under the burning sun, of hoping his father would look at him with pride.
All of it was gone now, replaced by the cold reality of betrayal.
Suddenly, the pulling force ceased, replaced by a sudden, sickening drop.
Gravity reasserted itself with a vengeance.
---
Mud splattered across his face as he slammed hard into the damp earth.
Air rushed back into his lungs in a ragged, painful gasp, causing him to cough violently.
Spitting out a mouthful of rotting leaves and black soil, he pushed himself onto his knees.
Rain poured down from a pitch-black sky, cold and unrelenting, washing the blood from his forehead.
Looking around, he saw nothing but gnarled, twisted trees with bark that looked like peeling, diseased skin.
Thick, gray fog rolled across the forest floor, carrying the pungent stench of decay and wild beasts.
This was the Lower Realm—a lawless, savage wasteland where only the strongest survived.
Without a bloodline, his chances of lasting a single night were virtually zero.
"Why?" he whispered to the empty forest, his voice cracking.
Anger, cold and sharp, began to replace the crushing grief in his heart.
He clenched his fists so hard his nails cut into his palms, drawing fresh blood.
They wanted him to die quietly.
Those elitist bastards wanted him to fade away, a forgotten speck in the annals of the Jin Clan.
"I won't," he muttered, his jaw tightening. "I will survive. I will make them regret this."
Steel resolve filled his chest, but his physical limitations quickly brought him back to reality.
His body was too weak, his spiritual meridians completely blocked by the residual energy of the teleportation array.
He was entirely defenseless.
---
Clinging to a thick, damp root, he dragged himself toward the hollow base of a massive, dying tree.
Shelter was his top priority; the rain was turning the ground into a freezing swamp, and hypothermia would kill him long before any beast found him.
Every inch of his body ached, a deep, throbbing protest against his stubborn refusal to die.
Inside the hollow tree trunk, he curled into a tight ball, shivering uncontrollably.
Memories of the awakening ceremony replayed in his mind, fuel for the fire burning in his soul.
Elder Jin Chen had stood before the clan, his voice booming as he declared Jin Lei a worthless cripple.
"A waste of resources," the elder had sneered, dismissing seventeen years of dedication with a single sentence.
Even his own parents had turned their gaze away, unable to look at their failed offspring.
No one had reached out to stop the guards when they dragged him to the dungeons.
Nobody had whispered a word of comfort during his entire week of confinement.
He was completely alone in a world that chewed up the weak and spat out their bones.
"If only I had power," he muttered, staring blankly into the darkness of the hollow tree.
If he had even a low-grade bloodline, he would have been allowed to stay, to live a quiet life as a guard.
But fate had denied him even that meager mercy.
Suddenly, a strange sensation stirred deep within his lower abdomen, right where his dantian lay dormant.
It was not the warm flow of spiritual qi, but something colder, sharper, and incredibly ancient.
A faint blue screen flickered in his vision, so dim he thought he was hallucinating from the fever.
He blinked, but the glowing words remained, hovering in the damp air before his eyes.
Analyzing system text showed his critical physical state and blocked meridians.
Warning prompts blinked in red, indicating he was at risk of imminent death.
Jin Lei stared at the text, his heart hammering against his ribs.
"What is this?" he whispered, his breath catching in his throat.
Was this a delusion born of his dying mind, or something else entirely?
System notifications flashed, announcing the initiation of the Bloodline Purification System.
Binding process began immediately, locking onto his soul.
Progress bars flickered, slowly climbing from ten percent to fifty.
Cold energy in his gut began to spread, seeping into his bones and soothing the fierce ache in his muscles.
It felt like liquid ice, numbing his pain and replacing it with a strange, humming vitality.
Another prompt appeared, announcing that the binding process had reached ninety-five percent.
System sounds chimed softly in his head, declaring the connection complete.
"Welcome, Host. The Primordial Bloodline System is now online," a genderless voice echoed directly in his mind.
Gasps escaped his lips as a rush of information flooded his brain, explaining the system's functions in an instant.
He could extract the bloodline essence of any beast or cultivator he defeated.
Extraction allowed him to merge disparate bloodlines, purifying them into legendary, primordial lineages of unimaginable power.
This was a forbidden cheat, a power that violated the very laws of heaven and earth.
Wild, hysterical laughter bubbled up in his chest, but he forced it down, knowing that making noise in this forest was suicide.
With this system, he was no longer a trash-tier cripple.
He was the ultimate predator in the making.
"Just wait," he whispered, a dark smile spreading across his pale face. "Jin Huo. Elder Jin Chen. All of you. I will crawl back from this abyss."
Before he could explore the system further, a sudden, heavy silence fell over the forest.
Even the sound of the pouring rain seemed to muffle, replaced by a tense, suffocating pressure.
Hair on the back of his neck stood on end.
Something was approaching.
An incredibly dangerous presence was drawing closer.
Holding his breath, he pressed his back against the rough wood of the hollow tree, peering out through a narrow crack.
Mist outside was shifting, swirling in unnatural patterns.
Thick, copper stench filled the air, so potent it made his eyes water.
He could hear the wet, heavy thud of paws stepping through the deep mud, slow and deliberate.
Every instinct in his body screamed at him to run, but his limbs remained frozen under the crushing aura.
He was trapped.
Teleportation array’s residual light had finally died down to a faint, dying ember in the distance.
As the last shimmering light of the array vanishes, a guttural growl echoes from the gnarled shadows, and a pair of malevolent red eyes pierce the gloom, locking onto Jin Lei with hungry intent.