Rotting copper filled Yu Tian’s lungs with every ragged breath. Squeezing his eyes shut, he dragged his withered left leg through the knee-deep muck of the offal trenches. Thick, grey mud, mixed with the stagnant, glowing blood of slaughtered spiritual beasts, splashed against his torn linen tunic. Pain was an old friend, but today it felt sharper, biting deep into the ruined pathways of his shattered meridians. Every day in the Azure Cloud Sect’s slaughterhouse was a lesson in cold, hard survival. Crippled disciples like him were not expected to live long. Most died of blood-rot within a year, their bodies tossed into the furnace to heat the sect's grand baths. He had survived three years here by being invisible, by expecting betrayal from every shadow, and by trusting absolutely no one. Above him, massive iron hooks groaned under the weight of headless fire-bulls. Heavy drops of boiling, spiritual fat hissed as they dripped into the dark water around his shins. Screams of dying beasts echoed from the upper pens, a constant, deafening roar that vibrated through the stone walls. Dragging his dead leg forward, Yu Tian gripped his rusted skinning knife tighter, his knuckles white. He wiped a layer of greasy steam from his forehead, his amber eyes scanning the rafters. Paranoia wasn't a disease; it was a shield. He kept track of every guard's footsteps, the exact timing of the overseer's rounds, and the number of steps to the nearest exit. When you were a powerless cripple in a world of immortal monsters, knowing when to run was the only cultivation that mattered. Blood-stained water splashed against his shins as he reached the carcass of a juvenile earth-serpent. Its scales were dull, cracked, and worthless to the sect's weaponsmiths, which was why it had been dumped here for the dregs to clean. Work like this paid three copper coins a day, barely enough to buy a moldy loaf of spirit-grain bread. Yet, he worked without complaint, carving out the fat and the sinew with practiced, mechanical precision. Memories of his past life often came to him in these dark, quiet moments between the screams of the beasts. Three years ago, he had been the young master of the Yu Clan, a promising talent with clean meridians and a bright future. Then came the night of the ritual. His father’s cold, unblinking eyes still haunted his dreams, watching in silence as the elders bound Yu Tian to the stone altar. They had sacrificed his spiritual roots to feed their ancestral beast, a monstrous, multi-tailed shadow cat, to guarantee Yu Feifan’s breakthrough into the Foundation Establishment realm. Ruined, crippled, and discarded, Yu Tian had been cast out like garbage, sold to the Azure Cloud Sect to work off a fictional debt. He survived because he refused to give them the satisfaction of his death. Every agony he endured was a coin saved in the bank of his eventual vengeance. Iron-clad boots suddenly clattered on the stone walkway directly above his trench. Years of cultivated paranoia made him freeze instantly, pressing his back against the slimy, wet stone wall. His breath hitched, shallow and silent, as he tilted his head to peer through the rising red mist. Two figures stood at the edge of the pit, their clean, silk robes a stark contrast to the filth below. Looking up, Yu Tian felt his stomach drop into an icy, bottomless void. Silk of pure sky-blue draped the shoulders of the taller man, embroidered with the silver crest of the Yu Clan. Yu Feifan. Crimson fury flared in Yu Tian's chest, hot and violent, before he forced it down into the coldest depths of his mind. "Are you sure he is still alive?" Feifan's voice carried over the roar of the boiling vats, dripping with casual disdain. "A waste like him should have rotted months ago." A stout, greasy man in heavy leather aprons bowed low beside him, rubbing his fleshy hands together. "He is alive, young master," the overseer wheezed, pointing a stained finger directly toward Yu Tian's hiding spot. "We keep him on the hardest shifts, but the rat refuses to die." Panic, cold and sharp as an icicle, pierced Yu Tian’s chest. This was the moment his paranoia had warned him about every single night. He had always known they would come back to finish the job once they realized his stubborn soul was still intact. "Bring him out," Feifan ordered, tossing a heavy leather pouch that clinked with the unmistakable sound of high-grade spirit stones. "Soul-refiners are paying a premium for live vessels this week." "Fresh, broken souls are needed to forge the new spirit-tracking banners." Two burly guards plunged into the trench, their heavy boots splashing filth onto Yu Tian's face as they grabbed his arms. Chains rattled, cold and heavy, wrapping around his wrists before he could even raise his skinning knife. Down into the lower execution pit they dragged him, his useless leg scraping against the jagged stone steps. Boiling steam rose from the massive copper grates below, smelling of scorched bone and spiritual marrow. Inside his mouth, tucked beneath his tongue, lay his only secret. Beneath the flesh of his cheek, a sharp, jagged edge cut into his gums, drawing a thin trickle of blood. Sharp and forbidden, it was a tiny shard of the Obsidian Karma Stone, stolen from the sect's deepest vaults during a chaotic beast stampede two months ago. If the guards searched his clothes, they would find nothing, but he had kept this lethal sliver hidden in his mouth for weeks, waiting for the final, desperate moment. Slowly, the guards threw him onto the blood-slicked stone of the execution pit. Blood-rot fumes rose from the drain, burning his eyes as he looked up at Feifan, who stood safely behind an array barrier. "You always were a stubborn dog, Yu Tian," Feifan sneered, stepping closer to the edge of the barrier. "But even dogs have a price, and yours is thirty low-grade spirit stones." Gold and silver light shimmered in Feifan's hand as he caught another pouch thrown by a hooded figure emerging from the dark. High above, the soul-refiner approached, clad in robes of stitched human skin, carrying a long, hollow brass needle. Slid between his teeth, the jagged shard of the Karma Stone tasted of cold iron and ancient, dead gods. Fire erupted in Yu Tian's throat as he gathered his saliva and swallowed the stone whole. Tears of pure agony welled in his eyes as the razor-sharp shard sliced down his esophagus, burning like liquid lightning. Through the agonizing heat, he watched Feifan laugh, tossing the heavy pouch of spirit stones up and down. Clinking sounds echoed in his ears, mixing with the roaring rush of his own awakening, dying meridians. Thirty spirit stones for his soul. Every inch of his chest felt like it was being torn apart from the inside out as the stone settled in his dantian. Black veins began to web outward from his collarbone, creeping up his neck like frozen spiderwebs. Shadows in the pit seemed to stretch, twisting toward him as if drawn by a magnetic force. As the soul-refiner's rusted extraction needle touches Yu Tian's throat, the swallowed shard glows black under his skin, and a voice whispers from the dark: 'Whose thread shall we sever first?'

Chapter 1: Where the Blood-Rot Breeds