The crimson light spanning the canopy was no gentle blush of twilight, but a raw, seeping wound cut across the firmament. Below, the Azure Ascendant Sect dissolved into uproar. Sword-apprentices pointed, shouted, and scattered, their skin washed pale beneath the glare. Grand halls emptied. Senior wardens stumbled onto the flagstones, silk sleeves flapping around them, composure abandoned.
Bi Ruoxue stood motionless on the central Plaza of Reverence, her emerald silk stark against the red canopy. Her thin lips curled in sharp triumph as she scanned the unsettled councilors, raising her voice over the racket.
“Look! This is no natural phenomenon!” she cried, sweeping an arm toward the churning clouds. “This foul omen began the moment her retinue dragged her back from the breach!” Her ringed finger pointed toward the steps, where two pale-faced deacons gripped the arm of a captive woman wrapped in tattered robes—a decoy bearing Lin Muxi’s outward shape, gaze blank, seemingly unbothered by the shouts.
“The blind saintess!” one councilor shouted, trembling. “She collapsed the Spirit Vein! She brought this ruin upon us!”
Ruoxue smiled with razor-thin cruelty. “Indeed! A blind girl chosen by ancestral decree? She has drained our foundation dry, and now her deception cracks open. A fiend in disguise, luring us into catastrophe!”
“Bind her!” Grand Elder Feng roared, veins bulging along his neck. “To the iron post! The ancient rites demand an offering to clear the sky!”
A dozen initiates surged forward at Feng's command, hauling the silent captive toward the weathered pillar at the plaza's edge. Hemp cables used for tethering spirit beasts coiled around the cloth, biting tight into the form. The captive offered no resistance, head upright while onlookers shrank back in dread.
Grand Elder Feng drew a rusted ceremonial blade, its bronze edge catching the red glare. Above him, the air split. A silhouette dropped through the smoke, descending with deliberate slowness, wreathed in ash and violet flame.
Zong Xiaotian dropped down lightly, the genuine Muxi cradled securely in the crook of his arm while Baozi clamped jaws onto his collar fabric with stubborn ferocity. At the pillar, the bound shape dissolved into smoke and loose hemp—a simple glamour shed like chaff. Xiaotian’s boots met the plaza, sending hairline fractures through five yards of stone. Malice and ancient cold leaked from his pores. His golden irises locked directly onto Bi Ruoxue, draining the smug color from her cheeks.
“Sacrifice?” Xiaotian’s drawl carried over the plaza, heavy and iron-laced. He set Muxi down. Her fingers brushed his forearm to steady her balance. On his shoulder, Baozi gave a wet, indignant burp, coughing up a singed pebble and a trail of soot.
“You call yourselves cultivators?” Xiaotian sneered, glancing over the shaking councilors. “You wet your boots beneath a red sky, then scramble to slaughter an innocent maiden. You bleat about celestial mandates while your guts rot with grease and cowardice.”
Grand Elder Feng puffed his chest, brandishing the bronze knife. “Zong Xiaotian! You broken cur, you dare trespass upon the high court? What foul miasma coats your meridian paths? You are possessed!”
Xiaotian barked a laugh. “Broken cur? You mean the heir your sect master butchered for scrap meat? The talent you buried beneath the quarry?” He took a deliberate step forward; granite cracked under his sole. “You claim you smell a fiend? Old fool, you wouldn't know true ruin if it cracked your skull open.”
Xiaotian’s golden gaze pinned Feng to his boots. “You want to beg the skies for mercy? Let us see if your grand formation can endure a sneeze.” With a flick of his wrist, an arc of black-purple essence struck the defensive glyphs set along the plaza's perimeter.
“He struck the boundary runes!” someone yelled.
Xiaotian smirked. “Boundary runes? These chicken scratches?” He lifted his boot, dark fire gathering along the leather sole, and brought his heel down.
Granite boomed like striking an iron bell. The ancient wards shattered in a blinding snap. Rifts jagged across the courtyard floor, and the mountain-guarding barrier crumbled into blue grit that dissolved upon the wind. Absolute silence choked the plaza. Centuries of wards, erased by one insolent stomp.
Bi Ruoxue stumbled backward, her mouth open and dry. Her manicured poise collapsed into trembling disbelief. The discarded exile she had mocked stood over the rubble of the sect's pride, entirely untouchable. A choked whimper escaped her throat as her knees struck the fractured flags, fingers clawing at her silk hem.
*“Excellent, little cub,”* Yao Qingyu’s voice purred in his mind, laced with an intoxicating blend of power and dark pleasure. *“The pathetic insects are broken. Now… let their blood wash away their arrogance. Let them know true fear.”*
The heat inside Xiaotian's chest flared hot and caustic, urging him to level the pavilions and burn away every memory of his degradation. Feng and the councilors scrambled backward on hands and knees, sputtering excuses, their grand robes dragged through grit. One stomp, and their skulls would smash like ripe gourds.
Just as his hand tightened, ready to unleash a torrent of darkness, a voice, hoarse and ragged, cut through the silence.
“Zong Xiaotian! Stop!”
From the collapsed vein entrance, a limping silhouette dragged itself into the light. Zong Hentian staggered forward, one arm hanging limp and shattered, soot caked over his torn silk. In his left hand flickered a pulsing sphere of orange fire—the remaining half of Xiaotian’s harvested Marrow-Flame bloodline. “Cast aside the pagoda,” the sect master rasped, raising the burning core, “and the girl leaves these grounds alive.”