Mud clung to Ren's boots as he stumbled through the dense growth, his lungs burning like hot ash.
Whispering stalks of black bamboo pressed in from all sides, their dry leaves scraping together in a mocking hiss.
Blood dripped from his fingertips, staining the pale green shoots beneath his feet.
Every step felt like dragging lead weights through wet clay.
Summoning the Primordial Beast had taken more than just his stamina; it had carved a hollow space right out of his skull.
Pain throbbed behind his temples, a sharp, rhythmic pulsing that kept pace with his frantic heartbeat.
He needed to hide.
Finding a small, hollowed-out clearing beneath a fallen colossus of a bamboo trunk, he collapsed.
Dirt scratched his cheek, but he barely felt it.
His mind was spinning, trying to grasp at something that wasn't there anymore.
Wind howled through the high canopy, bending the thick stalks of bamboo until they groaned like dying beasts.
Rain began to fall, cold and relentless, washing the grime from his face but doing nothing to cool the fever burning in his blood.
His cultivation base was in absolute tatters.
One wrong move, one more reckless summon, and his soul would shatter into a million unrecognizable pieces.
Yet, he couldn't stop.
Images of his sister, bound and bleeding in some distant, golden cage, kept flashing before his eyes.
He gripped the mud, his nails digging deep into the earth until they bled.
Isolation wrapped around him like a suffocating blanket.
Survival had always meant absolute self-reliance, but now, the isolation felt like a physical weight crushing his chest.
Breathing hurt.
Every gasp felt like swallowing broken glass.
Internal pathways of his Qi were jagged and frayed, sparking with residual dark energy that smelled faintly of ozone and decay.
Taotie's hunger still lingered in his consciousness like a greasy residue, whispering awful temptations into his mind.
It wanted him to consume.
Ancient, insatiable greed demanded he gorge on the flesh of his enemies, on the very soil beneath his feet, on his own flesh if nothing else was available.
Shoving the dark thoughts aside required a monumental effort of will.
He pressed his palms against his temples, forcing his mind to focus on the reality of his surroundings.
Damp earth, cold rain, and the rustle of bamboo became his only anchors to reality.
Reaching into his torn robes, his trembling fingers brushed against a charcoal stick and a scrap of coarse parchment.
He pulled them out with desperate haste, laying the paper flat against a flat stone.
"Think," he muttered to himself, his voice cracking in the damp quiet of the forest.
Images of his past were usually so clear, yet a cold dread was beginning to pool in his stomach.
He placed the charcoal tip on the rough paper, ready to sketch the curve of his mother's jaw.
Nothing came.
His hand froze.
"No, no, no," he whispered, pressing harder.
He remembered her warmth, her soft voice, the way she smelled of dried lavender and rain.
But when he tried to visualize her face, there was only a swirling, empty void.
Charcoal dragged across the parchment, leaving jagged, desperate lines.
He drew an oval for her head, then tried to place her eyes.
His wrist jerked.
Scribbles of black carbon became frantic, creating a dark, chaotic mess where her features should have been.
A faceless monster stared back at him from the page.
Terror, cold and absolute, gripped his chest like an iron fist.
He couldn't breathe.
Air refused to enter his lungs, trapping a silent scream in his throat.
Sweat poured down his neck, freezing in the damp forest air as his vision blurred at the edges.
He had traded her.
To summon Taotie and destroy the Enforcers, he had literally sliced his own memory of her face away.
Clawing at his own scalp, he squeezed his eyes shut, trying to force the image back into his mind.
Only a deep, black pit remained where his most cherished memory used to live.
"What did I do?" he gasped, his forehead pressing against the cold dirt.
Tears cut clean tracks through the mud on his face.
Paying the price for his forbidden cheat was excruciating, yet it was the only weapon he had left.
Panic flared anew as he stared at the ruined drawing.
He could remember her hands—they were warm, with small, pale scars from working the garden behind their old home.
Vivid memories of her soft, blue tunic remained, yet her face was gone.
But her face remained a blank, gray smear, a terrifying void in his mind's eye.
It was as if someone had taken a wet sponge and wiped that specific portion of his brain completely clean.
A cold sweat broke out across his forehead.
What else had he forgotten?
Had he forgotten her voice?
He tried to summon the sound of her calling his name.
Only silence answered him, heavy and mocking.
Realization washed over him with the force of a tidal wave: every time he used the Invocation Primordial, he was trading a piece of his own humanity.
---
Slowly, the shaking in his limbs subsided.
Anger, cold and calculated, began to replace the suffocating panic.
He couldn't afford to break down now.
His sister was still out there, captive in the upper realms, and the Heavenly Tribunal would not stop hunting him.
Pulling the heavy, blood-stained spatial ring he had stripped from the dead Enforcer out of his pocket, he poured its contents onto the dirt.
Clattering sounds echoed softly in the quiet clearing.
Several high-grade spirit stones rolled into the grass, glowing with a faint, mocking blue light.
A pair of silver daggers, a map of the Third Heaven, and a dark jade slip fell beside them.
Ren ignored the weapons and the stones, his focus locking instantly onto the jade slip.
This was how the Tribunal communicated, how they issued their cruel decrees.
Picking up the cold piece of jade, he channeled a tiny sliver of his remaining Qi into the crystal.
Green light flared, projecting a hovering screen of glowing glyphs into the dim air.
Scanning the text, his eyes narrowed as the true horror of the message unfolded.
"Harvest Quota: Ascension Spring," he read aloud, his voice barely a whisper.
Names of towns and sects throughout the Third Heaven were listed in neat, clinical rows.
Next to each name was a number, indicating the exact amount of soul-energy required for the seasonal extraction.
Tens of thousands of human lives were reduced to mere statistics.
They weren't just governing these realms.
Farmers of flesh and soul, that's what they were.
Cultivators who believed they were ascending to higher heavens were actually being steered directly into the slaughterhouse.
Their hard-won soul-energy was harvested to fuel the eternal youth of the Level-10 Tribunal elders.
Nausea rose in his throat, quickly overtaken by a burning, incandescent rage.
His own clan had probably been wiped out because they refused to comply, or perhaps because their high-quality souls made them a prime target.
"Cattle," Ren spat, his knuckles turning white as he clenched the jade slip.
"They treat us like fucking cattle."
Fear had completely evaporated, burned away by the heat of his rising fury.
Running was no longer an option.
If the entire system of the Nine Heavens was a rigged slaughterhouse, he would not try to escape it.
He would master it.
By climbing their corrupt ladder and using their own resources, he would tear the Tribunal down from the inside out.
Examining the dead Enforcer's spatial ring yielded a few more clues.
There were several vials of crimson pills, each smelling of iron and bitter herbs.
These were Blood-Condensation Pills, used by low-level cultivators to temporarily boost their physical strength at the cost of long-term health.
To the Tribunal, these Enforcers were just slightly higher-grade tools, disposable assets meant to keep the peace in the lower heavens.
They were cogs in a massive, blood-soaked machine.
And he was the wrench that was going to break it.
He picked up the jade slip again, studying the runic signatures of the other Enforcers assigned to this sector.
Three other signatures pulsed on the map, indicating active patrols searching for the massive energy spike that had obliterated their leader.
He didn't have much time.
If they found him in this weakened state, he wouldn't survive a single blow, let alone another summon.
He studied the specific coordinates of the Ascension Spring.
It was located only a few miles from his current position, nestled deep within the misty valleys of the Third Heaven.
Scheduled in three days, the next harvest would bring a high-ranking overseer to collect the condensed soul-pearls.
Overseers of high standing would be present to collect the condensed soul-pearls.
If he could infiltrate that gathering, he could intercept those resources.
Stealing the pure, concentrated energy of thousands of cultivators would accelerate his own stagnant cultivation, pushing him closer to Level 2.
Yet, surviving meant taking impossible risks.
He stared at the glowing glyphs, a dark, dangerous resolve crystallizing in his mind.
To defeat monsters, he had to play their game, even if it meant stepping into the bloodiest arenas of the Nine Heavens.
Every drop of fuel he stole from them was a step closer to his sister, and a step closer to burning their entire world to ash.
A sudden chime echoes from the jade slip, and a voice identical to his dead father's speaks from the glowing crystal, demanding an immediate status report.