The toll of a bell swept across the estate, its echoes still lingering. I stood at the edge of the training grounds, the warm grain of the wooden sword still clinging to my fingertips. The tear at my cuff fluttered open in the wind, and slanting sunlight fell across my skin, revealing an exceedingly fine golden line that vanished in an instant.
I did not return to my room.
My footsteps shifted lightly as I kept close to the wall, moving along the shadows of the corridor. Ji Hantian had been dragged toward the west wing of the side courtyard. Disgraced stewards had once been imprisoned there; now, it had become his temporary shelter. A faint stench drifted through the wind—not the smell of blood, but the scent of rotting herbs mixed with rust, slowly seeping through the cracks in the window.
I stopped outside the window and peered in through a tear in the paper.
He was curled up on the bed, his limbs twisted at unnatural angles, as though someone had forcibly snapped them and tossed him aside. Veins bulged across his forehead, his lips had turned purple, and broken hisses spilled from his throat. "...Kill him... Tear apart his bones... Draw out his marrow..." His voice rose and fell, sometimes sounding like his own, sometimes like someone else speaking through his mouth.
His left arm lay exposed. Black lines wriggled beneath his skin like living worms burrowing through flesh. With every twitch, his veins bulged further, his skin began to crack, and dark-red mucus seeped out. This was no ordinary festering wound. Something was devouring his body from within.
The Demonic Blood had already begun transforming its host.
If this dragged on for another half hour, he would completely lose his mind and become a puppet obedient only to the controller of the blood source—even if that blood had originally been his own.
I closed my eyes and sank my thoughts into my body.
The Heaven-Slaying Origin flowed quietly within me. Since the nine Remnant Dao Crystals had returned to their places, it had been growing in secret every day. With danger close at hand, its circulation had quickened slightly, but it had not triggered any additional system feedback. I knew this did not count as a life-or-death crisis, only a state on the edge of "danger approaching," enough for me to use a wisp of Origin without exposing everything.
My fingertips moved slightly, and a pale golden stream of light gathered in my palm, condensed without dispersing, like silk and mist.
The window broke without a sound.
I stepped into the room, my feet touching down without pause. He suddenly convulsed violently, his head snapping toward me. His eyes rolled white, his pupils shrinking to needlepoints as he spat out a mouthful of black mist.
The mist struck my sleeve and dissipated with a hiss, like fire meeting water.
I took a step forward, my right hand shooting out as my index finger pointed straight at his glabella.
The instant the golden light entered him, his entire body jolted. A muffled roar burst from his throat, and then he went limp, his breathing gradually slowing. The black patterns moving beneath his skin stopped, as though frozen within his blood vessels.
The room fell quiet.
Only his heavy breathing and the wind leaking through the roof remained.
I withdrew my hand and swept my sleeve lightly, erasing the last wisp of black aura from the ground. No one could touch this thing. If the elders noticed it, they would certainly trace its source. And if they discovered that I had suppressed it, more questions would inevitably follow.
The door hinge creaked softly.
I did not turn around, but I sensed a familiar presence standing outside.
Ye Qingwan stood there, her moon-white dress fluttering faintly in the night wind. A pale golden light glimmered in her eyes; she had clearly used the sensing power of the Blood Phoenix Body. Her gaze swept over Ji Hantian, unconscious on the bed, before falling upon the golden glow not yet dispersed from my hand.
"You can actually control Demonic Blood?" she asked. Her voice was soft, yet every word was clear. "This isn't an immortal art, nor is it a demonic technique... What did you use?"
I did not answer.
Instead, I shifted sideways and shielded her behind me.
The air in the room rippled faintly. A wisp of black smoke slowly seeped from Ji Hantian's nostrils, twisting like a snake as it lunged straight at our faces. I raised my hand and swept my sleeve. The Pseudo-Primordial Body reacted on its own, a paper-thin halo spreading outward. The black smoke struck the barrier and was instantly annihilated.
Her pupils contracted slightly.
"If you want to save him, you have to trust me," I said.
Before my words had faded, my left arm had already wrapped around her waist. With a light tap of my toes against the ground, I leaped into the air. The tiles trembled faintly beneath our feet as we soared upward, burst through the roof, and landed at its edge.
The night wind rushed into our faces.
The courtyard below was silent. Only a thread of black smoke curled up from the roof of the side courtyard before quickly scattering in the wind. The lights in the distance were sparse, and the guards had yet to notice anything unusual.
I released my hand, yet did not step away. I remained between her and the roof ridge, blocking any possible backlash of aura from within the room.
She did not move. Raising her head to look at me, she asked sharply, "That golden light just now came from inside your body. Can you absorb the power of Demonic Blood? Or... did you know from the beginning that he would suffer a backlash?"
I looked down at her.
The tips of her hair were tinged with a trace of crimson, nearly invisible beneath the moonlight, noticeable only from up close. It was the mark left behind after the Blood Phoenix Body awakened, and also the secret she had been unable to hide all these years.
And now, she was staring at me, trying to uncover another, even deeper mystery.
"People with too much curiosity tend to die young," I said.
She sneered. "Then why did you pull me up here just now? If you'd left me inside and let that black aura invade my body, wouldn't that have shut me up nicely?"
I fell silent for a moment.
"Because you can still save people," I said. "Now, you can't."
She frowned. "What do you mean?"
I raised a hand and pointed toward the depths of the side courtyard. In the corner of a small room, an oil lamp flickered on and off. That was where the medicine boy kept watch. Usually, alchemists took turns tending to severely ill patients there. But now, though the lamplight swayed, no one entered or left.
"He isn't merely poisoned anymore," I said. "The Demonic Blood has penetrated his Sea of Consciousness and contaminated his Divine Soul. Ordinary pills can't cure him. Forcibly driving it out will only make him die on the spot. Even if you go in now, all you can do is watch him die."
She bit her lip, anger flashing through her eyes. "So you made the decision on your own? You interfered with that kind of power? Do you know what it is? That isn't part of this world's Spiritual Power system at all!"
I smiled.
"Do you really think this world has only the few paths of cultivation you know?"
She froze.
Before I could speak, a muffled bang suddenly came from inside the room.
It sounded like someone had slammed heavily into a wall.
We both turned our heads at once.
The window of the west wing suddenly exploded, wooden fragments flying everywhere. A dense surge of black aura shot into the sky, circled once in the air, and condensed into a blurred face. It opened its mouth in a howl, then transformed into countless fine threads that drilled into the gaps between the roof tiles and vanished.
The room returned to deathly silence.
But I knew this was not the end.
Though the Demonic Blood had been suppressed, it had not been eradicated. It had already resonated with Ji Hantian's Divine Soul. Even if it lay dormant for now, it would awaken again at some point—especially when his emotions fluctuated violently or he circulated Spiritual Power.
And this body was no longer a complete mortal vessel.
Ye Qingwan stared at the shattered window, her voice turning cold. "He isn't completely dead yet."
"Mm," I said.
"You'll pay a price for this." She looked at me. "No matter who you are or what you've done, once you interfere in an aberration of this level, the elders won't let you go."
"What they fear more now is him becoming a demonic puppet," I said. "As long as he remains lying there without moving, no one will dig into who made the move."
She stared at me for a long while before suddenly asking, "What exactly are you trying to do?"
I did not answer.
Footsteps sounded in the distance. The guards on night patrol were changing shifts. We had to leave.
I turned, about to leap from the roof, when she suddenly reached out and grabbed my wrist.
Her touch was light, yet carried a force that brooked no escape.
"Don't take me away again next time," she said. "When I want to know something, I'll appear on my own in the place you want to hide."
I glanced at her.
Her fingers trembled slightly—not from fear, but from suppressing some impulse. Perhaps anger, perhaps something else.
I did not shake off her hand. I merely brushed it aside gently, then bent down and tapped the eaves with my toes, landing on the corner.
She remained where she was. She neither followed nor retreated.
I looked back one last time.
She stood at the boundary between moonlight and shadow, one hand still hanging in midair, as though she had not decided whether to lower it.
I leaped forward and disappeared into the darkness of the corridor.
As I landed, I heard her murmur something.
I did not catch it.
But I knew some things could no longer be hidden.
The wind whistled past my ears, lifting a fallen leaf that spun into the well in the side courtyard.
The well water was dark and deep, reflecting half a moon.
And at the deepest bottom of the well, a black line slowly writhed, climbing up the stone wall.
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