Scapegoat

Rahu Family headquarters.

Tents rose and fell in an unbroken expanse, like gray hills spread across the Wasteland.

Between the tents, vicious, ugly Asuras and beautiful, seductive Rakshasa Women came and went. Dark crimson banners snapped in the wind, their ferocious clan emblems gleaming with a bloodlike sheen beneath the sunlight.

The entire Camp was steeped in a grim, murderous atmosphere, like a slumbering beast that could open its bloody maw at any moment.

Inside the central tent.

Open flames flickered, stretching the shadows within into shifting lengths.

"Elder Luo Xia, Elder Salar, Osar, Amon, and Fili's soul flames—have gone out."

Quinn Luo Hou's voice was hoarse and low, like sandpaper slowly scraping across rough wood. His expression was grim, and that grimness held not only anger, but also an unmistakable heaviness.

An Eighth-Order elder and three Seventh-Order experts had fallen at once. Such a loss would have been a devastating blow at any time.

Luo Xia lowered his head and looked at the many blood-red jade tablets laid out on the table.

The jade tablets were translucent and warm in texture. Each was roughly three fingers wide and one palm long, arranged neatly across the tabletop.

Inside each tablet was a sealed orange-yellow flame. The flames burned quietly within their jade shells, like fireflies trapped in Amber.

These were the Luo Hou Family's Blood Soul Jades.

Before entering the Heaven Stele Secret Realm, every family member had to leave a mental imprint within a Blood Soul Jade, allowing their safety to be monitored in real time.

The Blood Soul Jade was linked to its owner's soul. So long as the owner lived, the soul flame would burn. Once the owner fell, the soul flame would extinguish, and the jade tablet would shatter with it.

Among those jade tablets, several