Iron-clamp hands locked around Li Yuan's thin arm, leaving him no room to struggle. Two expressionless family guards dressed in black dragged him from the cold pile of straw like a prisoner being hauled away. They propped him up and marched in silence through the family compound beneath the deep night sky.
There were no explanations, no announcements—only an unspoken, suffocating air of murderous solemnity.
Li Yuan didn't resist. He didn't even waste a breath struggling. Head bowed, his tangled hair hid his eyes. His frail body shivered in the cold wind, like a withered leaf ready to be torn apart at any moment. That air of resignation seemed to put his guards slightly at ease.
But inside, he was anything but resigned.
Deep within his consciousness, that tiny crimson "spark" hadn't gone out. If anything, spurred by his utter calm and suppressed will to survive, he sensed it more clearly than ever. It burned faintly but stubbornly, giving off the slightest warmth as it fought back against the chill outside him and the growing cold within.
They were heading toward the family's forbidden grounds, where the eerie blue-stone altar stood.
As expected... this day had finally come.
They dragged him roughly past checkpoint after checkpoint, until at last they reached that familiar clearing, thick with the stench of blood and a bone-deep chill. Under the bleak moonlight, the altar glimmered a murky blue-black. Its strange runes seemed to come alive, slowly writhing.
Several high-ranking family members stood around the altar. At their head was the Third Elder, his face cold, a trace of fanaticism lurking deep in his eyes. He didn't even look at Li Yuan, as if the boy were nothing but an object about to be put to use.
"The time has come. Prepare the sacrifice and welcome the Ancestral Spirit!" The Third Elder's aged, authoritative voice rang through the night.
They dragged Li Yuan onto the altar without mercy. The cold blue stone pierced through his thin clothes and straight into his bones. They forced him down in the center, in a hollow marked with the densest runes. Special metal shackles carved with runes locked his wrists and ankles, their icy touch raising goose bumps across his skin.
He lay on his back, staring up at the pitch-black sky, without a single star. It hung overhead like a colossal shroud, ready to cover him.
The Third Elder began chanting an obscure, tongue-twisting incantation. His voice rose and fell, carrying an eerie rhythm. The other family elders lowered their heads and chanted along, forming a din that made the world spin.
As the incantation continued, the runes on the altar lit up one by one, casting a ghostly green glow. The chill in the air suddenly thickened, turning viscous, as if into a solid tide that surged in from every direction and squeezed the space around the altar.
The Yin Sha Curse inside Li Yuan surged with unprecedented vigor! It was no longer slowly eating away at him. Now it devoured him with savage force, frantically draining what little vitality and blood he had left, then channeling them through some unseen connection into the unfathomable depths beneath the altar.
Agony! An agony beyond words!
Ten times, a hundred times worse than any previous attack! It was as if countless icy blades were churning inside him, carving up his nerves and tearing away at his soul. His blood was turning cold, his muscles wasting away, and his consciousness growing hazy as a deep darkness crept across his vision.
He could feel it clearly: his life was draining away at breakneck speed, like the last grains falling through an hourglass.
"...Am I going to die...?"
The thought flashed through his fading consciousness. Resentment, fury, hatred... Countless emotions bubbled up in his heart like magma, only to be crushed beneath an even greater cold and despair.
Just as his consciousness was about to sink into oblivion—
"Bzzz—"
A low hum rang out, not from the world around him, but from the very depths of his soul.
Above the black ancestral tablet that held offerings to the "Ancestral Spirit," the space at the center of the altar twisted violently. A dense, roiling mass of darkness appeared from nowhere. It wasn't empty space; it had substance, writhing like a living thing as countless tendrils of shadow reached out from it.
It radiated an ultimate chill, utter lifelessness, and an ancient, evil presence.
Was this the "Ancestral Spirit"? The "Anomaly" the family worshipped...
It sensed the presence of a sacrifice and let out a silent, ravenous shriek that struck directly at the soul. One of its thickest shadowy tendrils darted out like a venomous snake, aiming straight for Li Yuan's chest on the altar!
This wasn't physical contact. It was an assault on the very source of life and the soul, meant to devour them whole!
"It's here!" The Third Elder and the others held their breath, their eyes blazing with even greater fervor.
A touch of absolute, icy death engulfed Li Yuan in an instant.
His body jerked into a bow, his eyes flew wide, and all focus vanished from his pupils. His last shred of consciousness flickered like a candle in the wind, on the verge of going out.
But—
At the critical moment, just as utter silence and darkness were about to swallow him whole—
"BOOM!!!"
Deep within his consciousness, the faint, dormant crimson "spark" seemed to be set ablaze by the world's ultimate dark evil and the threat of death!
It didn't simply flare up. Like an ancient Fierce Beast waking from its slumber, it opened its crimson eyes!
Heat! A domineering, boundless heat, as though it could burn every last thing beneath heaven, burst forth with that "spark" at its center!
"SSSH—!"
Like red-hot iron plunged into ice water!
The shadowy tendril piercing Li Yuan's chest let out a shriek of utter agony the instant it touched that scorching power—a cry beyond the reach of the material world! As if it had met its Nemesis, it writhed and recoiled in a frenzy, desperate to escape.
But it was too late!
The Crimson Sun's explosive power revealed its savage side: devouring!
A mighty force of suction rose inside Li Yuan. No longer was the Yin Sha Curse being passively drained; the Crimson Sun seized its prey eagerly and of its own accord! It turned the tables, clamped onto the shadowy tendril, then charged brazenly along that unseen connection toward the roiling mass of darkness itself!
"ROAR—!"
The Anomaly let out a terrified bellow. Its entire body of darkness shuddered and churned violently as it tried to sever the connection. It could feel that scorching power devouring its very essence! This was absolute suppression on a higher level!
The fanaticism on the faces of the Third Elder and the others froze. Shock and disbelief took its place!
They watched the dark energy representing the "Ancestral Spirit" grow thinner and fainter before their eyes! Meanwhile, the young sacrifice who should have been drained dry was now glowing with a faint, ominous red light.
"What's going on?!"
"The Ancestral Spirit... its aura is weakening!"
"Backlash! It's a backlash! Stop him!" The Third Elder was the first to react. He roared in fury and alarm, trying to rush onto the altar.
But the activated ghost-green runes around the altar now flickered violently. Their energy had grown wildly unstable, forming a chaotic barrier that kept the elders at bay for the moment.
Li Yuan knew nothing of it.
His consciousness had been pulled into a strange place. On one side lay cold, lifeless darkness, representing the Anomaly and the Yin Sha Curse inside him; on the other was a newly born yet incomparably domineering crimson heat, representing the "Crimson Sun" that had just awakened.
Now, the crimson was devouring the darkness by sheer force!
The Anomaly's essence, its vast, concentrated energy of cold, was forcibly seized and torn apart by the Crimson Sun, then swept into Li Yuan's body. Cold enough to freeze a giant elephant to death in an instant, it was seared and refined the moment it touched the Crimson Sun. Its impurities were stripped away, leaving only the gentlest, most fundamental energy in staggering abundance. Like a floodgate bursting open, it poured back into his battered, nearly depleted body!
The bone-deep, icy agony quickly faded, replaced by a comfort he had never known before, as if he were soaking in a hot spring, and by the feeling of power surging wildly through him!
His parched meridians drank in the energy like land long starved of rain. His withered muscles trembled, beginning to fill out again. Beneath his pallid skin, a faint flush of life began to shine.
The process seemed to last a long time, but in truth, only a few breaths passed.
When the last trace of the Anomaly's essence had been swallowed by the Crimson Sun, the darkness representing the "Ancestral Spirit" vanished completely. The altar's ghost-green runes dimmed along with it, then went dark.
Silence returned to the night sky. Only the wind howled past.
Li Yuan lay at the center of the altar, his shackles still locked around him. But his breath, which had been so faint it was nearly gone, had grown steady and strong. He lay with his eyes closed, his face no longer ashen, but peaceful, as if asleep.
Below the altar, the Third Elder and the others stared, pale-faced and dumbstruck, first at the empty space above the altar, then at Li Yuan, who seemed... "unharmed."
Dead silence fell. Only the wind swept up dust from the ground with a soft hiss, as if mocking their ignorance and futility.
Before you continue