The arena still hummed with the aftermath of Li Wei's victory. Elder Han of the Azure Lotus Sect stood, his voice cutting through the noise.
"Li Wei, Li Yue, Bai Ye. You have shown promise. In one week, present yourselves at the foot of Mount Azure to undergo our sect's entrance trial." It was not a request. It was a summons to destiny.
But destiny was put on hold. As the sect elders turned to leave, a wave of killing intent erupted.
"The Li Clan will not rise today!" roared Clan Head Bai Feng.
"That boy dies now!" echoed Clan Head Yun.
In a flash, the tournament ended and the massacre began. Elders from the Bai and Yun clans lunged from the stands, their power aimed not at the Li elders, but like spears at a single target: Li Wei.
They never reached him.
A figure moved, a blur of repressed fury unleashed after years of silence. Li Kang met their charge. His sword, unused for a decade, was a sliver of cold light. He did not fight to win. He fought to kill. An elder's arm was severed. Another fell, clutching a gushing throat. Li Kang was a wounded lion guarding his cub, and the price of entry was blood.
"Kill the brat ourselves!" Bai Zixin screamed, her pride in tatters. She, Yun Lian, and the other younger prodigies, seeing their elders stalled, saw their chance. This was their fight. They surged towards Li Wei as one—a storm, a mist, a blade.
Li Wei had had enough.
The careful control, the hidden auras, the patience—it vanished. The air around him thickened. It wasn't pressure. It was the absence of space, the feeling of being at the bottom of the ocean.
He didn't speak. He moved.
He caught Bai Zixin's lightning-charged palm in his own. There was a sickening crunch of bone. He didn't throw her; he used her body as a weapon, swinging her into Yun Lian, sending both crashing to the ground in a tangle of broken limbs and gasps.
A Bai disciple thrust a spear at his back. The point hit his skin and stopped, as if striking solid iron. Li Wei's elbow shot backward, a piston of bone. It connected with the boy's face, which crumpled inward. He fell and did not move.
He was a reaper in a field of wheat. He didn't use techniques. He used his hands. He grabbed, he broke, he tore. A Yun clansman's delicate water-splash technique was met with a punch that shattered the water, the air, and the man's ribcage in a single, concussive blast.
The remaining prodigies froze, their courage replaced by primal terror. They weren't fighting a man. They were fighting a fierce pure blooded beast.
Li Wei stood in a circle of the fallen, his chest rising and falling steadily, his clothes splattered with the blood of his peers. The older generation's battle faltered as they saw the carnage he had wrought in mere seconds.
He looked at the terrified faces of Bai Zixin and Yun Lian, struggling to rise. His voice was flat, devoid of anger, filled only with finality.
"The next one who comes for me," he said, "dies."
There were no more challenges. The message was received, written in blood and broken bodies. The war for the region had begun, and Li Wei had just declared himself its god of death.
The silence that followed was louder than any battle cry. It was a heavy, stunned thing, broken only by the moans of the wounded and the ragged breaths of the survivors.
Li Wei stood in the center of it all. The coppery tang of blood filled his nostrils, a stark contrast to the clean, wild scent of the Whispering Fangs. His knuckles were raw, his simple robes spattered with crimson that was not his own. He felt no triumph, only a cold, hollow clarity. This was the price. This was what his power summoned into the world.
Around him lay the proof. Bai Zixin cradled a shattered arm, her fiery spirit extinguished, staring at him with wide, terror-filled eyes. Yun Lian tried to push herself up, her elegant mist-steps forgotten, her body broken by his casual, brutal swing. Other young prodigies from the Bai and Yun clans lay in broken heaps, their ambition crushed more thoroughly than their bones.
The older generation's fight had stalled into a tense, panting standoff. Clan Head Bai Feng stared, not at Li Kang who had blunted their assault, but at the carnage his son had wrought. His face was a mask of pure, undiluted hatred, but beneath it was a new, chilling understanding. This was not a rival to be crushed. This was a calamity.
Clan Head Yun, ever the strategist, placed a restraining hand on Bai Feng's arm. "Enough," he said, his voice low and tight. "This field is lost." His eyes, calculating the cost, settled on Li Wei. "The hunt is not over. It has only just begun."
With grim efficiency, the Bai and Yun clans gathered their wounded and their dead. They retreated not with shouts of vengeance, but with a silent, poisonous promise that hung heavier in the air than any threat.
As the last of their rivals vanished, the dam of tension within the Li Clan broke. A wave of cheers and cries of relief erupted, but it was fractured, uncertain. All eyes were on the two figures at the center of the devastation: the son who was a monster, and the father who was a rediscovered sword.
Li Kang stood over his son, his own blade dripping, his chest heaving. The harmless cripple was gone, replaced by a warrior whose eyes held the cold fire of a bygone era. He looked at Li Wei, and for the first time, there was no lesson, no caution in his gaze. There was only a grim, paternal pride, and a shared understanding of the burden they now carried.
Clan Head Li Tao approached, his steps hesitant. The man who had schemed for Li Wei's death now had to beg for the clan's survival from him. The irony was a bitter pill.
"The clan… we owe you a great debt," Li Tao began, his voice strained.
Li Wei cut him off, his voice flat, cutting through the celebratory noise. "Debt? You brought this." He gestured to the blood-stained earth. "Your envy. Your fear. You saw a threat to your chair when you should have seen a shield for your people."
He looked at the faces of his clansmen—the fear, the awe, the desperate hope. He saw his mother, being led away by a clansman, her face pale with worry. This clan was a cage, and his presence was setting it on fire.
"The Azure Lotus Sect," Li Wei stated, the decision final. "In one week, I go. Staying here will only bring you more of this." He didn't wait for a response. He turned and walked towards the family quarters, the crowd parting before him like sea foam before a warship.
The celebration died behind him. The truth of his words settled over the clan like a shroud.
That night, under a moon obscured by scudding clouds, Li Wei sat in the small courtyard of his home. The adrenaline had faded, leaving behind the stark reality. He had unleashed the beast within, and now every power in the region knew its scent.
A soft footfall, too light for any normal clansman, touched the edge of his perception. It wasn't his father. This presence was different—a void, a sliver of absolute cold in the night.
He didn't move. He didn't need to. His Divine Dao Bone perceived the killing intent not as an emotion, but as a flaw in the fabric of the night itself. It was a single, focused point of annihilation, far more refined and deadly than the blustering rage of the Bai Clan elders.
Foundation Establishment.
The hunter had come. Not for the clan. Not for glory. For him.
Li Wei slowly stood, the Primordial Sovereign Scripture beginning to churn within his dantian, not with rage, but with a cold, ready hunger. The sect was a week away. The night had just begun.