Chapter 5: The Crimson Dawn and the Law's Edge
The first light of dawn had barely touched the rooftops of the Ye Clan estate when the screams began. A young servant girl, tasked with delivering the meager morning rations to the Penance Courtyard, had dropped her wooden tray, the sound of clattering bowls echoing through the silent district. Four bodies, pale and drained of life, hung like macabre ornaments from the stone archway. The message written in blood on the wall shimmered with a dark, wet luster under the rising sun.
Within an hour, the courtyard was swarmed. Ordinary disciples stood at a distance, whispering in hushed, terrified tones, while the law-enforcement hall's guards struggled to maintain a perimeter. The atmosphere was no longer one of mockery; it was thick with a primal dread. The "waste" they had ridiculed for three years had not only survived an assassination attempt by the elite Hidden Vipers but had displayed their corpses as a declaration of war.
Ye Chen sat calmly inside his hut, the door wide open. He was currently immersed in the Spirit-Censing Divine Sense, feeling the frantic movements of the clan's higher-ups. He could sense the Second Elder's fury—a jagged, burning heat radiating from the main pavilion.
"Make way! The Second Elder has arrived!"
The crowd parted like a receding tide. Ye Kun stepped forward, his face a mask of cold, controlled rage. Behind him followed a dozen elders of the Law Hall, their auras heavy and oppressive. Ye Kun looked at the four hanging men, his eyes twitching as he recognized his most trusted shadows. He turned his gaze toward the hut, where Ye Chen sat motionless.
"Ye Chen!" Ye Kun's voice boomed, laced with the power of a 9th-stage Body Refinement expert. "You have practiced demonic arts and murdered your fellow clansmen in cold blood! By the laws of the Ye Clan, you are to be stripped of your name and executed on the spot! Guards, seize him!"
The Law Hall guards hesitated. They looked at the bodies hanging from the arch—men stronger than themselves—and then at the boy sitting in the shadows.
Ye Chen stood up slowly and walked out into the light. His azure robes were clean, his hair tied back neatly, and his silver-gray eyes were as calm as a mountain lake. "Murdered? Second Elder, you seem to have misplaced your logic. These men broke into the direct successor's residence at midnight with poisoned daggers. According to the Azure Dragon Code established by the First Ancestor, an assassination attempt on the True Successor is an act of high treason. I was merely performing my duty to the clan by purging the traitors."
"True Successor?" Ye Kun sneered, his hands trembling with the urge to strike. "You are a waste with no cultivation! You likely used a forbidden poison or a hidden mechanism to ambush these brave guards. You have no right to invoke the Ancestral Code!"
"Is that so?" Ye Chen took a step forward. With that single movement, the Sovereign's Aura he had gained from the System rippled outward. It wasn't a pressure of strength, but one of status—the innate weight of a ruler. Several lower-level disciples felt their knees buckle, instinctively wanting to bow.
"The Awakening Ceremony is in two days," Ye Chen continued, his voice reaching every ear in the courtyard. "If I am a waste, I will naturally be judged then. But if the Second Elder tries to execute the son of the Patriarch before the City Lord arrives, it will look less like justice and more like a desperate cover-up. Are you so afraid of what I might show the world in forty-eight hours?"
The surrounding elders shifted uncomfortably. Ye Chen had hit the mark. The City Lord of Blue Cloud City was a stickler for protocol, and he was a long-time friend of Ye Chen's missing father. If Ye Chen died now, the City Lord would have every reason to launch an imperial investigation into the Ye Clan's internal affairs.
Ye Kun's face turned a deep shade of purple. He realized he had been checkmated by the very "waste" he despised. If he attacked now, he risked his political standing; if he waited, he risked whatever miracle Ye Chen was hiding.
"Fine," Ye Kun spat, the word sounding like a curse. "I will let you live for two more days. But the Penance Courtyard is now under total lockdown. No one enters, no one leaves. If you step one foot outside this archway before the ceremony, the Law Hall will execute you regardless of the City Lord's presence."
"Agreed," Ye Chen said, a cold smile playing on his lips. "I was planning on staying in anyway. I have much to prepare for my 'homecoming'."
As the crowd dispersed and the guards moved in to take down the bodies, Ye Chen caught sight of Ye Ling in the distance. She looked pale but nodded to him, her hand surreptitiously touching her chest where she had hidden the Dragon-Blood Marrow.
Ye Chen returned to his hut and sat down. He didn't have time to waste on the Second Elder's posturing. He had the Great Seal of the Azure Dragon, but he needed to master the next level of the Chaos Heart-Refining Technique to truly suppress the 9th-stage experts at the ceremony.
[Ding! Host has successfully defended his territory and asserted dominance.]
[Reward: 500 'Chaos Points' (Can be used to upgrade techniques).]
[Reward: The 'Dragon-Step' Movement Art (Fragment 1/3)!]
"System," Ye Chen thought, "use the points to refine the Heaven-Shattering Void Palm to the 'Great Success' stage."
[Ding! Refining... 10%... 50%... 100%!]
[Success! Heaven-Shattering Void Palm has evolved into: 'Void-Breaking Dragon Claw'!]
Ye Chen felt his right hand grow hot, the skin momentarily turning a deep, obsidian gray. He felt as if he could now reach through the very fabric of the air to crush an opponent's internal organs without breaking their skin.
He closed his eyes and began to meditate. For the next two days, the Penance Courtyard was the quietest place in the Empire, but beneath that silence, a storm was brewing that would soon tear the Ye Clan apart.