Mount Canglong, 11:47 p.m.
The storm had become a living creature.
Crimson lightning split the sky every three seconds, illuminating the entire peak in hellish red. Thunder no longer sounded like thunder; it sounded like the mountain itself screaming.
At the highest point of the Su Family's ancestral ground stood the Nine Heavens Thunder Array three hundred and sixty-five bronze pillars arranged in the exact pattern of the Big Dipper, each pillar forged from meteorite iron and inscribed with Taoist thunder runes older than the Qin Dynasty.
For a thousand years, it had never once failed.
Tonight, it failed in eight seconds.
The first pillar exploded at 11:55:03.
The second at 11:55:04.
By 11:55:11, all three hundred and sixty-five pillars were molten slag.
The Su family elders watching from the main hall felt their hearts stop at the exact same moment.
Because the thing walking up the mountain path didn't bother hiding anymore.
Lin Feng strolled through the front gate as casually as a guest arriving for tea.
No flying. No flashy techniques. Just walking.
Every step he took, a bloody footprint appeared on the white marble footprints that smoked and hissed like acid.
Ten thousand protective talismans activated at once. Golden light formed a dome five hundred meters high.
Lin Feng looked up, mildly annoyed.
He raised one finger and flicked.
The dome shattered into countless golden shards that rained down like burning snow.
Behind him, three thousand black-robed death warriors of the Blood Shadow Sect stood in perfect silence, forming a tide of darkness that swallowed the mountain roads.
No one gave the order to attack.
They didn't need to.
The Su family had already begun dying.
Main Hall of the Su Ancestral Residence.
Su Batian stood before the sealed underground entrance, cane planted like a war banner.
Behind him, four hundred and seventy-one direct descendants knelt in perfect rows men, women, even teenagers who had just awakened their bloodline.
Every single one wore pure-white burial robes.
They knew tonight was a night of extinction.
Su Qingxue stood at the very front, face pale but eyes burning with hatred. In her hand she clutched the Su family's guardian treasure a nine-section whip forged from the spine of a thousand-year flood dragon.
Su Batian spoke without turning around.
"Qingxue."
"Grandfather."
"If I fall tonight, take the ancestral token and run. The Su family's fire must not die."
Su Qingxue's knuckles went white around the whip.
"I will not run."
Su Batian finally looked at her. For the first time in her life, the old man's eyes were wet.
"Good girl."
Then the doors of the main hall exploded inward.
Lin Feng stepped through the smoke, hands in his pockets.
Alone.
The three thousand death warriors waited outside like obedient dogs.
He looked around the hall, nodding appreciatively.
"Nice place," he said. "I remember when it was just a cave. You people really know how to spend stolen money."
Su Batian took one step forward.
"Reaper," he said, voice steady. "Name your price. Anything. The Su family will pay ten times no, a hundred times what we took from you."
Lin Feng tilted his head.
"You still don't understand."
He walked forward slowly.
"Twenty years ago, I begged. I was seven. I offered to be your slave forever if you just let me live."
He stopped ten meters away.
"You laughed. Then you nailed me into a coffin and dropped me into a thousand-meter abyss."
His smile disappeared.
"Tonight, no one gets to bargain."
He raised his right hand.
A sound like a dragon roaring underwater shook the entire mountain.
Deep underground, something moved.
The sealed stone gate leading to the coffin chamber cracked from top to bottom.
Su Batian's face finally changed.
"No… the nails
The first Dragon Suppression Nail flew out of the crack like a black arrow, hovering in front of Lin Feng.
It was three feet long, thick as a child's arm, covered in rust-red blood that still dripped after twenty years.
Lin Feng grasped it with two fingers and pulled.
A scream that did not belong to any living creature tore through every mind on the mountain.
The nail came free with a wet pop.
Lin Feng's shadow on the ground suddenly grew nine dragon heads.
His eyes turned pure gold.
Power that had been sealed for two decades poured back into his body like a supernova.
The marble floor under his feet turned directly into lava.
Su Batian roared and struck his cane on the ground.
Four hundred and seventy-one Su family members spat blood at the same moment, burning their life essence to activate the final forbidden technique:
"Bloodline Resonance Heavenly Dragon Descent!"
White light exploded from their bodies, condensing into a single colossal phantom dragon a thousand meters long. It opened its mouth and lunged at Lin Feng.
Lin Feng looked up and opened his own mouth.
He inhaled.
The entire phantom dragon was sucked into his mouth like noodles.
Then he burped.
The white light vanished.
Four hundred and seventy-one bodies fell to the ground, aged a hundred years in one second. Skin withered. Hair white. Eyes empty.
Only Su Batian and Su Qingxue remained standing.
Su Batian's cane cracked in his grip.
"You… what kind of monster are you?"
Lin Feng smiled again.
"The kind you created."
He took another step.
The second nail flew up from underground.
Then the third.
Fourth.
By the time the eighth nail hovered in the air, the entire mountain was shaking like it was about to collapse.
Only one nail remained sealing the coffin.
Lin Feng looked at Su Qingxue.
"You're different," he said suddenly. "Your bloodline… it's calling to me."
Su Qingxue spat blood but stood straight.
"My grandfather said the ninth nail was forged from the spine of the True Dragon that founded our bloodline. He lied to the other families. The Su family kept the purest dragon blood for ourselves."
She laughed, the sound brittle and beautiful.
"That's why you couldn't kill me yesterday, isn't it? Because part of you recognizes your own blood."
Lin Feng's eyes narrowed.
For the first time, something like uncertainty flickered across his face.
Su Qingxue raised the flood dragon spine whip.
"Come then, ancestor," she said. "Let's see if the created monster can kill its own descendant."
She lashed out.
The whip turned into a real flood dragon mid-air, a thousand meters of black scales and bloody fangs, roaring as it bit toward Lin Feng's throat.
Lin Feng didn't dodge.
He reached out and caught the dragon's jaws with one hand.
Crack.
The dragon shattered into black mist.
The backlash sent Su Qingxue flying. She crashed through three pillars before stopping, blood pouring from every orifice.
Su Batian finally moved.
He threw away his cane, revealing that it had always been a sheath.
A sword of pure white jade emerged Su family's ultimate treasure, the Dragon Subduing Sword, said to be able to kill even true immortals.
He charged.
One step, he was old.
Second step, he was middle-aged.
Third step, he was twenty-five, black hair flying, aura exploding to a level that made the air ignite.
He burned two hundred years of lifespan for this one strike.
"Die!"
The sword light turned into a white dragon that filled the entire hall.
Lin Feng finally looked serious.
He raised his hand, and the eight floating Dragon Suppression Nails arranged themselves into a tiny array in his palm.
He pushed forward.
Black and white collided.
For one eternal second, the world went silent.
Then
BOOM!
The main hall ceased to exist.
When the dust settled, only two people remained standing in a crater five hundred meters wide.
Su Batian, now a dried corpse with white hair, one hand still gripping the broken sword.
And Lin Feng, clothes torn, a single shallow cut on his cheek—the first wound he had taken in twenty years.
He touched the blood on his face and laughed.
"Not bad, old man. You actually hurt me."
Su Batian's corpse smiled with cracked lips.
"The ninth… nail…" he rasped with his last breath, "was never… meant to suppress you…"
Lin Feng froze.
Deep underground, the final seal shattered on its own.
The real coffin exploded upward, smashing through a thousand meters of rock like a missile.
It stopped hovering in front of Lin Feng.
The lid was carved with nine dragon heads—all of them weeping blood.
A child's voice came from inside.
Soft. Familiar.
Exactly like Lin Feng's voice when he was seven.
"Big brother… you finally came to get me…"
Lin Feng's face changed for the first time in twenty years.
True, bone-deep horror.
He stumbled back.
"No… that's impossible… I buried you… I buried that weak thing…"
The coffin lid slowly opened by itself.
Inside lay a little boy, no older than seven, wearing the exact same rags Lin Feng wore the night he was nailed into the coffin.
The boy opened his eyes.
They were pure gold.
Just like Lin Feng's.
He smiled.
"Big brother," the child said sweetly, "did you really think you could abandon me and become a monster all by yourself?"
He reached out a small hand.
"Come. It's time to become whole again."
Lin Feng's shadow on the ground suddenly split in two.
One half remained the nine-headed dragon.
The other half became a terrified seven-year-old boy, screaming and trying to run.
The child in the coffin tilted his head.
"You can't leave me again. We're the same person."
Black chains exploded from the coffin, wrapping around Lin Feng's body, dragging him forward.
Lin Feng roared, golden light exploding, trying to resist.
But the chains were made of his own suppressed memories—every tear he never shed, every scream he swallowed, every time he told himself weakness was death.
They were unbreakable.
The child stood up in the coffin and opened his arms.
"Welcome home, big brother."
Lin Feng's foot crossed the edge of the coffin.
At that exact moment
A blood-covered hand grabbed his ankle from behind.
Su Qingxue, half her body crushed, bones poking through skin, somehow still alive.
She looked up at him with mad, hateful, desperate eyes.
"If you're going to hell…" she coughed a mouthful of blood, "…take me with you."
She slammed the ancestral token against the coffin.
The token shattered.
A drop of pure True Dragon blood flew out—the last drop the Su family had guarded for a thousand years.
It shot straight into Lin Feng's forehead.
The fusion stopped.
The child in the coffin screamed a sound of pure agony.
The black chains shattered.
Lin Feng stumbled backward, golden eyes flickering between human and monster.
The child's body began melting into black mist, still reaching for him.
"No! You can't reject me! I am you! The weak you! The crying you! You need me!"
Lin Feng looked down at Su Qingxue.
Then at the melting child.
Then he laughed.
A real laugh. Broken and raw and human.
"No," he said. "I don't."
He reached down and gently closed Su Qingxue's eyes.
"Thank you."
Then he turned back to the coffin.
And stepped inside willingly.
The lid slammed shut.
The nine dragon heads on the surface opened their eyes at once.
The entire mountain went dark.
Ten seconds of absolute silence.
Then—
A single crack appeared on the coffin lid.
Golden light poured out.
When the coffin opened again, only one person climbed out.
Lin Feng.
But different.
His eyes were still gold, but now there were tears in them.
His shadow was no longer split.
The nine-headed dragon and the crying child had become one.
He looked at the ruins of the Su family mountain—at the corpses, at the blood, at the sky now clearing of storm clouds.
Then he knelt beside Su Qingxue's body and kowtowed three times.
"I owed you a life," he whispered. "I will remember."
He stood up.
Behind him, the three thousand death warriors of the Blood Shadow Sect knelt as one.
"Master."
Lin Feng didn't look back.
"Dissolve the Sect," he said quietly. "From tonight forward, there is no more Reaper."
He took one step—and vanished.
Leaving only a single sentence echoing in the night.
"The game… just got interesting."