The transition from life to death was supposed to be a quiet descent into the void.
For Mo Yan, the "Ghost Blade" of the Shadow Pavilion, it had been anything but that.
His final moments were a symphony of betrayal: the wet thud of silver needles burying themselves in his spine, the cold sneer of his favorite disciple, and the suffocating scent of the very poison he had spent years perfecting. He had died in a gutter behind the Imperial Palace, a discarded tool of a hidden master.
So, when his lungs suddenly expanded with a violent, gasping heave, the sensation was less like a rebirth and more like being struck by a lightning-attuned palm technique.
Mo Yan's eyes snapped open.
The first thing he noticed wasn't the pain—he was a master of ignoring that—but the smell. It wasn't the iron tang of blood or the moldy dampness of a capital alleyway. It was the cloying, sickly sweet scent of high-grade jasmine incense mixed with the sour, fermented stench of cheap rice wine.
He tried to sit up, but his body felt like a sack of wet flour. His limbs were heavy, his center of gravity was wrong, and his dan tian—the core of his martial power—felt like a stagnant pond filled with silt.
"Patriarch? If you are finished feigning sleep, the debt collectors from the Iron Fist Hall are at the gates. They've come for the deed to the North Mountain. Or, as they put it, they've come to take what is left of your dignity."
The voice was cold, melodic, and vibrating with an intensity of hatred that Mo Yan recognized instantly. It was the tone a man used when he was one second away from committing a murder.
Mo Yan turned his head, his neck fat and stiff, and stared at the man standing by the mahogany bedpost.
The stranger was breathtaking.
He was dressed in flowing robes of cerulean silk, his long black hair held back by a delicate silver crown and a blue ribbon—the mark of the Moon-Sect Omegas.
His skin was the color of fine porcelain, but his eyes, sharp and dark, were fixed on Mo Yan with such utter loathing that the air in the room felt frigid.
"Who are you?" Mo Yan rasped. His voice was deep, but it lacked the rasping edge of his former self. It sounded... soft. Pampered.
The man in blue stiffened, his knuckles whitening as he gripped a stack of ledgers.
"I am your Third Husband, Han Zhou. Did you truly gamble away your memory last night along with the winter grain supplies? Or is this another pathetic attempt to garner sympathy so we won't tell the others you sold the Ancestral Hall's incense burners for a night at the Red Lotus House?"
Third Husband?
Mo Yan's mind raced.
He was an assassin; information was his currency. He closed his eyes, forcing his consciousness inward. In the darkness of his mind, a flood of foreign memories rushed forward, chaotic and greasy.
He wasn't Mo Yan anymore. He was Jin Taoran.
The Jin Clan had once been a titan of the Southern Provinces, a family of Alphas whose "Golden Sun" technique could melt the snow of a thousand peaks. But three generations of decline had led to him. Jin Taoran, known throughout the Murim world as the "Sleeping Pig."
Taoran was a Prime Alpha by birth, blessed with a massive reservoir of qi that he had never once bothered to cultivate. Instead, he spent his days eating, drinking, and gambling. To keep the clan afloat, he had married seven Omegas from various falling or indebted sects, effectively using their dowries and their labor to fund his hedonism. He let them run the businesses, guard the walls, and manage the disciples, while he stayed in this room, rotting in silk.
And now, the gold had run out. The credit was dry.
"The Iron Fist Hall," Mo Yan whispered, the name tasting like ash.
Han Zhou let out a short, hysterical laugh.
"Yes. They are here. Zhao Feng is leading them. He says if you cannot produce the five thousand gold taels you lost at the dice table last night, he will take the North Mountain medicinal gardens. If we lose those, the Jin Clan won't survive the winter. We will be beggars, Jin Taoran. Or worse."
Mo Yan pushed back the heavy, embroidered quilts. His new body was... soft. There was a layer of fat over what should have been hardened muscle. His hands were smooth, without a single callus from a sword hilt or a bowstring. It disgusted him.
"How many?" Mo Yan asked, swinging his legs over the side of the bed.
Han Zhou blinked, his anger momentarily replaced by confusion. "How many?"
"Men. At the gate."
"Thirty. All mid-tier martial artists. Zhao Feng is a late-stage Earth Realm master. Not that it matters to you," Han Zhou sneered, tossing the ledgers onto a nearby table. "You've never even drawn your sword in a duel. You'll likely go out there and beg for another week's extension while offering up another one of us as collateral."
Mo Yan felt a spark of genuine Alpha pheromones flare up in his chest—not the lazy, stagnant scent of the old Taoran, but the sharp, metallic tang of a killer.
The room suddenly felt pressurized. Han Zhou, an Omega, instinctively took a half-step back, his throat bobbing as he felt the sudden shift in the air. The scent of the "Sleeping Pig" had changed. It no longer smelled of stale wine; it smelled of cold steel and impending lightning.
Mo Yan stood up. He was tall—towering, actually. Despite the neglect, this body had the skeletal structure of a god. He walked over to a bronze mirror, staring at the face of Jin Taoran. It was a handsome face, if one looked past the puffiness of the cheeks and the dark circles under the eyes.
"Where is my sword?" Mo Yan asked.
"The... the decorative one?" Han Zhou pointed to a wall rack where a sword encrusted with useless rubies hung. "The blade hasn't been sharpened in years. It's a toy, Taoran."
Mo Yan took the sword down. He unsheathed it. The steel was dull, the balance was horrific, and the jewels on the hilt bit into his palm. It was an insult to weaponry.
"It will do," Mo Yan said.
He looked at Han Zhou.
The Omega was watching him with wide, wary eyes. There was a trace of something else there—hope? No, it was too buried under years of resentment to be hoped for. It was a curiosity.
"Han Zhou," Mo Yan said, his voice cold and level. "Gather the other six. Tell them to meet me at the main courtyard. I have a debt to settle."
"You're going to give them the deed, aren't you?" Han Zhou's voice trembled with a renewed fury. "You're giving up."
Mo Yan didn't look back as he walked toward the door, his gait changing from a sluggish shuffle to the silent, predatory glide of the Shadow Pavilion's finest.
"I am an assassin," Mo Yan thought to himself, then corrected: "I was an assassin. Now, I am a Patriarch. And a Patriarch does not pay debts with land. He pays them with the blood of those who dare to knock on his door."
Aloud, he only said: "I am going to pay them exactly what they deserve."
The main courtyard of the Jin Clan was a graveyard of former glory. The marble tiles were cracked, weeds pushed through the gaps, and the Great Lion statues at the entrance were covered in moss.
Standing there, facing a line of thirty men in the black-and-red uniforms of the Iron Fist Hall, were six men.
The Husbands.
Even in their distress, they were a formidable sight. There was the First Husband, a stern man with the broad shoulders of a general; the Second, whose fingers moved in the air as if calculating a thousand losses; the Fourth and Fifth, twins who stood back-to-back with twin sabers drawn; the Sixth, a delicate youth who looked ready to cry; and the Seventh, a man with the scent of bitter herbs clinging to his robes.
"Where is the Pig?" Zhao Feng, the leader of the debt collectors, shouted. He was a barrel-chested man with a massive iron club resting on his shoulder. "I don't have all day! If Jin Taoran doesn't come out with the deed, I'll start taking his 'pretty wives' as interest!"
The First Husband, a man named Lu Cheng, stepped forward, his hand on the hilt of his broadsword. His Alpha-born pheromones were suppressed by the Omega mark on his neck, but his spirit was unbroken.
"You will not lay a finger on anyone here, Zhao Feng. The Jin Clan still has laws."
"Laws?" Zhao Feng laughed, his men joining in. "The only law in Murim is strength! And your Patriarch is a man who can't even see his own feet past his belly!"
"Is that so?"
The voice didn't come from the Husbands. It came from the shadows of the main hall.
The collectors and the husbands all turned as one.
Jin Taoran walked out into the sunlight. He wasn't wearing his usual flamboyant, oversized robes. He had taken a simple white inner robe and tied it tight with a leather belt, pulling the fabric taut across his chest. His long hair was tied back with a simple strip of cloth.
He looked... different. His eyes, usually clouded and wandering, were like two chips of flint.
"Patriarch?" the Sixth Husband whispered, his eyes widening.
Mo Yan ignored them.
He walked past his husbands, feeling the waves of confusion, fear, and bitterness radiating from them. He stopped ten paces from Zhao Feng.
"You are here for five thousand gold taels," Mo Yan stated.
Zhao Feng sneered, though he felt a strange prickle of unease at the back of his neck. "Five thousand. Plus interest. Which makes it six. Or the North Mountain."
Mo Yan nodded slowly. He held up the ruby-encrusted sword, still in its sheath. "I don't have six thousand gold taels."
"Then get the deed!"
"I don't have the deed either," Mo Yan said calmly. "I gambled that away two towns over three weeks ago. I forgot to mention it."
A collective gasp went up from the husbands.
Han Zhou, who had just arrived, looked like he was about to faint from pure rage. "You... you monster!"
Zhao Feng's face turned purple. "You dare play with me? If you have no gold and no deed, then I'll take your life! And your husbands will be sold to the pleasure houses of the Northern Border!"
Zhao Feng swung the iron club off his shoulder, the heavy metal whistling through the air. He lunged forward, a brute-force strike aimed directly at Mo Yan's head. It was a move meant to pulverize bone.
The husbands cried out. Some closed their eyes.
Mo Yan didn't move until the club was inches from his face.
In a movement so fluid it seemed like blurred ink, he stepped to the left. The club smashed into the marble floor, shattering the tiles. In the same breath, Mo Yan's hand flashed. He didn't even draw the sword. He used the sheathed weapon as a blunt instrument.
Thwack.
The end of the scabbard struck Zhao Feng's throat.
The big man choked, his eyes bulging as his windpipe collapsed. He dropped the club, clutching his neck.
Mo Yan didn't stop.
He stepped inside Zhao Feng's guard and delivered a palm strike to the man's solar plexus. It wasn't a move of great qi—this body didn't have the cultivation for that yet—but it was a move of perfect physics.
Zhao Feng flew backward, crashing into his own men, vomiting blood.
Silence fell over the courtyard. The thirty men of the Iron Fist Hall stared at their fallen leader, then at the "Sleeping Pig."
Mo Yan looked at the ruby-encrusted sword in his hand and sighed. "The balance is truly terrible."
He looked up at the remaining twenty-nine men.
"I have a new proposal," Mo Yan said, his voice carrying to every corner of the estate. "I am going to kill all of you. Then, I am going to walk to the Iron Fist Hall and kill your Master. In the confusion, the debt records will likely be burned. That seems like a more efficient way to settle a balance, don't you think?"
"Kill him!" one of the collectors screamed, overcome by panic. "He's just one man! He's a drunkard!"
They surged forward.
Mo Yan finally drew the sword. The steel was rusted in places, but in his hand, it became an extension of a soul that had known only slaughter for twenty years.
He didn't fight like a Murim warrior.
He didn't use flashy techniques or shout the names of his moves. He moved like a ghost. He stepped into the gaps of their formations. He used their own momentum against them. Every strike of his blade was precise—a slit throat, a punctured lung, a severed femoral artery.
He was a whirlwind of white silk and red spray.
The husbands watched in absolute, paralyzed horror and awe. They had lived with this man for years. They had despised him, cared for him, and wished him dead. But they had never seen this.
Lu Cheng, the First Husband, felt his breath catch. "That... that isn't the Golden Sun technique. That's... that's something else."
"It's beautiful," the Sixth Husband whispered, even as he turned his head away from the carnage.
In less than five minutes, the courtyard was littered with bodies.
Mo Yan stood in the center, his white robes splattered with crimson. He wasn't even breathing hard, though his muscles were screaming in protest at the sudden exertion. This body was weak, but the mind was ancient.
He walked over to the shivering Zhao Feng, who was still gasping for air on the ground.
Mo Yan looked down at him. "Go back to your Master. Tell him that Jin Taoran is dead. Tell him that someone else is sitting in his chair now."
He kicked Zhao Feng in the ribs, sending him tumbling toward the gate.
"Run. Before I change my mind about letting a witness live."
The remaining collectors who could still walk scrambled away, dragging their leader with them, leaving a trail of blood and broken pride.
Mo Yan stood in the silence of the courtyard. He felt the weight of seven gazes on his back—heavy, complex, and demanding.
He turned around.
The seven Omegas stood there, a spectrum of beauty and utility, all of them looking at him as if he were a demon wearing the skin of their husband.
Mo Yan wiped a drop of blood from his cheek. "Han Zhou."
The Third Husband flinched.
"Y-yes?"
"You mentioned something about winter grain supplies being gone."
Han Zhou nodded dumbly.
"Search the bodies," Mo Yan said, gesturing to the corpses. "They likely have purses. Collect the silver. Then, find me the strongest tea in this house and someone who knows how to mend a sword. We have a lot of work to do if this clan is to survive the week."
He started to walk back toward the hall, but his strength finally flickered. His knees buckled—the "Sleeping Pig's" lack of stamina finally catching up to the "Ghost Blade's" ambition.
Before he could hit the ground, two sets of arms caught him.
He looked up. Lu Cheng, the First Husband, held his left arm, while the Seventh Husband, the medic, supported his right.
Lu Cheng's face was a mask of suspicion, but his grip was firm. "You aren't Jin Taoran."
Mo Yan looked at the man, a faint, weary smirk playing on his lips. "Jin Taoran is gone. He died in his sleep. I'm just the one who has to clean up his mess."
He closed his eyes, the darkness of exhaustion claiming him. As he slipped into unconsciousness, his last thought was of the irony of it all. He had spent his first life killing for a master who betrayed him. In this life, he would have to learn to lead seven men who already hated him.
It was, he decided, a much more interesting way to die.