Chapter 3: The Banquet Upon the Dragon's Grave
The Zhao Manor was not simply a wealthy residence; it was a parasitic fortress devouring the eastern hill of the Dawn Valley. Its black stone walls, ten meters high, rose like fangs against the night sky. Around the structure, the air crackled and distorted visually. It was the family's Profound-Grade Grand Defensive Formation. Any entity below the Transcendence Realm who touched that barrier without the proper jade medallion would be reduced to ash by spiritual lightning.
In the city, only the City Lord, an expert in the unreachable Origin Realm, could ignore such defenses. To the rest of mortals, the Zhao Manor was impregnable.
In a narrow alley, hidden by thick mist and the shadows of the hill, two figures waited in silence.
"Patriarch..." Kael whispered, his voice barely a raspy thread in the dark.
The red-haired youth was vibrating. It wasn't cold that shook his body, but a toxic mix of primal fear and a hunger for vengeance that threatened to drive him mad. Kael had always lived in the shadow of his prodigy cousins, but tonight, with his family's blood still fresh on his clothes, he felt the edge of his own resolve as icy and sharp as the splintered sword he gripped in his hands.
"I can feel the formation's killing intent," Kael muttered, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the invisible barrier. "The air smells of ozone. If I touch it with my current cultivation base, they'll destroy us before I can even scream."
Samael did not answer immediately. He studied the dome, his violet eyes glowing faintly in the gloom. The Void pulsed in his newly rebuilt meridians—an energy too vast for his young mortal body, too frigid for his human soul, and yet, intimately familiar.
"The formations of this lower world follow the strict rules of Qi and matter," Samael finally said, his voice devoid of any human emotion. "They require balance, a constant flow of energy. But the Void... the Void respects no rules, Kael. The Void devours."
Samael stepped forward and raised his bare hand. A grayish mist, speckled with faint black flashes, began to twist the light around his fingers. He caressed the invisible wall.
The world seemed to hold its breath. There were no explosions or sparks. Instead, an unnatural chill spread through the alley, freezing the moisture on Kael's skin. The exact point of contact turned absolute black. The spirit stone, the runic seals, and the defensive Qi simply ceased to exist. They vanished without a single sound, as if the universe had erased that section of reality.
A perfectly circular hole, two meters in diameter, flickered in the darkness, its edges bleeding unstable energy that tried in vain to repair the breach.
"Go in," Samael ordered, lowering his hand. "Move like a wraith. Breathe only when the wind blows. If the guard captains catch you, you die. I will not save you from your own clumsiness."
Kael swallowed hard, nodded stiffly, and crossed the breach. He thought that not even the continent's best thieves could pull off such a feat without alerting the array masters.
They slipped their bodies through the mansion's labyrinthine gardens, becoming shadows within shadows. Kael stalked the first guard, a young man from the outer family leaning against a statue, daydreaming about the night's rewards.
Kael's heart beat so fast he feared the guard would hear it. He remembered Samael's teachings. Do not hesitate. Without mercy, Kael surged from the bushes, clamped a gloved hand over the man's mouth, and with a brutal, desperate yank, snapped his neck. The crack was deafening in his own mind. The man's body went limp. Hot blood welled from the dead man's mouth, staining Kael's fingers. A shiver of nausea ran through him, but he suppressed it instantly; he dragged the corpse into the hedges. It was his first real kill.
The next guard wasn't as easy. He was a veteran in the Meridian Opening Realm. The moment Kael stepped on a twig, the man spun on his heel, his hand flying to his saber. Kael didn't think; he lunged forward, fueled by pure adrenaline, and drove his rusted blade directly into the base of the guard's throat, putting all his body weight behind it. A pressurized spurt of blood stained the paving stones. The night began to smell of rust and raw meat.
Samael, on the other hand, advanced in a completely different manner. He didn't look like a human sneaking around; he looked like a spatial anomaly. His body flickered, folding short distances to appear directly behind the elite sentinels.
Every time Samael closed in on an enemy, he would place two fingers on the back of their neck or cover their faces with his palm. The Void Qi penetrated their pores, burning their souls and meridians from the inside out. The sentries didn't even have a chance to be frightened; their eyes rolled back, and their bodies crumbled into silent piles of gray dust. Bones, flesh, and armor disintegrating like sandcastles struck by the wind.
It was an exhibition of lethality so clean and terrifying that Kael, watching his Patriarch operate, felt more fear of Samael than of the entire Zhao family combined.
Suddenly, an older guard captain, his eyes dilated with terror upon seeing one of his men turn to dust in the moonlight, filled his lungs with Qi.
"Intru—!"
Kael appeared from the flank, slipping on the bloody grass, and drove his sword through the man's open mouth. The alarm cry morphed into a muffled, repulsive bubbling that ended in a puddle of blood and scattered teeth on the gravel. Kael panted, leaning his forehead against the stone wall, trembling.
"Control your breathing," Samael whispered, passing by him without so much as glancing at the corpse. "The hardest part is over. We are above them."
Finally, scaling the blind cornices of the central structure, they reached the roof of the Great Jade Hall.
Below, through the wide windows and the skylights embedded in the ceiling, the banquet seethed in a cacophony of zither music, vulgar laughter, and the clinking of golden goblets.
Samael carefully lifted a black clay tile and looked down. With a thought, he activated the System. The Eye of Destiny superimposed digital data over the opulent scene.
[Threat Analysis - Great Jade Hall][Hostile Target:] Young Master Zhao Feng. (Base: Transcendence Realm - Stage 2). Aura: Gray (Arrogant mediocrity). Threat Level: Trash. [Hostile Target:] Grand Elder Zhao. (Base: Transcendence Realm - Stage 4). Threat Level: Inferior to Host. [Primary Hostile Target:] Patriarch Zhao. (Base: Transcendence Realm - Stage 5). Threat Level: Matched in brute strength. Caution recommended. [CRITICAL ALERT!]: Massive energy fluctuation detected. An entity at Transcendence Realm - Stage 7 is in hibernation 500 meters underground, within the mountain's veins.
"Stage 7..." Samael murmured, his eyes narrowing. "An old monster sleeping beneath their feet. There is no room for error tonight."
But his eyes didn't linger on the men of the Zhao family. At the head of the main hall, Samael's heart gave an icy lurch.
There was Seraphina.
She had been kidnapped during the chaos of the attack on the Morningstar clan. Now, she was forced to serve wine on her knees beside the Young Master's throne. Heavy, Qi-suppressing iron shackles had been clamped onto her slender wrists. Her elegant blue dress was in tatters from struggling, and her platinum blonde hair, usually immaculate, hung disheveled over her ash-smudged face.
But despite the chains and the bruises, Seraphina was not broken. Her posture, even on her knees, was straight as a sword. Her deep blue eyes radiated a fury so cold and focused that it seemed to freeze the air around her.
An involuntary memory, inherited from his own mortal emotions, pierced Samael's chest. He remembered Seraphina's soft hands cleaning his childhood wounds in the rain, looking at him with absolute devotion and whispering: "I don't care what the elders say. You will be a King, Samael."
The System blinked frantically as it focused on her:
[Target: Seraphina][Aura:] Black (Destiny Breaker) overlaid with Gold (Supreme Empress). [Bloodline:] Unknown Ancestral (Status: Latent/Sealed). [Physique:] Supreme Yin Lotus Body. (Power reacting to environmental hostility). [Mental State:] Reincarnation memory sealed. Loyalty to Host: Unbreakable.
Down below, the sound of a slap rang out over the music. Zhao Feng had brutally yanked the chain connected to Seraphina's shackles, forcing her hard against the marble floor.
"Look at you!" Zhao Feng sneered, his face flushed with alcohol, raising his goblet to the cheers of his captains. "The great and untouchable 'Princess' of the Morningstars. The untouchable jewel of the Dawn Valley! Tonight, I will test that famous physique of yours until I break you, and tomorrow I'll send you to the cheapest brothel in the outer city for my soldiers to enjoy."
Patriarch Zhao, a broad-shouldered man with a scarred face, leaned back in his throne carved from beast bone and let out a thunderous laugh.
"Enjoy your spoils, my son. The Morningstars are ancient history. Their bones are already rotting beneath the ashes. No one is coming to save a lowly servant of a dead clan."
Seraphina propped herself up on her bleeding elbows and raised her chin. There were no tears in her eyes, only an absolute contempt that made Zhao Feng hesitate for a fraction of a second.
"You are wrong," Seraphina said, her voice clear and icy, cutting through the murmur of the hall. "He will come. Samael Morningstar will come. And when you see him walk through those doors, all of you will beg the heavens for a quick death."
Zhao Feng gritted his teeth, humiliated by his prisoner's insolence in front of his subordinates. He raised his hand, wrapping it in violent wind-attribute Qi, ready to shatter her face.
On the roof, time seemed to stop.
Samael's aura erupted. His violet eyes shone like two death stars in the dark.
"Heaven's Fall," Samael whispered.
It wasn't a simple jump. Samael simultaneously channeled the heavy pressure of his newly forged cultivation base and the annihilating force of the Void. He concentrated all that weight into the soles of his boots.
The roof of the Jade Hall simply imploded.
BOOOOOM!
It was as if an invisible meteorite had struck the structure. Sacred wooden beams, massive stone slabs, and thousands of roof tiles rained down on the banquet like shrapnel. The gigantic central mahogany table exploded into thousands of sharp splinters. Golden tableware shattered, mingling with the agonizing screams of the nobles and guards who were instantly crushed by the debris.
A captain at the Qi Sea stage attempted to use a movement technique to dodge the collapse, but was pierced through by a beam studded with iron nails. A minor elder was cleaved in half by a granite block the size of a carriage; blood, wine, and viscera splattered the fine silk-lined walls.
Patriarch Zhao, reacting purely on survival instinct, unleashed all his Stage 5 Transcendence Qi. A pale yellow spherical barrier surrounded him, but the shockwave generated by Samael's impact was so brutal it dragged him three meters back, cracking his spiritual shield and forcing him to spit blood.
In the exact center of the crater of destruction, as the dust cloud slowly settled, Samael landed with lethal grace. His black robes billowed violently from the distorted air currents. Around him, a grayish barrier of Void devoured any debris that tried to touch him, keeping a circle of absolute chaos at bay.
A second later, Kael dropped to his right flank, landing heavily but firm. His rusted sword dripped fresh blood, and his golden and red eyes burned with the ecstasy of slaughter.
Zhao Feng had narrowly escaped being crushed thanks to a defensive artifact, but he was covered in white dust, rubble, and, to his humiliation, urine. He scrambled backward on all fours, trembling uncontrollably at the sight of the demon that had just fallen from the ceiling.
"Monsters...!" Zhao Feng babbled, his eyes bulging. "How... how are you alive? How did you get in here?"
Samael didn't even pay attention to the crawling scum. He raised a finger, and instantly, the crushing gravitational pressure vanished from Seraphina's body, who was just on the edge of his safe zone.
Samael walked toward her, his steps silent on the broken marble. He leaned down, and with a simple squeeze, the Void Qi corroded the heavy iron shackles into harmless dust that fell from her wrists.
"Rise, Seraphina," Samael said, his voice softening only a fraction—a tone reserved exclusively for his own. "Forgive the delay. The path was full of pests."
Seraphina stood up. Her legs trembled from exhaustion, and her beautiful lips were stained with her own blood, but her face lit up with a smile that eclipsed the destruction around her.
"I knew you would come... You always keep your promises, my Lord," she whispered. Without hesitation, she stepped to position herself right behind him, metaphorically clinging to the immense shadow of his spirit. At her side, Kael gave a quick bow of respect to his future matriarch.
From the other end of the ruined hall, Patriarch Zhao emerged from the wreckage of his throne. His elegant clothes were torn, and in his right hand, he had materialized a thick, curved saber that glowed red-hot with fire-attribute Qi. His aura overflowed, filling the room with a suffocating pressure that mixed homicidal fury and a deep, undeniable fear.
"Samael Morningstar!" Patriarch Zhao roared, his voice rattling the remaining intact glass. "I saw you fall! You should be a rotting corpse in the valley! How the hell did you bypass my spiritual formation? What kind of demonic arts are you using?"
Samael slowly raised his right hand. He stroked the fake rusted ring on his index finger with his thumb.
A black, dense, and absorbing flash illuminated his palm, and the Obsidian Fang sword materialized with a hungry hum. The High Earth-Grade blade seemed to drink the scarce moonlight entering through the open roof.
"Your formation has as many holes and weaknesses as your concept of honor," Samael spat, his violet eyes locking onto the Patriarch. "Kael."
"Yes, Patriarch!" the redhead responded instantly, tightening his grip.
"Protect Seraphina with your life. No one possessing a base lower than the Transcendence Realm has the right to approach her. Cut down anything that breathes. Use that sword as if the gates of hell depended on it."
"With pleasure!" Kael roared. His Qi Sea level aura erupted, and a mysterious red resonance began to emanate from his blood, a dormant talent awakening under the pressure of true war.
Samael pointed the black tip of the Obsidian Fang directly at Patriarch Zhao's face. There was no blind arrogance in the young leader's eyes, no speeches of justice; there was only an infinite hunger for retribution and the cold calculation of an executioner.
The System flashed violently in his peripheral vision, tinting the world in alert red.
[Combat Quest Activated: Eradication of Roots.][Estimated time before the Stage 7 Ancestor awakens from energy fluctuations: 180 seconds.][Objective: Total Annihilation of enemy forces in the room.]
Samael took the first step. Physical space seemed to curve around him. The light of the torches and the sound of wailing began to be swallowed by the cloak of Void enveloping his body.
"You have exactly three minutes of life left in this world," Samael declared, and his voice resonated from all directions, like a divine judgment. "Use them well to pray. Though I highly doubt your ancestors want to hear you from the bottom of the hell I am about to send you to."
And with the flash of obsidian cutting through the darkness, the massacre of the Zhao family began.