Chapter 4: The Judgment of Blood and the Echo of Ashes
The Great Jade Hall, once the undisputed symbol of the Zhao family's absolute power in the Dawn Valley, was now a desecrated altar under the light of a reddish moon. The roof's implosion had left a landscape of rubble, torn silk, and crushed corpses. The chill of the night seeped through the cracks, but it wasn't enough to dissipate the thick stench of copper, spilled wine, and visceral fear that saturated the atmosphere.
In the center of the crater stood Samael Morningstar, immaculate. His black robes, though worn from the previous combat, billowed with a dark dignity. His eyes, two abysses of gleaming violet, did not look at the enemies surrounding him; rather, they seemed to pierce the veil of reality itself.
[CRITICAL ALERT!][Time remaining for the Ancestor's awakening (Stage 7): 175 seconds.][Underground energy fluctuation increasing by 400%.]
The System flashed blood-red in his peripheral vision. Samael did not alter his expression. Every breath he took was a calculation; every beat of his heart resonated in tune with the blood spilled on the hall's floor.
"Protect the Young Master!" roared Grand Elder Zhao, breaking the sepulchral silence. His voice trembled, betraying the terror that his cultivation base tried to hide.
The Grand Elder, a sharp-faced man in green robes, unleashed his Transcendence Realm - Stage 4 power. In his hands materialized two curved jade sabers, whose edges crackled with a thick, poisonous Qi. Drops of the poison fell to the marble floor, melting the stone with a toxic hiss.
Samael barely tilted his head, his gaze locked on Patriarch Zhao, who was rising from the rubble.
"Kael," Samael's voice was a cutting whisper that traveled straight to his cousin's ears. "Clean up the trash. If any of them breathe near Seraphina, I will cut off your legs myself."
Kael didn't answer with words. The wild, red aura of his Qi Sea (Stage 2) erupted, enveloping him like an open wound in the middle of the cold air. He knew perfectly well that Grand Elder Zhao was a monster who outleveled him by an almost insurmountable margin... but pure fury and the hunger for retribution silenced any instinct of self-preservation.
The Grand Elder lunged forward, ignoring Kael and aiming directly for Seraphina, who still stood behind Samael.
"Die, Morningstar bitch!" shrieked the elder, looking for a hostage or an easy victim to destabilize Samael.
The jade sabers whistled, launching two crossing arcs of corrosive Qi.
Kael stepped in like lightning, the old rusted sword shining with an unexpected fierceness. When his steel clashed against the jade sabers, the impact was devastating. The difference in Realms became instantly evident: Kael felt like a mountain was dropping on his shoulders. The bones in his arms cracked painfully, and the friction of the poisonous Qi began to burn the skin of his forearms. His knees slammed against the marble, cracking it.
"Arrogant brat! You haven't even touched Transcendence!" spat the Grand Elder, pressing downward. The green poison was inches from Kael's face.
Behind the collision, Seraphina watched. Her platinum blonde hair swayed with the shockwave. Seeing Kael being crushed, her blue eyes—deep as ancient glaciers—narrowed. She didn't remember her past, but the instinct of the Empress ran through her veins. Her Supreme Yin Lotus Body, reacting to the lethal hostility threatening her Lord's sword, released an invisible pulse.
It was barely a microsecond. A fraction of time undetectable to mortals. But the air around the Grand Elder plummeted to absolute zero. The flow of his poisonous Qi froze and stuttered within his meridians, breaking his concentration.
Kael felt the pressure yield a fraction of a millimeter. Inside him, the dormant blood of his lineage boiled. A phantom roar, ancient and draconic, echoed in his mind.
[Martial Epiphany Detected in subordinate!][Kael has awakened: Draconic Resonance (Initial Phase) and Sword Intent (Seed).]
Kael's rusted sword lit up with a golden-red glow. Ignoring the pain of his torn muscles, Kael slid his blade along the edge of the jade saber, deflecting the attack. He spun on his heel, turning his body into a whirlwind of fury, and traced a perfect upward arc.
The rusted blade, wreathed in newly born Sword Intent, sliced through the air, the defensive Qi, and finally, flesh and bone.
Grand Elder Zhao's head flew through the air, his eyes still wide open in incomprehension at having been decapitated by a kid in the Qi Sea Realm. Blood erupted like a geyser, splattering Kael's freckled face.
"I am a Morningstar," Kael panted, leaning on his sword so as not to collapse, trembling with exhaustion and triumph. "Today... the trash cleans the hall."
[Time remaining: 110 seconds.]
As the headless body fell, Samael began walking toward the throne. Patriarch Zhao, a burly man whose Transcendence (Stage 5) aura warped the heat in the air, gripped his thick, burning saber.
"Kill him! He's just a brat!" shrieked Young Master Zhao Feng, crawling pathetically among the shattered tables, covering his head.
The Patriarch looked at Samael with distilled hatred.
"I saw your family's tower burn!" roared the Zhao leader, his fire and earth Qi making the remaining pillars tremble. "You should be a charred corpse!"
Samael did not change his icy expression. His control over the Void was barely at the lowest stage; he couldn't simply erase a Stage 5 cultivator from existence without exhausting his reserves. However, his Blood Mastery had already crossed the Beginner Stage threshold. It was more refined, deeper. And in a hall covered with the blood of thirty slaughtered men, Samael was a god in his own domain.
"Fire does not consume one born from the ashes," Samael replied.
The Patriarch brought his saber down with the force of an erupting volcano:
"Earth Meteor Slash!"
An immense blade of fire and molten rock, five meters long, cleaved the hall in two, heading straight for Samael. The heat was so intense that the silk on the walls spontaneously burst into flames.
Instead of dodging, Samael raised his left hand. His fingers glowed with an intense crimson radiance.
[Blood Art: Crimson King's Barrier.]
The blood scattered all over the hall's marble rose in defiance of gravity. In a blink, dozens of liters of blood condensed in front of Samael, crystallizing into a wall as solid as dark diamond. The Patriarch's fiery meteor smashed against the blood barrier. There was an explosion of red steam and sparks, but the barrier held, absorbing the kinetic impact.
"What the hell is that?!" babbled the Patriarch, watching his flames extinguish against a liquid wall.
"Your own people, protecting me," Samael whispered.
With a fluid flick of his wrist, the blood barrier dissolved into hundreds of microscopic needles that shot toward the Patriarch. The man managed to raise his Qi shield, but the blood needles acted like drills, seeking the flaws in his spiritual armor.
Forced backward, the Patriarch launched a series of wild slashes, closing the distance. His burning saber aimed at Samael's neck.
It was in that perfect instant, mere millimeters from impact, that Samael combined his arts. He no longer used blood. He opened the palm of his right hand.
[Void (Low Stage): Erasure Touch.]
Samael caught the blade of the Earth-Grade saber with his bare hand. There was no cut. There was no blood. A dark gray mist enveloped the hot metal. The spiritual-grade weapon, forged by master blacksmiths, simply disintegrated. The metal dissolved into harmless ash that fell through Samael's fingers.
Patriarch Zhao froze, holding only the hilt of a weapon that no longer existed. Absolute terror emptied his lungs.
Samael gave him no time to process the impossible. In a burst of speed, he closed the distance and plunged his hand into the Patriarch's chest—not with Void, but with his Blood Art.
[Blood Art: Internal Boiling.]
The Patriarch let out a muffled shriek. The veins in his neck turned black, bulging like snakes beneath his skin. Samael controlled his enemy's bloodstream, forcing the Patriarch's heart to beat a thousand times a minute until, with a wet, dull sound, the organ burst inside his chest.
The leader of the Zhao family fell to his knees, dead before hitting the ground.
Samael, with precise and cold movements, ripped the spatial ring from the corpse's finger. The System immediately confirmed the acquisition of the Spirit Mine Scriptures, the vital objective that would fund the Morningstars' resurgence.
[Time remaining: 10 seconds.][9...][8...]
"Patriarch... the floor..." warned Kael, barely managing to stay on his feet, using his sword as a cane.
The marble beneath his feet began to fracture concentrically.
[0 seconds.]
BOOOOOOM!
The mountain itself seemed to roar. The floor of the Great Hall exploded upward. The shockwave was so overwhelming that Kael was thrown several meters, landing on his back and spitting up a large mouthful of blood. Seraphina covered her face with her arms, her knees buckling under the atmospheric pressure that suddenly weighed like tons of lead.
From the rubble and underground smoke, a figure floated upward. It was a skeletal old man, his skin clinging to his bones like ancient parchment, dressed in golden rags. His eyes, sunken sockets with yellow lights, radiated a monstrosity that transcended human understanding.
It was Ancestor Zhao. A monster at Stage 7 of the Transcendence Realm.
The pressure of his aura cut off the oxygen in the hall. Samael felt hundreds of invisible knives stabbing into his newly healed meridians. The terror of that moment in Morningstar Square, when the Empire's Protector crushed him like an insect, threatened to paralyze his mind.
"Who... dares... disturb my slumber and murder my bloodline?" The Ancestor's voice wasn't sound; it was a mental vibration that tore at the eardrums.
Seeing Samael and the corpses of his family, the Ancestor asked no questions. He raised a skeletal hand toward the destroyed ceiling.
"Golden Heaven Punishment Palm!"
The Qi of the surrounding world was sucked toward the Ancestor's hand, forming a translucent, golden palm the size of a house that slowly descended toward Samael. There was no way to dodge it; the attack locked space itself. It was absolute death for someone who had just stepped onto the path of cultivation.
Samael's System erupted in red alerts.
[LETHAL DANGER!][Insurmountable power gap. Blood Shields ineffective against Stage 7 suppression.][Do you wish to temporarily unlock the latent bloodline ability 'Void: Black Heart'?][PRICE WARNING: Activating this technique prematurely will consume 30% of the Host's Vital Blood Essence and cause severe micro-tears in arm meridians. Probability of post-combat coma: 85%.]
Samael watched the golden palm descend. Behind him, Kael and Seraphina were going to be crushed into meat paste. His violet eyes gleamed with the madness of a sovereign who refuses to kneel ever again.
"I accept the price," Samael thought. "TAKE IT!"
An agonizing pain, as if lava were injected directly into his veins, exploded in his right arm. The skin on his arm cracked, and vital black blood began to seep through his pores, evaporating instantly.
Samael raised his trembling hand, palm open toward the immense golden technique that was about to crush him.
[Temporary Ability Activated: Void - Black Heart.]
In the exact center of Samael's palm, a small sphere was born. It was no larger than a pearl, but it was made of a darkness so absolute and pure that the moonlight and the hall's fire were sucked into it.
It was a singularity seed. A microscopic black hole that ignored the rules of the Mortal Realm.
The gigantic Golden Heaven Palm collided with the tiny dark sphere... and the world fell silent.
There was no explosion. Instead, there was a deafening sound of tearing, as if the fabric of the universe were ripping. The monstrous golden Stage 7 energy, capable of flattening a mountain, began to be violently sucked in by the black pearl in Samael's hand, distorting and swirling like water down a drain.
"What is this?!" howled Ancestor Zhao, his voice losing its divine echo, replaced by pure panic.
The sphere wasn't just devouring the attack; its spiritual gravitational pull locked onto the creator of the technique.
Samael, teeth gritted and the blood vessels in his eyes bursting, took a step forward.
"If the heaven tries to crush me..." Samael roared, black and red blood welling from his mouth, "I will devour the heaven!"
The suction force of the Black Heart multiplied. Ancestor Zhao was dragged through the air, screaming and kicking uselessly. His mummified flesh began to disintegrate, his parched muscles turning to dust before being swallowed by the sphere.
"NO! My cultivation! My soul...!" was the old monster's last scream.
The black pearl absorbed the physical form and the shattered soul of the Ancestor. With a sound akin to the crack of a divine whip, the sphere collapsed in on itself and vanished from Samael's palm, leaving behind only absolute void and a terrifying silence.
[QUEST COMPLETED: HARVEST OF DEBTS][Objective: Extermination of the main Zhao bloodline - SUCCESS.][REWARDS GRANTED: +2,000 Family Luck Points. Heaven Grade Treasure Chest (Mid).][Spirit Mine Scriptures secured in Inventory.]
Samael couldn't read the messages. The price of the Black Heart took its toll all at once.
His body swayed and he dropped to one knee. His right arm hung uselessly at his side, the skin charred and covered in bleeding fissures. He coughed violently, spitting up thick clots of black blood onto the pristine marble. The world spun around him, threatening to drag him into unconsciousness.
Soft footsteps approached. Samael instinctively tried to raise his hand, but delicate, cold hands stopped his trembling fingers.
It was Seraphina.
The platinum-haired young woman knelt before him, amidst the puddle of blood and viscera. There was no disgust or fear in her beautiful blue eyes as she looked at the violet-eyed monster in front of her. With the torn sleeve of her own dress, Seraphina gently wiped away the black blood staining Samael's chin and lips.
"You are safe now, my Lord," she whispered, her voice the only anchor keeping Samael tethered to the world of the living.
Samael took a deep breath, fighting the darkness in his vision, and gave a slight nod to his cousin, who was limping over, holding his broken ribs.
"Kael..." Samael's voice was hoarse, barely a metallic rasp. "Loot the main treasury. Burn the rest. Take the fastest horses."
Kael, looking at the scattered remains of what was once the powerful Zhao clan, nodded with a crooked, bloody smile.
"Tomorrow, the Dawn Valley will wake up to some interesting news, Patriarch."
Samael slowly stood up, momentarily resting his weight on Seraphina's shoulder. He looked at the smoking ruins of the Zhao Manor, the first tombstone on the path of his revenge.
"Tomorrow," Samael said to the void, "the world will know that the Morningstars have come to collect the interest on their blood."