The sun was beginning its descent, casting long gold shadows across the uneven trail winding through Red Root Valley. The valley walls sloped in like ribs, red-tinged trees rustling softly in the breeze, their leaves whispering warnings no one could hear.
Lan Qin had just finished recounting a story to Yu Mei about a duel gone embarrassingly wrong—when the air changed.
Even Huang, at the rear flank, noticed it.
A stillness fell. Birds vanished. Even insects held their breath.
And then—
Screams.
From the forward guard position, four cultivators collapsed as if struck by a silent thunderclap. Their weapons clattered to the ground. Their eyes rolled back.
One of them trembled violently—before going utterly still.
Huang's head snapped up.
A shadow passed overhead.
"Spirit beast!" Kao Lin shouted from the left flank. "Fast—no sound—!"
Lan Su gasped.
Lan Qin stumbled in his seat. "What was that?!"
A gust of wind slammed into the carriage roof, strong enough to rattle its frame. And then a second scream—not of a human, but of something ancient, high-pitched and hollow, as if torn from a shattered bell.
Elder Wu appeared atop the carriage in a blink, sword drawn.
"Stay inside!" he barked. "It's a Nether Owl!"
Huang's expression tightened.
That was bad.
Very bad.
Even as chicks, Nether Owls could lift a full-grown man. But it wasn't their claws or speed that made them feared—it was their soul-ripping shriek, a spiritual-frequency scream that stunned the mind and damaged the spirit root directly.
The Owl dove again.
Kao Lin was the next target. He turned just in time to parry—and flew backward twenty paces, blood spraying from his ears.
The Owl didn't linger. It was gone again, lost in shadow.
One of the archers screamed, not from pain, but soul-stun—frozen, eyes wide, his spirit body spasming within his frame.
Elder Wu formed five sigils with his fingers and cast a protective soul curtain over the second carriage, where Lan Su had gone unnaturally quiet, bracing herself, eyes fixed upward.
"I can't track it!" Wu shouted. "It's moving between air currents—folding its presence!"
From the rear, Huang's steps slowed.
His fingers touched his sword.
> "You remember this one?" came Fei's faint voice from the blade.
"Yes," Huang murmured. "From the tomb. A formation meant to blind and anchor sky-hunters."
He pulled the blade free.
Then—in the middle of an open road—he stabbed it into the earth.
He swept his left foot backward and raised his palm.
> "Stone Wound Form: The Four Nails of Sky Binding."
Four afterimages of his blade split outward into mirrored phantoms, forming a square formation around the carriages. Spiritual light—subtle and pale—linked them like threads of silk.
The Nether Owl dove again—drawn to the gaps in the guards.
But this time, as it passed through the center of the formation—it wavered.
A pause.
Like a glitch in a dream.
Its flight path bent off-kilter, wings twitching as the air within the formation dragged at its soul.
"Now," Huang whispered.
His second hand gripped the hilt, and he twisted the embedded sword.
The threads of the formation snapped taut—and light flared upward like a cage.
The Nether Owl shrieked, caught mid-air as its flight was severed by an invisible pressure—its soul weighed down, its body frozen.
Elder Wu's eyes widened. "He trapped it!"
Huang didn't stop.
He rushed forward, pulling the sword from the ground, leaping high above the trapped beast.
He didn't yell. Didn't pose.
Just a clean overhead strike.
One slash.
The blade descended with precision—carving through flesh and soul. No explosion. No show of power. Just finality.
The Owl hit the ground in two halves. Black blood pooled around it, its soul-stun screech never released.
A hush fell over the ravine.
Lan Qin opened the carriage door slowly, mouth agape. "What… what kind of sword art was that?"
Even Lan Su stared, lips parted in breathless awe.
Elder Wu leapt down, checking the downed guards, stabilizing soul pressure where he could. Two were gone—soul already scattered. Two more comatose.
But thanks to Huang, no more had fallen.
He approached slowly, gaze firm. "You saved the entire column."
Huang sheathed his sword.
"I did what I was paid for."
Elder Wu didn't argue. "That formation... where did you learn it?"
Huang paused. "From a master no longer living."
Wu grunted. "Then they must've been a true cultivator."
Lan Qin slid from the carriage, walking up beside Huang with a grin.
"I think I found the master I've been looking for."
Huang gave him a glance. "You'd need to survive a lot more of this to even ask."
Lan Qin laughed. "That sounds like a yes."
Lan Su whispered, her voice dancing across Huang's mind even at a distance.
> "Thank you, again."
The caravan resumed its journey an hour later, slower, quieter.
But among the survivors, something had changed.
They no longer saw Huang as a quiet sword-for-hire.
They saw him as what he was:
A cultivator whose sword bore the weight of ancient arts… and who walked closer to true danger than any of them dared.