The land changed long before they saw it.
Gone were the green ridges and quiet trees. The path beneath their feet cracked in patterns like coiling serpents. Boulders with deep claw marks lined the trail. The wind, sharp and dry, carried the scent of decay and blood.
They had reached the threshold of Scorpions Pass.
A jagged canyon split the land ahead like a scar carved by an angry god. Its cliffs jutted upward in violent angles, casting shadows that moved without wind. Sparse, sickly grass crunched beneath their boots, and the mists that swirled at ground level were tinged faintly red.
> "It's colder here," Bao Yun muttered, fingers tightening on his hilt.
> "The Qi feels… wrong," Yi Meixue said.
Huang paused.
> "This region was a battlefield during the Severing Age. The blood of thousands seeped into the ground. Spirit beasts born here are different."
Lan Qin nodded, but drew his sword with excitement. "Let's hope they're not too different."
As if summoned by his words, a rustling echoed from a pile of shattered stone up ahead. Then—they came.
Four Crag-Fanged Ligers, each twice the size of a bull, lunged from the mist with eyes glowing dull gold. Their stripes shimmered with embedded mineral threads, and when they roared, the stone beneath them cracked.
Huang stepped forward—but held up a hand.
> "Yours," he said to his three disciples.
They didn't hesitate.
Yi Meixue vanished in a blur, her movements like wind slipping between cracks. Her sword flashed with barely a sound—a clean crescent that glided along the beast's ribs. One Liger shrieked, spun, and collapsed as its tendons gave way.
> "Refined," Huang murmured. "Good."
Bao Yun charged forward more loudly, spinning with reckless courage. His Ruling Blade strike came down not with elegance—but weight. When it struck the skull of the second beast, it didn't slice—it shattered, dropping it instantly.
> "Brute force," Lan Qin smirked. "Classic Bao."
> "Still counts," Bao grinned.
Lan Qin moved last, stepping forward with a mix of flourish and focus. He didn't draw fully—only a third of the blade, as Huang once did. When the beast leapt, his sword flicked up in a diagonal line—
> "Ruling Blade: Severed Momentum."
The air warped. The beast's jump halted midair, body suspended unnaturally for a split second—then split along the cut, falling in two clean halves.
Huang nodded, proud—but his head turned.
> "Last one's mine."
The fourth Liger was larger than the rest, its body laced with faint inscriptions—an Alpha, possibly mutated. It charged, leaving gouges in the earth.
Huang narrowed his stance.
The sword left his sheath in a smooth, sudden motion, coiling with faint purple light—but instead of Ruling Blade, the aura shifted to something more primal, more direct.
> "Dragon's Pounce."
The ground beneath his feet exploded as Huang vanished, a violent gust of wind erupting behind him. In a blink, he reappeared above the beast's back, slamming downward with a descending strike like a falling meteor.
His sword struck the base of the Liger's spine—BOOM—sending out a concussive pulse that shattered the stone beneath the beast. It collapsed, legs twitching, before going still.
The technique's aura faded quickly—unrefined compared to Ruling Blade—but deadly against beasts. A direct soul-jarring impact, modeled from a scroll once buried in the Immortal Master's tomb.
> "Not bad," Huang muttered. "Crude... but efficient."
Lan Qin clapped, panting slightly. "How many more of those can you use?"
> "Two more. Maybe three. Any more and it'll rupture my core."
They gathered the spirit cores from the fallen beasts, burning the bodies swiftly to avoid drawing scavengers.
Just then, Yi Meixue knelt and held up a torn scrap of blue cloth—singed and half-buried in dirt. The Azure Sect emblem was barely visible.
> "The missing disciples passed this way," she said.
> "They were fighting something," Bao Yun added, pointing to claw marks on a nearby tree—deep and humanoid.
Lan Qin frowned. "That's not from a beast."
Huang looked toward the narrowing mouth of the canyon ahead. Faint echoes of growls and screams drifted on the wind—twisted, half-formed sounds.
> "We're not alone in the pass," he said quietly.
Then Jiang Fei's voice echoed faintly from within the sword.
> "Not just beasts. I feel spirit signatures from two sects I don't recognize."
> "Foreign cultivators?" Huang asked.
> "Yes. And worse... something else.
The sky above dimmed slightly, even though it was only midday. Somewhere deep within the pass, an ancient presence stirred—watching.
Waiting.
> "Stay close," Huang said, gripping his sword tighter. "From here on, every step counts."
The deeper they went, the more the land seemed to bleed silence.
Scorpions Pass narrowed into a ravine of fractured stone and bone-dry air, where sunlight barely touched the earth. Thorned vines grew from cracks in the canyon walls, pulsating with dull violet veins. A suffocating pressure hung in the air—like a spirit pressing against their lungs.
Huang led the group with measured steps. He could feel the shift in ambient Qi—something unnatural and ancient. He knelt near a broken pillar covered in faded inscriptions. The language was older than most sects. Dead script from the time before the Realm Divide.
Yi Meixue reached out to trace the markings, but Huang stopped her.
> "Cursed script," he warned softly. "It marks forbidden ground."
They moved forward in silence, eventually reaching a ledge overlooking what was once a temple courtyard, now shattered by time and war. And there they saw it.
Down below, five disciples in Azure Sect robes knelt in a circle etched with blood and glowing chains of silver. Their bodies twitched as energy was forcibly drawn from them into a floating array core—one forged with foreign sigils.
Surrounding them were eight cultivators, dressed in strange robes: white and bone-gray, etched with a sigil none of them recognized. These were not Azure cultivators.
Lan Qin whispered, "That symbol... like a sun being swallowed."
Bao Yun looked grim. "Not Silent Ridge. Not Amber Root."
Yi Meixue's voice was quiet. "They aren't supposed to exist anymore."
The leader of the foreign group—a man with flowing gray hair and a mask of bone over his jaw—stepped forward, adjusting the central formation.
> "Their soul compression rate is high," he muttered aloud. "Perfect as anchors. With the last phase, we can reveal the Crown's slumbering aura. Then the beasts will come… and we'll take the Crown in the chaos."
Huang's eyes narrowed.
> "They're using Azure disciples as soul beacons… to bait the Crown."
Lan Qin muttered, "That's insane."
> "No," Fei said from the sword. "It's desperate. Only a sect with no claim to legitimacy would use a method this cruel."
Bao Yun gripped his hilt. "Let's tear them apart."
Huang held him back.
> "No. Not yet."
He pointed to the edge of the ruins. On the far side, embedded in a cliff wall, was a tall stone monolith glowing faintly with blue light.
> "That's an Array Keystone. If we destroy it, we'll free the captives."
Yi Meixue nodded. "But the second we move, they'll know."
> "That's why we split," Huang said, already forming the plan.
He knelt and sketched a crude map in the dust.
> "Lan Qin and I will engage the central group head-on. Bao, you'll flank left and draw fire. Meixue, you take the upper ledge, move like a shadow, and destroy the keystone. Once the array breaks, move fast. They'll target the captives."
> "And you?" Yi Meixue asked.
Huang's eyes gleamed faintly.
> "I'll test a new technique."
They prepared in silence, sharpening blades, channeling Qi, and wrapping talismans around wrists and hilts. Huang gripped his sword—and Fei's voice was calm within it.
> "They're stronger than they look. Some are peak Silver Seal... maybe more."
> "Then we'll show them," Huang said softly, "that even a student of bronze can kill gods with the right edge."
He drew a breath, sheathed his blade, and gave the signal.
> "Now."
Lan Qin leapt first, drawing every eye with his bold, sweeping charge. His blade danced with Ruling Blade's rhythm, and his laughter echoed off the canyon walls. Bao Yun followed with wild power, shattering stone columns as he barrelled through the flank.
And Huang—vanished.
He reappeared directly in front of the masked man, sword drawn halfway in a silent flash.
The man blocked with a fan-shaped weapon, but his arm shook at the force. Huang smiled slightly.
> "You don't belong here."
The man's mask cracked slightly. "And you are?"
> "I am the sword that cuts what should not be."
And above it all, in the shadows, Yi Meixue darted toward the keystone, her blade already glowing with a faint violet edge.
The first clash had begun.