Chapter Five – Blood and Bone
Emrys could feel it now.
His essence had sunken deep—not just into flesh, not just into organ—but into the marrow of his bones.
Thus began his journey into the 7th Pillar: Marrow Refinement, a cultivation path that would consume the next seventy years of his life.
Marrow and blood were one.
The marrow gave birth to blood. The blood nourished the marrow. Neither could be tempered without transforming the other. Therefore, the first step was purging the old blood—draining it out through refined essence channels—allowing the body to generate new, essence-enriched lifeblood from the tempered marrow.
Only when the marrow had been reformed and new blood flowed freely could a martial artist be considered a true Martial Lord.
He cultivated in deep seclusion, his body suspended in vast stone cisterns filled with essence-rich mineral water. Countless times, his blood would be drained, and his marrow left aching, brittle—before it regenerated, stronger and more vital.
He came to understand the foundations of life as few others had:
Bone marrow, nestled deep within the medullary cavities of long bones and the flat bones of the pelvis and sternum, was the body's inner forge.
It was the seat of hematopoiesis—the generation of red blood cells, white blood cells, and platelets.
It held the stem cells that could become anything. Blood. Power. Life.
There were two kinds of marrow—red, responsible for making blood cells, and yellow, primarily fat. Emrys refined both. He burned away weakness in flame-like essence, condensed vitality until even his bones glowed faintly in moonlight.
At the end of the process, his new blood was alive with strength. It coursed through him with heat and pressure. When he walked, the earth subtly vibrated. When he struck, he needed no technique—his blood alone made his body a weapon.
He had become a Martial Lord.
Yet the world outside had changed during his long retreat.
In the fifty years since he emerged from the marrow sanctum, Emrys had not yet begun the 8th Pillar: Blood Refinement.
He couldn't.
Not because he lacked the time, but because something dark had risen—a hidden organization that moved in shadow and silence.
Their targets?
Only Martial Artists who had reached the 7th Pillar.
He had once believed age would grant peace. Some of those killed were retired masters, long absent from the martial world. Others were rivals and friends. A few had been enemies, true—but their deaths were no cause for celebration. Not like this.
All were assassinated.
And not by ordinary means.
From the fragments of intel and poison-ravaged corpses recovered, he had learned only this:
The organization uses a poison said to be capable of killing even a Martial King.
Emrys had tasted that poison once, when investigating a slain Martial Lord in the highlands. He traced a remnant of it with his essence—and even he had to spend a full month in deep meditation to purge it. That was just a trace.
He couldn't yet name the enemy.
He couldn't yet see the full scale.
But he had begun his hunt.