Chapter Six – Blood Lotus, The Bloom of Death
They called themselves the Blood Lotus.
A secretive order operating from the shadows of the continent, known only to those they hunted—and even then, only in their final moments. They were not a cult. They were not a nation. They were a web of death, spun across kingdoms, empires, and ruins alike.
At its heart sat a single, unseen sovereign.
The Poison Martial King.
No one had seen him. No one knew his voice. No one could even agree on his origin. But what all survivors and scattered reports confirmed was this—his poisons could kill Martial Kings. That alone made him the most dangerous man alive.
Below him, the Twelve Assassin Lords each led a branch of the Blood Lotus, stationed across the continent in deep cover. Each Assassin Lord had their own code, their own methods, and their own elite agents. Some used political infiltration. Others bred venomous beasts. A few were known to use illusions, seduction, or blood rites.
But none knew where the Poison Martial King was.
Only that he existed—and that when he gave a command, it was followed without question.
The Twelve kept in contact through encrypted ledgers and secret meetings, never more than two or three present at a time. Their knowledge of one another's locations was limited to necessity. Enough to coordinate a mission—but never enough to destroy the entire order.
That day, somewhere in the heart of a nameless kingdom, he walked.
A solitary figure, draped in robes of oil-dark silk, passed unnoticed through the edge of a quiet town. He was tall, yet unremarkable. Unarmed, yet more dangerous than an army.
The Poison Martial King did not look like a tyrant of death.
He had the bearing of a minor noble, a scholarly man with a calm, unremarkable face, his hair combed neatly back and his robes embroidered with faded sigils no one recognized. To most, he would appear as nothing more than a refined gentleman nearing the later stages of middle age.
But this man had lived nearly four centuries.
He was a Martial King—an 8th Pillar Blood Refinement cultivator.
And perhaps the most dangerous living being on the continent.
He stood now at the crest of a solitary hill, overlooking an open plain, a scroll tucked neatly into the folds of his sleeve, as though here only to enjoy the view.
But above him, the clouds churned.
The sky was weeping black.
This was not a storm of nature.
This was Blood Rain.
A technique he had been crafting for years. Honed, tested, perfected. Unlike others of his realm, who used their blood to empower their strikes or to withstand fatal wounds, the Poison King had turned his body into a venomous crucible. His blood had long since ceased to be mortal—thicker, darker, and saturated with poisonous essence refined from a thousand toxins.
His veins carried death.
And now, the heavens would too.
He raised his hand. Only slightly.
A single finger moved.
A flick.
A bead of crimson-black blood, dense with essence and venom, flew upward—far higher than it should have by any natural force—until it vanished into the belly of the clouds.
The moment it touched, the sky rippled.
The clouds turned dark as iron, and then it began.
Rain.
But not water.
Each droplet was infused with his poisonous blood, thinned across the sky yet potent enough to wither crops, corrode steel, and melt flesh. The Poison King had weaponized the weather itself.
This was not a killing blow. It was a declaration.
A warning to the world.
Let those foolish enough to chase the Martial Path beyond the 7th Pillar understand—
Even nature could be bent to kneel beneath the Blood Lotus.
Rain began to fall on the nearby forest. Birds dropped from the sky mid-flight, twitching as their lungs collapsed. The grass blackened. Small animals fled, only to fall in twitching heaps, foam leaking from their mouths. The rain didn't sizzle—it soaked, quietly, invisibly, with the certainty of a creeping death.
The Poison King watched, his face impassive.
He turned and walked away, the storm continuing behind him. He did not need to stay. The technique had already spread, expanding in radius slowly. It would dissipate in time—but by then, any mortal caught beneath it would be long dead.
....
At first, the villagers thought it was a trick of the weather.
The sun dimmed. A chill rolled in.
Then the sky blackened, and clouds thick as pitch gathered with unnatural speed. The first drop of rain fell—and where it struck the stone, it sizzled.
It wasn't water.
It was blood.
His blood.
A dog barked once. Then whimpered. Then dropped dead.
Leaves withered. Crops soured. People began to bleed from their eyes without knowing why.
...
The rain stopped.
After seven days and seven nights, the black storm clouds dissolved into ash-gray mist, swirling like the dying breath of something ancient. No birds sang. No wind stirred. The silence was not peace—it was the stillness of death.
The Kingdom of Delvane had fallen.
No walls remained, no banners flew. The once-golden fields that fed five cities were now a desolation of rotting vines and thorned weeds twisted in unnatural shapes. Forests had collapsed in on themselves, the trees hollowed out and blackened from within, their trunks weeping corrosive sap. Rivers had turned sluggish and dark, thick like oil, and every living thing that had once drawn breath now lay silent—animals, insects, men, kings, and even children.
The Blood Rain had spared no one.
If one could fly high enough, ascending above the poisonous clouds and deadened air, they would see it:
A mark burned into the land, an impossibility crafted from devastation.
A Black Lotus.
Its petals stretched across what had once been the heartland of the kingdom. Villages, farms, and cities had been erased so precisely, so cruelly, that the shape was unmistakable—drawn in rot, in plague, in ash. The stem trailed like a scar from the southern mountains to the northern sea, a shadow upon the world.
The center of the lotus—the capital itself—was nothing more than a crater, the size of a lake. Whatever last resistance had been mounted there was buried in poisonous soil. Not even corpses remained. Only scorched bone dust.
A figure stood at the edge of the dead zone, his boots crunching against crystalized residue left behind by the rain. It hissed faintly as it reacted with his essence barrier.
An old cultivator, cloaked in pale robes that shimmered with defensive runes. His beard was silver, and sorrow hung in his gaze.
He turned to his disciples.
"Don't step any farther. Not even Martial Kings can breathe that air long. This… this isn't just a technique."
"It's a doctrine."
One of them, younger and trembling, whispered:
"Why would someone do this?"
The old man stared at the horizon, where the scorched lines of the lotus stretched on endlessly.
"Because they could."
.....
Far to the west, hidden in a nameless valley of toxic mist, the Poison Martial King sat cross-legged atop a lotus-shaped altar formed from obsidian stone.
His eyes opened. Calm. Cold.
"It bloomed," he said.
His voice carried through the mountain like wind through a tomb.
"Now let the world understand… what it means to reach the Eighth Pillar."