Dawn bled over the **Lóngxīa Empire**, staining the smog-choked sky the color of a bruise. In the **Tea-Cooling Pavilion**, Prince Yan Ling traced the veins of a dried chrysanthemum petal. His breathing was shallow, each inhale scraping like sandpaper in his chest. The cost of sealing yesterday's events – Zhi'er's intrusion, the leaked sword intent – lingered in the deep ache of his bones. He felt thinner, more insubstantial, as if the world might dissolve him before his task was done.
Outside, the imperial court stirred like a dying beast. Gongs echoed, summoning officials to the **Hall of Echoing Virtue**. Whispers slithered through corridors: *Vermilion Bird Envoys. Demands. Surrender.* Yan Ling didn't need spies. He felt the approaching storm – a prickling against his skin, the faint, acrid taste of suppressed **Quasi-Immortal Qi** carried on the wind from the west gate. Xiao Hong had arrived.
---
Zhi'er clutched the pouch of silver coins, the weight both comforting and terrifying. He'd bought the ginseng, watched his sister sip the bitter broth, felt the unnatural heat of her skin recede slightly. Relief warred with unease. *Old Man Luo's fear. The humming scroll. Blood becoming leaves.* The prince wasn't just sick; he was… *wrong*. A dangerous wrongness Zhi'er should avoid. Yet, like a moth drawn to a guttering candle, he found himself slinking back towards the palace outskirts, drawn to the mystery festering in the Tea-Cooling Pavilion.
He watched from a crumbling moon gate as courtiers in stiff silks hurried towards the main hall, faces pinched with anxiety. Their fear was palpable, a sour scent mingling with the dust. Guards, usually languid, stood rigid, hands tight on spear hafts. The air itself felt heavy, charged. *The envoys.*
---
The **Hall of Echoing Virtue** was a cavern of faded grandeur. Emperor Feng, Yan Ling's nominal father, slumped on the **Dragon Throne**, his face pouchy and pale beneath the heavy imperial headdress. He looked less like a ruler and more like a man drowning in his own robes. Before him, flanked by four hawk-faced retainers radiating restrained menace, stood **Xiao Hong**.
She wore scaled armor the color of fresh blood, a single vermilion feather pinned above her left ear. Her eyes, sharp as obsidian shards, swept the assembled court with undisguised contempt. She didn't bow.
"The **Celestial Peaks**," she announced, her voice cutting through the nervous silence like a blade, "recognize no decaying throne. We come for one thing only." She held up a scroll sealed with black wax stamped with a mountain piercing clouds. "Prince Yan Ling. The Last Painter of Jade Heaven. Surrender him."
A collective gasp rippled through the court. Chancellor Bo, a wispy man with eyes like a weasel, stepped forward, wringing his hands. "Esteemed Envoy! Prince Yan Ling is… he is frail. Dying. He paints harmless landscapes. Surely there is some mistake?"
"Mistake?" Xiao Hong's laugh was brittle, devoid of humor. She pointed a gauntleted finger towards the eastern wing. "Harmless? We felt the tremor yesterday. The *silence* that followed. That is not the power of a dying man. That is the echo of the **Nightless Blade**." The name hung in the air, heavy and unfamiliar to most, yet it sent an instinctive shiver down every spine. "Bring him. Now. Or Lóngxīa burns."
Emperor Feng flinched, beads of sweat glistening on his forehead. His eyes darted wildly, seeking escape, finding none. "Guards! F-Fetch the prince!"
---
Yan Ling saw the guards approach – six of them, their usual slovenly demeanor replaced by stiff-backed apprehension. He didn't resist. He rose slowly, leaning heavily on his cane carved from lightning-struck plum wood. The walk to the Hall of Echoing Virtue was an exercise in agony. Every step jarred his brittle frame; the weight of countless gazes – curious, fearful, hostile – pressed upon him. He was a ghost walking amongst the living, a relic of a forgotten war.
He entered the hall. The courtiers parted like reeds before a dying wind, their whispers falling silent. Emperor Feng couldn't meet his eyes. Xiao Hong's gaze, however, locked onto him with the intensity of a predator spotting wounded prey. She stepped forward, radiating a palpable pressure that made the air hum faintly, a stark contrast to the heavy suppression blanketing the world. Here was active, *leashed* power.
"So," she breathed, circling him slowly. "This is what remains of the scourge who shattered the heavens? A withered stalk clinging to dirt." She stopped before him, close enough for Yan Ling to smell the ozone tang of her suppressed Qi. "Where is it, painter? Where do you hide the **Nine Suppression Scrolls**?"
Yan Ling met her gaze. His own eyes, though sunken in a gaunt face, held a depth that seemed to swallow the flickering lamplight. "Scrolls?" His voice was a dry whisper, barely audible. "I paint… only dreams. And memories best forgotten."
"Forgetfulness is a luxury we cannot afford!" Xiao Hong snapped. Her hand shot out, not towards Yan Ling, but towards the small scroll tucked partially into the sash of his robe – the one he'd been sketching that morning: a simple study of wilting lotus pods in a cracked vase. She snatched it. "Let's see what nightmares you bind in ink, old man!"
Before Yan Ling could react – before anyone could blink – Xiao Hong tore the scroll cleanly in half.
---
A soundless detonation.
It wasn't light or heat. It was *absence*. A sudden, chilling void that sucked the air from the hall. The torn edges of the scroll didn't flutter to the ground. They *dissolved*, releasing a storm of ink-black particles that swirled violently. Within the maelstrom, images flickered with terrifying clarity:
* A battlefield under a shattered sky, mountains floating like broken teeth.
* Yan Ling, clad in robes of starlight and shadow, his face cold as glacial ice, raising a sword that was pure absence.
* A scream – not of sound, but of severed destiny.*
**REALM MANIFESTATION (Sealed Fragment):**
> *The torn painting unleashed a shard of **Void Severing Intent**, a technique from a **Transcendent Realm** now lost. It wasn't an attack; it was the uncontrolled *memory* of one – a ghost of annihilation.*
The swirling ink-particles coalesced into a single, jagged line of pure negation – a blade-shape forged from the concept of *ending*. It hung in the air for a microsecond, humming with silent, world-rending power. Then, guided by the residual echo of Yan Ling's will still clinging to the destroyed painting, it lashed out – not at Xiao Hong, but at the source of the aggression, the disruption of stillness.
It struck the vermilion feather pinned in Xiao Hong's hair.
There was no flash, no bang. The feather simply… ceased to exist. Along with a precise lock of Xiao Hong's jet-black hair, severed cleanly as if by a razor made of nothingness. The severed strands drifted slowly to the polished floor.
Silence. Absolute, suffocating silence.
Xiao Hong stood frozen, her hand still raised where the scroll had been. The arrogance had bled from her face, replaced by stark, primal terror. She touched the side of her head, her fingers coming away clean – no blood, just… absence where hair and feather had been. The Void Severing Intent dissipated, leaving only the faint scent of ozone and old paper.
Chancellor Bo fainted. Guards trembled, their spears clattering on the floor. Emperor Feng whimpered, shrinking into his throne.
Yan Ling closed his eyes briefly, a fresh wave of weakness washing over him. Sealing the uncontrolled release cost him dearly; a trickle of blood escaped the corner of his mouth. He raised a trembling hand. A single, desiccated chrysanthemum petal, dislodged from his sleeve earlier, drifted slowly downwards from the rafters. With impossible, weary grace, Yan Ling caught it in his palm before it reached the floor where Xiao Hong's hair lay.
"See?" Yan Ling whispered, his voice barely a breath, yet echoing in the petrified silence. He held the fragile petal towards the trembling envoy. "Only dreams… and endings."
---
Zhi'er, pressed against a lattice screen outside the hall, had seen everything. The tear. The swirling darkness. The terrifying, silent blade of nothingness. The feather vanishing. The prince's blood. He hadn't understood the words – 'Nightless Blade', 'Suppression Scrolls' – but the *power* was undeniable. Raw, terrifying, and utterly controlled even in its uncontrolled release. It wasn't Qi as the street brawlers used. It was something deeper, older, written in ink and silence. And the prince… he hadn't fought. He'd *contained*. He'd paid in blood.
As Xiao Hong staggered back, her face ashen, flanked by her unnerved retainers, Zhi'er's earlier fear crystallized into a cold, hard resolve. This prince wasn't just wrong. He was the storm center. And Zhi'er's sister needed more than ginseng; she needed protection from whatever ancient war was clawing its way back into the world. Protection the dying prince somehow offered, even as he bled.
Zhi'er slipped away from the screen, his heart pounding not with terror now, but with a desperate, burgeoning purpose. He needed to get closer. He needed to learn. He needed… the painter.
---
High in the **Celestial Peaks**, **Jiang Xi** snapped the jade hairpin he was holding. The shattered pieces clattered onto an obsidian table. The withered crane feather in its case was vibrating violently, emitting a thin, keening sound only he could hear.
He stared westward, towards the crumbling Lóngxīa capital, his eyes blazing with cold fury and… triumph. *He bleeds,* Jiang Xi thought, the corner of his mouth twisting into a cruel smile. *The seal weakens when he exerts himself. When he bleeds.* The Void Severing Intent's echo, faint but unmistakable, had reached him. It wasn't just power; it was a beacon. A confirmation.
"Xiao Hong failed," he murmured to the empty chamber, his voice like grinding ice. "But she made him *show* a fragment of his hand." He closed his fist around the vibrating feather. "Good. Bleed more, Master. Bleed, and remember the power you cast aside. Soon… I will help you paint your final masterpiece. In the color of oblivion."