At a waterfall nestled deep within a valley surrounded by rare beasts and herbs, a young man walked alongside two young women. Laughter and casual conversation flowed between them as they moved. All three wore black and crimson robes, the official garb of the Holy Land of the Blood Moon, embroidered with overlapping moons and blood-petal blossoms along the sleeves.
Behind them, the shattered stone ground was littered with the mangled corpse of a Saint King–level spirit mantis, its body torn into grotesque pieces. One of the women, her long jet-black hair cascading down her back, smiled admiringly.
"Junior Brother Lin, your Bone of Emptiness is far more powerful than I ever imagined."
Lin Yuan offered a gentle smile in return.
"Senior Sister praises me too much. I'm still far too lacking compared to—"
Before his words could even finish, a voice thundered in his mind.
"Get down!"
Lin Yuan didn't hesitate. In a single motion, he pulled both women into his arms and launched them all toward the ground.
Boom!!
The mountain behind them was sliced cleanly in two. The waterfall shattered and vanished without a trace. Rocks collapsed in a roar as a wave of dust surged out and engulfed the entire area.
Before Lin Yuan could even regain his bearings, a voice rang out from within the smoke.
"It's been a while… my loathsome former junior disciples. So… is that bitch still doing well?"
As the dust thinned, a figure emerged, clad in robes of dark gray. He stood amidst the rubble and remains of the broken waterfall, exuding a violent aura of emptiness from his body.
Lin Yuan's expression changed the moment he saw the man.
"Feng Huangjun… you… you're still alive…"
His sentence had yet to finish when
Whoosh!
A piercing sound cut through the air, racing straight for Lin Yuan's throat. The blue-haired woman beside him, his senior sister, grabbed him and pulled him aside just in time to evade it.
Her voice trembled with fury as she snapped.
"Senior Brother! Are you trying to kill your own junior? And how dare you speak of Master like that? Have you already forgotten who spared your life and let you walk free from the sect?"
Feng Huangjun let out a low, chilling laugh.
"And what about my bones and blood, huh? Why did that damned woman dig up my remains and hand them over to Lin Yuan?"
A blade-like wave of void energy erupted from his palm, slicing toward all three of them in a flash.
But just before the attack could strike
Fshhhp!
A massive shadow suddenly plummeted from the sky, crashing violently against the wave of void energy with a thunderous explosion. The impact shattered Feng Huangjun's attack entirely.
The mysterious newcomer was cloaked in black, his face completely obscured. No one could see who he was, but the aura radiating from his body made Feng Huangjun frown slightly. It seemed he had caught the wrong fish.
...
...
...
A long silence followed, broken only by the sound of space itself cracking. Feng Huangjun raised a hand, and instantly the void in front of him split open into a long, dark gray rift. The man in black tried to dodge, but he wasn't fast enough. His body was sliced in half on the spot. Yet he quickly retrieved a high-grade recovery pill and swallowed it, regenerating his body in moments.
He stared at Feng Huangjun in stunned disbelief. That single strike made it abundantly clear they were not in the same league. Realizing the danger, the man in black turned and charged toward Lin Yuan without hesitation, while a blade of void energy surged after him with terrifying speed.
Boom!!
The blade of emptiness slammed into the ground, ripping it open in a long, jagged path. Feng Huangjun looked down at the scene below, then stepped into the void and vanished.
Far from the waterfall mountain from earlier…
Another rift in space tore open, and Feng Huangjun emerged like a violent storm, his figure darting forward at a speed so fast it left even breath trailing behind.
Ahead of him, the man in black was channeling spiritual energy to carry the heavily wounded bodies of Lin Yuan and his two senior sisters. They were fleeing in a chaotic rush. The man looked back at Feng Huangjun, still unable to discern which faction he belonged to. But in this moment, all he could do was grit his teeth and call out in a harsh voice.
"Wait! Hold on, kid! We can talk this through! You can have whatever you want, anything at all just spare our lives!"
Though his tone was sharp, it was laced with unmistakable fear.
"You may be from a powerful force… but our clan isn't something you can just—"
Before the man in black could finish his sentence, another wave of dark shadows clearly reinforcements rushed toward Feng Huangjun at lightning speed. But before any of them could even take half a step closer, their bodies were torn to pieces by the void. Blood sprayed through the air as they fell dead in an instant.
The man in black had thought he was safe with his backup arriving, but his face twisted in shock as he watched them all get slaughtered in the blink of an eye. He had known this young man was powerful but not to the extent of shredding a dozen Saints in a single breath.
Feng Huangjun wasted no time. Blades of void energy slashed through the four injured figures, slicing their bodies clean in half.
"Aaaargh!!"
The wounded man shouted in fury.
"I told you to stop!!"
Feng Huangjun replied with an amused smirk as he prepared to reclaim his stolen Bone of Emptiness.
"I really can't believe that..."
Suddenly, a wave of dark spear energy surged at him from the side. But it was swallowed instantly by a spontaneously opened rift in the void, as if the attack had never existed at all.
A second later, the dimensional tear reopened and hurled the black spear energy back in its original direction. But just before impact, a new wave of spear energy was launched from the enemy's side, intercepting the returned blast. The two collided, sending out a shockwave that cracked the earth beneath them.
Feng Huangjun halted instantly as a voice echoed within his spiritual consciousness. It was his master, Han Ming.
"All of you… reach the center of the hidden realm within five minutes."
As he absorbed Han Ming's words, the dying man in black raised his voice with reverent effort.
"Thank you, General Liu Aiqing…"
High above, a woman with long, sea-blue hair stood suspended in the sky. Dark, ominous energy pulsed around her, and her ocean-colored eyes sparkled like deep gemstones as she stared curiously at Feng Huangjun. She spoke in a calm, unwavering voice.
"What is your name?"
Feng Huangjun sneered before replying coldly.
"You'll know soon enough… because my name will shake the Boundless Spirit Realm."
He paused for a moment, narrowing his eyes at her with a complex expression.
"And I truly hope… that we won't have to stand on opposite sides."
As the final word left his lips, the power of the void erupted. The space around them tore apart, ready to crush everything before it into dust.
The man in black and the two female disciples who once called him senior were shredded midair into fragments of flesh, blood spraying in every direction, while Feng Huangjun pulled Lin Yuan's body directly toward him.
High above, even Liu Aiqing who had believed she had dodged the previous strike could not escape unscathed. Her left arm and leg vanished in an instant, a massive hole opened through her torso, yet not a drop of blood spilled from the wound. And in the end, her body collapsed and died, only to reveal that it had merely been a puppet all along.
Feng Huangjun smiled faintly as he stood over Lin Yuan's broken form. The lower half of Lin Yuan's body had been completely obliterated, leaving only the upper torso gasping for breath on the ground.
"It's time I took back what's mine… my bone and my blood."
He looked down at the body as though it were no more than trash, then raised his hand. Void energy flowed from his fingertips, and his slender fingers pierced mercilessly into Lin Yuan's chest, caring nothing for whether he lived or died.
In an instant, Feng Huangjun withdrew his hand, pulling out the Sacred Bone of Emptiness, followed by strands of Void Phoenix blood purple streaks interwoven with black trailing from the wound.
Though unconscious, Lin Yuan's body spasmed uncontrollably the moment his bone and blood were torn out. Agony surged through every fiber of his being. His eyes flew open. One hand twitched upward feebly, as if trying to resist.
"S...senior...brother…"
He tried to cry out, pleading through trembling lips, but not a sound escaped. Even his breath had become so faint it was nearly nonexistent. Tears began to stream down his cheeks.
He could do nothing but whisper in despair, enduring the torment with no way to fight back, silently praying for it to end quickly.