I. The Trial of Blood
Darkness swallowed Li Shenhai.
No floor. No sky. Only blood, stretching into infinity—a crimson sea that reflected not stars, but faces. His mother. His father. Strangers with his eyes. A thousand ancestors buried beneath centuries of silence.
"Why do you seek the truth?"
A voice rose from the sea.
"To avenge? To understand? Or to surrender?"
He opened his mouth—but blood poured in.
He sank.
The sea thickened into flesh, and the world shifted.
He stood again—barefoot on earth scorched black.
Around him, corpses impaled on stakes. Cultivators. Villagers. Children.
A younger version of himself knelt in the center, screaming as flames consumed a cottage. His home. His grandmother's blindfold fluttered in the heat, soaked in blood.
Shenhai staggered forward. "No… this isn't real. This didn't happen—"
"Not yet."
The corpses twitched.
A figure emerged from the smoke—a man with a face like his own, older, eyes empty, blade soaked in blood. He wore robes torn from sect banners, trophies of war.
"This is what you become if you embrace the blade without restraint," the figure said.
"You are the storm… but what will you strike?"
The blood beneath them boiled.
Shenhai drew his sword.
"I will strike only what deserves it."
"Then bleed to prove it."
The two rushed forward—lightning against shadow.
II. Xiao Lan
Outside the stone gate, the silence was heavier than stone.
Xiao Lan paced, eyes darting between the kneeling crimson-robed figures. They hadn't moved in nearly an hour. It wasn't meditation—it was waiting. For what, she didn't know.
She pressed her palm to the gate. "Shenhai…"
Suddenly, the air warped. A surge of heat swept through the trees. One of the kneeling figures twitched, blood dripping from his eyes.
The sigil on the gate glowed again—crimson and gold.
Something inside had awakened.
She stepped back, hand gripping her blade.
"You were always going to follow him, weren't you?" came a voice from the trees.
She turned sharply. A tall figure in silver-gray robes stepped forward, face hidden behind a wooden mask shaped like a fox. A Watcher—an ancient order of assassins sworn to balance the martial world.
"You shouldn't be here," he said softly. "And neither should he."
"If you want to stop him," Xiao Lan said, "you'll go through me."
"No," the masked man replied. "I'm here to kill what wakes inside that temple."
III. The New Threat
Deep beneath the altar, something opened its eyes.
Not physical eyes—consciousness. A sleeping remnant bound in flesh and time. It had waited since the fall of the Crimson Moon. Buried in the forgotten chambers beneath even this trial.
The heartbeat of the blackened heart on the altar accelerated.
Thump. Thump. THUMP.
Cracks spread across its glass prison.
The silver-eyed woman's calm face faltered. She turned sharply toward the altar, her lips parting.
"No… not now…"
From the shadows behind her, a hand of bone and red sinew reached up, clawing at the air.
The Crimson Soul, sealed by Li Zhen himself, had begun to stir.