A low tremor ran through the earth, like the heartbeat of something ancient awakening.
It began as rumor—faint whispers that the border cities of the Zhao Dynasty had fallen. Then came the smoke. Rising columns across the southern sky, black and churning like a funeral banner. With it came dread, spreading like ink through clear water. Entire towns were swallowed whole overnight. The Zhao Dynasty, long considered a beacon of stability and spiritual advancement, was now a scarred frontier.
In the Grand Hall of the Celestial Dawn Sect, bells tolled.
The sect's core disciples stood in formation. Elders with grim faces dispatched orders. Outer and inner disciples alike gathered in silent rows, each summoned for a task greater than cultivation.
War.
The Call
Lu Xuan stood among the summoned, his plain robes fluttering in the mountain wind. Though his cultivation had surged rapidly in recent days, he remained an enigma among his peers. Most avoided his gaze. His recent duel, his strange energy, and his mysterious origin—it all marked him.
He felt Su Xue's presence nearby, silent and watchful. She stood a few paces behind him, her robes whispering with faint frost.
Elder Qian's voice rang out over the gathered crowd.
"The Zhao Dynasty bleeds. Our ancestral allies request aid. The Celestial Dawn Sect shall answer."
Gasps rippled. A war hadn't threatened the sect's borders in decades.
Qian continued, "You will be divided into squads. Secure supply routes, assist evacuations, defend sacred grounds. Beware—demonic cultivators walk the battlefield."
Lu Xuan felt the subtle buzz within his veins. The Devouring Skill stirred. It knew.
Where war raged, opportunity followed.
A Mission Beyond Orders
Three days later, Lu Xuan rode a spirit beast through the emerald valleys of southern Zhao Province. Around him moved his assigned squad:
Yu Shilan, a quiet girl of the Frost Branch, with silver eyes that missed nothing.
Han Feng, loud, confident, and always ready for battle.
Su Xue, unofficially assigned elsewhere, yet somehow always close.
Their mission: investigate the fall of Green Lantern Village, a minor settlement but vital due to its spirit artifact stores.
As they approached, the sky seemed... drained. The air no longer hummed with life, and birds did not sing.
They passed blackened trees, their bark cracked with burn marks. Lu Xuan stepped through the ruins of the village gate.
"This wasn't a raid," Su Xue said quietly. "It was consumption."
Lu Xuan said nothing, but the hum of the Devouring Skill in his core grew stronger. The world around him felt like a whisper calling his name.
The Crater
At the center of the ruins was a wide, smoking crater, where the spiritual well once rested. Now, nothing but ash and memory remained.
Lu Xuan knelt near the edge. Amid the scorched stone and dust, something glimmered faintly. A jade scroll fragment, cracked but intact. Ancient runes pulsed across its surface.
The moment he touched it, a bolt of force shot through his mind.
Visions overwhelmed him:
Dragons bleeding across the heavens.
A battlefield at the edge of time.
A solitary figure, drenched in shadows, devouring the stars themselves.
The scroll held more than technique—it held lineage.
The Forbidden Inheritance
That night, while the others made camp near a spirit tree that had miraculously survived the carnage, Lu Xuan sat apart, beneath the bare skeleton of a willow.
The jade fragment glowed faintly in his palm.
He channeled a thread of spiritual energy into it. Symbols lit up across his veins like old scars reigniting. The Devouring Skill surged, awakened by the scroll's inheritance.
Consume. Transcend. Rise.
The scroll was an ancient relic tied to the original Demon God—an extension of the Devouring Path. With it, Lu Xuan could consume not just energy, but laws, intent, even fate itself. The cost? His humanity, inch by inch.
He clenched his fist. He wouldn't lose himself. Not yet.
"You found something," Su Xue said, stepping out of the shadows.
He didn't flinch. "A path to power."
She studied him carefully. "A path to becoming what you fear."
"I fear being powerless more."
She stepped closer, her presence calm and anchoring. "Then let me remind you what's worth holding onto."
Their eyes met. She touched his hand—not to stop him, but to remind him he was not alone.
Portents
The next morning, Yu Shilan returned with a message: two other villages had gone silent. Rumors claimed the attackers weren't mortal armies—but corrupted cultivators, their bodies hollowed by forbidden arts.
Lu Xuan's thoughts returned to the scroll. What if these enemies also followed some version of the Devouring Path? Was this all connected?
He looked to the horizon.
There, far in the distance, was a mountain range veiled in dark clouds. Deep within those peaks, the scroll hinted, lay an ancient altar—abandoned since the Demon God's fall.
And perhaps, his next step.
But war would not wait.
The sect would call again soon. And Lu Xuan had to make a choice.
Seek the altar and risk everything…
Or stay and prove to the sect he was more than a shadow.
End of Chapter 10
Next Chapter Preview:
The journey to the hidden altar begins
Su Xue's past and true cultivation revealed
An ambush by a rogue demonic sect
Lu Xuan must choose: save his allies, or seize forbidden power