Lin Fang couldn't move. The technique had paralyzed everything except his mind. He could think. He could feel. He just couldn't escape.
His dantian burned of Ice that cut deeper than any blade. Something was being carved out of him piece by piece. Not just his cultivation. His self.
Memories flickered through his awareness like dying candles. Father's calloused hands ruffling his hair. Sister laughing at his terrible jokes. The day he found the jade slip in the ruins, the moment Master's voice first spoke to him.
All of it unraveling.
He tried to speak. Blood filled his mouth. Poured from his nose, his ears, his eyes and every orifice. The world turned red and hazy.
I wanted to make Father proud.
The thought came unbidden. His spiritual energy was flowing out instead of circulating.
Meridians tearing like wet paper. His body didn't belong to him anymore. I promised Sister I'd come back.
The boots. The stupid boots in his spatial ring. He'd never get to wear them. Never stand before those sect elders. Never prove he was more than a merchant's son playing cultivator.
He'd never mattered at all.
Jue Xuanyi's face hung above him. That gentle smile. Those empty eyes.
Lin Fang tried to speak one last time but still failed. His final thought was simple and childlike.
I just wanted to matter. The darkness took him.
Jue Xuanyi felt the moment Lin Fang's consciousness dissolved. The Origin Devouring completed. Lin Fang's body convulsed once.
His dantian imploded. A heartbeat later, the pressure ruptured the entire body.
Blood erupted outward in a pressurized spray. It was hot and thick. It hit Jue Xuanyi's face, his chest, and his arms. Drenched his white robes in an instant. The force knocked him back a step.
He caught himself.
Looked down at the ruin that had been Lin Fang. The body was hollow now, nothing but a shell. Blood pooled beneath it, spreading across the cracked stone floor.
Foundation Establishment cultivation was nothing to a Saint. The energy he'd absorbed was a drop in an ocean. But the act itself. The consumption, the control, all of it intoxicating.
He closed his eyes and took a breath. Let the satisfaction settle into his bones like sediment in still water.
"The first of many."
His voice was a quiet promise.
He knelt, not for mourning but for collection. His fingers found Lin Fang's spatial ring. Pulled it free. Opened it with a thread of spiritual sense.
The boots were inside. Plain leather well-made. Expensive for a merchant family. He took them. Slipped them into his own ring.
Waste not.
"You… you MONSTER." The Azure Void Emperor's spectral form trembled with rage. Still held helpless by Soul Devourer's Dharma body.
"You DEVIL."
Jue Xuanyi finally turned to face him. "Yes. I am."
All traces of performance and justification vanished. There was only acknowledgment.
"Heaven will punish you for this! The karmic debt alone will…"
Soul Devourer's voice overlaid his own. Hungry beyond measure. "Heaven can try." The Dharma body's grip tightened and began to pull.
The Emperor's spectral form resisted. Spatial energy flared desperately around him. Reality bent and buckled under the pressure.
"No! You can't! I'm a Sovereign's legacy! My soul is bound to the Azure Void lineage! You can't just…"
"I've eaten twelve Sovereigns." Soul Devourer's tone carried amusement. "You're just leftovers."
The spectral claw grabbed the Emperor as he screamed. Spiritual pressure so dense it cracked the walls further. His form was ripped from the jade slip shattering.
Green light exploded outward. Spatial energy backlashed through the chamber in a wave of distorted reality. The temperature dropped thirty degrees instantly as frost spread across blood-slicked stone. Void rifts opened and closed like blinking eyes.
Jue Xuanyi felt it being pulled into him. The Emperor's essence. Three thousand years compressed into seconds. Spatial techniques refined over centuries. The Azure Void Step. Void Rend. Spatial Lock. Combat experience. Victories. Defeats. Regrets.
The Emperor's final words echoed in his skull.
"You'll bring ruin to everything you touch."
Then silence.
The consumption completed.
Soul Devourer's Dharma body retreated back into shadow. The channeling ended. Jue Xuanyi staggered, catching himself against the wall. His hand left a bloody print on ancient stone.
The spatial storm from the shattered jade whipped through the chamber. Blood from Lin Fang's exploded corpse caught in the vortex. Spattered across walls. Across his face. More crimson soaking into fabric already drenched.
He stood in a pool of it. Lin Fang's blood. The Emperor's spiritual essence made manifest. All of it mixed together. Indistinguishable.
Then the weight hit.
It was devoid of the flash of lightning or the roar of thunder. All that remained was immense pressure. Crushing. Like Heaven itself pressed down on him specifically.
He dropped to one knee. The blood pool rippled around him.
His cultivation churned violently. The stolen techniques began unraveling. Blood poured from his nose, mouth and ears. Pain lanced through every meridian.
The Calamity Bone flared hot in his chest. Fighting to keep what it had taken.
Fate Weaver: "Heaven's punishment! You killed him before reducing his thread!"
Schemer Supreme: "Let go of the fortune! You'll die if you hold on!"
War Devil: "Hold it! Don't give up what's OURS!"
Heartless Sage: "Choose what matters. Release the rest or it destroys you."
He couldn't keep everything. The Emperor's legacy was too vast. Containing combat memories, cultivation insights, spatial techniques and personality imprint. Heaven was pulling it all back. Treating it like vandalized property.
He fought. Focused on one thing. The core technique, Azure Void Step. The supreme movement art. Let everything else burn away.
Centuries of insights dissolved. Combat experience scattered. The Emperor's memories returned to void.
The pressure eased.
His cultivation stabilized.
He knelt in the blood pool, gasping. Throat raw. The karmic debt settled into his bones like lead weight.
One technique. That's all Heaven let him keep.
Nameless One: "…That was a warning. Next time, Heaven won't let you keep anything."
Fate Weaver: "You have to reduce the thread first. Steal their fortunes piece by piece. Make Heaven think they failed naturally. THEN kill them."
He nodded. Couldn't speak yet.
But he understood. Heaven had rules. He couldn't just take. He had to dismantle them first. Strip fate threads bare. Then harvest.
He stayed on his knees for three breaths. Then stood slowly. The chamber was destroyed. Walls cracked. Formations shattered. Blood everywhere. Lin Fang's hollow corpse. Jade slip fragments glittering like broken stars.
His white robes were crimson from collar to hem. All of it blood. Whose was whose didn't matter anymore.
He raised his hands and looked at them. Blood dripped from his fingers. Steady drops hitting the pool below.
He should feel horror, guilt maybe. Something just enough to make him human. Instead, satisfaction bloomed in his chest. Deep and right.
Twenty years of masks. Twenty years of cages. Twenty years of pretending to be something gentle. This was who he really was underneath.
A slow smile spread across his face, void of performance. This was real.
War Devil: "…That smile. I know that smile."
Seduction Emperor: "You look pleased with yourself."
War Devil: "Shut up. That smile. Boy, what are you?"
Soul Devourer: "He's thinking about the next one."
Schemer Supreme: "Don't lose yourself to this."
War Devil: "He's not lost. He's… fuck. I've seen that smile before. On the Nameless One. Right before…"
Nameless One: "…Yes."
The chamber fell silent in his mind.
"The first of many," he said again. Tasting the words. He turned toward the entrance. The isolation formation was weakening. Wouldn't hold much longer.
Time to leave. Time to…
"I was wondering when you'd stop playing with your food."
His head snapped up. A woman stepped from shadows near the entrance. Purple robes. Serpent-green accents. She'd been there a while.
Watching perhaps.
Peak Nascent Soul cultivation. Poison aspecting. Du Qianmeng. One of his seven fiancées. The Poison Valley Witch.
She saw everything.
He remained still, his silence unbroken. He simply watched her, calculating.
She stepped into the dim light. The air around faintly distorting as if laced with toxin. Her eyes traveled across the destroyed chamber. The blood and corpse. Him standing in the center of it all, drenched head to toe in crimson.
Her smile widener in amusement.
"What a mess, husband." She tilted her head, her eyes gleaming as they traced the blood-soaked lines of his robes. "And here I thought our first meeting would be so... formal."