The first sign that something had changed was not an attack, not a whisper, not even a shift in the wind. It was silence. The forest beyond Veyron territory had always carried low vibrations of ambient aura, a faint hum felt only by those sensitive enough to perceive it. That hum vanished the moment Kael began circulating the devoured qi from his last encounter. He stood beneath a broken stone archway, eyes closed, breathing slow, as the Devouring Mark pulsed faintly beneath his collarbone. The aura he had absorbed from the corrupted beast was resisting refinement, its texture coarse and heavy. Instead of forcing it into his core, Kael compressed it, layer by layer, grinding it against his stabilized qi like stone against steel. Sweat traced down his jawline, but his breathing never broke.
The silence snapped when a wave of pressure rolled through the trees. It was controlled. Directed. Someone had found him. Kael opened his eyes without turning around. Three signatures. Meridian Awakening Realm at minimum. One of them had Law Engraving traces—weak, incomplete, but present. He clicked his tongue softly. Too early for this. He stepped forward casually, as though unaware, letting his aura dim. The moment he crossed the boundary of a shallow clearing, killing intent descended. Blades flashed from three angles, precise and rehearsed.
Kael moved not with speed but with prediction. The Devouring Mark had grown sharper at sensing irregular fluctuations. He felt the disturbance before metal touched air. He pivoted, letting the first blade graze his sleeve instead of his throat, and drove his elbow into the attacker's ribs. Bone cracked. He did not pursue. The second assailant unleashed a crescent of compressed qi. Kael raised his palm and absorbed it directly. The impact shoved him back three steps, boots tearing grooves in the dirt, but the energy dissolved into the Mark. His veins burned. This was cleaner than corrupted qi. Structured. Disciplined. Delicious.
"You're the anomaly," the third figure said from the tree line, voice calm. A young man stepped forward, robes marked with the insignia of the Iron Hollow Sect. "Your Heaven Mark vanished from the registry."
Kael tilted his head slightly. "Registry?"
The man's eyes sharpened. "All major sects maintain observational arrays. Destiny threads fluctuate when irregular growth appears. Yours disappeared."
Kael's expression did not change, but inside, something shifted. Disappeared. Not hidden. Not weakened. Gone. That meant the Devouring Mark was not merely altering his fate. It was erasing its trace.
The injured attacker lunged again out of pride rather than strategy. Kael sidestepped and drove his palm into the man's dantian. Instead of shattering it, he absorbed the destabilized qi on contact. The man collapsed, unconscious but alive. Kael's vision flickered briefly as the absorbed energy tried to integrate too quickly. A faint ringing filled his ears. Weakness. There it was. The more structured the energy, the harder it resisted assimilation.
"You're not corrupt," the sect disciple observed carefully. "You're empty."
Kael smiled faintly. "Is that worse?"
The disciple answered by forming a seal. The air condensed, forming thin bands of metallic qi that wrapped toward Kael from every direction. Law Engraving—Metal Fragment Principle. Incomplete, but enough to bind. Kael inhaled slowly. Instead of absorbing immediately, he released a controlled burst of aura from his Spirit Core, destabilizing the structure of the bands before they fully solidified. Then he absorbed the fragments. This time the backlash hit harder. His meridians trembled. He tasted iron.
The disciple's composure cracked. "Impossible."
Kael stepped forward through the fading metal strands. "You're hunting something you don't understand."
"I understand enough," the disciple replied, retreating a half-step. "Anything without destiny cannot be allowed to exist."
That sentence clarified everything. It was not fear of corruption. It was fear of unpredictability. Kael vanished from sight—not through speed alone, but by suppressing his aura to zero output for a split second, creating a perception gap. He reappeared within arm's reach and pressed two fingers lightly against the disciple's chest. Instead of devouring, he injected a sliver of destabilized qi back. Not enough to kill. Enough to disrupt circulation for months.
"Tell your sect," Kael said quietly, "that hunting me will cost more than observation."
He turned and walked away before reinforcements could arrive. Only when he reached a dense ravine did he finally stop. His knees bent slightly. The backlash from absorbing refined Law qi was tearing micro-fractures through his meridians. He sat cross-legged immediately and began controlled aura farming. Instead of drawing from outside, he circulated internal qi in tight spirals, compressing and smoothing the turbulence. It took hours before the trembling subsided.
When he opened his eyes again, night had fallen. The Devouring Mark pulsed once, almost thoughtfully. Someone had noticed. The hunt had begun