Dawn's light had not yet touched the peaks of Verdant Vine, but the Main Hall was already brilliantly illuminated by twenty spirit stone lanterns hanging from the dragon-carved ceiling. Outside, on the stone courtyard, the corpses of Night Phantom Sect assassins still lay in pools of slowly coagulating blood, impaled by guards' spears. Inside, a heavy, poisonous silence hung in the air like fog before a storm.Lin Feng stood in the center of the hall, surrounded by fifteen Verdant Vine Elders seated in a semicircle upon elevated jade seats. Behind him, several Inner Court disciples—witnesses to the previous night's battle—whispered among themselves with expressions mixing admiration and suspicion. In the corner, Chen was twisting the hem of his robe until his knuckles turned white, and Yun Xue stood rigidly, her hand on her sword hilt, her ice-blue eyes sweeping across every elder with wariness.Elder Huo, his old enemy, sat on the left wing with a thin, poorly con

The bronze bell of the Verdant Vine Sect tolled three times. Its sound was deep, heavy, and resonant—not in the ears, but in the bones. Each strike was a warning left unspoken: Today, someone would be broken. Lin Feng stood in the center of the Main Hall, alone. The black marble floor beneath his feet was as cold as a tombstone slab. Surrounding him, upon tiered elevated stone seats, thirteen Elders sat in a horseshoe formation, their faces hidden in the shadows of heavy green robes bathed in blue jade lantern light. Above them all, on the highest throne crafted from petrified ancient tree roots, sat Grand Elder Sheng—the old man with eyes like cracked jade who twenty days ago had offered him a deal, and now sat as judge. On the left wing of the hall, Elder Huo of the Green Stone Outpost stared at Lin Feng with a satisfied smile. His eagle-like face still bore the small burn scars from the unstable Shard energy explosion du

Ghost Whisper Canyon was never silent.Even at midday, when the sun was directly overhead and shadows shortened, the air here was filled with sounds—whispers, sighs, sometimes short screams cut off before they could fully form. Hunters and herb gatherers avoided this place like the plague. Locals said it was a place of restless spirits, ghosts of miners who died in nearby excavations, or victims of ancient massacres.Lin Feng, after three days of traversing steep cliffs covered in strange moss, now knew they were all wrong.Or rather, they only saw the symptoms, not the cause."You feel it, don't you?" That voice was hoarse, like dry leaves rustling against each other. Old Man Ku sat upon a collapsed boulder, his gaunt body hunched like an old willow tree. His dim eyes—physically blind, but Lin Feng's Deconstruction Eye showed he possessed some form of alternative spiritual perception—were aimed directly toward the canyon's center. "Not spirits. N

The wind of Ghost Whisper Canyon was never truly silent.Throughout their three-day journey deeper in, Lin Feng had grown accustomed to the whispers—that low rustle creeping through the crevices of the cliffs, vibrating in his bones, whispering in voices that were almost words. Almost. But never clear enough to understand. Like memories floating at the edge of consciousness, always retreating just as he was about to grasp them.Today, the whispers changed tone.Lin Feng stopped. The Deconstructor's Gauntlet on his left hand suddenly grew warm. The blue pattern on the back of his hand flickered in an erratic rhythm—a system warning he had come to recognize over the past weeks.---[Early Warning: Anomalous Energy Fluctuation Detected.][Source: 200 meters northeast. Density: High.][Classification: Unknown—Energy Pattern Does Not Match Living Being Database.]---"Grandpa Ku," Lin Feng called, his voice low. "Ther

mThe gates of the Verdant Vine Sect stood wide open—something that rarely happened to welcome an Outer Court disciple.Lin Feng stood at the threshold, his robes still tattered, his face adorned with dust and dried blood not his own. In his hands, he carried a translucent jade box within which pulsed a crystal the size of a fist—a Crystallized Memory Core. The silver-blue light it emitted swirled slowly like a miniature nebula, reflecting faint images of ancient battles upon the gate walls.Behind him, Xiao Lan—Old Man Ku's granddaughter—stood rigidly, her eyes red but dry. In her hands, she held a bamboo tube containing her grandfather's journals and the map leading to the Observatory.Behind them, half of the Pavilion of Heavenly Blueprints—the remaining core members—had come as an unofficial honor guard.But what drew the most attention was not them.It was Supervising Elder Wei.That old man in black robes adorned with coiled