The screaming did not stop. It multiplied. “What’s happening to him?!”“My qi— it’s leaking!”“Someone call an elder!”Ken stood in the rain as the outer disciple convulsed on the stone path, clutching his abdomen. Spiritual light flickered wildly around the boy before collapsing inward like a snuffed candle.Ken stared at his own hands. “I didn’t touch him…”Another thread, thin, silver, drifted toward Ken’s chest. He stumbled back. “No.”The strand pierced his dantian. Warmth surged through him. His meridians pulsed, not in pain this time, but in hunger.Across the courtyard, three disciples recoiled. “It’s him!”“He did something!”“He’s cursed!”Ken’s voice came out hoarse. “I didn’t.”The convulsing disciple went still. Not dead. But empty. His cultivation aura had vanished. Footsteps thundered from the inner compound.Elder Mo Yan appeared beneath the eaves, eyes blazing. “What disturbance dares interrupt this elder’s meditation?”His gaze swept the courtyard. It stopped on Ken.

“Kill him.”The word was soft. Measured. Spoken not in panic, but in calculation. Ken did not open his eyes. But he heard it clearly.The world felt distant. Heavy. As if submerged beneath deep water. His body lay on fractured stone, smoke still rising from his sleeves.Elder Mo Yan’s voice carried across the ruined plaza. “No.”A pause. Another elder hissed, “He drew down Heavenly manifestation! He wounded it! That is heresy beyond sect crime!”“And yet,” Mo Yan replied calmly, “Heaven retreated.”Silence. Ken’s consciousness flickered. Fragments of silver drifted through the darkness behind his closed eyelids. Threads. Golden fragments mixed among them.The Heavenfall Root churned slowly, digesting. “Elder Mo,” another voice pressed, “if the higher realms learn of this.”“They will,” Mo Yan interrupted.The wind shifted. “And when they ask,” he continued, “do you wish to answer that Azure Sky Sect destroyed a phenomenon Heaven itself failed to erase?”The plaza grew very still. Ken

The first golden beam did not strike the mountain. It erased it. A section of the outer cliff vanished silently, stone, trees, disciples, reduced to drifting dust before screams could fully form.For half a breath, there was only stunned quiet. Then chaos exploded. “Heavenly punishment!”“Activate the Grand Defensive Array!”“Inner disciples to the core formation!”The sky fractured further. Three golden fissures widened above the sect, each radiating crushing pressure that bent the air itself.Ken stared at the descending light. His heartbeat was steady. Too steady. “They’re not targeting us directly,” he said.The hooded young man beside him nodded once. “They’re eliminating contamination at the source.”Ken’s jaw tightened. “The sect.”Another beam formed. Thicker. Denser. The stranger’s eyes flicked toward Ken. “If the Grand Array collapses, shockwaves alone will kill everyone below Core Formation.”Ken turned toward the main peak. Screams echoed faintly across the valley. His gri

The mountain screamed before it split. Not with sound, but with pressure. Ken felt it in his bones first. A deep vibration that did not belong to earth or sky.The silver crack at the edge of the clearing widened by an inch, then another, jagged light spilling upward like a wound refusing to close. The stranger’s voice was tight. “That is not spiritual energy.”Ken swallowed. “No. It’s older.”The fissure tore open fully. And something inside breathed. A pulse rolled outward, not crushing like the envoy’s authority, not devouring like the Heavenfall Root.This pulse felt… unfinished. Like a heart that had been buried but never stopped beating. The trees around the ridge blackened instantly. Leaves withered mid-air. Birds dropped without sound.Ken stepped back. “Seal your threads.”“I already have.”The silver light thickened. Not blinding, dense. It began forming lines in the air, geometric and wrong, angles that made Ken’s eyes ache. The Remnant whispered inside him. “Do not touch i