Deacon Shen didn't scream. He couldn't. His vocal cords seemed to have seized, his throat constricting as he stared at the "sculpture" of his wife. The organs, still faintly steaming in the morning air, looked like a grotesque tapestry of his own arrogance.Dver took a slow, deliberate sip of the tea. He didn't look at the corpses. He looked at Shen.Those dead, black-hole eyes were fixed on the Deacon's face, tracing the way the man's skin turned a waxy, sickly yellow. Dver wasn't just watching him; he was harvesting the fear. Every shiver, every choked sob from the broken man was a delicacy."You... you monster..." Shen finally managed to wheeze, his knees hitting the stone with a dull thud. "You... the Sect... they'll hunt you... they'll soul-search you until there's nothing left..."Dver set the jade cup down on the veranda steps. The sound of the porcelain hitting the stone was like a gunshot in the silent courtyard."The Sect won't hunt me, Master Shen," Dver said, his voice as

The Blood Lotus war camp was a sprawling city of silk tents and blood-stained steel, bathed in the sickly orange glow of watchfires.Inside the command tent, Deacon Shen was curled on a cot, his face buried in his hands, shivering violently. He had spent the entire day watching the monster in his shadow slaughter three hundred men without moving a muscle. His mind was fracturing.Dver sat cross-legged on a simple straw mat near the entrance, calmly using a whetstone to sharpen the Deacon's ceremonial dagger. The rhythmic shhh-shhh of the stone was the only sound in the tent.Suddenly, the heavy canvas flap was pushed aside.The Saintess Lyra stepped inside. She didn't wear her pristine white silks tonight; she wore form-fitting silver armor that hummed with a high-level purification array. She waved her hand, and a soundproof Qi-barrier instantly snapped over the tent, sealing them off from the rest of the camp.Shen scrambled backward on his cot, his eyes wide with panic. "S-Saintess

The Weeping Gorge was no longer a battlefield; it was a mass grave that hadn't been filled in yet.The sky rained ash and boiling blood. A few hundred yards away, the shockwaves of fighting Elders leveled entire ridges, sending jagged boulders crashing into the throngs of dying disciples. The mud was so thick with gore it sucked at the boots like hungry mouths.Deacon Shen's heavy iron broadsword hung loosely in his grip. His armor was dented, his breath coming in ragged, bloody gasps. He had just decapitated a Foundation Establishment cultivator from the Black Heaven Pavilion, but it had cost him nearly all his Qi. His meridians burned like dry paper.He looked behind him.Dver was there. Standing perfectly still in the chaotic slurry, holding the black silk umbrella. Not a single drop of blood or mud had touched his stolen white robes.While Shen was fighting for his life, coughing up black phlegm, Dver was just... breathing. Shen could see the microscopic ripples in the air around

The gates of the Blood Lotus Sect opened not to the sound of triumphant war horns, but to a heavy, suffocating silence.The "Retribution Army" that had marched out thousands strong returned as a battered, blood-soaked fraction. Limbs were missing. Cultivation bases were shattered. But to Grand Elder Vane, who stood atop the grand obsidian staircase of the Inner Court, they were political capital."Behold our heroes!" Vane's voice boomed, his Qi amplifying the sound across the peaks. "They marched into the Weeping Gorge and broke the spine of the Black Heaven Pavilion! We mourn the loss of Elder Kaelen and the brave Deacon Shen, but their sacrifice has secured our mountain for a thousand years!"At the front of the surviving procession stood the Saintess, Lyra.The crowd of disciples cheered her name, throwing crushed lotus petals at her feet. She wore a fresh set of pristine white silks, her silver armor replaced by the elegant robes of her station. To the Sect, she looked like a trag

The disappearance of Deacon Varg was barely a ripple in the ocean of the Blood Lotus Sect.In a place where murder was just an aggressive form of negotiation, an Outer Court bully vanishing in the night was usually chalked up to a beast attack or a gambling debt. Dver, of course, played his part flawlessly. He spent three days loudly weeping in the courtyards, crying about how much he missed Master Varg's "strict but fair guidance."The other disciples threw mud at him in disgust. The Elders ignored him. He was completely, perfectly invisible.Until the Golden Bell of the Peak rang.BONG. BONG. BONG.The heavy, resonant chime shook the dust from the rafters of the Outer Court slums. It was a sound that only echoed once every decade.High above, a massive projection of Grand Elder Vane appeared in the clouds, his voice rolling over the mountain like thunder."The celestial alignment is upon us! The Ancestral Blood-Pool opens in one month! All Inner Disciples at the peak of Foundation E