John Carter knelt in the snow while blood streamed steadily from his split lips, staining the white ground beneath him a dark crimson.Laughter surrounded him from every direction.It was not the restrained laughter of people hiding amusement behind courtesy. The disciples made no effort to conceal their enjoyment. Open mockery echoed throughout the courtyard as dozens of outer disciples watched him suffer with the same casual entertainment one might reserve for street performers.The winter wind screamed through the mountain peaks, dragging needles of snow across the stone courtyard. Above them, massive black towers pierced the clouds like ancient tombstones rising from the earth itself. Crimson banners bearing the symbol of the Sky Burial Sect snapped violently in the storm.It was a sect built like a graveyard.A world built on death, and John Carter existed at the very bottom of it. His trembling fingers dug weakly into the snow while pain burned through his shattered meridians. E

For the first time in fifty years, the Sky Burial Sect activated its ancient war formation.Crimson light erupted across the mountain peaks like rivers of blood spreading through the heavens. One after another, ancient runes carved deep into the cliffs awakened from their slumber, flooding the night with violent spiritual pressure that rolled across the sect like an endless storm.The entire mountain trembled beneath the awakening power.Alarm bells roared without pause, their thunderous cries echoing through every valley and courtyard. Disciples rushed from their residences in confusion and panic while elders streaked across the skies atop flying swords, their figures cutting through the snowstorm like blazing comets.Protective barriers rose around the borders of the sect, sealing the entire mountain beneath a massive dome of crimson spiritual light. Fear spread faster than wildfire. Something terrifying had awakened inside the Sky Burial Sect, and everyone felt it.Inside his broke

Elder Morvane had seen corpses like this once before, thousands of years ago, and the memory returned with enough force to steal the breath from his lungs.He remembered black snow falling across burning heavens. He remembered mountains of shriveled corpses scattered across an immortal battlefield where entire sects had been reduced to hollow shells drained of spiritual essence. Above all, he remembered the figure standing silently among the dead—a man with golden-black eyes that seemed capable of devouring the world itself.Morvane’s fingers trembled faintly as he stared at Derek Vane’s corpse sprawled across the frozen cave floor. It was impossible. That technique should no longer exist. It had been erased from history, buried beneath blood and silence, then destroyed alongside the bloodline that created it.Yet the corpse before him carried every unmistakable sign. The meridians had been devoured. The spiritual veins had collapsed inward even the soul itself showed signs of exhaust

The crowd stopped laughing the moment John stepped into the arena. A strange tension spread across the battlefield almost immediately, because something about him had changed in a way no one could fully explain.Snow continued falling across the Sky Burial Sect’s mountain arena while thousands of disciples watched from the stone terraces above in uneasy silence. Crimson lanterns swayed violently beneath the winter wind, their blood-colored light washing over the battlefield like an omen.John Carter walked toward the center platform at an unhurried pace. Too calm, far too calm.The hunched outer disciple everyone once mocked openly seemed to have vanished completely. The exhausted cripple who lowered his gaze whenever stronger cultivators approached no longer existed. Now the crowd watched him carefully, with the same instinctive caution prey felt when sensing danger hidden in darkness.Across the arena stood Elias Vane. Unlike his older brother, Elias possessed none of Derek’s arroga