"Step up, Chen Mo, unless you want to prove to the entire province that you are nothing but a hollow shell."Chen Feng’s voice cut through the heavy silence of the courtyard, dripping with absolute malice. He stood near the center stage, his gold embroidered robes catching the morning light, his face twisted in a smug, confident grin.Chen Mo kept his eyes on the stone tiles, his fists clenched so tightly his fingernails bit into his palms. The silence of the gathered clan members felt like a physical weight pressing down on his shoulders. He could hear the quiet snickers of the outer disciples, the rustle of silk as the elders leaned forward in their high chairs, and the steady, agonizing drip of his own sweat hitting the floor."Do not make us wait all day," the testing elder barked, his voice echoing off the high stone walls. "The ancestral stone demands your touch, boy."Chen Mo took a slow, trembling breath. He looked up, his gaze sweeping past the sneering face of his cousin Che

"If this power wants to kill me, it better hurry up, because I am not giving up this body without a fight."The words tore out of Chen Mo as he shoved the massive, dead weight of the Blood Wolf off his chest. He collapsed into the cold mud right next to the carcass, his breath hitching, his lungs screaming. The terrifying, icy hunger in his chest wasn't fading; it was expanding, twisting his insides into knots. It demanded something. It wanted sustenance."What do you want from me?" Chen Mo choked out, gripping his ribs as a violent spasm racked his frame. "Tell me! What do I have to do?"A dark, crimson glow pulsed beneath the dead wolf's chest, right where its heart should be. The primordial blood in Chen Mo's veins roared in response, a fierce, suffocating pull that dragged his hand toward the beast. He didn't have a choice. He plunged his fingers through the torn flesh, tearing out the glowing, crystalline spiritual core of the beast."You have to swallow it," a voice echoed in his

"If you move so much as a muscle, I will paint these rocks with your life."The cold edge of a pitch black dagger pressed tightly against the warm skin of Chen Mo’s throat. Meng Yao stood close, her body a coiled spring of lethal intent, her grey eyes cutting through the swirling mountain fog. She was breathing too fast, her chest heaving beneath her dark armor, a strange, dark energy rippling wildly across her collarbone.Chen Mo didn't flinch, even as a thin line of warmth trickled down his neck. "You just saved my life from Ge Xuan. Why kill me now?""Because you are a walking anomaly," she hissed, her hand trembling slightly against the hilt of her weapon. "That pulse I felt from the peak, it wasn't human. It wasn't even standard qi. What did you do to your body?""I survived," Chen Mo said, his voice dropping into a dangerous, hardened register. "The same way you're trying to survive right now."Meng Yao opened her mouth to snap a retort, but a sudden, violent spasm racked her en

"My father looked at me like I was already a corpse, and that tearful pity is a ghost I cannot shake."The silent confession burned in Chen Mo's throat as he stared blankly at the silk canopy of his bed. The luxury of the Sovereign Pavilion felt like a velvet shroud wrapping tighter around his neck with every passing second. Sleep was a distant, impossible luxury. His newly forged iron pathways hummed restlessly, vibrating with a desperate, animalistic instinct that screamed danger."They are lying to you," he whispered to the shadows stretching across the room. "Every single smile, every single bow, it is all a theater."He quietly swung his legs over the side of the jade bed. His enhanced primordial senses pulsed outward, mapping the estate through the heavy silence of the night. He could smell the lingering scent of incense, the faint trace of spilled wine from the banquet, and then, a very specific, agonizingly familiar aroma. It was his father’s spiritual scent, laced with bitter

 "I will drag every single one of you into hell with me, even if I have to pull my own ribs apart to do it."The vow was a bloody smear of sound as Chen Mo was slammed onto the freezing obsidian slab. The poison gas had done its work, leaving his limbs heavy as lead and his iron pathways flickering weakly. Dozens of elite clan guards held him down, their heavy boots echoing against the subterranean stone walls of the Altar of the Ancestors. Beside the platform, Meng Yao was thrown roughly into the dirt, her body bound in heavy spiritual ropes, her gray eyes staring at him in helpless, agonizing terror."Hold him still," Chen Feng shouted, stepping onto the altar steps, his face twisted into an expression of manic, unhinged ecstasy. He held up a ceremonial, curved knife, its jagged edge gleaming with a sick, oily light designed to harvest hearts. "Look at you now, Mo. Where is that grand, terrifying power? Where are your scales?""Feng, do not delay