"Bind him!" Damon gasped from the marble floor, coughing up dark clumps of thick, clotted blood as he pressed his seared palms against his chest. "Elder Vane, he manipulated bloodline sorcery! He's a demonic fake!"The heavy silence in the ruined pavilion remained absolute, choking every noble present.Lucas stood motionless under the gaping, shattered ceiling, his left hand hanging casually at his side as the brilliant golden light on his wrist slowly dimmed into a dull silver glow beneath his skin."Shut your fool mouth, Damon," Elder Vane hissed, his voice trembling violently as he scrambled to his feet and bowed low toward Lucas. "The ancestral mark does not lie to the sky! Every elder in the southern province saw the dragon crowns!"Damon tried to push himself up, but his fractured cultivation core buckled, sending him crashing face-first back onto the blood-stained marble."Private chamber! Right now!" Patriarch Peterson roared, his heavy iron boots slamming onto the stone dais

"Unhand her before I break your spine," Lucas said, stepping out onto the cobblestones as his voice cut through the cold morning air.The lead guard Marco spun around, the white-hot iron branding rod sizzling inches from Esther's face. "You coreless trash! You dare bark at me while you're being dragged off to the border?""Let her go," Lucas repeated softly, his boots clicking in a steady, measured rhythm against the wet stone.Marco laughed hysterically, turning to his two fellow guards who were holding Esther pinned against the wooden pillar. "Look at him! The ruined heir thinks he can still play protector! Hold the girl, boys! Let's see what this mute dog does when I whip her in front of his eyes!"Marco dropped the iron rod into the dirt and snatched a heavy six-foot leather whip from his belt.The whip was no ordinary leather. It was laced with barbed iron teeth and embedded with a low-grade fire-element array along its core, glowing with a cruel orange spark as Marco channeled h

"Neutralize it now," Lucas said, his voice flat as he shoved his bare palm straight into the dense green fog.The toxic fumes sizzled against his skin, turning into white ash before they could reach his lungs.Deep inside his left palm, the geometric ghost-sign flared to life. The silver matrix spun in a tight, violent circle, drawing every drop of the Corpse-Melting Viper Poison into a localized spatial void above his skin."How... how is his body standing that?!" the shadow lieutenant shrieked, his hands shaking so hard his broadsword rattled against his iron gauntlet."Your poison is weak," Lucas said softly.He closed his fist.SNAP!The spatial void imploded, crushing the green poison cloud into a harmless speck of dry grey powder that blew away into the dark night air.The shadow lieutenant stumbled backward, his face turning pale as paper as he looked at Lucas's unmarred skin. "Retreat! Back to the estate! Tell the Vice-Patriarch he can't be killed by mortal venom!""You're not

"Stay inside and seal the latch," Lucas said, pressing his bare left hand against the damp wooden doorframe of the safe house.Esther nodded, her fingers trembling as she pulled the wooden bar across the heavy oak door. "Be careful, Young Master."Lucas turned his back on the safe house, his boots sinking into the wet mud of the dark alleyway. The cold night wind tore through his thin linen tunic, but his internal meridians burned with a white-hot, suffocating heat.The residual blood-curse Damon had activated on his mother's soul-ring was pulsing inside his chest every twelve seconds, trying to rot his internal channels from the inside out. To any normal cultivator, the curse was a slow death sentence.To Lucas, it was raw, unrefined spell energy waiting to be dismantled.He walked deeper into the abandoned eastern quarter of the border city, stopping in a ruined stone courtyard where the city's old sewage channels collapsed into the deep bedrock.Lucas sat cross-legged on the cold s

"Clear the entrance immediately or I will sever every meridian in your torso," Lucas said, his voice flat as he stepped out from the star-steel threshold of the subterranean cavern.The surviving Iron Blood Sect elders scrambled backward through the dark mud of the underground corridor, dragging their broken bodies up the stone steps in total terror."Retreat! All disciples fall back to the upper garrison!" Elder Kael shrieked, clutching his crushed shoulder as blood dripped onto his torn silk robes. "Don't look back! Don't engage him!"Lucas didn't pursue them up the narrow stone stairs. He stood alone in the cold subterranean draft, watching the fleeing cultists vanish into the shadows above.His sternum burned with an unbearable, violent heat.The spatial energy he had re-routed from the ruin's core array was surging wildly through his freshly opened meridians, demanding immediate refinement before it ruptured his internal organs.Lucas sat cross-legged on the cold star-steel floor