Dragonblood Chaos Heir

Chapter 3: Thrown into the Abyss

The silence in the wake of the assassin’s dissolution was profound. The only sound was Lin Feng’s own ragged breathing, which sawed in and out of his lungs, steaming faintly in the lingering, supernatural cold emanating from the sword in his hand. Frost Desire. The name took on a horrific new meaning. It didn’t just desire frost; it was frost made manifest, the end of all heat and life.

The blade hummed with a low, sub-aural vibration that seemed to resonate in the hollow of his bones. That single, sluggish pulse he’d felt in his veins had faded, leaving behind a strange, echoing emptiness, not the old emptiness of his shattered dantian, but the emptiness of a vast chamber that had just seen a door swing open for a single, terrifying second.

Uncle Tian.

The name was a shard of ice in his mind, sharper and more painful than the sword’s chill. His father’s brother. The clan’s steward, the man who managed their dwindling resources with a perpetual frown of concern. The man who had brought Lin Zhan his “medicine” every night without fail. Lin Feng’s legs felt weak. He stumbled back, his calves hitting the edge of his bed, and he sat down heavily, the point of the black sword clinking against the floorboards.

He didn’t know. The legacy is awake.

The assassin’s words twisted in his gut. So his uncle had sent a killer, but not for this. Not for a sword that could turn men into frozen vapor. For a simpler, cleaner death. To erase the inconvenient, humiliated nephew. Why? To consolidate control over the dying clan? To curry favor with the Leis? The motives swirled, dark and muddy. But one thing was piercingly clear: his father’s warning had been a prophecy. The vipers were not just in the world; they were coiled in his own home.

A new, more immediate terror cut through the shock. The assassin was gone, but the evidence of the struggle wasn’t. The window was open, the sweet smell of the poison was fading but had been present, and he was sitting here holding a sword that looked like a piece of a dead star.

He had to move. Now.

With hands that trembled only partly from the cold, he fumbled for the scabbard. As the midnight-black blade slid home, the deep chill receded, becoming once more a contained, subtle radiation. He rewrapped it hastily in the blood-red silk, his mind racing. He couldn’t stay here. Whoever had sent the assassin, Uncle Tian or a shadow behind him, would soon know the killer had failed. They would come to investigate. They would find him.

He had to get to his father.

Clutching the bundled sword, he moved to his door, unbolting it with painstaking quiet. The western wing was deserted, a tomb of faded grandeur. Shadows seemed to cling thicker to the corners. Every creak of the floorboard beneath his feet was a thunderclap in his ears. He moved not with the grace of a cultivator, but with the desperate, silent caution of prey.

His father’s chambers were in the main house, across a central courtyard. Lin Feng paused at the edge of the covered walkway, peering into the moon-washed open space. The compound was never lively, but tonight it felt extraordinary still, as if holding its breath. He saw no one. Taking a deep breath, he sprinted across the open ground, his soft-soled shoes whispering on the flagstones.

The door to his father’s study and adjoining bedchamber was half opened. A sliver of warm, lamplight spilled out. For a heart-lifting moment, Lin Feng thought his father was awake, working late. Then he caught the smell.

Not poison. Something earthier. Herbal. The mixture Old Chen prepared.

But underneath it, something else. The metallic tang of blood.

“Father?” Lin Feng pushed the door open.

The scene inside froze the blood in his veins more effectively than Frost Desire ever could.

Lin Zhan was not at his desk. He was slumped in a high-backed chair by the cold fireplace. His head lolled to one side, eyes closed. A cup lay overturned on the floor beside him, dark dregs of medicine staining the rug. But it was the figure standing over him that turned Lin Feng’s world to ash.

Uncle Tian.

He stood with his back to the door, but Lin Feng would know that posture anywhere; the slightly stooped shoulders, the careful, almost fussy way he held his hands. He was leaning over Lin Zhan, not in concern, but in scrutiny. In one hand, he held a small, empty vial. In the other, a clean, white cloth with which he was methodically wiping his brother’s lips.

“The dosage had to be increased, I’m afraid,” Uncle Tian said, his voice a soft, conversational murmur, as if speaking to a sleeping child. “The excitement of the day was too much for your weakened system. A tragic relapse. The physicians will nod understandingly. The clan will mourn. And the burdens you carried… well, they will pass to more capable hands.”

The monstrous, casual cruelty of it stole Lin Feng’s breath. He stood rooted in the doorway, the bundled sword heavy in his arms.

Uncle Tian straightened up, corking the empty vial and slipping it into his sleeve. He turned, and his face, usually a mask of pinched worry, was smooth, calm. There was no surprise in his eyes as they met Lin Feng’s. Only a mild, calculating disappointment.

“Nephew,” he said. “You’re awake. And you’re… elsewhere than you should be. Pity.”

“You…” The word was a dry croak from Lin Feng’s throat. “You poisoned him. You’ve been poisoning him for years.”

“Maintaining him,” Uncle Tian corrected gently, stepping away from the chair. “A delicate balance. Too much, and he dies too quickly, raising questions. Too little, and he might have recovered enough to be… inconvenient. Tonight, however, the balance ended. His usefulness, and his suffering, are over.”

He took a step toward Lin Feng, his eyes flicking to the silk-wrapped bundle. “And you. You were supposed to be sleeping a final sleep. My associate was quite specific. Yet here you stand. With… that.” A flicker of greed, sharp and hungry, flashed in his gaze. “What have you got there, boy? Did your sentimental father give you a final toy?”

Lin Feng backed up a step, his back hitting the doorframe. The inferno of rage was back, but it was a cold fire now, focused. “The assassin is gone.”

Uncle Tian paused. His eyes narrowed. “Gone?”

“Gone,” Lin Feng repeated, his voice gaining a shred of strength. “He spoke of a ‘Blood Seal.’ He said you didn’t know.”

For the first time, a crack appeared in Uncle Tian’s composure. Confusion, then a dawning, alarming comprehension. “The Blood Seal…? That peasant woman’s ornament?” His gaze locked onto the bundle. “No. It can’t be. That was just a story she told to soothe a dying man’s guilt…” The confusion vanished, replaced by a insatiable, gleaming certainty. “Give it to me.”

He lunged. Not with the speed of the assassin, but with the determined strength of a high-level Qi Condensation cultivator—a fact he had carefully hidden for years. His hand, clawed, shot out for the bundle.

Instinct took over. Lin Feng didn’t draw the sword. He swung the wrapped bundle like a staff, deflecting the grab. The moment the silk-wrapped scabbard connected with Uncle Tian’s arm, the same phenomenon occurred; a flash of bone-deep cold, a cracking sound of spiritual ice.

“ARGH!” Uncle Tian jerked back, clutching his forearm. His fingers were already turning blue, the skin mottled with the beginnings of those same, complex frost-runes. But he was stronger, more prepared than the assassin. With a grunt, he channeled his qi, a murky, brownish aura flaring around his arm. The frost slowed, fought to a standstill, but the limb was clearly wounded, crippled by the unnatural cold.

Terror and fury warred on his face. “What demonic artifact is this?!” he snarled. “It doesn’t matter. You are still a dantian-less cripple! You cannot hope to wield it!”

He drew a weapon of his own, a slender, cruel-looking dagger from his belt. His good hand. His qi, now fully revealed, filled the room with a oppressive, earthy pressure. Lin Feng could barely move under it. This was the true power his uncle had concealed. He was not a weak steward; he was a predator who had been slowly consuming the clan from within.

“I will peel that treasure from your frozen corpse,” Uncle Tian spat, advancing.

Lin Feng knew he couldn’t win a fight. Not here. Not like this. His eyes darted past his uncle, to his father’s still form. A fresh wave of grief and fury washed over him. There was no saving him now. There was only survival. And revenge.

He did the only thing he could think of. He turned and ran.

He burst out of the study door, back into the courtyard. “GUARDS!” Uncle Tian’s voice roared behind him, sharp and commanding. “TRAITOR! The young master has murdered the Patriarch! SEIZE HIM!”

The lie was launched like a weapon. Lights flickered on in servant quarters. Shouts of confusion and alarm began to rise.

Lin Feng ran blindly. He knew the compound, its forgotten paths and crumbling walls. His destination was the only place that offered a sliver of a chance: the back walls, near the old, disused storage cellars. There was a section where the outer wall had partially collapsed into the canyon behind the compound, the place the locals called the Abyssal Chasm. A sheer drop into a fog-shrouded canyon from which no light ever reflected and no sound ever returned. A place of utter despair.

It was also, at this moment, his only possible exit.

He could hear pursuit now, booted feet, the shouts of guards roused by their new master’s call. An arrow whistled past his ear, thudding into a wooden post. They were shooting to kill. Uncle Tian’s narrative was taking immediate hold.

His lungs burned. His legs, untempered by qi, screamed in protest. He clutched Frost Desire to his chest like a lifebuoy in a stormy sea. The bundle pulsed once, a faint, cold heartbeat against his own frantic one.

He reached the rear courtyard, a junkyard of broken furniture and old, rusting training dummies. Ahead, through a gap in a final, inner wall, he could see the jagged silhouette of the compound’s outer perimeter, and beyond it, the yawning, black nothingness of the chasm. The mists that perpetually cloaked it swirled like ghostly fingers.

“THERE! Stop him!”

Uncle Tian’s voice was closer. Lin Feng risked a glance back. His uncle stood at the entrance to the courtyard, his injured arm held stiffly, his face a mask of triumphant venom. A half-dozen clan guards flanked him, arrows nocked.

“You see?” Uncle Tian declared, his voice carrying in the night. “Fleeing like the guilty viper he is! He murdered his own father in a fit of shame over the broken engagement! He seeks to throw himself into the chasm to avoid justice! SHOOT HIM DOWN!”

The order was given.

Lin Feng didn’t hesitate. He sprinted for the gap in the wall, for the edge of the world.

An arrow tore through his robe, scoring a line of fire across his ribs. Another grazed his thigh. He stumbled but didn’t fall. The edge came rushing up, a line of broken stonework, then nothing.

He reached it. He turned, for one final second, to look back at the home that had just betrayed him, at the uncle who was his father’s killer, at the guards whose faces were twisted in confusion and zeal.

He met Uncle Tian’s eyes. And in that moment, he didn’t see triumph. He saw a flicker of frantic, thwarted greed. Uncle Tian hadn’t wanted him dead at the edge of the chasm. He’d wanted him dead in his room, so he could retrieve the sword. This outcome was a messy second best.

It was a small, cold comfort.

“This isn’t over,” Lin Feng mouthed, the words soundless in the roaring wind that swept up from the abyss.

Then, clutching his mother’s legacy to his heart, he let himself fall backwards.

The world upended. The lights of the compound, Uncle Tian’s silhouette, the shocked faces of the guards, all of it whipped away, replaced by the rushing dark and the hungry, mist-throated roar of the Abyssal Chasm. The air grew cold, then colder than cold. He tumbled, weightless, the sword’ bundle humming louder now, as if resonating with the darkness below.

This is it, a detached part of his mind observed. The worm is thrown into the dirt.

But as the blackness swallowed him whole, a final, defiant thought ignited, fueled by the cold pulse against his chest and the infinite void around him:

No. The worm is thrown into the dark… where dragons are born.