SON OF THE MANOR

The golden bells of the Grand Sovereign Dragon Palace echoed across the high mountains, celebrating a thousand years of glory. Outside, millions of guests drank and cheered for the empire’s grand milestone. No one in the festive crowd cared that this breathtaking fortress was built entirely on the butchered bones of its true founders.

Six years ago, the noble Long Clan had been poisoned, betrayed, and slaughtered in a single night of blood by the treacherous Three Sovereign Houses. Today, the usurping Chu Family ruled the palace with an iron fist, treating the surviving heirs of the fallen lineage with demonic cruelty. Far away from the golden banquet halls, hidden in the freezing shadows of the outer estate, sat a ruined, decaying wooden shack.

Inside the freezing shack, seven-year-old Long Xiaoxiao shivered violently on a bed of rotting straw, clutching her older brother’s frayed collar. She let out a ragged cough, hacking up bright crimson blood that splattered across her pale, hollow cheeks. High above the shack, the Chu family’s spiritual arrays hummed with a sickly light, continuously draining her unique life-force through the floorboards.

"Brother, it hurts so much... I am in so much pain," Xiaoxiao wept bitterly, her tiny, trembling hands losing their grip on his sleeve. "If only my veins didn't inherit the Eternal Phoenix Marrow from mother, maybe we could have lived comfortably as commoners. It hurts so bad, brother."

She coughed again, her small body shaking as the invisible arrays tugged ruthlessly at the very core of her bones. "Now, these usurpers keep mining the Phoenix Nectar from my body just to brew their ageless Gem Tea. I don't want to die like mother and father."

Long Jingchen gently wiped the blood from his little sister's lips, his chest tightening as a wave of suffocating, murderous fury threatened to break through his fragile composure. He held her tiny, frail form tight against his chest, forcing himself to breathe through his nose to hide the trembling in his hands. He could feel her bones vibrating beneath her skin, hollowed out by years of systematic torture, yet he had to force a calm smile onto his face so he wouldn't terrify her further.

"You won’t die, Xiaoxiao, I swear it on my very life," Jingchen whispered, his voice cracking with a terrifying intensity. "I will save you and take you far away from this wicked hall, no matter what it takes. Hold on for me."

He kissed her forehead, his eyes dark with a vengeance that had been festering in his soul for six long years. "I will end the Three Sovereign Houses with my own two hands and reclaim our father's legacy. They killed our parents with the Heavenly Dagger, and I will make them pay tenfold."

"But we have no magic left, brother," Xiaoxiao cried softly, her eyelids growing heavier by the second. "The medicine... the doctor said the Jade-Stabilizing Dew costs fifty spirit points. We don't have anything."

Jingchen pulled his thin blanket over her shivering shoulders, adjusting it carefully to keep out the biting winter wind. "I will get the medicine, Xiaoxiao. Just close your eyes and trust your brother. I’ll be back before the red light on the array turns dark."

He stood up, his jaw clenched so tightly that his teeth began to ache, and strode out of the shack without looking back. He wore nothing but the dirty, torn janitor’s rags assigned to the slaves of the palace, his bare feet sinking into the freezing mud. To buy his sister a single drop of that Jade-Stabilizing Dew, he knew he would have to walk straight into hell.

The ceremonial grounds were packed with hundreds of inner disciples, all dressed in luxurious silk robes, laughing as they gathered around the archery range. Long Jingchen walked straight toward the front of the crowd, keeping his head low as he approached Chu Tianyou, the top genius of the usurper Chu family.

"Master Tianyou," Jingchen said, his voice steady but flat as he stopped a few feet away from the grand dragon-bone bow. "My sister is in critical condition tonight. I need a single drop of the Jade-Stabilizing Dew to relieve her pain, and I am willing to work off the points later."

Tianyou paused, a lazy, arrogant smirk playing on his lips as he looked down at Jingchen's torn janitor rags. He turned back to one of his personal guards, gesturing with a flick of his wrist. "Bring the medicine container forward."

The guard placed a small, gleaming glass vial of green medicine onto a silver velvet tray, holding it right in front of Jingchen's face. Tianyou tapped the glass with his long fingernail, letting out a sharp, mocking chuckle that drew the entire crowd’s attention.

"You want it? Then you will have to earn it like a proper slave," Tianyou announced, turning away from Jingchen to face his wealthy peers. "Disciples! The slave boy wants to beg for a drop of our family's charity tonight! Prepare your heavy steel arrows; our human shield has arrived!"

The inner disciples erupted into loud snickers, eagerly pulling their high-grade bows from their backs as the guards pushed Jingchen onto the target line.

Jingchen didn't resist as the guards pushed him onto the target line, tying his hands loosely to a wooden post. He didn't look at the sharp, gleaming tips of the arrows aimed at his chest; he only thought of Xiaoxiao’s blood-stained lips, his eyes remained fixed entirely on the silver tray near Tianyou.

"Let’s see if your dead father’s bloodline gives you any thick skin, trash," Tianyou laughed, drawing his bowstring back until the wood creaked. With a sharp flick of his fingers, three heavy steel arrows shot through the air, tearing through the wind with a lethal whistle.

Shuck. Shuck. The first two arrows sliced deep into Jingchen’s shoulders, the jagged iron barbs tearing through his flesh and pinning him to the wooden post. Blood burst from the wounds, instantly soaking his dirty janitor’s rags in a deep, dark crimson that dripped onto the stone.

Jingchen didn't scream; he clamped his teeth together until his gums bled, his eyes never leaving the medicine vial. The pain was a blinding white fire, but the rage in his chest was hotter, keeping his mind focused through the agony. Another wave of arrows followed, grazing his ribs and embedding themselves deep into his thighs.

The inner disciples cheered and roared with laughter, treating his flowing blood like a spectacular show for their millennium celebration. After an hour of brutal practice, the guards finally untied Jingchen’s broken, bleeding body, letting him collapse face-first into the dirt.

Jingchen dragged himself forward through the mud, using his fingernails to pull his weight toward the velvet tray. "The training is over," Jingchen wheezed, his breath coming in shallow, bloody gasps. "Give me the medicine. I earned it."

Chu Tianyou let out a low, sadistic chuckle, walking over and snatching the prize medicine vial from the tray before Jingchen could reach it. He looked down at the bleeding heir, a look of pure, aristocratic disgust crossing his handsome features.

"You want the medicine, slave?" Tianyou sneered, tilting his hand and dropping the vial directly into a fresh pile of horse manure by the stable wall. The glass didn't break, but the pristine green vial was instantly covered in thick, foul filth.

"I never said the medicine would be clean, trash," Tianyou mocked, crossing his arms as the watching crowd roared with cruel laughter. "If you want to keep your little sister breathing tonight, get down on your knees and lick it off."

The laughter of the disciples echoed through the grand courtyard like a chorus of demons, every face twisted in mockery. But Long Jingchen did not bow his head, and he did not sink back into the dirt like the animal they wanted him to be. The royal pride hidden deep within his soul snapped, releasing a current of ancient fury that had been suppressed for six years.

With a sudden, explosive burst of movement, Jingchen ignored the arrows in his flesh and lunged forward from the mud. His bloody hands shot upward, gripping Chu Tianyou’s pristine, golden-threaded collar with a force that rattled the young master's teeth.

"You cowardly dog," Jingchen hissed, his eyes suddenly flashing with a terrifying, ancient authority that made Tianyou’s breath catch. The air around them grew instantly heavy, a ghostly echo of the Long Clan’s old sovereignty flaring to life for a split second.

Tianyou’s face twisted in shock, which quickly turned into an absolute, murderous humiliation as he realized a slave had touched him. "How dare you touch me, you mana-less piece of filth!" Tianyou roared, his spiritual energy erupting in a wave of golden light.

Insulted by a mere servant's defiance in front of his peers, Tianyou channeled his full power into a forbidden Vile Bone-Crushing Kick. His boot, reinforced with high-tier explosive Qi, slammed directly into Jingchen’s chest with a force that shattered the brick wall behind them.

A sickening crunch echoed through the ceremonial grounds as Jingchen’s kneecaps and ribs collapsed inward under the massive impact. He was sent flying across the courtyard, his body rolling through the dirt like a broken ragdoll before coming to a stop at the edge of the pavilion.

Jingchen lay there, blood pouring from his mouth, his chest caved in and his legs twisted at unnatural angles. He couldn't move a single finger, his breath caught in his throat as his lungs began to fill with his own warm blood.

Tianyou walked over, spitting directly onto Jingchen’s broken, twitching form before turning to his personal guards. "He’s finished. Take this dying corpse and hurl it into the bottomless waters of the Abyssal Dragon Mirror. Erase the evidence before the elders see this mess."

The two massive guards grabbed Jingchen by his broken ankles, dragging his limp body across the stone steps, leaving a thick trail of crimson behind. They reached the edge of the Abyssal Dragon Mirror—a bottomless, freezing lake that sat at the very center of the palace's magical defenses.

Without a second thought, they swung his body and threw him over the edge, watching as he plummeted into the dark waters. The freezing cold of the lake hit Jingchen like a solid wall, instantly numbing the fiery pain in his broken bones as he began to sink.

He sank deeper and deeper into the black abyss, the light from the millennium celebration above growing smaller and dimmer until it vanished completely. The water around him was silent and dead, the crushing pressure of the depths pressing against his shattered chest.

On his wrist, the faint glow of his life essence was fading, dropping past the critical threshold down to a mere one percent. His mind began to wander, the image of Xiaoxiao crying in that freezing shack flashing behind his eyes one last time. He had failed her. She was going to die alone in the dark.

"Ancestors..." Jingchen's soul screamed out into the primordial darkness of the lake, a silent roar of pure, unadulterated vengeance. "If you can hear me... don't let them win. Let me tear them down. Let me burn their empire to ash!"

He closed his eyes, ready for the darkness to take him, his heart giving one final, pathetic flutter against his broken ribs. The light from the surface vanished completely, and his consciousness began to drift into a cold, eternal void where no magic could reach him.

But instead of the quiet embrace of death, a sharp, electric hum suddenly vibrated at the very center of his soul. The frozen water around his body instantly stopped moving, the bubbles of his last breath locking in place like diamonds suspended in solid ice as a heavy, mechanical pressure gripped his heart.