SON OF THE MANOR

CH3

The morning sun had barely cleared the mountain peaks when the heavy stomping of boots shattered the quiet of the outer slave sector. Long Jingchen sat cross-legged on the dirt floor, his violet eyes instantly tracking a trail of dried mud by the doorway. The air grew thick and heavy as five men dressed in crimson tactical armor surrounded the wooden shack, their weapons drawn.

"Check the room! The blood trail from the courtyard leads straight to this dump!" a harsh voice barked from outside. The rotting wooden door was kicked inward, splinters flying everywhere as the leader of Chu Tianyou’s elite execution squad stepped inside. His eyes narrowed as he spotted Jingchen sitting calmly beside his shivering, pale sister.

Jingchen didn't move a single muscle, but his mind was already evaluating the baseline spiritual energy of the men before him. He could easily unleash his new gravity suppression and turn all five of them into dust within a split second. But he knew that hiding his supreme unbound level for now was the most calculative, intelligent, and safest method.

"So you really didn't die in the abyssal lake, you immortal cockroach," the lead executioner sneered, stepping closer as his blade flared with heat. "Master Tianyou sent us to verify the corpse, but since you're breathing, we’ll just have to cut you down again. Your sister is coming with us to the extraction room anyway."

"Leave her out of this," Jingchen said, his voice dropping into a dangerously flat, quiet tone that made the air turn cold. He slowly began to gather a speck of his cosmic energy into his fingers, preparing to erase the squad if the blade came any closer. He was ready to strike, regardless of the high-tier patriarchs patrolling the mountain grid.

The executioner let out an ugly laugh, raising his glowing blade high above his head, aiming straight for Xiaoxiao's throat. "Who do you think you are to give orders to the Chu family, slave? Both of you can rot together in the dirt tonight!"

"Stop your blades right there!" a magnificent, icy voice echoed from the sky, instantly freezing the crimson fire on the executioner's sword. A sharp wave of crystalline starlight energy cascaded through the broken roof, forcing the guards to stumble back onto the muddy pathway outside.

Ji Qingwu descended smoothly from the clouds, her white silk robes fluttering gracefully as she landed directly between Jingchen and the executioners. She was the Grand Sovereign Sect’s famously cold Saintess, a legendary beauty whose pure presence made the surrounding disciples look away in awe. She stared at the squad with eyes like winter frost, her aura completely suffocating their fire magic.

"Holy Saintess Ji!" the lead executioner stammered, his arrogant posture instantly folding as he dropped to one knee in the mud. "We are only executing a pair of runaway slaves on the direct orders of young master Chu Tianyou. This shouldn't concern your high estate."

"Shedding the blood of servants during the Palace's Holy Week is a direct violation of our ancestral laws," Ji Qingwu declared coldly. "Do you wish to bring a catastrophic ancestral curse upon this mountain just to satisfy your master's petty grudges? Lower your weapons."

The guards trembled under her immense starlight pressure, their eyes darting to each other in absolute frustration but unable to defy her rank. Ji Qingwu turned her head slightly, her gaze lingering on Jingchen's calm, unblinking eyes for a brief, heavy second. She was bound by a secret, ancient blood-oath to his deceased mother, a promise she had waited six years to fulfill.

"From this moment on, this boy is under my personal jurisdiction," she announced, her voice carrying a clear, indisputable authority to the crowd. "He will serve as my private attendant in the Starlight Manor. If the Chu family has an issue, tell Tianyou to speak with me directly."

"This is absurd!" a sharp, venomous voice shouted from the back of the gathering crowd of inner disciples. Chu Xuan, a secondary cousin of the Chu lineage, stepped forward, his face twisted in pure, aristocratic humiliation. "He is a mana-less parasite, Saintess! Why would you protect a piece of garbage that belongs to our house?"

Ji Qingwu didn't even bother to look at him; she simply turned her back to the crowd, signaling Jingchen to follow her. "Pick up your sister, Jingchen. We are leaving this place."

Jingchen bent down, gently scooping Xiaoxiao into his arms, keeping his head lowered to maintain his mask of a broken servant. He followed behind the Saintess as she began to guide them away from the rotting shack toward the upper peaks. But as they turned the corner of the stone wall, Chu Xuan’s eyes flared with a cowardly, murderous madness.

"You won't leave this mountain alive, trash!" Chu Xuan hissed silently, slipping a venomous Shadow Needle from his silk sleeve. With a rapid flick of his fingers, he sent the black, lethal dart flying directly at Jingchen’s blind spot behind his neck.

Through his newly repossessed golden perception, Jingchen saw the poisonous dart moving through the air in absolute slow motion. He could feel the exact trajectory of the venomous tip, its black light carrying enough toxin to rot a cultivator's lungs within seconds. Instead of openly deflecting the needle and exposing his true strength, his mind calculated a much better move.

Just as the dart was about to pierce his skin, Jingchen masterfully feigned an awkward, agonizing stumble, his legs buckling as if from his "shattered knees." He let out a soft groan, dropping his shoulder by an inch as he simulated the clumsy balance of a slave.

The black needle flashed harmlessly past his ear, missing his skin by a hair's breadth, and flew straight down the path behind him. Thwack. The venomous dart struck the lead Chu executioner—who was still standing near the door—directly in the center of his throat.

The man didn't even have time to let out a gasp before the purple poison spread across his neck, turning his skin pitch black. He collapsed onto the stone pavement, his eyes rolling back into his head as he died instantly from his own team's lethal weapon.

Ji Qingwu turned around instantly at the heavy sound of the body hitting the floor, her eyes narrowing as she saw the black needle. She looked at the dead executioner, then at the trembling, panicked Chu Xuan who was still holding his empty hand out. Fully believing the clumsy idiot had accidentally murdered his own ally in broad daylight, her face darkened with disgust.

"Incompetent fools," Ji Qingwu whispered, her frost-aura flaring slightly as she looked at the chaotic scene. She turned back to Jingchen, reaching into her robe to pull out a brilliant, glowing amulet that pulsed with a deep blue light.

"Take this, Jingchen," she said, handing him the Azure Heart Pendant—a legendary defensive artifact capable of blocking high-tier elemental strikes. "It seems the people around here are too clumsy to be trusted near my servants. Wear it at all times."

The watching crowd of inner disciples erupted into furious jeers, their faces twisted with an intense envy as they watched the trash receive a treasure. "Look at that pathetic cockroach!" one disciple spat. "He’s literally hiding behind a woman’s skirt to survive!"

"He has no shame!" another shouted, laughing mockingly as Jingchen quietly accepted the glowing amulet, hanging it around his neck without a word. To the world, he looked like a spineless, weak coward; to his inner soul, he was simply letting them build their own graves.

Chu Xuan stood in the mud, his face burning with a deep, public humiliation as the other disciples began to whisper about his clumsiness. He glared at Jingchen's back with a hatred that went deeper than his bones, his fingers shaking as he realized he had failed completely. "You won't get away with this, slave!" he muttered under his breath, turning on his heel to flee the outer sector.

He ran straight toward the inner peaks, desperate to report to Chu Tianyou that the long clan trash was using a stolen Saintess artifact to stay alive.