The Green-Eyed Blademaster

Chapter 7: The Blood-Flame King's Feast

Deep within the Serpent's Maw Forest, a place where even demonic beasts feared to tread, the very air was sick.

The trees were black and twisted, their branches like skeletal fingers clawing at a sky perpetually shrouded in a miasmic gloom. The ground was soft and spongy, covered in a moss that pulsed with a faint, malevolent light. This place was not natural. It was a scar, carved into the world and hidden from prying eyes by layers of illusory formations, woven with bone dust and blood runes, that twisted the light and swallowed all sound.

At the heart of this corrupted domain, a clearing swarmed with activity. Hundreds of guards in dark leather armor patrolled the perimeter, their faces impassive, their eyes holding the cold emptiness of true fanatics. They were the outer shell.

Within their ring stood the core of the Blood Serpent Clan.

At the center of it all stood a man, cloaked in robes the color of drying blood, his face hidden in the absolute darkness of a deep hood. He was motionless, yet his presence dominated everything, an oppressive weight that demanded silence and obedience. This was their leader, known only by his title: Xue Yanluo – the Blood-Flame King.

Arrayed before him in a semi-circle were eleven figures, the clan's Elders, their faces grim and shadowed. Behind them stood ten more, the Division Leaders, each a master of a different vile art. Their collective gazes were fixed upon the monstrous object before them.

It was a cauldron. A massive bronze tripod, as large as a commoner's house, pulsating with a hellish heat. Inside, a viscous, crimson slurry bubbled and churned. Floating within the profane stew were the mangled chunks of demonic beasts—the horns of a Tyrant Ape, the eyes of a dozen Shadow Cats, the still-beating heart of a Six-Armed Gorgon. The stench of boiled blood, molten metal, and corrupted Qi hung heavy in the air, a perfume of pure evil. They were brewing a new kind of poison, a potion of power.

Further back, in the sprawling, temporary camps, the true nature of the clan was on full display. This was not just a military encampment; it was a den of depravity. A writhing mass of bodies writhed around crude, blood-stained altars. Dozens of the clan's warriors, both male and female, were locked in a carnal, ritualistic frenzy. Their cries were not of pleasure, but of a primal, bestial ecstasy. They moved with a savage energy, spilling their seed and blood upon the earth in a sacrament of contempt for all mortal restraint. It was a ritual to shed their humanity, to embrace the beast within before the true transformation.

Suddenly, a tremor ran through the giant cauldron. The bubbling intensified, and a pillar of blood-red steam shot into the gloomy sky.

Xue Yanluo raised a single, gauntleted hand.

At his signal, the ten Division Leaders moved as one. They began to chant in a low, guttural language, and from the camps, a procession began. One thousand individuals, their eyes hollow and wide with a mixture of terror and fanatical devotion, were marched forward. They were captured bandits, failed demonic cultivators, and disgraced clan members—all now raw material for the Blood-Flame King's ambition.

The Elders siphoned the grotesque concoction from the cauldron into large stone bowls. The liquid glowed with an unstable, angry light.

"Drink," Xue Yanluo's voice commanded, a sound like grinding tombs that echoed directly in the minds of the chosen thousand. "Drink, and be reborn in my image."

Hesitantly at first, then with a desperate fervor, the thousand test subjects drank.

The effect was instantaneous and horrific.

Screams of inhuman agony ripped through the clearing. Their bodies convulsed violently. Thick, black veins bulged from their skin, pulsing with crimson light. Their muscles tore and re-knitted themselves into new, more powerful configurations. Their screams were not of death, but of a monstrous rebirth. Their Qi, once a stagnant pond in most, now raged like a crimson river, doubling, tripling, quadrupling in power within seconds. They were no longer men. They were living weapons, their minds wiped clean and filled with nothing but absolute loyalty to their creator.

After a full minute of agonizing transformation, silence fell. The thousand soldiers stood ramrod straight, their bodies steaming, their eyes glowing with a uniform, blood-red light.

Xue Yanluo surveyed his creation, the darkness within his hood seeming to deepen with satisfaction.

"You are my fangs! You are my venom! You are the Blood Serpent Phalanx!" his voice boomed across the clearing. "Your first meal awaits you."

He turned his hooded gaze north, in the direction of the Huang Clan's territory.

"The Huang Clan and their pathetic defensive formations have stood as a bastion of 'righteousness' for too long. They are a stone in my path. They are the first to fall."

"Not long, you will march! You will bring them a tide of blood and flame! You will grind their walls, their homes, and their people to dust!"

A single, unified roar of a thousand monsters shook the very foundations of the forest, a promise of the slaughter to come. The first phase of the Blood Serpent Clan's plan to poison the world had begun