To cross the imperial border into the Neutral Lands, Shara contacted an old acquaintance—a merchant named Lucius, who specialized in smuggling rare treasures and rogue cultivators. They met him at a desolate mountain pass, under the cover of a moonless night.
"The Grand Elder of the Eternal Lotus... fugitive and beautiful as ever," Lucius sneered, his eyes darting between Shara and the young Yun Caos. "And this must be the 'Anomaly' that has the Empire offering enough gold to buy a kingdom."
"Cut the talk, Lucius," Shara snapped, her hand on her sword. "Do you have the tokens for the teleportation array?"
"Of course, of course," Lucius smiled, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. As he reached into his sleeve, he didn't pull out tokens, but a black signal flare that hissed into the sky.
Before the group could react, the earth began to shake. From the shadows of the surrounding cliffs, dozens of cultivators from the Iron Blood Hall—a mercenary sect known for their ruthlessness—emerged. They were led by a man with a scar across his throat, a Peak Core Formation master.
"Lucius, you coward!" Meilin screamed, her flames erupting in a violent crimson wave.
"Business is business, little phoenix," Lucius laughed, retreating behind the mercenary lines. "The Iron Blood Hall pays better than gratitude."
The mercenaries formed a "Suppression Circle," their combined Qi creating a heavy, golden dome that weighed down on the group's meridians. Shara and Meilin found themselves struggling to breathe, their powers dampened by the sheer number of opponents.
Yun Caos, however, looked at Lucius with an eerie, translucent calm. He felt the betrayal not as an insult, but as a vibration in the threads of destiny he had been learning to read.
"Lucius," Yun's voice was a low hum that seemed to bypass the ears and vibrate in the bones. "You traded my life for gold. Now, I will trade your existence for silence."
Yun didn't use a technique. He simply stepped forward, ignoring the crushing weight of the Suppression Circle. With every step, the golden dome cracked. The violet mark on his neck pulsed with a rhythmic, dark light. He wasn't fighting the mercenaries; he was simply walking through the space they occupied, devouring the air and energy between them.
The mercenaries panicked. They unleashed their spiritual arts—swords of light, hammers of earth—but everything that entered Yun's immediate vicinity turned to gray dust before contact.
"Kill him! Kill him now!" Lucius shrieked, realization dawning on him that gold was useless if the world turned to void.