The wind whistled past Ye Fan's ears as he streaked towards the ruins of what was once the Profound Yin Sect. The familiar landscape below was a scarred testament to a recent, brutal conflict. The air still carried the acrid tang of spilled qi and charred earth, a scent that did little to quell the storm raging in his heart.
He moved like a ghost, his enhanced spiritual sense from the secret realm allowing him to cloak his presence from the patrols of Blackscale Guards that now marched where disciples once trained. He slipped into a half-destroyed tavern on the outskirts of the sect's main city, its owner a broken man with eyes full of fear.
A few carefully placed spirit stones loosened the man's tongue, and the story spilled out in a hushed, terrified whisper. Ye Fan listened, his face a mask of stone, as the man spoke of the rebellion, of the coalition's desperate attack.
And then he spoke of her.
"The Phoenix Empress herself," the man breathed, a superstitious awe mixing with his fear. "Descended from the Citadel in armor of fire and shadow. She... she shattered the Scarlet Thunder vanguard with a glance. Froze a hundred men where they stood. It wasn't a battle... it was an execution. Led by her."
The words were a physical blow. His mother. Leading the armies of the man who had violated and enslaved her. The image was so perverse, so utterly wrong, that Ye Fan's stomach twisted. The Ancestor hadn't just broken her; he had remade her into a weapon.
His next stop was a hidden contact from the now-disbanded Hidden Su Clan, now operating as a lowly informant for the new "Marquis of the Whispering Tide." The news here was even more grotesque.
"The Matriarch..." the informant, a young woman with hollow eyes, whispered from the shadows of an alley. "She is... one of them now. The Ancestor took her as his fourth wife. She lives in the Citadel with... with the Empress." The informant couldn't even comprehend the sentence she was saying. "They say the Empress was there at the wedding. They call her... the 'Silken Matron'."
A cold nausea washed over Ye Fan. The psychological cruelty was beyond anything he could have imagined. To force a mother and daughter into such a abominable relationship... It was a depth of evil that made the blood run cold.
He learned of the new titles, the dissolution of the sects, the establishment of the "Eternal Dragon Phoenix Dynasty." The Luo Region was gone, replaced by the "Heartland Domain." It was a complete and total erasure of the old world.
But the most chilling information, the piece that truly outlined the nightmare he faced, came from a captured, low-level Lu Clan administrator he intercepted on a remote road. Under a gentle but firm spiritual compulsion, the man babbled everything he knew about the inner workings of the Citadel.
He spoke of the third wife, Wang Xia, the "Withering Lily," now seemingly healed and docile, her life-force somehow bound to the Empress's.
And then he spoke of the Crown Prince.
"The young master... Lu Feng," the administrator stammered, his eyes glazed. "A prodigy like the heavens have never seen. The Ancestor dotes on him, but... the servants are terrified. The child doesn't cry. He observes. His mere presence suppresses the qi of those around him."
Ye Fan's compulsion tightened. "His cultivation?"
The administrator shivered. "The nurses whisper. They say... they say he formed a perfect Qi Foundation in his mother's womb. That at his first birthday, he naturally circulated qi and... and broke through to the second level of Qi Condensation. He's not yet two years old."
The air left Ye Fan's lungs. Qi Condensation level 2. At nineteen months. It was impossible.Unheard of. Even the most legendary tales of supreme geniuses spoke of achieving Qi Condensation at five or six years old. This was an abomination. A violation of the natural order on par with his father's existence. This wasn't just a child; it was a monster in the making, a symbol of the unnatural dynasty the Ancestor was building.
He saw the full picture now, and it was more horrifying than any battle he'd faced in the secret realm. This wasn't a war for territory. It was a war for reality itself. The Ancestor was not just a conqueror; he was a perverse creator, weaving a new world from the threads of broken lives and unnatural power.
He was building a family. An eternal, monstrous family. With Ye Fan's mother as its Empress, his former love as its Maid, a broken girl as its Lily, and his own half-brother—a toddler tyrant—as its Crown Prince.
Ye Fan released the administrator, leaving him confused on the roadside. He stood alone under the cold stars, the information settling like a weight of lead in his soul.
The anger was still there, a white-hot core in his chest. But it was now encased in a layer of ice-cold, grim understanding. He was not fighting a man. He was fighting a disease. A cancer that had to be cut out, root and branch.
He turned his face towards the distant, looming silhouette of the Black Dragon Citadel, now the Imperial Palace. His eyes, hard as diamonds, reflected the faint starlight.
He knew what he had to do. The meeting at Sky-Splitting Canyon could not come soon enough. The storm had gathered. Now, it needed to be unleashed.
.....
The joy of return curdled into ash on the tongue. For Ye Fan's companions, the homecoming was not a triumph but a funeral march. They had emerged from the time-warped secret realm as heroes, their bodies thrumming with hard-won power, their spirits forged in fire. They returned to find their world remade in a monster's image, their victories rendered meaningless against the scale of the loss.
Lei Gang arrived at the scorched plains where the Scarlet Thunder Fortress once stood. The proud banners of lightning were gone, replaced by the obsidian standard of the Blackscale Guard. His father, the mighty Fortress Lord, was not dead. He was broken. Forced to kneel in the central courtyard, his once-powerful frame now gaunt, he was made to oversee the conscription of his remaining clansmen into the very army that had crushed them. Lei Gang watched from a distance, his fists crackling with lightning he dared not unleash. He saw the hollow shame in his father's eyes, a fate worse than death for a warrior. His newfound power, enough to shatter mountains, felt useless against the chains of psychological enslavement.
Feng Zhi, the sly trickster, found his family's merchant conglomerate not destroyed, but absorbed. Their warehouses now flew the Phoenix flag. His sharp-eyed uncle, a man who could smell a profit across continents, now managed the "Imperial Logistics Corps," his cleverness turned to streamlining the tribute system that bled the land dry. The family was richer than ever, their vaults overflowing with spirit stones, but their spirit was bankrupt. "Survival, nephew," his uncle whispered when Feng Zhi found him in his opulent, gilded office. "It is the only currency that matters now. We trade freedom for safety. A most profitable transaction." Feng Zhi's spatial dagger felt heavy in his hand; he could cut a man's throat from ten paces, but he couldn't cut his family free from this gilded cage.
Lin Xian'er, the gentle healer, sought the hidden groves of her family, masters of spirit herb cultivation. She found the groves now surrounded by Blackscale Guards, designated "Imperial Cultivation Farms." Her grandmother, a woman who communicated with plants, now worked under the watchful eyes of overseers, her life's work used to feed the machine of the very dynasty that enslaved her. The herbs themselves seemed to weep, their energies tinged with a subtle, oppressive qi. Lin Xian'er's healing touch, which could mend fatal wounds in the secret realm, could do nothing to heal the despair rooted in her own home.
Bai Wei of the proud Bai Clan found her family's sword-peaks silent. The ethereal sword hymns that once echoed through the mountains were gone. The Bai had not been conquered; they had been made irrelevant. Their territory was now a "Protected Zone of Natural Beauty," their martial traditions deemed "quaint cultural artifacts" by the new regime. Her father, a legendary swordsman, spent his days polishing a blade he would never again be allowed to draw in anger. "Power without a target is mere decoration, daughter," he said, his voice flat. "Our edge has been sheathed. We are a museum piece."
Elder Sister Lian returned to the moonlit pools of her sect, only to find them empty. Her sisters were gone. The Prime Minister's House, the new bureaucratic heart of the empire, had "recruited" them for their administrative skills and calming auras. They were now clerks and scribes, their mystical traditions reduced to filing tax reports and processing decrees issued under the Phoenix seal. The connection to the moon, once a source of power, felt distant and cold.
Luo Ying, the mistress of space, found her family gone entirely. Their hidden manor was a vacuum in the world, erased not by force, but by a spatial lock of such profound complexity it made her own skills seem childish. The only thing left was a single, official notice nailed to a non-existent door, stating the property had been "reclaimed for imperial use due to absence of declared loyalty." She was truly alone, her home not just taken, but deleted from existence.
One by one, they gathered their fragments of the horrific truth. The Ancestor's victory was not just military; it was absolute. He had not merely defeated his enemies; he had rewritten their purpose, turning proud sects into ministries, warriors into bureaucrats, and healers into farmers. He had made them complicit in their own captivity.
The burning need for the meeting at Sky-Splitting Canyon became an ache in each of their souls. They were no longer a band of triumphant heroes. They were a council of the damned, the last whispers of a world that had been erased. And they carried home not treasures, but a devastating understanding: the true battle had not even begun.