Three days later.
In a forsaken hollow, cradled in the grim silence far beyond the heart of Twin Peak Hill.
It began with a subtle, sickening shift. The quiet earth, a thick carpet of blood-soaked loam and decay, stirred with an unnatural breath. A patch of soil buckled, its dark granules loosening and sliding away as if pushed by some slow, patient pressure from the abyssal dark below. Then, a finger breached the surface—a pale, grub-like thing, slick with grave-ooze and caked in the black dirt. The finger curled, a hook of terrible purpose, and more earth was raked aside. Then another finger joined it, the nails split and bleeding.
With gathering momentum, a hand clawed its way into the frigid air. The soil fell away in clumps, and a form began to ascend. The movement was agonizingly slow, accompanied by the muffled crunch of shifting earth and the grotesque, dry protest of joints—a sound like rusted hinges screaming in a long-sealed vault.
From the unwilling womb of the tomb, Lordi Payne emerged.
He rose into the twilight not with the vigor of a man, but with the dreadful, deliberate stiffness of a marionette hauled upright by an unseen hand. Clods of earth cascaded from his shoulders like rotten hail. His body was a prison of its own making, locked in the profound rigidity of the Withered Heart Technique. Every movement was a battle against petrification, his flesh as cold and unyielding as marble.
His face was a study in deathly pallor. It was not the white of snow or bone, but the ghastly, bloodless hue of a fish's belly, of old porcelain left in the damp. The skin clung tight to the prominent architecture of his skull, pulling his features into a gaunt mask.
His body remained rigid, every muscle locked in a state of high tension from the weird martial art's lingering grip.
This demonic martial art, the Withered Heart Technique, was a brutal exercise in self-inflicted mortality. In truth, its most advanced stage could only sustain the perfect illusion of death for a fleeting quarter-hour at a time, placing an immense strain on both his body and his cultivation base. Yet, for Lordi, a young man of extreme—some would say pathological—caution, it had served him perfectly.
His was a philosophy of survival above all else, where the slightest sound, the most gentle shift in the breeze, or the innocent rustling of a blade of grass was a potential harbinger of doom, compelling him to immediately sever his own vitality. His true objective was to escape the ever-searching, sentient awareness of the Sword of Red Run.
For three long days and nights, any rustle of leaves or shift in the wind had sent him sinking back into a deathlike stasis beneath the soil, and this exhausting, silly-looking strategy had, against all odds, proven effective.
As Lordi finally raised his head, the soil crumbling from his features, his eyes scanned the profound darkness with the hyper-alert wariness of a man who had danced on the very edge of oblivion and felt its cold breath upon his neck.
It was then that he froze, his entire body seizing up once more, but this time from sheer, unadulterated shock.
From his current vantage point, the Hanz Clan Estate should have been completely obscured by the layered illusions of the Gloomwater Phantom Lily Array. He should have been gazing upon an endless, mist-shrouded lake, with perhaps the barest, illusory glimpse of the Outer Gatehouse's roof peeking through. Instead, the sight that met his eyes made him whisper a stunned.
"What the...?" His eyes widened in dawning realization, "... fuck??!"
The night itself seemed wrong; it clung to the world like a heavy shroud soaked in old blood, casting a sinister pall over a landscape he literally could not recognize.
This was not the same mountain estate he had known. The miles of dreamlike, beautiful cherry trees that once painted the slopes in soft hues were utterly gone, replaced by a forest of countless, strangely shaped dead tree trunks that clawed at the sky.
Most staggering of all was the change to the Twin Peak Hill; where two majestic summits had once stood guard over the Hanz Clan Estate, only one remained.
It seemed as if one of the peaks had been crumbled, smashed into countless pieces by the furious, indiscriminate blow of an angry celestial giant, leaving the area littered with crumbling rocks and shattered tiles.
"The grand defensive formation… it's shattered...?" The memory of an unknown horror from three days prior surfaced in his mind—not long after he had initially buried himself, a series of continuous, cataclysmic roars had shaken the very ground, a tremor of such immense, world-shattering power that it had prompted him not to investigate, but to dig himself deeper in a primal, overwhelming horror of death.
Now, the evidence of the broken grand formation laid bare before him provided a terrifying explanation for that tremor; something monumental, something of unimaginable power, had occurred.
The entire mountain estate's manor house and stronghold stood fully exposed upon the broken mountain range not far away, stark and silent under the faint, bloody light of the moon. Its secrets, once guarded by a thousand years of mystical tradition, were now bared to the world, and with them, a tantalizing promise of forgotten wealth stirred in his heart.
The heritage of a thousand-year-old cultivation family, he knew, must hold countless secrets and legendary treasures, all now potentially within reach.
Lordi's pulse quickened, like drumbeat against his ribs as the allure of forgotten treasures whispered seductively in his mind, yet his innate, bone-deep caution—a fear of death honed since reincarnated in this devil's domain—acted as a swift and powerful temper to the flames of his greed.
The primal instinct for self-preservation shouted down the avaricious whispers, and a single, unequivocal thought crystallized into a command that brooked no argument: "Flee. Back to the sect. Now." Without a moment's hesitation, his body already moving before the thought was fully formed, Lordi invoked the Blood Spectre Footwork Art. His form dissolved from solid flesh into a swirling, crimson mist, streaking like a ghostly arrow away from the unsettling ruins and toward the distant, perceived safety of the Holy Sect's direction.
He ran with a phantom's speed, his feet barely seeming to touch the blighted earth, not daring to slow his frantic pace until the formidable silhouette of the Hanz stronghold had diminished to a mere dark smudge on the horizon behind him.
Only with that crushing distance between him and the cataclysm did the staggering truth fully settle upon his shoulders with the weight of a mountain: the legendary protective formation, a bastion that had stood for a millennium, was truly gone, stripped away as if it had never been. This realization brought curiosity, mingled with a deeply wariness.
After some thought while running, his mind racing faster than his feet, Lordi deliberately slowed his frantic flight. His eyes, sharp and calculating, scanned the terrain until they settled on a minor hollow nestled within the slope of a mountain woods.
He changed his course, steering toward it and leaping down into its earthy embrace, vanishing from the open path.
Not long after, Lordi stepped back up to the top of the little slope. In each hand, he held a large, snarling mountain wolf by the scruff of its neck, the wild beasts suspended in his unyielding grip, their powerful hind legs kicking and pawing uselessly at the empty air. These were creatures of raw ferocity and primal strength, yet in his grasp, they were rendered utterly pathetic and helpless, their wild strength futile against his cultivated force.
A faint luminescence pulsed ominously from Lordi's death-pale fingers, a visible current of his spirit energy snaking into the bodies of the captive wolves. The effect was not one of burning heat, but of a profound, invasive cold that seeped deep into their flesh. The alien energy flowed through the beast's blood vessels like a glacial tide, cooling and hardening their very lifeblood, tracing a network of scars made of frost along their limbs and torsos. Their muscles, once coiled springs of lethal power, began to lock into immobility, the very veins within turning to brittle, frozen pathways that could no longer carry warmth or movement.
Their maws were wrenched open in silent, unnatural snarls, forced impossibly wide as if by an invisible meat hook sunk deep into their jaws. Their lethal fangs were now merely a ghastly, stationary display of their former menace. They could not snap their jaws shut, could not even whimper in protest or pain. The only sound that broke the silence was the soft, steady, almost rhythmic drip… drip… of horror-mixed saliva falling from their slack tongues to patter softly on the leaf-litter below.
Satisfied with his living instruments, Lordi carried the paralyzed wolves and dashed back toward the ominous vicinity of the shattered Twin Peak Hill, moving with the silence of a shadow. From a safe distance, perched in the boughs of a gnarled, dead tree that overlooked the silent estate, he retracted the spirit energy suppression holding the wolves' maws and limbs, with a powerful heave, hurled the two beasts deep into the dense woods that now cloaked the silent mountain estate.
For another three days and nights, Lordi remained hidden like a specter at the edge of the ruins. He waited and watched, his senses stretched to their limit. Each night, the lonely, confused, and now freed howls of the two wolves echoed from within the ruin of the lone peak Hanz Clan Estate.
Other animals came too—some small, pretty-skinned wild mountain predators like sleek mountain cats, and some huge, ragged vulture-like scavengers, all drawn by some invisible signal or the lingering scent of death, crossing the ridges and filtering through the woods to enter the deserted estate.
Seeing that the wolves not only survived their foray into the ruins but were subsequently joined by a steady trickle of other beasts, a tense, coiled knot of primal fear within Lordi's gut finally began to loosen.
A slow breath escaped Lordi's lips, crystallizing in the chill air as he murmured, "So… it is truly over?"
"The life-or-death 'Path to Dao Strife,' the decade-long contest between Krogh Hanz and the Ju-On, has finally reached its brutal conclusion."
The very stillness of the mountains seemed to affirm his deduction, the absence of conflict speaking louder than any battle cry.
His mind, sharpened by survival, pieced together the recent cataclysm with the evidence before him.
"So the terrible upheaval six days ago must have been the final clash. The complete and utter collapse of the Hanz Clan's grand defensive formation can only be the work of the victor." A shudder of profound relief, cold and sharp, ran through him. "Thank the Abyss… My decision to feign death outside the outer ring gatewalls spared me from being slayed within that deadly battle."
His gaze, now analytical rather than terrified, tracked the movements of the beasts below.
"The wolves live and hunt without being struck down by some residual curse. Other predators and carrion-eaters enter and leave freely, treating this place as just another part of their territory."
The conclusion was clear. "The immediate, active danger of this haunted place seems… to have passed. Whether it was Krogh Hanz or the Ju-On who ultimately prevailed, the place itself clearly has no more use for them; they have moved on, their purpose here fulfilled."
With the primal fear receding, Lordi's thoughts turned ruthlessly practical, a covetous, calculating glint igniting in the depths of his eyes. "Well," he mused, "the Hanz Treasury House had been plundered by us once before, that is true."
But his mind was already racing beyond that single memory. "However, a thousand-year heritage cultivator estate of this vast scale… Especially one that once birth to a near Upper Three Level Golden Rank, Core Formation Stage ancestor… Such a place is a fairyland of secrets. The victors, in their haste to claim the grand prize and depart, must have overlooked lesser treasures, hidden vaults, or spirit tools deemed unworthy of their immediate attention but which would be a king's ransom to a rogue cultivator like me."
Seeking a tangible anchor for his courage, his fingers dipped into his storage pouch, emerging with the Hundred-Mile Escape Dao Fulu given to him by Kinson Wexford. Its solid presence was a profound comfort, and he focused on the uniquely cold, almost greasy texture of the talisman's human-skin material against his palm. This was his ultimate insurance, a guarantee of escape from all but the most inescapable of traps. Gripping it so tightly his knuckles turned white, he willed his feet to move, stepping with deliberate, measured caution past the skeletal remains of the broken gatehouse and across the final, symbolic threshold into the Mountain Estate proper.
The ascent under the starless sky felt less like a climb and more like a pilgrimage through the corpse of a fallen giant. The ancient stone path, which had once stair-stepped its way with elegant precision towards the Hanz Stronghold, was now a shattered spine of granite and marble. It was cracked inch by treacherous inch, its immense flagstones tossed aside like children's blocks and upended at violent angles, as if the very mountain itself groaned and shifted under the unbearable memory of the apocalyptic violence it had been forced to absorb.
His eyes, straining against the gloom, were drawn inevitably to the summit, to the place where the imposing silhouette of the main stronghold should have cut a jagged line against the night. But there was only a void, a gaping absence in the skyline that disoriented his sense of place and scale. His breath caught as he confirmed the specifics of the devastation: the entire left peak of the mountain together with the Ancestral Shrine on top was simply gone, erased from existence as if it had never been.
After a quarter-hour of navigating the treacherous, rubble-strewn path, Lordi finally reached the middle reaches of the front mountain. Here, the terrain fell away abruptly into a deep basin, granting him a sudden, devastating, and panoramic view into the heart of the estate. The sight that unfolded before him was one of pure, unadulterated desolation. The martial arts arena, once a hallowed clearing veiled and protected by a dense, spirit-rich ancient forest, now lay completely exposed and utterly eviscerated. The mighty trees that had stood as silent guardians for centuries were now reduced to fields of splintered toothpicks, their vast canopy shredded away to reveal the arena's brutally violated form below.
The training field itself was not merely damaged; it was flattened, its reinforced stone tiles pulverized into a fine, gray dust. But the true horror lay deeper. The land's spiritual nodes—the vibrant, pulsing arteries of the mountain's earth vein that had concentrated energy here—had been brutally gutted and torn asunder. From these deep, weeping wounds in the world's flesh seeped a baleful, visible air, a shimmering poison of malevolent energy that coiled and writhed like a ground-hugging miasma over the corpse of the land.
Such profound taint attracted life only in its most corrupt and profane forms. The air thrummed with a macabre chorus composed solely of the ceaseless, chittering skitter of venomous insects that swarmed in thick, glistening black clusters across the tainted soil. The entire valley now felt hollowed out, its spiritual heart replaced with a core of pure malevolence, and a faint but palpable aura of killing intent permeated the very air he breathed, a psychic stench that had driven away all normal beasts and birds, leaving only the profane to thrive in the oppressive silence.
After another quarter of an hour of swift, silent treading along the broken mountain path, Lordi reached a vast mountain courtyard that served as the formal nexus connecting the ravaged front side of the estate to the more secluded rear mountains.
Pushing onward beyond the courtyard, his path led him toward where, for a few thousand steps, the Driftdream Loch should have lain. But long before he reached its former banks, the reality of its fate became horrifyingly apparent. The entire body of water had vanished, not merely dried up, but seemingly ripped from its bed, leaving behind a colossal, gaping basin of cracked and desiccated mud that stretched before him like a horrible, festering scar upon the land, as if from the impact of a cataclysmic meteorite crash. The once-lush, spirit-nourished willow trees and lovely, vibrant florals that had once adorned its shimmering banks were now reduced to forests of withered, brittle husks, their life essence utterly siphoned away.
With the mountain estate's grand defensive array completely broken down, the entrance to the Hanz Clan Treasury House, which should have been one of the most fiercely guarded secrets, now stood naked and exposed at the far end of the dry lakebed. It appeared as a charred, dark maw gaping open in the earth, a void leading into the mountain's heart.
A deeply ingrained "cautious" prudence dictated Lordi's next move. He spent a few moments wandering the perimeter until he captured a stray, confused deer. With a powerful heave, he threw the terrified creature through the gaping entrance and into the treasury's depths, then stood perfectly still outside, listening with every fiber of his being. From within, he heard only the panicked, echoing cries of the animal and the subsequent clatter of disrupted vases and objects as it scrambled in the dark. There were no sizzling sounds of activated traps, no roar of hidden guardians—just the noise of a scared beast. Satisfied the immediate way was clear, he finally crossed the threshold and entered.
The interior of the Treasury House was a mess of overturned carved wooden frame shelves and scattered luxury vases and valuables, all bearing the clear, unmistakable marks of his own previous frantic looting raid with Emma Dawson and Donovan Valdez. Yet, critically, it was equally clear that no one else had disturbed this plundered treasured place since their hasty departure. This time, operating alone, Lordi showed no restraint. He swept through the chamber like a greedy locust feeding on a last, neglected field, systematically clearing every shelf and probing every shadowy corner, stuffing every remaining piece of artifact, desiccated herb, spiritual ore, dao fulu, and faintly glowing spirit stone—every scrap of remaining resources—into the newly acquired storage pouches he now possessed.
His recent breakthrough into the Eighth Layer of the Qi Refinement Stage proved invaluable. His increased cultivation strength and refined spirit energy allowed him to easily bypass the weak spirit mark locks on the various storage pouches he had collected from fallen comrades and foes, which he had then emptied and prepared, giving him more than enough spatial capacity for this swift, systematic harvest.
Yet, as he was busy with his hasty and swift collection, a nagging doubt surfaced and began to gnaw at the edges of his mind. If the real Krogh Hanz—the terrifying entity he had glimpsed at that Ancient Stone Well—had ultimately won the strife, why would he ever abandon his ancestral Clan Estate and leave his home without first reclaiming the goods from his own Treasury House? What possible victory could be so complete that it required abandoning one's very legacy?
Doubt solidified into a cold knot in his stomach. Unless… the victor was the Ju-On after all? But that presented its own maddening paradox. The Ju-On was supposed to be a complete mind and strength copy of the cultivator; it should have inherited all of Krogh Hanz's knowledge, including the location and value of this vault. Why would it, too, leave all these treasures abandoned and untouched? The thought, laced with a fresh spike of fear, spurred him to move even faster, his hands a blur. He could not stay here. He needed to see what had happened at the ruin of left peak, where Ancestral Shrine once located.