The five-thousand-foot granite walls of the Ash-Peak Ravine no longer existed.
In a single, microscopic fraction of a second, the catastrophic eruption of absolute-zero kinetic rage exploding from Li-Wen's body had atomized millions of tons of solid basalt into a boundless, pale-blue blizzard of frozen dust. The sky above was no longer overcast; it was a swirling, pitch-black vortex of atmospheric vacuum, pulled down by the sheer, terrifying gravitational mass of a man whose last anchor to humanity had just been violently severed.
Down on the smooth, polished ice floor of the flattened crater, Li-Wen remained on one knee.
His broad, iron-like frame was perfectly still, but his broad shoulders were trembling with a quiet, horrifying intensity.
In his large, scarred left hand, he held the small, cracked pink lotus lantern. The silver framework was bent, its warm ruby glow flickering like a dying candle in a howling winter storm. And on the cold glass surface rested those tiny, fresh drops of dark crimson blood—Xiao-Yue's blood.
His physical ears—capable of hearing the heartbeat of an ant a mile away—focused with frantic, terrifying precision on the pitch-black abyss deep within the western mountain pass.
Three miles away... four miles away... five miles away...
There was no sound of small leather boots stepping over ice.
There was no cheerful, sweet giggle asking for honey oat cakes.
The microscopic, fragile thread of Xiao-Yue's life aura—the innocent, gentle warmth that had kept the dark void inside Li-Wen's soul at bay—had completely vanished into the freezing mountain wind.
In his mind, the scene played out with unbearable, terrifying clarity: while he was erasing the three Stage-6 Sovereigns in the sky, a hidden, dark entity—the Grand Patriarch of the Blood-Shadow Sect—had used a spatial shadow-talisman to strike from the absolute dark, crushing the small girl's chest and dragging her lifeless, bleeding body into the deep abyss to refine her spirit artifact.
She was gone. His little sister... the child who had held his sleeve through snowstorms and smiled at sweet bread... was dead.
"Xiao... Yue..."
Li-Wen's voice was no longer human. It was a low, guttural growl that sounded like tectonic plates grinding against each other deep within the earth's core.
Slowly, agonizingly, he raised his head.
His eyes—which had always been calm, flat, and unyielding like an ancient frozen lake—were no longer black.
They were burning with a blinding, abyssal pitch-black fire, surrounded by thick, glowing sapphire veins that crawled up his neck and across his pale face! His short dark hair fluttered wildly, turning pure, snow-white at the roots as his primordial marrow began to burn its own ancestral physical essence!
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!
A pure pillar of black-and-sapphire kinetic aura erupted from his broad back, tearing five thousand miles into the upper atmosphere, shattering the cloud layer across the entire Western Province!
The temperature within a hundred-mile radius of the Ash-Peak Ravine dropped instantly by three hundred degrees! The rivers froze to their beds, the ancient pine forests turned into brittle glass sculptures, and the steam conduits of Winter-Frost City forty miles away burst violently as the cold wave struck!
Li-Wen slowly stood up.
He placed the small, cracked pink lotus lantern carefully into his inner coat pocket, right against his heart.
He reached behind his broad back with his right hand and wrapped his thick, calloused fingers around the dark grip of the Pitch-Black Heavy Blade.
For five years—since the fall of the Northern Realm—Li-Wen had never drawn this blade from its scabbard. He had fought with his fists, his fingers, his open palms, reserving the heavy blade as an unpolished weight.
SHRRRRRRR—!
A sound like a dying star being dragged across dry iron echoed through the mountains!
Li-Wen drew the Pitch-Black Heavy Blade three inches out of its scabbard!
CRACK—! SHATTER—!
The moment three inches of the raw, unadorned dark steel exposed itself to the air, the physical spatial structure of the Western Continent groaned in agony! A three-mile wide void rift opened horizontally across the sky, completely swallowing the light of the afternoon sun!
The Northern Sovereign was no longer a martial artist. He was a calamity—a roaming demon of absolute destruction walking upon the mortal realm.
Sixty miles deep within the jagged, volcanic peaks of the Blood-Eagle Mountain Range lay the ancestral stronghold of the Blood-Shadow Sect.
Built inside a colossal, hollowed-out volcanic crater, the stronghold was an intimidating, dark-red fortress surrounded by rivers of bubbling lava and protected by three ancient Stage-6 offensive arrays. Over three thousand elite disciples and forty Stage-5 Elders resided within the fortress, ruling over the dark trade of the Western Continent with absolute, ruthless terror.
Inside the grand ancestral hall at the top of the fortress, a tall, gaunt man dressed in long, blood-embroidered robes sat upon a throne of human bones.
This was Grand Patriarch Blood-Shadow—a terrifying Stage-6 Mid-Grade Sovereign who had mastered the ancient, forbidden art of Blood-Soul Extraction.
Floating in the air before his throne was a sphere of dark crimson spatial energy. Inside the sphere lay a small, motionless figure wrapped in a torn white sheepskin coat, surrounded by bits of broken pink lotus glass.
"Hahaha! Splendid! Truly splendid!" Patriarch Blood-Shadow cackled, his sunken eyes burning with greed as he looked at the floating sphere. "The small girl was indeed the living vessel of the ancient Northern Lotus Artifact! Though her heart stopped beating the moment my shadow claw struck her chest, her blood essence still contains the pure, untainted spirit-marrow of the Northern Lineage!"
He raised his skeletal hand, preparing to drive his blood claws into the crimson sphere to extract the spirit-marrow.
"With this spirit-marrow, I can break through to Stage-7 and rule the entire Western Continent! The Northern Sovereign can scream all he wants in that ditch... his sister is dead, and his artifact belongs to me!"
However...
Before his skeletal fingers could touch the crimson sphere, the bubbling lava rivers surrounding the hollowed-out volcanic crater suddenly fell completely silent.
The intense, thousand-degree heat radiating from the volcanic magma vanished in a single microsecond.
CRACKLE—! CRACKLE—!
The glowing red lava rivers turned dark gray, then pale blue, before snap-freezing into solid, miles-thick blocks of volcanic ice!
"What... what is happening?!" One of the Stage-5 Elders standing below the throne yelled in sudden panic, looking down at his freezing boots. "The volcanic heat... it's gone! The magma is frozen?!"
"ALARM! THE DEFENSIVE ARRAYS ARE—"
Before the guard outside could finish his scream, the sky directly above the volcanic crater was violently torn open!
BOOOM—!
It was not lightning. It was not a meteor.
It was a solitary figure descending from the pitch-black void sky, stepping down onto the cold air as if descending a flight of invisible stone stairs.
Li-Wen had arrived.
His white-rooted hair fluttered wildly in the howling, freezing wind. His traveler's coat was completely covered in a frost layer of sapphire light, and in his right hand, he held the Pitch-Black Heavy Blade—now drawn six inches out of its scabbard!
His dark eyes, burning with pitch-black abyssal fire, locked onto the grand ancestral hall three miles below.
He did not speak. He did not issue a demand. He did not ask if his sister was alive or dead.
To a man whose heart had been turned into absolute, unyielding ice, words were meaningless. Only total, absolute annihilation remained.
Li-Wen raised his right arm, lifting the heavy blade six inches out of its scabbard high into the frozen sky.
"EVERYONE! ACTIVATE THE THREE STAGE-6 ARRAYS! COMBINE OUR POWER AND KILL HIM!" Patriarch Blood-Shadow screamed from inside the hall, his Stage-6 soul trembling violently with a sudden, bone-chilling sense of impending doom!
Three thousand elite disciples and forty Stage-5 Elders unleashed their entire spiritual energy simultaneously! Three colossal, blood-red defensive barriers—each ten feet thick and reinforced with volcanic runes—erupted over the fortress, forming an impenetrable dome of blood-red steel!
Li-Wen brought the heavy blade down.
A single, vertical slash.
BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM—!!!!!
There was no sound of impact. There was no explosion of sparks.
A three-thousand-yard line of absolute-zero sapphire kinetic destruction cut through the sky, through the three Stage-6 defensive arrays, through the blood-red fortress, through the hollowed-out volcanic mountain, and deep into the crust of the earth below!
CRUNCH—! SHATTER—! REPRESS—!
The three Stage-6 defensive arrays? Vaporized in a microsecond!
The forty Stage-5 Elders and three thousand elite disciples? Their bodies, their weapons, and their souls were snap-froze mid-air before being instantly pulverized into microscopic frost-dust that filled the entire valley!
The colossal, thousands-of-years-old volcanic mountain housing the Blood-Shadow Sect was split cleanly in half! The two halves of the granite mountain groaned violently before collapsing outward, pulverized into fine grey dust under the absolute physical pressure!
In less than three seconds, the entire Blood-Shadow Sect—one of the three ruler sects of the Western Continent—was completely wiped off the face of the world map!
Where the grand ancestral hall had stood moments ago, there was now only a flat, two-hundred-yard circular platform of frozen basalt, hovering precariously over a thousand-foot deep abyssal trench.
Sitting on his throne of human bones at the center of the platform was Patriarch Blood-Shadow.
He was the only survivor. His long blood robes were shredded, his Stage-6 spiritual domain was completely shattered, and blood was pouring uncontrollably from his eyes, nose, and mouth.
He looked around in pure, unadulterated, hysterical terror.
Three thousand disciples... forty elders... a three-thousand-year-old mountain fortress... gone! Erased by a single, casual vertical slash of a partially drawn blade!
"Demon... You are a demon from the outer void..." Patriarch Blood-Shadow whimpered, his voice choking on his own blood as he crawled backward off his throne, using his skeletal hands to drag himself away from the broad-shouldered man landing silently on the stone platform.
Li-Wen stepped onto the frozen basalt.
His heavy leather boots made quiet, steady click-click sounds that echoed like funeral bells in the dead silence.
He did not look at the screaming patriarch. His pitch-black, abyssal eyes locked squarely onto the floating sphere of dark crimson spatial energy resting on a stone pedestal near the ruined throne.
Inside the sphere lay the small, motionless girl in her torn white sheepskin coat, her pale, quiet face showing no sign of breath.
Li-Wen walked past the crawling Stage-6 Sovereign as if he were a dry leaf on the ground.
He reached out his broad, calloused hand and gently shattered the dark crimson spatial sphere with a touch of his finger.
He reached in and carefully picked up little Xiao-Yue into his broad arms.
Her small body was ice-cold. Her arms hung limply against his broad chest, and her small, pale face was stained with dry, dark blood.
Li-Wen pulled her small, light frame close against his heart, right beside the cracked pink lotus lantern in his coat pocket.
Deep within his chest, his primordial heart hammered with a silent, agonizing pain that felt far worse than a thousand void needles tearing through his marrow.
"Xiao-Yue..." Li-Wen whispered, his raspy voice cracking softly as he rested his cheek against her cold, small forehead. "Brother Li-Wen is here... Wake up..."
There was no answer.
The small girl remained cold, still, and silent in his arms.
"NOOOOOOOOO! SPARE ME! I WILL GIVE YOU EVERYTHING! I WILL BE YOUR SLAVE!" Patriarch Blood-Shadow screamed hysterically behind him, burning his remaining life essence to crawl toward a hidden spatial escape rune on the edge of the platform!
Li-Wen did not turn around.
He simply stood holding his motionless sister in his left arm, his dark, void-like eyes staring out at the frozen mountain horizon.
He slowly raised his right hand, holding the Pitch-Black Heavy Blade—and slammed the dark steel three inches back into its scabbard.
CLANG.
A single, microscopic shockwave of absolute-zero physical pressure traveled backward from the scabbard.
CRACKLE—!
The shockwave struck Patriarch Blood-Shadow five yards behind him.
The Stage-6 Mid-Grade Sovereign didn't even have time to utter a final plea. His body, his Stage-6 golden core, his soul, and the remaining stone platform beneath his knees were instantly snap-froze into pale-blue ice, before disintegrating into fine, sparkling frost-dust that was swept away by the cold mountain wind.
The entire Blood-Eagle Mountain Range fell into absolute, dead silence.
Li-Wen stood alone on the edge of the thousand-foot abyss, wrapped in his frost-covered traveler's coat, holding his quiet, pale little sister close to his broad chest.
The wind whistled through his white-rooted hair, carrying the pale-blue frost-dust into the vast, unending skies of the Western Continent.
His face was flat, indifferent, and completely devoid of human emotion once more.
"If the Western Continent has no path for you..." Li-Wen murmured softly into the cold wind, his deep, raspy voice carrying an absolute, unyielding oath that echoed across the frozen mountain peaks.
"I will turn the entire Western Continent into your graveyard."
See you in next chapter....