The Jia estate was ablaze with lamplight. Messengers hurried through corridors, faces pale, their voices hushed but urgent. The weight of Feng Xieyun's oath had fallen across the land like a shadow, and here, in the heart of one of the Four Great Clans, pride clashed violently with fear.
In the ancestral hall, carved from black stone and gilded with jade, the elders had gathered. Their robes shimmered with the embroidered emblems of the Jia, but their faces bore no serenity—only thunderclouds.
The patriarch, Jia Tianlong, sat at the head. His beard was streaked with silver, but his eyes burned with a cold fury that could split mountains. He raised a single hand, and silence consumed the hall.
"You have heard the whispers," he said, voice sharp as a blade. "Our banners stained with blood. Our elites slaughtered in the night. The boy, Feng Xieyun, dares defy not only us, but the very order of this continent."
Murmurs rippled through the chamber. One elder, his voice trembling with suppressed anger, rose.
"Patriarch, he must be exterminated. If we do nothing, the clans will laugh at us. The Lian alliance will wither. We will be seen as weak."
Another elder, older and more cautious, shook his head. "Extermination is easier said than done. That boy is no longer a child. Reports say his Qi erupted like a tidal wave, his core already stabilized. To face him directly is to invite disaster."
"Are you suggesting," a third snapped, "that we let a mere boy humiliate us before the continent?"
Their voices rose, clashing like steel. The air thickened with tension until Tianlong struck the table, the crack echoing like thunder.
"Enough." His voice cut through the chamber like frost. "Do you think I fear a boy? Whether he hides the blood of demons or the will of heaven, he will kneel before the Jia."
He leaned forward, eyes narrowing. "Summon the Shadow Hall."
A hush fell. Even the boldest elders flinched at the name. The Shadow Hall was not spoken of lightly—an order within the Jia Clan trained not for honor, but for silence. Assassins, raised from childhood, honed in forbidden arts. They did not fight wars; they ended bloodlines.
One elder hesitated. "Patriarch… to deploy them is to admit that we cannot face him openly."
Tianlong's gaze was glacial. "Let the world think what it will. In the end, only results matter. Xieyun's corpse will speak louder than whispers."
The decision was sealed.
---
In the depths of the Jia compound, torches guttered against walls slick with moisture. Here, in the bowels of the earth, the Shadow Hall dwelled. Dozens of figures knelt in silence, their forms wrapped in black cloth, their faces hidden behind bone-white masks carved with faint, sinister runes.
A man stood at their head, taller than the rest, his mask etched with crimson. His presence was suffocating, not through sheer power, but through the sheer absence of life that clung to him. He was called Jia Xun—the First Shadow, leader of the Hall.
When the summons came, he bowed once, his voice a whisper like a blade drawn in the dark.
"The target?"
The messenger's lips trembled as he spoke the name. "Feng Xieyun."
For a long moment, Jia Xun was silent. Then he raised a hand. Shadows slithered along the walls, wrapping around the assassins.
"When the child comes," he said, "no body shall remain."
The words were not shouted. They did not need to be. Death had been set in motion.
---
Far to the east, rumors began to spread. A treasure, ancient and untold, had surfaced in the ruins of the Azure Cleft. They said it pulsed with immortal light, that it carried the key to stepping beyond the mortal realm.
In taverns and sect halls, the whispers grew louder. Some dismissed it as fantasy. Others sharpened their blades and prepared to seek fortune.
But beneath the surface, the truth coiled: it was bait, spun from the Jia Clan's threads, designed for one purpose—to draw Feng Xieyun into the open.
---
By the lotus pond, Xieyun sat cross-legged, his breathing steady, his core pulsing in rhythm with the night. Yet his peace was shallow. The oath he had sworn burned within him, a constant reminder of the chains upon Lian Zhe and the storm gathering around him.
When the news reached him—brought by a trembling wanderer who claimed to have overheard sect disciples boasting—his eyes narrowed.
"Immortal light…" he murmured. His heart clenched. The word was dangerous, but alluring. If there was even a chance, even a sliver of truth, it could not be ignored.
But he was no fool. He could smell the trap within the honeyed tale.
The System stirred, its voice curling with amusement.
> [Oh, how convenient. A treasure from the heavens, surfacing just as you rise. Do you not see the strings being pulled?]
Xieyun ignored it, his gaze fixed upon the horizon.
"If there are strings, I will cut them. If it is bait, I will devour the hunter instead. The Immortal Plane is my path, and I will not let others bar it."
His decision was made.
---
That night, in the ruins of the Azure Cleft, shadows gathered. The assassins of the Hall moved like phantoms, their steps leaving no sound, their presence erasing itself from the air.
Among them, Jia Xun stood upon a crumbled pillar, the moonlight painting his mask crimson. His gaze swept the ruins, every stone and shadow mapped in silence.
"Tonight," he whispered, "a storm meets silence. Let us see which endures."
Around him, dozens of shadows vanished into the night, their blades thirsting, their runes humming faintly with forbidden power.
The trap was set.
And somewhere beyond the mountains, Feng Xieyun began his walk toward it.