The setting sun bled gold across the horizon, painting the sky in hues of fire. A dozen riders thundered down the official road, their horses' hooves churning up a storm of dust. They were powerful men on powerful steeds, led by the indomitable Jiang Dao. They had ridden hard since leaving Qian Yuan City at dawn, not even pausing for water, pushing their fine horses to the limit. As dusk settled, they finally reached the gates of Feng Prefecture.
But upon entering the city, a cold knot of dread tightened in Jiang Dao's stomach. He reined in his horse, his eyes scanning the streets.
Nothing.
An unnatural silence had fallen over Feng Prefecture. The wind, his only companion, whispered down the empty streets, skittering loose trash across the cobblestones like skeletal fingers. A profound wrongness hung in the air, thick and cloying.
"Something is terribly wrong," Jiang Dao muttered, his voice a low growl. He spurred his horse onward, a new urgency in his movements. The rest of his men, sensing the same ominous quiet, followed without a word. They galloped through the hollow city, the rhythmic beat of hooves the only sound, a frantic heartbeat against the silence. Street after empty street, the dread mounted.
Then, a scream tore through the twilight. It was a sound of pure agony, a shriek of someone being torn apart from the inside out.
Jiang Dao yanked his reins so hard his horse reared. The sound had come from a tavern a hundred yards away, its red lanterns glowing in the gathering gloom like malevolent eyes. After that single, soul-shattering cry, the silence returned, deeper and more menacing than before. A storm of rage and fear brewed in Jiang Dao's chest, but his family came first. He turned his back on the tavern and kicked his horse into a desperate gallop.
Inside that tavern, a gaunt young man with a chilling smile gently lowered the body of a waiter to the floor. He cocked his head, a flicker of awareness in his eyes, and in the next instant, he was standing at the window, watching the riders disappear.
"More flies to the web," he chuckled, his voice a dry rasp. "And warriors, this time. How fun."
Half an hour of frantic riding brought them to the Jiang Mansion. The sight that greeted them turned Jiang Dao's blood to ice.
The massive, black-lacquered gates were sealed shut. Ghostly white lanterns, a color reserved for funerals, swung gently in the breeze. Scrawled across each in blood-red ink was a single, glaring word: DEATH.
With a roar of fury, Jiang Dao launched himself from his saddle. He landed before the gate and unleashed a palm strike brimming with terrifying power. The thick, iron-banded wood exploded inward in a shower of splinters, the shockwave rattling the very roof of the mansion.
The courtyard within was a scene from a nightmare. The coppery stench of blood was overwhelming. Bodies were strewn everywhere, a carpet of the dead under the dimming sky.
"FATHER!" Jiang Dao bellowed, plunging into the carnage. He began frantically turning over bodies, his heart pounding against his ribs. To his profound relief, his father, Jiang Dalong, was not among them. Nor were his trusted men, Pang Lin, Wang Xing, or Fang Biao. These were strangers, all of them. He stormed toward the inner courtyard, a desperate hope warring with his fear.
Suddenly, another scream. Piercing, terrified, and undeniably from the backyard.
Pure, unadulterated rage consumed Jiang Dao. As he charged forward, his body became a canvas of grotesque transformation. Muscles coiled and bunched beneath his skin like enraged serpents, his veins standing out like thick ropes. His entire frame swelled, growing a full head taller as his power erupted. A dual aura enveloped him: one, a thick, invisible armor of Qi, and the other, a blazing, ferocious heat that turned his skin a menacing dark red. He was no longer a man; he was a walking engine of destruction.
He didn't bother with doors. He crashed through wall after wall, a demon god of vengeance tearing through his own home.
"Hall Master!" his men cried out, but he was already gone, a blur of unstoppable fury.
In the backyard, Jiang Dalong, Pang Lin, and the rest of Jiang Dao's family and servants were huddled together, pale and bleeding on the ground. They stared in abject terror at the creature before them—a girl in a white dress with a face of uncanny beauty, lips as red as fresh blood, and eyes as black and deep as a vortex.
"Hee hee hee," she tittered, a sound like shattering glass. "Now, who should be next?"
"Please," Jiang Dalong choked out, his voice trembling. "I'm begging you... Let the children go. Let them live."
The girl's laugh grew sharper. "Let them go? Oh, no. Your precious son, Jiang Dao, cost me dearly. He slaughtered my Spirit Children, shattered my Yin Body… left me for dead. A debt like that must be paid in blood. His entire family turned into my new puppets. Now, doesn't that sound like justice?" She smiled sweetly at Jiang Dalong. "Don't you worry, dear father. You'll be the last to die. I want you to watch."
With a flick of her wrist, her long black hair shot out like a nest of vipers, aiming straight for Jiang Dalong's eighth concubine.
Just as the woman screamed, the entire back wall of the courtyard exploded.
A wave of heat, as intense as a blast furnace, rolled through the yard. The air itself seemed to catch fire. The girl in white spun around, her beautiful face contorted in shock. What she saw made her shriek in pure terror.
"Jiang Dao!"
She turned to flee, all pretense of control gone, but it was too late.
Before she could even turn, a hand like a forged iron clamp shot out, wreathed in a shimmering, oppressive heat. Jiang Dao's fingers tangled in her long black hair, and with a guttural roar, he used her as a flail, slamming her body into the stone courtyard with a sickening, earth-shaking crunch.
He wasn't done. He raised his other hand, now glowing with a venomous purple fire, and brought it down on her face.
"Young Master Shi—" she gasped.
The world exploded in pain. His palm crushed her features, shattering her skull like fine china. Blood and brain matter erupted from the cracks. Her limbs thrashed, her razor-sharp nails scraping uselessly against his armored skin, creating nothing but a shower of sparks.
He wasn't finished. With a snarl, he dug his fingers into the ruined mess of her face and, with a gruesome tearing sound, ripped her features clean off. Black blood geysered from the raw, empty canvas of her head.
Still, his rage was not sated. Again and again, he hammered his fist into her, each blow shaking the very foundations of the earth. The savage, rhythmic impacts echoed through the night, a brutal drumbeat of vengeance.
To his terrified family, the man standing over the mangled creature was not their son or their master. He was a demon of vengeance, returned from the abyss to claim his due in blood and bone.
Finally, after dozens of relentless strikes, the girl's body could take no more. Overwhelmed by the raw, elemental fury of Jiang Dao's attack, she disintegrated, dissolving into a cloud of ash that settled at the bottom of the deep, crack-webbed crater his assault had created.
Jiang Dao rose to his full, monstrous height. His body, nearly eight feet tall, was a terrifying sculpture of corded muscle gleaming with a metallic sheen. Wild, untamed, and utterly terrifying, he looked nothing like the man who had left home. Even Pang Lin, a formidable warrior himself, felt like a child in his presence.
"Hall Master!" Guo Dutian and his men finally caught up, stopping short at the scene of absolute devastation.
Jiang Dao glanced at them, and the monstrous form receded. His muscles shrank, his height returned to normal, and he was once again the man they knew. He walked to his father. "Father, are you hurt?"
"Dao'er… is that really you?" Jiang Dalong stammered, his eyes wide with awe and fear.
"I've had some… opportunities," Jiang Dao said, his voice now calm. "It's nothing."
The adrenaline fading, Jiang Dalong finally registered the searing pain in his arm. It was broken, twisted at an unnatural angle. Jiang Dao gently took the limb, and with a precise, skillful movement, set the bone. He then channeled a warm, healing energy into his father, and Jiang Dalong gasped as the pain melted away into a dull throb. It was like witnessing a miracle.
After tending to the rest of his family, Jiang Dao's face hardened. "Father, tell me everything."
"I don't know," Jiang Dalong said, his voice laced with grief. "We were celebrating your success… a feast for the whole city. Then your brothers, Hai'er and Rulin… they were poisoned. That… that thing appeared and slaughtered the entire staff, keeping us alive only to torture us."
Rage, cold and sharp, lanced through Jiang Dao. So the creature had survived their last encounter. And her first act upon returning was to come for his family. He paused. Was she truly gone this time? He turned his focus inward, consulting the source of his power. A quiet certainty settled in his mind, a familiar echo: [Modifiable]. The word was a confirmation. The threat was neutralized. Permanently.
"Rest tonight," Jiang Dao declared. "Tomorrow, you all come with me to Qian Yuan City." The loss of his two half-brothers was a distant, emotionless fact. He barely knew them.
"But our entire fortune is here," his father protested.
"Don't worry," Jiang Dao assured him. "I have enough businesses in Qian Yuan to make the Jiang family ten times what it was."
Just as a sliver of relief began to settle, a frigid wind swept through the courtyard, carrying with it the putrid stench of decay. The temperature plummeted.
Jiang Dao's head snapped up, his eyes like chips of ice. He blurred into motion, reappearing thirty feet away, scanning the shadows.
"Stop hiding in the dark," he boomed, his voice shaking dust from the rooftops. "Show yourself!"
A dry, rasping laugh answered him. "Interesting. Very interesting. To think you actually managed to kill White Bone…"
Another one?
A figure emerged from the shadows of the front courtyard. He was young and unnervingly gaunt, with a strange, fixed smile. But his most disturbing feature was his neck—it was grotesquely long, easily three times that of a normal man, giving his movements a bizarre, bird-like quality.
"Another one from the Spirit Child Palace?" Jiang Dao growled.
"Indeed," the man hissed, his smile widening. "You may call me Corpse Master."
"Corpse Master…" Jiang Dao repeated, a terrifying grin spreading across his own face as he cracked his neck. "So you're the 'Young Master Shi' that bitch was screaming for."
The air crackled with tension. Without another word, Jiang Dao's body began to swell and transform once more, the monstrous power within him roaring to the surface. His opponent's eyes narrowed, watching the metamorphosis with a predatory focus.
Then, they moved.
Both men exploded from their positions in a blur of motion, the ground cracking under the force of their launch.
"DIE!" they roared in unison.
Their palms met in the center of the courtyard. The impact was apocalyptic. The air itself seemed to shatter, unleashing a shockwave of razor-sharp wind that shredded everything in its path. The gale was laced with a double dose of venom—the poison from Jiang Dao's technique colliding and reacting with the poison from his enemy's.
But for all the Corpse Master's power, Jiang Dao's was greater. The resulting explosion sent the gaunt man flying backward, his arm snapping with an audible crack. Jiang Dao, however, stood his ground, an immovable mountain of muscle and rage. He began to stalk forward, each heavy footstep a death knell.
"Fascinating…" the Corpse Master wheezed, forcing himself to his feet. He gave his broken arm a casual shake, and with a sickening crunch, the bone reset itself. He stared at Jiang Dao, his grin wider than ever. "Tell me… are you even human?"
Jiang Dao didn't answer with words. He vanished. One moment he was stalking, the next he was right in front of the Corpse Master, moving faster than the eye could follow.
The Corpse Master tried to raise a block, but his body was too slow. His mind saw the attack coming, but his flesh couldn't react in time.
Jiang Dao's fist, glowing like a brand from a forge, slammed into his chest. The impact was absolute. Ribs didn't just break; they vaporized. The Corpse Master's clothes disintegrated as his chest caved in, and he was launched through the air like a broken doll, spraying a fountain of blood. He had seen it coming, but seeing and surviving were two very different things.