The cold rain had fallen for three days and nights without cease, drowning the border city of Qinglin in a bleak despair. It was a city in the Heavenly South Prefecture, on the edge of the Great Yan Empire.
In the slums of the West District, deep within a narrow, filth-choked alley, Ling Ye dragged his leaden feet forward. Each step was a struggle. The icy rainwater streamed from his soaked, patched hemp tunic, tracing chilling paths down his back. Fresh from a brutal day's labor in the Hei Yao mines, every muscle in his body screamed in protest. The old wounds on his back, gifts from the overseer's thorn-laced whip, throbbed with a maddening itch in the damp air.
He carefully pulled three sweat-tarnished copper coins from his tunic, clutching them tight. This was today's pay. Enough for a small bag of the lowest quality rice. Maybe… just maybe, enough for the cheapest remedy for his father's worsening cough. The thought of his father, wracked with coughs under thin, ragged blankets, and his mother's increasingly gaunt face, made him clench his jaw and quicken his pace.
The squalid, leaning shacks of the slums stood in stark, hopeless contrast to the distant, brightly-lit mansions of the merchant quarter. Through the curtain of rain, the familiar, crooked outline of his home gradually came into view.
Yet, the closer he got, the heavier his heart became. An inexplicable dread gripped him.
It was too quiet.
The usual cacophony of the slums – wailing children, scolding women – was absent. The air, thick with wet cold, carried another scent… a faint, coppery tang of something foul.
The door was slightly ajar. A single, muddy footprint was stamped violently upon the worn wood, a crude and ominous mark.
Ling Ye's breath hitched. A premonition, sharp as an icicle, stabbed into his heart.
"Father? Mother?" His voice trembled, laced with a fear he didn't recognize. He shoved the creaking door wide.
The next instant, a wave of suffocating, metallic bloodscent hit him like a physical blow.
The single room was a wreck. Their meager possessions were shattered, the rickety table splintered. The earthen walls were spattered with dark, congealed stains.
And his mother – that gentle, kind woman who had never raised her voice – lay motionless in the center of the cold, dirt floor. A vast, sticky pool of blackish blood spread beneath her like a grotesque, blooming flower of death. Her eyes were wide and empty, staring sightlessly at the leaky roof as if silently accusing the heavens of their injustice.
"Mother—!"
The world spun. Darkness swam at the edges of his vision. He crashed to his knees in the cold, viscous muck, clutching her stiff, cold form. A dead, chilling silence was all that met his touch.
"Mother! Wake up! Look at me! It's your Ye'er! What happened?! Father! Where's Father?!" He screamed, his voice raw and broken. Tears, mingling with rain and grime, streamed down his face.
A tidal wave of grief threatened to drown him. He held her tight, his body wracked with violent sobs.
Then, his cold fingers brushed against one of her hands, clenched into a white-knuckled fist so tight the knuckles were bone-white.
Like a drowning man grasping for a final straw, he desperately pried open her cold, rigid fingers.
A single, crude, cold copper button, its edge crusted with dried, blackened blood, lay in her pale palm.
It wasn't theirs. The button was cheaply made, yet bore a design of arrogant flair – a stylized, twisted character: "Zhao."
*Zhao?*
The Zhao family from the City Lord's mansion? That Zhao family that held the city in its grip, notorious for their cruelty and debauchery? The Zhao family of the young master, Zhao Kang?!
Ling Ye's scalp crawled. A terrifying, monstrous thought clawed its way into his mind, shredding his sanity.
He gently laid his mother down, clutching the bloodstained button until its sharp edge bit into his palm. He burst from that house of death and despair and ran, heedless of the rain lashing his face, driven by a single, screaming thought: *Find Zhao Kang! Make him answer!*
Before the City Lord's mansion, two stone lions looked particularly menacing in the downpour. The vermilion lacquered gates were shut, guarded by several sneering lackeys in rain cloaks.
"Scram! Filthy beggar! Disturb the young master and you'll pay for it!" the lead lackey barked, his face a mask of disgust as he looked Ling Ye over, seeing nothing but a mud-caked madman.
"Let me in! I need to see Zhao Kang! What did he do to my mother?! Where's my father?!" Ling Ye roared, trying to charge past.
*Thud!* A lackey's boot connected hard with his stomach. The agony folded him in half, sending him crumpling to the ground. Icy mud and the taste of blood filled his mouth.
"Vermin! You dare speak the Young Master's name?" the lackey sneered, crossing his arms. "Your mother? That blind old hag offended the Young Master. Got what she deserved! Your father? The old fool tried to fight back. Dragged off to the magistrate, of course! Now get lost!"
The magistrate? The prison?
A sliver of desperate hope flared. Struggling to his feet, ignoring the pain and their mocking laughter, he staggered towards the city jail in the east district.
The rain was cold, but he felt feverish, his blood burning. He collapsed to his knees on the slick flagstones before the jail entrance, kowtowing desperately to a fat, dozing guard. His forehead was soon bruised and bloody.
"Sir! Please, I beg you! My father, Ling Shan! Is he here? Please, let me see him! Just once!" His voice was a hoarse, desperate plea.
The guard stirred, opening a bleary eye with immense irritation. Recognizing Ling Ye, he let out a contemptuous snort. "Ling Shan? That fool who crossed Young Master Zhao? Too weak. Didn't survive the questioning last night. Corpses was dragged to the western mass graves at dawn, food for the dogs. Now scram! Stop your wailing, you're bringing bad luck!"
*Mass graves… Food for dogs…*
The last flicker of hope was snuffed out, utterly and completely.
Both parents… gone. His family destroyed.
All for "offending" Zhao Kang.
An all-consuming hatred, like venomous vines, choked his grief and reason, twisting his heart into a bloody ruin.
He stopped pleading. Stopped crying. He was just a hollow shell, his eyes vacant, moving mechanically back towards the house of blood and death.
Beside his mother, he silently, mechanically began to dig at the cold, hard earth with his bare hands. His fingers were soon raw and bleeding, the blood mixing with mud and rain, but he felt no pain.
The rain fell harder, as if the heavens themselves were weeping.
With the last of his strength, he buried his mother beneath the gaunt, old locust tree behind their shack. No coffin. No marker. Just a small mound of earth.
He knelt before the humble grave, unmoving, a statue being eroded by the relentless rain.
The world was gray, silent, save for the drumming of the rain and the heart filled with boundless hatred and despair, ready to shatter.
His fingers unconsciously traced the bloodstained button, the cold metal the only proof his agony was real.
Then—
The button pressed against his palm suddenly turned scalding hot!
Like a brand fresh from the forge, it seared his flesh!
"Ugh!" He grunted in pain, trying to fling it away, but the button clung to his skin as if alive, burrowing deeper, as if seeking his very bones.
What happened next was even more horrifying—the "Zhao" character on the button's surface flared with a blinding, blood-red light! Instantly, the entire button dissolved like ice under a fierce sun, transforming into a viscous, dark stream of light, reeking of boundless malice and ancient, baleful energy. It shot into the wound on his palm!
"AHHH—!"
Agony! Pain beyond any he had ever known erupted along the meridians of his arm, like countless red-hot needles stabbing through his body, spearing directly into his mind!
Countless twisted, grotesque, incomprehensible dark-gold符文 and fragmented, bloody images violently tore through his consciousness, a raging torrent scouring and branding itself upon the deepest parts of his soul!
*The Scripture of Blood and Flame!*
Three massive, glyph-like characters, seemingly forged from endless blood, resentment, and black fire, filled his mind, carrying with them the cold, sinister, yet vast and profound information of a cultivation art!
*Burn your own blood and vitality as kindling, offer your lifespan and soul as sacrifice, ignite the Flame of Blood! Wrest destructive power from the Tribulations of Heaven and Earth! Each activation is torment beyond torment, agony to shatter the soul, like being cast into the deepest hell! It can also feed on the world's resentment, death-qi, and baleful energy to advance with terrifying speed and power! But beware… it invites demonic possession, eternal damnation, an abyss from which there is no return!*
It was a shortcut to power. A direct path to damnation. Mad. Tyrannical. Absolute!
*"Do you hate?"* A voice, cold, sinister, seeming to emanate from the lowest depths of the Nine Hells, whispered directly in his heart.
*"Does it hurt?"*
*"Do you resent?"*
*"See now… this world… is already a hell on earth…"*
*"Then… burn… burn it all… destroy…"*
Almost the moment this sinister knowledge finished searing itself into his being, the sound of杂乱 footsteps, savage barks, and rough shouts echoed from the end of the alley!
"He must have run home! Search! Turn this place inside out! Steward Zhao's orders: find him, alive or dead!"
The Zhao family's hunters had arrived. And from the sounds of it, they'd brought numbers.
Ling Ye's head snapped up.
Those eyes, once filled with despair and grief, now blazed with endless hatred, the newly acquired sinister knowledge, and a cold, brutal power rapidly burgeoning within him. They shone with a terrifying, blood-fire hue.
There was no way back.
The murder of his parents was an enmity that could not share the same sky. He could die like them, crushed like insignificant insects, forgotten. Or… he could embrace this darkness from the abyss. Burn himself to cinders, and take all his enemies with him.
He looked at his hands, stained with mud and his mother's blood, feeling the savage, bloodthirsty art in his mind and the destructive energy stirring within. A low, guttural growl, like that of a cornered beast pushed to the absolute brink, tore from his throat:
*"Zhao Kang… Zhao family… I will make you… pay in blood!!"*