Time tore forward like a white steed forcing its way through a narrow gap, leaving everything behind without pause. Summer ended without ceremony, replaced by the quiet, suffocating presence of autumn.
The wind scraped across the land, carrying the chill of decay. Red leaves drifted down slowly, brushing past dry yellow grass that had long since lost its vitality. On the branches, wild fruit hung in clusters—some bright red, others a dull orange—standing out sharply against the dying landscape.
Fang Yuan sat cross-legged on the bed, his body still, his eyes closed. His focus sank inward, cutting off the outside world as he examined his aperture.
Within it, red steel primeval essence surged in relentless waves. Forty-four percent of the aperture was filled, the sea thick and heavy, colored a deep, dark red. This was rank two peak stage primeval essence.
At rank two, primeval essence was known as red steel, yet it differed clearly between realms. The initial stage was light red, the middle stage scarlet, the upper stage crimson, and only at the peak did it deepen into this oppressive dark red.
Only a few days had passed since he reached this level.
Before, his essence had relied on the refinement of the Four Flavors Liquor Worm, forcefully tempered to reach dark red and break through the stone membrane of his aperture. Now, that assistance was no longer required.
The aperture wall had already changed. The rough stone membrane was gone, replaced by a crystal membrane that was clean and cold, its radiance sharp and unforgiving.
Deep beneath the red steel sea, numerous Gu lay dormant, submerged in silence.
Fang Yuan opened his eyes and looked toward the distance, his expression flat, stripped of emotion.
"It's about time."
He rose from the bed and walked out of the room, his footsteps steady, as though the path ahead was already soaked in consequences he was prepared to accept.
...
In the adjacent room, Jiaying lay on the bed with her body turned slightly toward the window, watching the dim light outside shift slowly as the day passed, though her eyes no longer followed it with any real awareness.
More than two months had passed since she last stood on her own.
What began as weakness turned into confinement, and confinement slowly became her entire world.
No matter how much she willed her body to move, it refused her, as though it had already accepted an ending she was not ready to face.
Her cultivation declined alongside her strength, slipping away in quiet, humiliating steps.
Rank One, Initial Stage—an existence barely different from an ordinary mortal.
For someone who had once relied on power to protect her family, that loss felt crueler than the illness itself.
Her body had grown thin and fragile, her breathing heavy and uneven. White strands overtook her hair so quickly that she stopped trying to count them, and deep wrinkles carved themselves into her face as if time had suddenly accelerated.
In just two months, she appeared decades older, like someone whose life had been forcibly compressed into its final chapter.
Tears lingered constantly at the corners of her eyes.
Regret pressed so tightly against her chest that it became difficult to breathe.
In a voice cracked with exhaustion and sorrow, she whispered into the empty room, "Fang Mo… I'm sorry."
Her throat tightened as she continued, her hands trembling against the sheets.
"I can't protect him anymore."
Her thoughts drifted back into the past.
She remembered holding Fang Yuan and Fang Zheng as infants, remembered the warmth of their small bodies and the certainty she had felt that she would be able to shield them from anything.
She remembered watching them grow, believing that blood and shared memories would always be enough to keep them together.
Fate proved her wrong.
One son was gifted with talent and opportunity, while the other was left behind, forced to live an ordinary life among countless others who would never be remembered.
She mourned that unfairness deeply, but it was not what broke her now.
Her fear belonged to Fang Yuan.
As her body weakened, her mind sharpened cruelly.
Details she once dismissed began to align in ways she did not like.
The relic Gu he obtained over the years without explanation.
His emotional distance from everyone around him.
The way he observed people as if measuring them rather than caring for them.
Even when she had been seriously injured during a clan mission, his reaction had been unsettlingly different, as though he was... acting.
When she compared the Fang Yuan of the past to the one standing before her now, the resemblance felt superficial, like a familiar face worn by someone else entirely.
The realization filled her with quiet terror.
She understood that everything Fang Yuan did served a purpose.
He acted for benefit, efficiency, and survival, and she had accepted that harsh logic long ago.
But this time, she couldn't understand him.
Why would Fang Yuan push events in such a cruel direction?
Why would he ask Jiang Ya to rape Shen Cui, especially in front of Fang Zheng?
Why would he choose a method that shattered his own brother's dignity rather than simply discarding him?
As she replayed it endlessly in her mind, a frightening possibility began to form, one she desperately wished was wrong.
Perhaps Fang Yuan did not act without reason. Perhaps this was the reason.
By destroying Fang Zheng emotionally and socially, Fang Yuan ensured his brother would never interfere, never compete, never stand in his way.
It was not profit in the material sense, but a brutal form of control, achieved by cutting away resistance at the root.
The thought made her feel sick.
When she finally learned the full truth of what had been done, her body reacted before her mind could catch up.
A cold, suffocating sensation spread through her limbs, and she collapsed into the bed, unable to rise again from that day onward.
Since then, the question never stopped echoing in her thoughts, twisting deeper with each repetition.
Why would someone need to go that far?
She remembered Fang Yuan shielding Fang Zheng when they were younger, remembered the concern she had once believed was genuine.
That memory now felt fragile, cracked by the possibility that even then, love might have been secondary to calculation.
She tried to convince herself there was still something she did not understand, some higher necessity she was too weak to grasp.
She wanted to believe her son had not crossed a line that could never be undone.
But no matter how she reasoned it, the conclusion remained the same.
That realization hollowed her out completely.
Her hair continued to fall.
Her hands shook uncontrollably.
Tears slipped down her face without warning, soaking into the pillow as her breathing grew uneven.