The moon was a silver sickle, reaping the drifting soul-mists of the firmament.
A hollow lamentation of a thousand unburied ghosts shrieked through the mountain pass.
Under this sickly luminescence, the warriors' halberds glimmered with a murderous frost.
Tonight, the whispers of the wind were unanimous: the Hour of Inevitable Judgment had arrived.
At the center of the iron-clad escort walked a youth—Yu Zhou.
Shackled. Broken. Accused of staining the jade purity of the Great Lord's lineage.
He felt the frigid breath of the Yellow Springs upon his neck, yet he knew his "sin" was but a phantom woven by unseen hands.
As the cold iron bit into his marrow, memories surged like a tide of black bile.
"This seed... is of my loins."
His father—the Lion of the Yu Clan—stood rigid as an ancient pine, his voice fracturing like brittle porcelain.
"My son..."
His mother's eyes were like dried-up wells. She clutched her silk sleeves until they tore, her silent grief falling like heavy rain upon unyielding stone.
Yu Zhou had not begged. He had not pleaded. He had simply become a void.
"A star of calamity," his kinsmen hissed from the shadows.
"He invited the Divine Wrath. Let his blood appease the soil!"
Crunch.
An iron-shod boot ground the sacred gravel into common dust.
"Hahaha... wretched cur," the Head Guard spat. His voice was a low rasp, yet it struck Yu Zhou's ears with the weight of a collapsing mountain peak.
Yu Zhou closed his eyes.
In the sanctuary of his mind, he saw the architects of this tragedy: the Zhang Clan.
He saw them feasting within their gilded ramparts while he bled in the dirt.
A single tear escaped.
Ting—
It struck the earth not with a splash, but with the resonance of a shattering bronze bell.
It was not a drop of sorrow; it was a drop of primordial embers.
Thud.
The prisoner's carriage groaned to a violent, unnatural halt.
No beast had pulled the reins. No mortal had engaged the brake.
The very laws of the world seemed to thicken, as if an invisible mountain had descended upon the path.
This was the Will of the Firmament.
"Who dares obstruct the Mandate of the Lord?" the Head Guard roared, his palm slamming against the pommel of his dao.
He never finished the breath.
Sliver—
A mist of crimson painted the moonlight.
The guard's head took flight, his expression frozen in a mask of eternal confusion.
In a single breath, twenty warriors of the Body Refinement Realm were snuffed out.
They were extinguished like flickering candles in a gale, their lives severed before their shadows could strike the ground.
"I... I am a scion of the Zhang Clan!" Zhang Wu shrieked.
"To spill my blood is to invite the extermination of nine generations!"
Whirr—
A second head rolled through the mire.
Blood fountained toward the stars, reflecting the pale moon in the dying light of the noble's pupils.
"Two breaths," a voice murmured.
It was cold and ancient, like a scroll being unrolled after a thousand years.
"Such is the limit of an ant masquerading as a warrior."
A figure emerged from the shifting gloom, silhouetted against the colossal moon.
He stood with the terrifying stillness of an ancient monolith.
The scent of ancient incense and fresh iron trailed in his wake.
"To live is to struggle against the Heavens," the stranger whispered.
Yu Zhou did not look up.
_Let the darkness take me,_ he thought, bowing his head to the reaper.
Clang!
The scream of celestial steel meeting common iron shattered the silence.
The crushing weight upon his wrists vanished.
The cold was replaced by an intoxicating, ethereal lightness.
Yu Zhou opened his eyes.
The chains were dust.