Southern lands. Sounds poetic, doesn't it? Like some sun-drenched paradise. It wasn't. It was the gutter of the cultivation world. In the Fallen Leaf City, the Lin clan wasn't some dynasty; they were a flickering candle in a hurricane. They were surrounded by the Xu, Zhao, Mo, and Han clans—predators circling a wounded animal. In a place where "Core Formation" was a myth people told children at night, the Lins were bottom-feeders.
Then there was Lin Chen.
Imagine being the firstborn son of a clan leader and having exactly zero cultivation talent. No seed. No spark. Just... empty. His father, Lin Guowei, looked at him with that devastating mix of pity and regret. He loved the boy, sure, but his eyes only truly lit up for Xiaoyu, Chen's younger sister. She was the prodigy. The hope. The one with the actual future.
But Chen didn't sulk. He didn't have the luxury. While his sister practiced her forms, Chen was at the market, a fifteen-year-old kid acting like a pack mule. He'd haul crates of yams so heavy they should've snapped his spine. He wasn't doing it for glory. He was doing it for Lin Xiuya, his other sister, who had been lingering at death's door for five years. He worked to buy her time.
"I must become strong!" He'd grunt, throwing a massive load of yams onto his back, his muscles screaming. He had physical strength, but in a world of Qi, muscle is just meat.
One afternoon, the world decided to break.
He was walking home, sweat drying on his neck, when three shadows blocked the path. In the middle was Xu Feng—a sneering, arrogant prick from the Xu clan who had already hit the mid-stage of Foundation Establishment.
"Lin Chen!" Xu Feng called out, his voice dripping with that fake, oily friendliness.
Chen tightened his fists. He knew this script. "Ha, I knew I'd run into these scums today," he muttered.
"You look awfully happy for a guy whose family is currently being dismantled," Xu Feng said. He stepped closer, his hands glowing with channeled Qi. It felt heavy. Oppressive.
Chen's heart did a slow roll in his chest.
"What are you talking about?"
"The Lin clan is pathetic," Xu Feng laughed. "The Zhao clan 'found out' it was a Lin who burned the council hall. You're all done. Slaves. Every last one of you."
The air left Chen's lungs. He didn't wait for the punchline. He didn't care if they called him a coward. He turned and ran. He ran until his lungs burned worse than the fires he saw on the horizon.
By the time he reached the Lin estate, it was already a graveyard.
Smoke choked the sky. The screams of his kin echoed off the stone walls. Men, women, and children he'd known his whole life were being dragged away in heavy iron chains toward the Black Cell. He saw his father, the Great Lin Guowei, forced to his knees. He saw Xiaoyu, the golden child, weeping in the dirt.
"Young master, help us!" they cried out.
Chen stood there, frozen. What was he supposed to do? He had no Qi. He had no sword. He was just a boy who carried yams. He looked down and saw his mother. She was still. Cold. The life had already left her eyes.
Something snapped.
Guowei, seeing his wife's lifeless body, let out a roar that shook the burning foundations of the house. He was a late-stage Core Formation cultivator—a titan in these lands—and he went berserk. He shattered his chains with sheer willpower and launched himself at the Zhao soldiers.
"You will pay!" he screamed, his fist connecting with a soldier's chest with the sound of a collapsing building. The man flew back, taking three others with him.
In the chaos, Guowei reached his children. He broke Xiaoyu's chains and grabbed Chen by the shoulder. His eyes weren't full of regret anymore. They were full of a desperate, final love.
"Take your sister and run," Guowei commanded. "Run as far as you can. Protect her. She's the future."
"But Dad—"
"Go!" Guowei pressed a finger to Chen's lips, then turned back to the sea of soldiers.
Chen grabbed Xiaoyu's hand. She fought him, screaming for their mother, for their father, but Chen dragged her away. He looked back just once. He saw his father surrounded, a wall of steel closing in. He saw a Zhao blade slide through his father's heart. Guowei didn't scream. He just looked at his son and nodded. Proud.
Then the world became a blur of trees and tears.
They weren't alone. The Zhao soldiers wanted the bloodline extinct. They chased the siblings to the edge of a jagged valley, a sheer drop into nothingness. Ahead, a line of archers raised their bows.
"Release!"
The sky filled with black streaks. There was nowhere to go. No cover. No miracle.
So Chen did the only thing he could. He spun around and wrapped his body around Xiaoyu. He became a shield of meat and bone. The arrows hit him like hammers. One, five, ten. He felt the cold steel bite into his back, puncturing his lungs. Blood filled his throat, hot and metallic.
"I'm... sorry, Xiaoyu," he whispered. The world went gray.
He collapsed. Xiaoyu, her face pale as a ghost, cradled his head. She tried to summon her Qi—a weak, icy mist that barely stirred her hair—but she was exhausted. The soldiers closed in, laughing at the pathetic sight.
"So, one Lin left," a soldier sneered, reaching down to grab her hair. "Your family were traitors. You're lucky to be alive, girl, but it won't be fun."
He raised a fist to strike her, but a hand caught his wrist mid-air. It was a Zhao officer.
"The Patriarch wants her alive. You kill her, you die next."
The soldier spat on the ground and signaled his men. They ripped Xiaoyu away from her brother's body. She screamed until her voice broke, watching as the leader walked over to Chen's limp form. With a casual, bored kick, he sent the boy tumbling over the edge of the cliff.
Chen fell into the mist, a broken pinwheel of blood and arrows.
The soldiers marched away, their laughter fading into the wind. They thought the job was done. They thought the Lin bloodline ended in that valley.
But they didn't see the shadow. Atop a gnarled tree at the cliff's edge, a figure dressed in midnight black had been watching the whole time. Without a word, the figure stepped off the branch and plummeted into the abyss after the boy.
The southern lands were about to find out that sometimes, when you kill a man's family, you accidentally create a monster.