Han Zhenwu rose from the table as if some new weight had settled into his shoulders. He spoke to himself in the room's dim hush, each word a sharpened promise. "Now—for the reason I framed the Xue and He clans. They hold the last pieces of my plan. I need them to break into the inheritance."
He moved with the slow certainty of a man who had rehearsed every step a hundred times. The pathway he chose ran beneath the town—one of the old tunnels he had begun years ago and never finished: a blind artery that curled toward the estates of the Xue and He. He had left it half-buried on purpose; the closer it came to the clans' lands, the harder it was to mask vibrations. Formations could hush sound, but the instinct of men and beasts felt pressure and change. Back then he had stopped because caution mattered. Now caution no longer bound him.
He whistled once. From the darkness came the heavy, earth-sinking tread of a creature bred for tunnels and secrecy—a mole as broad as an elephant. Years ago he had taken the beast for his own; a living shovel that could be trusted not to betray him, because a beast could not gossip. If the tunnels were ever discovered, he could always claim nature had carved them and that beasts had nested beneath the soil.
"Dig," he ordered, and the mole obliged, snuffling and clawing through old earth until the passage opened onto a hard, cold wall. The beast battered uselessly at the stone. Han Zhenwu signed it away with a curt motion. The mole turned back to its prior work, a mountain of fur vanishing into the dark.
Han Zhenwu set his palm against the wall and let lightning gather around his fingers, not in furious arcs that would wreck the passage above, but honed into a clean, humming blade. A measured incision, then a steady widening, until a circular doorway yawned open. As he stepped through, formations flashed into life—the old clan wards protecting hoarded sanctums. They tried to sing warnings and lash out, but his roar swallowed their voice. He carved through glyph and ward like a man slicing ties that had bound him for too long.
The corridor beyond led him to a door covered in layered seals. He smiled without humor. Two roaring lion-head motifs of storm coalesced on his fists, and he poured them into strike after strike. Stone split, runes flaked, iron hinges sheared. At last the heavy door collapsed inward and the smell of closed vaults and old incense flooded his nostrils.
He moved like a thief and a conqueror at once—ignoring scrolls, ignoring lesser treasures. His hands sought one thing. Then he saw it: a display case, polished and proud. When he broke the casing, the sight made something like hunger unfurl inside his chest.
The double-bladed sword shone as if it had been forged in lightning. Two blades ran from a single golden hilt, their edges engraved with a coiling dragon. It sat caged and waiting—as if some spirit restrained it until a worthy hand came. "An aetherborne weapon," he breathed. It was a third-rank relic of the Emberwake line; instruments such as this drank pure aether to unleash hidden arts. Wars were fought for such things. Whole houses rose and fell on the strength of a single weapon like this. He felt its pull at the hollows of his spirit: raw demand, caged power, a promise that the world could be rearranged in the swing of a blade.
He reached for it and the weapon answered to his grasp like hunger answering to a throat. For a single heartbeat he imagined swinging it—artisanship and appetite combined—but the distant echo of soldiers' boots snapped him out of reverie. The presence had come too soon: Xie Tianhun's men had not yet cleared the estates. He could taste the net closing.
He did not linger. He strapped the sword to his back, feeling its weight and the sharp comfort of its purpose, and made for the exit. Behind him he sealed the tunnel mouth with a controlled collapse and stole to the next route—one slinking toward the He clan.
The mole obeyed, widening his secret like a pair of unseen hands beneath the earth. When he breached the He clan's subterranean vault, iron shouted at him—soldiers. Their formation tightened as one of them barked, "That's Han Zhenwu! What is he doing here?"
Han Zhenwu let the grin slide over his face like a mask. The crowd stiffened; someone recognized what they'd thought impossible. He did not answer. He drew from his spatial ring the double-bladed sword and turned, speaking to it as much as to himself. "You've slept too long, caged one. Time to remember your fate."
Then he moved.
The world narrowed to bone and edge. He stepped the long arc of a practiced killer, the blade an extension of his will. In the space of a breath a man who had shouted the alarm lay decapitated; his head tumbled and struck the floor with a dull, final thump. Soldiers blinked, then screamed. The chamber rang with steel and the wet sound of flesh parting. Han Zhenwu was an animal come back from clever disguise—swift, savage, unashamed.
He tore through rooms, bypassing traps and twisting wards into smoke. Each man he felled made him younger in some terrible way; he remembered a time when his hands had always been stained, when taking a life had been the simplest solution. "I haven't felt like this since I killed my father and took his throne," he said to himself, and the memory of that first theft made him laugh, low and private.
At the end of the vault, in a place protected by concentric runes and boasting the sort of precautions only the rich and fearful use, something glowed beneath crystalline coverings. Han Zhenwu moved toward it like a hunter to its prize. There, cradled on a pedestal, pulsed a great core—black and beautiful, veins of dark qi running through it. Even ringed by wards, even wrapped in silence, it could not hide. The demonic core of a titled beast, the sort of heart that fed Cultivators' ambitions and raised sects' fortunes. For a moment he simply stood and drank it in.
"Even with all those wards," he whispered, "you cannot hide your beauty. A titled beast's core is not something one buries on idle whim—it is a prize or a curse. The Xue and He have hoarded what they cannot use. They are fools. They deserve ruin for letting treasure rot."
He gathered the core with fingers that did not tremble. The torchlight caught the sword at his back and flashed like a verdict. He had come for the tools that would open the inheritance. He had found them. Now the cost he would pay for them would be counted in blood and erased names. He smiled again—clean, surgical—and the vault swallowed the sound as he made for the tunnels that would take him away.
Han Zhenwu raced down the tunnel path, his movements a blur until he skidded to a halt at the clearing. There they were, just as he had left them: his son Han Zhennan, his daughter-in-law He Ruying, and their child, all still deeply unconscious. A cold resolve settled over him as he strode forward, his eyes locking onto He Ruying.
He knelt, his hands moving to snap her neck.
But just as his fingers brushed her skin, Zhennan's eyes flew open. With a guttural roar, the boy launched himself at his father. However, with his Qi sealed, he was little more than a nuisance. Zhenwu didn't even glance at him, simply backhanding him with a flick of his wrist. Zhennan crashed into a nearby wall with a sickening thud.
"Father!" Zhennan screamed, spitting out blood. "What in hell are you doing?! Do you actually believe that man? He's a liar! You've always told me never to trust the Empire, so why are you trusting him now, of all times? Please, don't do this! Whatever he told you is an obvious lie! I don't know what happened, but you already know her—she couldn't have done anythi—"
His pleas were cut short as Han Zhenwu drove a knee into his temple. The blow was precise, powerful enough to shatter his consciousness but not his skull. Zhennan slumped to the ground, silent.
How did he keep his consciousness? Zhenwu mused, looking down at his son. "If Tianhun knocked him out, he should be in a deep sleep. That bastard... he wanted the boy to see me kill his wife. To turn him against me as well. A crafty old bastard. But he never imagined I plan to kill them both."
A flicker of movement at the edge of his perception was his only warning. Zhenwu ducked instantly, a sword sheathed in crackling lightning passing through the space his head had just occupied. He fluidly moved back several paces, his twin blades materializing in his hands with a low hum, answering lightning dancing around his own forearms.
His attacker stood before him, a woman clad in ornate armor emblazoned with his own family's crest. He recognized her face instantly—Ku Hua, the woman who had helped his son's wife conceive. Her expression was a tempest of pure, undiluted rage.
"You have always been the worst scum I've ever known, Zhenwu," she snarled, her voice trembling with hate. "But I never thought you'd sink so low as to do this to your own family. Then again, I should not be surprised. You did the same to our father and your own wife before her, didn't you?"
Zhenwu didn't speak. A thin, cold smile was his only reply as he raised his blades, the air crackling with energy.
"You've breached our deal, Han Hua," he said, her true name a deliberate poison on his tongue. "You should know I am going to slaughter that town you call your new home."
She stepped forward, the hate in her voice so potent it seemed to solidify the air. "I cannot believe Father ever trusted or believed someone like you. What you did to him... was beyond cruel. You gained his trust and then slaughtered everyone he loved right before his eyes after weakening him, while he was begging for you to let them go! The only reason I am here is because he made a deal to give you everything the clan had, as long as you let me live."
A wave of sadness briefly eclipsed her fury. "Even after he defended you for years, helped you so many times, you betrayed him. You killed him like a coward because you knew you could never beat him face-to-face! The same way you killed our other brothers! The same way you killed your wife! Face it, Zhenwu, everyone you ever knew was better and more powerful than you, and your solution was always to kill them from behind, even when they were on your side! Even when they dedicated their lives to you!"
She took a final, shuddering breath, her grip tightening on her lightning-wreathed sword. "You killed my father, my brothers and sisters, my dearest friend... and you took her child from her while she bled with tears in her eyes. You're not a man. You're not even a living creature. You're a hateful corpse that has no emotion and hates the living for having them. So let me make this clear: today, I am here to return that corpse to the dirt!"
She disappeared in an instant. Han Zhenwu simply smiled, rotating his double-bladed sword into a defensive stance.
Rank 2 Mid-Tier Technique: Lightning Serpent's Coil. Tendrils of lightning erupted from Zhenwu's blades, forming a swirling, defensive vortex around him. Ku Hua rematerialized within it, her own sword clashing against his in a shower of sparks.
Rank 2 High-Tier Technique: Thousand Bolt Flurry. Zhenwu pressed the attack, his blades becoming a storm of relentless strikes, each one a condensed bolt of lightning aiming to pierce her defenses.
Ku Hua was overwhelmingly outmatched. She gave ground with every exchange, her armor smoking, her movements becoming purely reactive as she desperately parried and deflected.
Rank 2 Mid-Tier Technique: Static Veil. She conjured a shimmering, electric field in front of her, but Zhenwu's flurry shattered it like glass.
Something felt off to Zhenwu. The fight was too easy; she was defending, not attacking, buying time. His Qi sense prickled—multiple powerful individuals were converging on their location, and fast.
No more games.
Rank 2 Peak-Tier Technique: Heavenly Judgment Blade. He channeled a massive amount of Qi into a single, devastating swing. A crescent of pure, white lightning shot forward, too fast and powerful to dodge.
Han Hua crossed her arms, her sword blazing with power in a final, desperate block. Rank 2 High-Tier Technique: Stormbreaker Parry. The impact was colossal. The force sent her flying backward like a discarded doll, slamming her into the rocky cliff face with a thunderous crash that webbed the stone with fractures. She slumped to the ground, unmoving.
But the delay had cost him. The approaching presences were now terrifyingly close. He was almost out of time.
Zhenwu rushed to Zhennan and He Ruying. He slapped his son awake, the jolt of Qi breaking through the daze. "Get up, boy! We need to leave, now! They're coming here to kill us all! I need to get you, your wife, and your child away from here! Hurry up!"
Zhennan groaned, his mind a swirl of confusion and fractured memories. The last clear thing was begging his father for help. In his disoriented state, he latched onto that, believing his father had finally chosen to help them escape. He scrambled to his feet, grabbing for his wife.
"ZHENNAN, DON'T!" a weak but piercing scream came from the rubble. Han Hua was struggling to rise, one arm hanging limply. "DON'T GO WITH HIM! HE'S LYING TO YOU! I DON'T KNOW WHAT HE WANTS, BUT HE WANTS TO KILL YOU ALL! DON'T TRUST HIM!"
Zhennan froze, his eyes wide. "Aunt Hua?!"
Aunt? Rage, cold and sharp, flared in Zhenwu's chest. Did that worm tell him she's my sister? Damn filth. I should have never agreed to that old fool and let her live.
Zhennan looked from his battered aunt to his urgent father, utterly torn.
"Zhennan," Zhenwu said, his voice a masterful blend of urgency and fatherly concern, "she has been hired by the Empire to kill you and your wife. They believe you are both demonic cultivators. That man you saw me with earlier was an Imperial agent, here to take He Ruying away. I was able to persuade him to leave by lying, saying I wanted to punish her myself. That is why I knocked you out—he was still watching. You have to believe me. Whatever she told you is a lie."
"But..." Zhennan stammered, "she said she was your sister. She controls the clan's safehouses, which is why her identity is a secret. She gave me artifacts to call her if I was in danger. I gave some to He Ruying and Xue Lian. In fact, I was notified by Xue Lian inside the inheritance, which is why I came here!"
"SHE'S LYING!" Zhenwu roared, the sound echoing through the clearing. "I banished her for colluding with demonic cultivators years before you were born! I only let her live because of your grandfather's wish, and I knew she held a grudge! Now she works for the very Empire that wanted her dead, all for petty revenge! She gave you those artifacts to track you, to find the perfect moment to do what she's trying to do now—kill you! We need to leave now! Others are coming! We cannot save your wife and son if we just stand here! NOW!!"
Confusion warred with a lifetime of ingrained trust. In the end, the word of his father outweighed that of a woman he had known for only months. Han Zhennan took a step back, then another, moving toward his father.
Han Hua screamed again, a raw, desperate sound, but it was soon silenced as Zhenwu unleashed a volley of lightning attacks to keep her pinned.
"Rank 2 Mid-Tier Technique: Chain Lightning Barrage." Bolts of forking energy shot toward the rubble, forcing her to take cover and drowning out her warnings.