The rain hadn't stopped for three days.
Dark, bitter droplets soaked the mountain valleys like grief poured from the heavens. From the ruined gates of the Emerald Light Sect, blood trickled down ancient stone steps—carving rivers through ash and shattered bone.
A lone figure walked barefoot through the carnage.
Black robes dragged behind him, soaked and torn. His presence was silent, like the final breath of a corpse, yet heavier than an army's march. Where he stepped, the Qi in the air stilled. Birds fled. Insects went quiet.
He stopped before the Ancestral Lotus Altar—the heart of the sect. Or what remained of it.
Statues lay beheaded. Spirit wards cracked and wept blue flame. Dozens of bodies, still twitching, had been pinned to the temple walls with their own swords.
> "Yi Mochen," a voice rasped from behind the rubble.
The figure turned slowly. His face remained shadowed by a wide black hood, but the eyes—those hollow, silver-flecked eyes—cut through the mist like blades.
A disciple, barely alive, crawled through the blood. Her jade pendant—sign of inner court status—was cracked in half.
> "You… you betrayed us," she said, choking on rain and blood. "You were… one of us."
He looked down at her.
> "No," he said simply. "I was never one of you."
She tried to summon Qi. Her fingers trembled, glyphs flickering—but they only sparked and failed.
Yi Mochen walked past her. He didn't look back when her body collapsed.
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⛰️ Deep beneath the altar
He reached the Forbidden Root Chamber, sealed by six golden locks. With a flick of his fingers, blood shot from his wrist—coiling like serpents and melting the barriers with a hiss.
Inside, the chamber pulsed with a pale red light. A massive cocoon of living flesh hung from the ceiling, veins stretching across the walls. It breathed.
> "You returned," a voice echoed. "I was beginning to doubt you had the will to finish."
Yi Mochen's voice was low. Calm.
> "I told you. I'll give you the empire… if you give me what lies beyond it."
The cocoon rippled. Eyes opened—hundreds of them.
> "Then feed me, Heartless One. Feed me the Dao of the weak. The love of the dying. The truth of a world that's already lost."
Yi Mochen raised his palm—and the chamber screamed as he poured the emotions of the fallen into it. Love, hope, memory—all drained from the battlefield above. Into the void.
And from that offering, a black lotus bloomed in his hand.
> His path forward was no longer human.
It was Crimson.
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