Moonlight shone on the stone of the Chu family courtyard in silver. Yue Zihan moved through that light like a breeze soft, nearly polite, camouflaged by his blindfold and the practiced stillness of someone who'd learned not to make a noise.
He'd come out to breathe, to feel the city's pulse away from Chu family eyes. The System hummed in his skull, a polite insect:
[System]: No unusual activity within five hundred meters.
[Zihan]: Delightful. The city sleeps like an obedient child.
He had just settled beneath an orange tree when the sound came, a footstep too sure for a servant, the sound of leather against leather. He listened.
The night was small; the step was large.
A figure unfolded from shadow and sprinted straight toward him fast, brutal, practiced.
"Your Highness!" the attacker snarled, voice thin with fear and force both. "You refused Chu Chen in public. For honor's sake, I....."
The man's face flashed into the moonlight for one breath: Han Feng the sworn brother to Chu Chen, a name that had scraped his ears like a dull knife since the Mountain Hall. His shadow won't just stop following him.
Han had been bold enough to approach him before at the training ground; tonight he came with the wrong sort of certainty.
Zihan made no move. He exhaled, soft as silk.
Han Feng's blade cut the air like a promise. It vibrated, aiming straight for the throat.
[System]: Lethal intent confirmed. Duel parameters: unregistered.
[Zihan - internal]: Awkward. I told them not to test the me.
The world contracted to the clash of metal and the sensation of air splitting. Han Feng's swing would have taken the prince's head had the world been ordinary.
Instead it struck nothing and everything.
Zihan stepped aside the way a shadow steps around an obstacle so gently that the air forgot it had been moved. Han Feng's momentum failed, and he overbalanced. In the heartbeat that followed, Zihan touched him no theatrics, no shout. A fingertip at the temple, a pressure as light as a monarch's courtesy and released chaos into his brain.
Instantly destroying his spirit core. His qi consumed.
Han Feng's body folded and fell, quietly, as if sleep had simply decided to become permanent.
People in the windows blinked. Somewhere in the courtyard a dog barked and then was still.
No blade severed flesh in any slow-motion description. Han Feng simply did not rise. His eyes, in death, reflected the moon as a mirror reflects a candle: small and ordinary.
Zihan crouched and turned Han Feng's face toward the sky. "You chose well," he said, voice small and almost bored. "And poorly."
The courtyard held its breath. No one who saw him that night would later describe what happened as a fight. They would tell different stories about a silence that swallowed a man, about a prince's fingertip, about luck. The truth was, their stories would be safer than the fact.
The System filled his vision.
[PRIMORDIAL CHAOTIC GENESIS SYSTEM — Event Log]
Event: Unregistered lethal attack Target: Han Feng (Chu Clan)
Outcome: Fatal confirmed (no visible external trauma; bodily cessation recorded)
Sin Increase: +25.0 (Accepted/inflicted lethal action)
Madness Increase: +15.0 (Empathy suppression; intimacy with oblivion)
Chaos Points (CP) Awarded: +50 CP
New Title: "Quietus' Finger" (temporary, flavor)
Unlocked Function: Thermal reversal
Functions
convert fire during a fight into your own.
freeze fire
Side effects: increase in madness points+3 , increase in sin point +15 .
Zihan read the log as if skimming an advertisement. He swallowed and felt nothing like remorse; something older and colder nodded in its place.
He rose and walked back through moonlight, leaving Han Feng where he fell. The courtyard remained unnaturally still until torches were summoned and attendants muttered prayers over a body that would, by morning, be marked down as "a tragic test of loyalty."
The news moved like a ghost through the Chu family courtyard: a sentry glimpsed a shadow, a servant mentioned a fall, a second-hand rumor grew into fact. By dawn, the Chu Clan would demand justice, Chu chen would bristle with fury, and people would whisper of the blindfolded prince who answered insult with silence and death.
Inside the guest house, in a small inner chamber, Yue Zihan sat and called the System to him.
[Current System Status]
- Sin: 44.5 / 100 (previous 19.5 + 25)
- Madness: 33.3 / 100 (previous 18.3 + 15)
- Chaos Points: 142 CP (previous 92 + 50)
- New Ability: THERMAL REVERSAL
He smiled once, a small, private thing.
"Let's see what you can do," he whispered to the flickering flame.
Closing his eyes behind the blindfold, Zihan inhaled deeply.
Inside him, Chaotic Qi stirred vast, unpredictable, alive. The Fire within the chaos stirred when it sensed his call.
The floor cracked faintly.
[System Alert:] Understanding of the Fire dao increasing drastically
Recommend stabilization.
"Do I look like someone who stabilizes things?"
[Unfortunately, yes.]
Chaos tried to suppress the fire as it saw it grow stronger as his understanding of flame increased spontaneously
He exhaled slowly not pushing the energies apart, but forcing them to negotiate.
The flame in his hand turned blue-white, then vanished, absorbed into his palm like an offering.
Zihan closed his eyes behind the silk and felt only the faint echo of a life that once wanted to prove itself.
[Assimilation Complete.]
Fire Dao Fragment Integrated: 0.01% Compatibility Achieved.
He stood and walked to the window. Dawn thickened in the east like drained blood.
[System]: Recommendation: attend Flame Sovereign Conference political fallout likely.
[Zihan]: Naturally. I'll bring manners.
He rested his hand on the sill, feeling the city breathe in. Somewhere in its alleys, people exchanged fearful smiles. Somewhere in the Chu Hall, anger sharpened like a blade.
Yue Zihan adjusted his blindfold with a small, indifferent motion an actor retying a mask and felt, for the first time with clear understanding, how cheap a life could become a stepping stone.
Then he turned and left the chamber, already composing polite answers for the questions he would inevitably be asked.