The aftermath of Luo Feng's failed mission was a wound salted with bitterness. The Verdant Sword Sect did not mourn; it seethed. The carefully maintained facade of order under Elder Wu shattered completely. His cautious faction was eviscerated by the sheer, bloody cost of his one sanctioned gamble. The halls echoed not with reasoned debate, but with the raw, angry shouts of disciples and junior elders demanding retribution, demanding a leader who would not send them to die for scraps of intelligence.
Through it all, Lin Tianyao moved like a phantom. The emotional energy was a maelstrom, and the Tri-Flame Vortex feasted. He was a black hole at the sect's center, drawing in the grief, the rage, the fear, and the burgeoning bloodlust. Each surge of collective emotion hammered against the barrier to the Fourth Stage of Soul Ignition. It was no longer a distant threshold but a cracking wall, and he could feel the terrifying power waiting on the other side. He needed one final, concentrated blow to break through.
His focus turned to the single, tangible prize salvaged from the disaster: the sealed cask of Zhao poison. It sat in the Alchemy Pavilion, a object of both horror and intense study. The alchemists, working under heavy guard, confirmed its nature—a refined version of the Serpent's Venom, designed to not just kill plants, but to corrupt spiritual soil for generations. It was a weapon of utter desolation.
This confirmation was the final piece Mo Ye needed. The Zhao had provided the justification for total war. Now, he needed to ensure the sect had the will—and the leader—to wage it.
He found his instrument in the chaos. With Elder Wu disgraced and Luo Feng hovering between life and death in the infirmary, a new voice was rising: Elder Bai, a hard-line traditionalist who had always advocated for overwhelming force. He was not a brilliant strategist, but he was a blunt instrument, a man whose entire philosophy could be summarized as meeting violence with greater violence.
Mo Ye's approach was different this time. He did not need subtle whispers or forged documents. The sect's emotional state was a tinderbox; he only needed to provide a spark in the right direction. He used his network not to gather intelligence, but to disseminate it.
He ensured that the most inflammatory details of the alchemists' report—the permanence of the soil corruption, the targeting of the sect's future—were "leaked" to the most hot-headed disciples. He made sure the story of Luo Feng's "valiant, desperate last stand" against impossible odds was the version that spread, painting the Zhao not as cunning adversaries, but as dishonorable butchers who preyed on the brave.
The narrative took hold with frightening speed. The desire for vengeance became a palpable force, a psychic pressure that filled the courtyards and training grounds. Disciples sharpened their swords with a frantic energy. The air itself tasted of metal and ash.
The final catalyst came from an unexpected source. Luo Feng, clinging to life by a thread, awoke for a brief, lucid moment. His body was broken, but his eyes, when they focused on the elder attending him, burned with a feverish intensity.
"They knew..." he rasped, his voice a dry leaf crushed underfoot. "They were waiting... It was a trap... We must... we must burn them out. All of them."
His words, the final testament of a broken hero, were carried from the infirmary and into the seething heart of the sect. They were the perfect, unassailable justification for the fury Mo Ye had cultivated.
The following day, Elder Bai stood before the assembled sect. There was no elegant speech, no political maneuvering. His face was a mask of grim fury.
"The Zhao have spat upon our dead and sought to poison our future!" he roared, his voice echoing off the mountains. "They have shown us no honor, and we will offer them none in return! No more half-measures! No more cautious defense! We will take this war to their doorstep! We will gather our full strength, and we will scour the Serpent's Gulch and every Zhao-held pass from this world! We march at dawn!"
A roar erupted from the disciples, a primal scream of released tension and bloodthirsty approval. It was not a cheer of hope, but a snarl of vengeance. The sect had been forged anew in the fires of failure and rage, and it was a uglier, more dangerous beast than before.
As the sect erupted into a frenzy of preparation, Mo Ye retreated to his hidden spot by the compost heaps. The emotional energy was at its peak—a singular, focused wave of destructive intent from hundreds of cultivators. He closed his eyes and finally stopped suppressing the Vortex.
He let the power in.
It was not a gentle flow, but a cataclysm. The barrier to the Fourth Stage shattered like glass. The Tri-Flame Vortex collapsed inward, the violet, amethyst, and black flames fusing in a silent, terrifying implosion. For a moment, there was nothing. A perfect void.
Then, it ignited.
A new flame was born in his dantian. It was no longer a vortex, but a single, perfect sphere of Soul Flame. Its color was a deep, luminous Void-Sapphire, a blue so dark it was almost black, shot through with veins of the abyssal core's absolute nothingness. This was the Soul Condensation Realm.
Power, vast and cold, flooded every cell of his being. His spiritual sense expanded exponentially. He could now feel the entire sect as a constellation of flickering emotional flames, could sense the frantic preparations, the individual fears and hatreds. He could feel the faint, dying ember that was Luo Feng, and the blazing, crude bonfire of Elder Bai's wrath.
He had done it. He had taken a wounded, cautious sect and remade it into a hammer of blind fury. He had broken through to a new realm of power using the very chaos he had engineered. The Verdant Sword Sect was now fully committed to a war of annihilation, a war that would bleed the Zhao white.
He opened his eyes. The world was preternaturally clear, every shadow sharp, every sound distinct. The ashen taste of victory was on his tongue—not the sect's victory, but his own. They saw a path to vengeance. He saw a path to a massacre, and he was the one holding the leash.
The ghost was no longer just hiding in the machine. He had become the engine. The war he had craved was here, and he was ready to drown his enemies in a tide of blood, using the Verdant Sword Sect as his willing, raging vessel. The first arc of his vengeance was complete. The ghost was now a general, and the battlefield awaited.