The night was starless.
Beneath the blood-drenched sky, the once-mighty Crimson Sect burned like an offering to the heavens. Towering pagodas collapsed into smoldering rubble. Screams echoed across the sect grounds, cut short by the clash of steel and the roar of fire.
Zhu Yan stood at the heart of the massacre, his breath ragged, his robes torn and soaked in blood — his blood.
His golden core had been shattered. His meridians crushed. His cultivation sealed by the very hand he once trusted the most.
"Master…" he rasped, falling to one knee, glaring up at the robed figure descending through the smoke.
Sect Master Yuwen. The man who raised him, who trained him, who called him son.
Now, he stood with Zhu Yan's lover by his side — Elder Sister Ruoxi — her eyes cold as jade, her sword still dripping crimson.
"You should have died quietly," Ruoxi whispered. "If only you hadn't found the manual…"
Zhu Yan's heart clenched. The Crimson Immortal Codex. A secret technique hidden in the forbidden vault — one that revealed the truth: their sect was no beacon of justice, but a nest of demons wearing the skin of virtue.
He had planned to expose them.
Instead, they buried him.
Yuwen raised his palm. Power surged — enough to tear soul from flesh.
"You were my greatest disciple," he said, voice devoid of regret. "But loyalty ends where secrets begin."
The strike came fast.
Pain tore through Zhu Yan's very soul. His body convulsed, limbs snapping, eyes rolling back.
But just before darkness took him—
A voice whispered inside his mind.
"Do you wish to live?"
The world stopped.
His blood, once scattered, now reversed. A crimson sigil etched itself onto his shattered dantian. Bones realigned. Nerves reknit. His heart beat once… twice… then exploded in a burst of black flame.
The body died.
But the soul… descended.
Into the Abyss.