The echoes of the cosmic whisper—"Found you"—seemed to linger in the crystalline walls of the Ancestral Vault long after the vision had vanished. The atmospheric pressure, which had been a crushing weight of spiritual gravity, now felt thin and cold, as if the very oxygen in the cavern had been consumed by the phantom sun.
For a full minute, no one spoke. The Shadow Serpent Guards remained on their knees, their obsidian halberds forgotten on the bone-white floor. Even the Matriarch, Yin Mei, looked aged, her fingers trembling as she pulled them away from her ceremonial dagger.
Her violet aura, usually so sharp and predatory, was dim, suppressed by the lingering residue of the obsidian gaze.
Beside the smoking True Primordial Obsidian, Yin Shen stood with a chilling stillness. The golden lions embroidered on his overcoat seemed to shimmer in the low light, and his silver hair, though dusted with ash, framed a face that was devoid of the terror everyone else was drowning in.
He looked like a man who had seen the end of time and found it unremarkable.
"Matriarch..." Elder Zhao Tie finally spoke, his voice cracking like dry parchment.
He leaned heavily on his staff, his eyes never leaving the blackened surface of the Major Awakening Stone. "The stone... it did not show a rank. It showed... an apocalypse."
Yin Mei took a shallow breath, her mind racing to categorize the catastrophe she had just witnessed. As the leader of one of the Top Five Families, she could not allow the result to remain an "unknown." If word got out that Yin Shen's destiny was a universe-melting star and a void-entity, the other families wouldn't just be curious—they would form an alliance to exterminate the Yin Family entirely.
She stepped forward, her voice regaining a fraction of its iron authority, though it lacked its usual resonance.
"The Major Stone has finalized its judgment," she announced, her words echoing through the cavern. "Let it be recorded in the scrolls of the High Archive. Yin Shen, of the Direct Lineage, has awakened a Supreme Grade vein."
A collective gasp rippled through the onlookers, but Yin Mei was not finished.
"However," she continued, her eyes flickering toward the ceiling where the Ancestors' ethereal eyes remained closed in defensive meditation. "The Stone has revealed a potential that defies standard classification. While his Vein Rank is classified as Supreme to maintain the order of our records, the Will of the Stone dictates that his potential... exceeds that of the First Young Master, Yin Long."
The silence that followed was even heavier than before. To say a 1st Stage Qi Condensation "novice" had higher potential than the Army Commander and current Heir Apparent, Yin Long, was a political declaration of war.
It effectively shifted the axis of the family's future from the borderlands to the person standing on the bone dais.
"Supreme Rank?" Yin Hua whispered, her face a mask of pale disbelief. "But Long-ge is an Eternal Grade... how can a Supreme potential be higher than an Eternal?"
"It is not about the grade of the blood," Elder Feng interjected, his voice deep and grim. "It is about the 'Weight of Destiny.' The Stone didn't see a river; it saw a Void. Yin Long may be a dragon, but Yin Shen... Yin Shen is a different creature entirely."
Suddenly, the Major Awakening Stone hummed once more. It was not a violent vibration this time, but a low, mournful sound. The jagged surface of the obsidian began to glow with a soft, pulsing violet light, and ancient runes—older than the Yin Family itself—began to form on the stone's surface.
The Honorary Guards of the Ancestral Vault scrambled backward, their bronze armor clanking in fear.
"A Divine Decree!" the lead guard cried out. "The Ancestors are speaking through the stone!"
Everyone in the Vault bowed their heads, pressing their foreheads to the bone floor. Even Yin Mei descended from the dais, kneeling at the base of the monolith.
Only Yin Shen remained standing, his golden eyes fixed on the runes as they shifted and coalesced into a single, terrifying phrase.
The runes didn't translate into a rank. They translated into a name.
[The Child of the Abyss]
The words burned into the minds of everyone present. It wasn't just a title; it was a verdict. It carried the weight of the Ascended ones' fear. They weren't calling him a genius; they were labeling him as a harbinger. In the higher realms, the "Abyss" was not just a place—it was the primordial state of non-existence that preceded the creation of the heavens.
"The Child of the Abyss..." Yin Mei whispered the title, her voice filled with a mixture of reverence and dread.
She looked up at her son, seeing the way the shadows of the cavern seemed to naturally congregate around his feet.
She stood up slowly, the ceremonial protocols of the family taking over her shock. She turned to face the Council of Elders and the gathered members of the direct line.
"By the Decree of the Stone and the Verdict of the Ancestors," Yin Mei declared, her voice now carrying across the entire vault with the force of a Soul Transformation expert. "Yin Shen is hereby granted the title of The Child of the Abyss. His status as a 'cripple' is removed from every record, every ledger, and every memory of this house. To speak of his past as anything other than a 'period of deep dormancy' is now a capital offense punishable by soul erasure."
She paused, looking at the empty seat that had belonged to Yuan Mo.
"Furthermore," she continued, "the Council of Elders has a vacancy. A vacancy created by the weakness and shortsightedness of the former Third Elder. The Ancestors have shown us that Yin Shen's destiny is to govern. Therefore, I appoint Yin Shen as the provisional Third Elder of the Yin Family Council."
If the vision of the sun had been a shock, this was an earthquake.
"Mother!" Yin Jian screamed, his voice breaking as he scrambled to his feet, his face red with a mixture of tears and rage. "You can't! He's nineteen! He's at the 1st Stage of Qi Condensation! To put him on the Council... it's an insult to everyone who has spent centuries reaching the Nascent Soul realm! I won't allow it! I—"
"You will be silent, Jian," Yin Mei snapped, her violet Qi lashing out like a whip, pinning her son to the floor once more. "You were bested by his aura when he was but a Body Tempering cultivator. You have no voice in this Vault. The Ancestors have spoken. The Stone has spoken. Would you argue with the Void?"
Yin Jian collapsed, his spirit finally breaking under the weight of his mother's rejection and his brother's ascension. He stared at Yin Shen, and for the first time, his hatred was eclipsed by a paralyzing, soul-deep fear.
Yin Xue and Yin Yue stood in the corner of the dais, their expressions unreadable. Xue looked at her brother with a newfound wariness—the "resource" she had tried to protect had just become a "sovereign" she would have to serve.
Yue, on the other hand, was vibrating with a strange, frantic energy. She didn't look scared; she looked as if she had just realized the "toy" she had been playing with was actually a loaded crossbow.
Yin Shen finally turned his gaze away from the stone. He looked at the Council—at Zhao Tie, Han Bi, Wei Long, and Yin Feng. He saw the way they looked at him: not as a nephew or a nephew-in-law, but as a political catastrophe they had to manage.
He stepped off the bone dais, his golden-dragon coat sweeping behind him. He walked toward the Matriarch, stopping only when he was inches from her.
"The Third Elder," Yin Shen repeated, his voice calm and devoid of the gratitude one would expect from such a promotion. "A seat at the table where my death was discussed for nineteen years. It seems poetic, Matriarch."
"Do not let your newfound status go to your head, Shen," Yin Mei warned, though her voice was low. "The Council is a nest of vipers. You may have the potential of a star, but you still have the body of a 1st Stage cultivator. If you cannot survive the politics, the title of 'Child of the Abyss' will merely be the name on your tombstone."
"I have survived the death of a world, Mother," Yin Shen replied, his golden eyes flashing with a predatory, violet light. "A few vipers in a jade hall will not be my end."
He turned and looked toward the exit of the Ancestral Vault. The honorary guards instinctively parted for him, bowing their heads in a display of submission they usually reserved for the Matriarch herself.
The Major Awakening had ended, but the true re-examination had just begun. Yin Shen was no longer a ghost in the shadows of the library.
And the Yin Family, which had spent centuries cultivating the "Serpent" style, was about to realize that they had invited a dragon into their nest—a dragon that didn't just want a seat at the table.
It wanted the throne.
---
The moon, a pale and distant observer, hung suspended over the Hidden Dragon Faculty. Unlike the Serpent's Nest, this residence was built into the jagged cliffs of the Inner Estate's eastern edge.
The architecture was minimalist—sharp obsidian edges and cold white jade, designed to channel the natural wind-elemental Qi that whistled through the mountain passes.
Inside the master chambers, the air was thick with the scent of sandalwood and the low, rhythmic hum of the Star-King Breathing Technique. Yin Shen lay atop the silk bedding, his silver hair fanned out like a spill of moonlight. His body was in a state of deep, restorative rest, but his consciousness was not. Even in sleep, the Chaos Meridian remained active, a silent radar pulsing through the darkness.
Since the ceremony in the Ancestral Vault, the "Child of the Abyss" had not known true peace. The title had brought luxury, yes, but it had also painted a target on his back so bright it could be seen from the royal capital.
Suddenly, the rhythm of the wind outside changed.
It was a subtle shift—a momentary lapse in the natural whistling of the mountain air. To a standard 1st Stage Qi Condensation cultivator, it would have been nothing. But to Yin Shen, it was a discordant note in a familiar symphony.
He didn't open his eyes. He didn't even change the cadence of his breathing.
'Two presence,' he thought, his mental Eye of Insight vibrating. 'No heat, no sound, no heartbeat. They are suppressing their existence to the point of non-existence.'
He waited. His muscles were coiled, ready to trigger Flash Step at the first sign of a strike.
He planned to play the victim, to draw them in close enough to unleash Absolute Domination at point-blank range. In his past life, the "Possum's Gambit" had claimed the lives of a dozen high-ranking generals.
But he had underestimated the sheer, terrifying gap between a 1st Stage Qi Condensation novice and the monsters that moved in the upper echelons of the Yin Family.
There was no "approach." There was only the sudden, violent erasure of the world.
CRACK—!
The northern wall of the chamber didn't just break; it detonated. Before Yin Shen's nervous system could even send the signal to his legs to move, a foot clad in black shadow-silk connected with his solar plexus.
The force was not merely physical. It was a concentrated explosion of Nascent Soul grade Qi—condensed, refined, and heavy enough to shatter a fortress gate.
Yin Shen was sent flying. He felt his defensive Qi layer—the one he had spent the last forty-eight hours refining—shatter like cheap glass.
He tore through the southern wall of his bedroom, then the secondary partition of the dining hall, and finally the outer jade siding of the faculty itself.
He became a human projectile, trailing a wake of splinters and obsidian dust. He only stopped when he crashed into the center of the front courtyard, his body carving a five-meter-long furrow into the frozen earth.
Silence returned, save for the sound of falling rubble.
"Gah... hukk..."
Yin Shen rolled onto his side, a violent spasm racking his frame. He coughed, a thick, hot spray of crimson splattering the white marble tiles. The world was spinning, a chaotic blur of grey sky and dark shadows. His vision was clouded with a red film, and every breath felt like inhaling a bag of jagged glass.
'Status... check...' he groaned internally.
His left arm hung at a grotesque, unnatural angle—the humerus snapped clean through. His chest felt concave; at least four ribs had been reduced to fragments, one of them dangerously close to piercing his left lung.
This was the reality of a Nascent Soul strike. Even a casual kick from such an entity was enough to liquidate a lesser cultivator.
He forced his eyes open, the golden pupils flickering with a desperate, dying light. He focused, pushing his Eye of Insight [Level 4] to its absolute limit through the fog of pain.
[Target A]
* Cultivation: Nascent Soul Realm (Early Stage)
* Equipment: Shadow-Veil Cloak (High-Mortal Rank)
* Aura: Corrosive, Silent.
[Target B]
* Cultivation: Nascent Soul Realm (Middle Stage)
* Equipment: Void-Steel Daggers
* Aura: Sharp, Merciless.
Two of them. Both were in the Nascent Soul Realm. In the Yin Family, such experts were usually Grand Elders or high-ranking generals of the border armies. To send two such beings for a Qi Condensation fledgling was not an assassination—it was an overkill designed to ensure that not even a ghost would remain.
Two figures landed softly amidst the ruins of the pavilion's gate. They moved with a disturbing fluidity, their bodies wreathed in a shifting, black mist that distorted the moonlight.
The one on the left—Target A—let out a low, raspy chuckle. The sound was like dry leaves skittering across a grave.
"Look at him," the assassin mocked, his voice distorted by a vocal-masking formation. "The 'Child of the Abyss.' The 'Prodigy' who split the heavens. He looks remarkably like a broken doll in the dirt, doesn't he?"
The second assassin, the Middle-Stage expert, didn't speak. He simply toyed with a dagger, the blade reflecting a cold, murderous light.
"You should savor this last breath, Yin Shen," the first one continued, stepping closer.
The marble cracked beneath his feet from the sheer, unsuppressed weight of his aura. "It's a pity, really. All that potential, wasted because you couldn't stay in the shadows where you belonged. But don't worry... you won't be lonely in the yellow springs. You and your sister are both scheduled to die tonight."
Yin Shen's heart stopped. Not from the physical trauma, but from the words.
'Sister?'
His mind raced through the haze of agony. Yin Xue? She was a Foundation Establishment expert, but against Nascent Soul assassins, she would be as helpless as he was.
Yin Yue? The energetic 5th Mistress who had given him her most prized scroll? The thought of her vibrant, goofy pigtails being stilled forever caused a surge of ice-cold fury to drown out the pain of his broken bones.
"Which... one?" Yin Shen managed to wheeze, his voice a bloody rasp.
The assassin laughed again, a cruel, high-pitched sound. "Does it matter? By the time the sun rises, the direct line will be a few seats shorter, and the 'Child of the Abyss' will be nothing more than a footnote in a tragedy."
The silent one, suddenly blurred. He was done with the talk. He lunged, the Void-Steel dagger aimed directly for the base of Yin Shen's skull—a strike meant to sever the connection between the soul and the body, preventing even a spiritual escape.
'Move!'
Yin Shen didn't think; he reacted with the primal desperation of a cornered beast.
[Flash Step — Perfection!]
A silver spark ignited in his eyes. Just as the blade was an inch from his neck, his body dissolved into a streak of starlight. He reappeared ten meters away, near the shattered remains of a spirit-stone lantern.
He stood there, swaying on his feet. He used his right hand to grip the shoulder of his shattered left arm, the bone grinding audibly. He gritted his teeth, refusing to scream. He funneled every drop of the violet-gold Qi in his Dantian toward his wounds.
The Chaos Meridian roared, its evolvable nature allowing it to mimic a rudimentary healing art. The bleeding slowed, and the jagged ends of his ribs were held in place by a framework of Qi, though the pain remained absolute.
"Who..." Yin Shen gasped, his golden eyes burning with a terrifying, abyssal intensity that made even the Nascent Soul experts pause for a fraction of a second.
"Who sent you? Was it Yuan Mo? Or is the Council so terrified of a nineteen-year-old that they've resorted to hiring rats?"
The silent assassin tilted his head, his eyes narrowed behind his mask. He seemed surprised that a 1st Stage novice could even track his movement, let alone dodge a direct strike while half-dead.
The first assassin stopped laughing. The atmosphere in the courtyard grew heavy—heavier than it had been during the ceremony.
The two Nascent Soul experts released their full auras, the sheer weight of their spiritual pressure causing the remaining jade tiles to shatter into dust.
"You have ten seconds of life left, boy," the vocal assassin said, his voice now cold and devoid of humor. "Make them count."
Yin Shen looked at the two monsters, then at the burning ruins of his residence. He could feel the Star-King Breathing Technique pulling in the ambient Qi from the mountain air, trying to replenish his depleted reserves even as his body began to fail.
'They think I'm a candle in a windstorm,' Yin Shen thought, his hand tightening on his broken shoulder. 'They don't realize... that the Abyss doesn't just hold darkness. It consumes it.'
He reached into his mental inventory, his mind touching the Qi Devouring Pill he had purchased earlier. He only had one chance.
If he couldn't bridge the gap, or at least survive long enough for help to arrive, the vision of the blazing sun would be the last thing he ever saw.
"Silence, then?" Yin Shen whispered, a dark, predatory smirk cutting through the blood on his face. "Fine. I've always preferred the sound of a dying enemy to the talk of a living one anyway."
The two assassins vanished simultaneously, turning into twin streaks of black death.
---