The silence that followed the soldier's death was heavier than the roar of the surrounding flames. Ye Fan stared at the grey, withered corpse of the Zhou family guard, then at the back of the servant he thought he knew.
"Han... your eyes..." Ye Fan stammered, his voice cracking. "They aren't brown anymore. They're... hollow."
Shen Yuan didn't bother to turn around. He was feeling the wisp of Soul Essence he had just harvested. It was thin, polluted, and barely enough to jumpstart his stagnant meridians, but to a starving man, even a drop of dew is a feast.
"Focus, Young Master," Shen Yuan said, his tone as cold as a mountain spring. "If you want to live, pick up that sword. If you want to die, stay on your knees. I don't care which you choose, but don't block my path."
"Wait! My sister!" Ye Fan scrambled to his feet, ignoring the bruise on his ribs. "Ye Lin is trapped in the Ancestral Library! She was holding off the Lin family experts so we could escape... she's wounded!"
The Ancestral Library. Shen Yuan's interest flicked like a dying ember. Libraries meant knowledge, and knowledge, in this primitive era, usually meant old remnants of alchemy or half-baked scrolls. Even if the techniques were trash, the paper and ink could be used for arrays.
"Lead the way," Shen Yuan commanded.
As they sprinted through the burning corridors of the Ye Estate, Shen Yuan noticed the carnage. The attackers weren't just killing; they were searching for something. The Ye Clan's Hidden Key? Or perhaps a debt long overdue? It didn't matter. Everything here would soon belong to him.
They reached the Library just as a blast of icy Qi blew the heavy oak doors off their hinges.
Inside, a young woman stood amidst a circle of fallen guards. Her silver-white robes were stained crimson, and her breath came in ragged gasps. This was Ye Lin, the genius of the Ye Clan. Her jade-green sword was chipped, and her arm hung limp at her side, frosted over by a blue, supernatural ice.
"Yield, little bird," a man in azure armor sneered, stepping over a pile of scrolls. He was a 4th-tier Qi Condensation expert—a giant compared to the mortals around him. "Your father is dead. Your clan is ash. Give us the Seal of the Frozen Heart, and I might let you become my furnace instead of a corpse."
"In... your... dreams," Ye Lin spat, blood spraying from her lips. She tried to raise her sword, but the frost on her arm crept toward her chest. Void Ice Poison.
Shen Yuan narrowed his eyes. So, the Lin family uses Void Ice? A dark irony. It was the same poison Ling Xian had used to numb his heart before she struck.
"Pathetic," Shen Yuan's voice rang out through the hall.
The azure-armored cultivator turned, his eyes landing on the disheveled servant and the trembling Young Master. He burst into laughter. "Another one? The Ye Clan really is desperate if they're sending house-boys to—"
He never finished.
Shen Yuan didn't move his feet. He reached out and grabbed a handful of air. In his mind, he activated the [Second Gate: The Gate of Consumption].
The blood on the floor—the blood of the fallen Ye guards—began to boil. It didn't evaporate; it rose in thin, crimson needles, hovering in the air like a swarm of angry hornets.
"Alchemy without a cauldron?" Ye Lin gasped, her eyes widening in shock. "Impossible..."
"In this world, 'impossible' is just a word used by the ignorant," Shen Yuan said calmly.
He thrust his hand forward. The blood-needles flew.
The azure cultivator roared, conjuring an ice shield, but the needles didn't strike the shield. They moved with a predatory intelligence, curving around the ice and piercing the man's pressure points with surgical precision.
The man screamed, his Qi backfiring as the needles injected a chaotic, foreign essence into his veins. His azure armor cracked. His skin began to bulge.
"You... what did you do to me?!" the cultivator shrieked, falling to his clutched throat.
"I merely accelerated your blood flow by a factor of ten," Shen Yuan walked toward him, stepping over the threshold of the library. "Your heart is currently trying to pump Qi through your lungs. It won't last long."
Pop.
A vein in the man's temple burst. He collapsed, his life force flickering out.
Shen Yuan ignored the dying man and walked straight to Ye Lin. She looked at him with a mix of terror and hope.
"Who... who are you?" she whispered.
Shen Yuan reached out and gripped her frozen arm. The Void Ice, which should have frozen him solid, began to drain into his palm, turning into a dull purple mist.
"I am the one who will make sure you don't die today," Shen Yuan said, his eyes meeting hers. "But remember this, Ye Lin. My help is not a gift. It is a loan. And when I come to collect, you will give me everything."
He turned his gaze to the shelves of the library.
"Now, tell me. Where do you keep the forbidden herbs? I need to refine a pill before the true masters arrive."