The sun had just begun to rise.
All four elders and roughly fifteen hundred disciples stood at the base of the mountain, their eyes fixed on its peak. Shen Kai stepped forward and turned to face them.
"I know you are scared," he said. "I am more scared than you. But if we let that fear rule us, we let these rebels do whatever they want — even after everything they have taken from us."
The disciples erupted.
"Absolutely not! We will kill them all — for our glory, for our sect, for our empire, for every disciple we have lost!"
Shen Kai's voice dropped, steady and iron-hard.
"If you are scared, that is alright. But if you are scared and want to run — then you are no Black Serpent Sect member. We do not run. Not even when death stands before us."
He turned and pointed toward the peak.
"Charge!"
The disciples surged forward, flooding up the mountainside.
On the other side, Mo Xuan watched the climbing disciples from a distance and gave a slow nod.
"It's time."
He moved out with six elders and five hundred elite disciples, pressing along a flanking path, intent on sweeping the enemy from behind in a single blow.
'I need to move fast,' he thought. 'Hit them hard and give my people a chance.'
As they pushed through a narrow trail, Mo Xuan scanned his surroundings with a soldier's eye.
"No traps. No watchmen." He frowned. "I expected at least one or the other."
He was still turning it over in his mind when—
Wzzz!
"What was that?"
Arrows rained down from the ridgeline.
"Not many — but enough to wound. Everyone be alert! Enemy attack! Scatter and evade!"
The disciples broke formation. But in the panic, not everyone watched their footing.
Zrrr—
"Aah!"
A man dropped into a hidden pit. At the bottom, thick spears waited. He did not make another sound.
"Ground traps! Watch where you step!"
Even among five hundred elite disciples — veterans who had fought in countless battles — the sudden chaos claimed ten lives before they could adjust.
Mo Xuan pressed on, measuring the incoming fire with cold eyes.
"Too few arrows… no more than fifty archers." He paused. "But if even one of them slips away and warns the main army, we lose the surprise."
"Elders!" he barked. "Push forward — stop them before they can send word back!"
The six elders broke into a run.
They found them just ahead.
Around fifty figures stood waiting on the path.
Mo Xuan's gaze swept the group — and stopped.
There was a boy at the center. No older than twenty. Yet the way the others positioned themselves around him, subtly angled inward, made it clear: he was the one in command.
Mo Xuan held up his fist. His elders halted behind him.
"What is your name, boy?"
The boy looked at him and smiled.
"Shen Ming."
"I have never heard that name before." Mo Xuan studied him. "You are not one of the rebels."
"It is a little sad," Ming said, still smiling, "that you have already forgotten the man you are trying to kill."
"I have never seen you in my life."
Ming's smile faded.
"Then let me remind you. You framed me as a Blood Cult member. You put a bounty on my head."
The pieces fell into place.
"So… it's you." Mo Xuan's expression shifted — recognition, then calculation. "The one who killed my disciples. And that physician." He exhaled slowly. "I had been wondering how I would find you. And yet here you are."
'If I had known he was this young — and already giving me a sense of danger at this age — I might have chosen differently. A talent like this, I would have wanted to bring in. Make him a disciple. But that door is closed. He killed my people. And if he is truly as gifted as he seems, I cannot afford to let him live.'
His thoughts were cut short.
"You — I am going to kill you!"
Mo Xuan turned.
It was Mori Jin — Shen Kai's disciple — his face pale with fury, his hands trembling.
Mo Xuan put it together quickly. Mori Jin's father had been killed by the same person who had slain his disciples. A blood feud, then.
"I am going to kill you!" Mori Jin shouted again, his voice cracking at the edges.
Ming looked at him.
He remembered that face.
The father. The first innocent man I ever killed.
For a fraction of a second, something flickered behind his eyes — guilt, or the ghost of it. Then it was gone.
"If you want revenge," Ming said quietly, "come and take it."
He reached into his own shadow.
And drew his sword.
Mo Xuan lurched back instinctively. Not from the ground — from the shadow itself. As if the darkness simply gave it to him.
The blade was pitch black. It did not gleam. It swallowed the early morning light and returned nothing — and in its presence, the air grew heavy. Cold.
Despair.
Mo Xuan glanced at his elders. Every one of them had gone tense without realizing it, their bodies reading the threat before their minds could name it.
"Hold yourselves!" he snapped. "No matter how strong he is, he cannot fight five hundred at once. Do not lose your nerve!"
At that, two figures stepped forward from behind Ming.
Mo Xuan recognized one immediately — the man who had become a ghost story among military commanders. The rebel who had appeared from nowhere, rallied a shattered uprising, and turned it into something that kept generals up at night. The one soldiers had started calling the Spear Ghost. He carried a long spear loosely in one hand, his posture easy and unhurried, as though this were a walk and not a battle.
Beside him stood a heavyset man dressed like a monk, who carried himself like a weapon.
"You're the rebel commander," Mo Xuan said slowly, his mind working fast. "What are you doing here? If you're here — then who is leading your army?"
The Gluttony smiled.
"Don't worry about them." The smile stayed, easy and certain. "They're going to die. Just like you."
Mo Xuan's jaw tightened.
"Kill them all!"