The Haze Sect burned. Its once-proud banners, embroidered with the insignia of mountains and rivers, were now nothing more than ash drifting on the wind. Screams faded into silence, leaving only the crackle of flames as witness to the slaughter.
In the heart of the sect, Yun Wangshu—reborn, wrath incarnate—walked with steps that echoed like a judge's gavel. Her bridal robes, now torn and drenched in blood, clung to her slender frame. Her scar, where her heart had been stolen, pulsed faintly as if mocking her past.
Before her knelt the City Lord, the man who had declared her a demon cultivator, the voice that had condemned her clan to massacre. His once-immense aura was shattered, his golden core cracked from her strike. Yet he still glared at her, eyes burning with pride and venom.
"You… were nothing but a pawn," he spat, blood dripping from his lips. "Your clan was fated to fall. And you—" he coughed violently, "—you were never meant to live."
Wangshu's crimson gaze narrowed. The voices of her fallen kin whispered in her ears, their agony feeding her rage.
"No," she said coldly, lifting her hand. "I was meant to kill you."
Void energy surged, wrapping around her fingers like chains of shadow. With a single motion, she crushed what remained of his core. The City Lord's body convulsed, his scream echoing like a requiem through the halls of his dying sect.
As his soul ripped free, she seized it. His essence writhed in her grasp, clawing, begging for release. Instead, she pressed it against her scar, feeding the wound, feeding herself.
The moment his soul was consumed, her robes shimmered. Threads of crimson stitched themselves from the blood-soaked air, wrapping her form in something neither cloth nor armor, but alive. The Blood Robe had awakened. It pulsed with the hatred of every soul she had taken, its fabric whispering vengeance with each breath.
In the broken shards of a jade mirror, she saw herself reflected: no longer Yun Wangshu, the naive bride. The girl was dead, buried with her clan. In her place stood Xihe—cold, merciless, reborn in vengeance.
"This is for Wenxue," she whispered, remembering the one name that haunted her dreams.
She raised her head, eyes blazing. The sect was no more. Its lord was dead. Its name would never again be spoken without fear.
And yet, deep in the shadows of the burning ruins, another presence lingered. Unseen, unfelt, but ever-watching. The man of the Void. His voice threaded through her mind, silken and dangerous:
"Good. Burn the world, piece by piece. Every drop of blood spilled binds you closer to me. Do not stop now, Xihe. Your vengeance has only begun."
The flames roared higher, and with the City Lord's final scream fading into silence, the world trembled. News of the Haze Sect's annihilation would spread. Allies would rally. Enemies would stir.
But Xihe no longer cared. Draped in the Blood Robe, she walked from the ashes like a deity of slaughter, her path lit only by fire and the cries of the damned.