The fires of Emerald Street were receding into a blur of neon and smoke. Gu Hanzhou sprinted through the labyrinthine maze of the sewers, the white-haired woman on his back feeling as cold as a block of permafrost against his heated skin.
When he reached the Old Fox's black-market clinic, the iron door didn't just open—it was nearly kicked off its hinges by Gu Hanzhou's heavy boot.
"Hey! You little madman! Are you trying to dismantle my—" The Old Fox jumped up, a string of curses ready on his tongue. But as his mechanical prosthetic eye locked onto the woman draped over Gu Hanzhou's shoulder, the device emitted a screeching, metallic grinding sound, nearly popping out of its socket.
"A... a Primal Blood-Seed?!" The Old Fox's voice cracked, sounding like a strangled rooster. He scrambled toward the door, slamming home five heavy deadbolts and activating every signal-jamming device in the room.
"You've lost your mind! Gu Hanzhou, you didn't just steal from Lin Xiu—you ripped out his very soul!" The Old Fox turned around, his face a ghostly, pallid white. "The Inquisition will turn the entire Furnace District inside out. They might even authorize a 'Holy Order Cleansing'!"
"Shut up and wake her up," Gu Hanzhou growled. He laid the woman onto the cold surgical table. In his hand, [Black Order] emitted a low, vibratory hum, its killing intent not having dissipated in the slightest.
The Old Fox trembled as he examined the woman's pupils and the raw, jagged scars where the shackles had pierced her flesh. Cold sweat poured down his brow. "She's too weak. For three years, Lin Xiu has used her as a human refinery. Her Order Blood is depleted; she's only alive by a thread of sheer willpower. To save her, unless..."
"Unless what?"
"Unless there's a high-purity medium to reignite her energy sea. Even if you poured every drop of the Blood-Ignition Serum you stole into her, it might not be enough."
At that moment, the woman on the table stirred. Her eyelids flickered, slowly revealing those amethyst, glass-like eyes once more. She didn't look at the Old Fox. Instead, she stared intently at Gu Hanzhou's chest. Her voice was weak, yet it carried a natural, unquestionable authority.
"Don't... save me," she whispered, her words broken by labored breaths. "Take the serums... and the crystal core you have. Refine them all. Your blood... is my medicine."
Gu Hanzhou's brow furrowed. "Explain yourself."
"Your dark-gold blood... contains the Laws of the Ancient Court. Those laws... can reshape any withered life-force." A tragic, beautiful smile touched her lips. "But you hold a mountain of treasure without knowing how to use it. The fragments of those laws are clashing within your veins. If you don't refine them now, your blood vessels will explode before the sun rises."
"How do I do it?" Gu Hanzhou felt that familiar, needle-like stabbing pain in his heart once more.
"Sit," she commanded, her voice possessing a hypnotic, magnetic quality. "Guide your Order Blood. It must no longer simply flow. It must... spiral. Like a nebula, use that vortex to compress and grind those fragments."
"Old Fox!" she added, glancing at the trembling man. "Pour every drop of stabilizing fluid you have over him."
Terrified as he was, the Old Fox knew there was no turning back. He began dousing Gu Hanzhou with gallon after gallon of pale-green coolant, attempting to suppress the terrifying heat that was beginning to radiate from the boy's body.
Gu Hanzhou sat cross-legged on the floor. He uncorked the three vials of highest-purity Blood-Ignition Serum and downed them in a single breath.
BOOM!
The violent potency of the drugs transformed into a searing torrent of fire, crashing through his limbs and organs. Gu Hanzhou felt as if he had become an industrial forge; every breath he took exhaled glowing, white-hot sparks.
"Spiral..."
Enduring the agony of his soul being seemingly shredded, he began the grueling task of reigning in the defiant, dark-gold blood.
Initially, the blood charged through his veins like a pack of rabid beasts. But under his iron-willed intervention, it began to converge at his center, forming a small, slowly rotating vortex.
As the vortex took shape, the dormant fragments of the Ancient Court's laws—those jagged, dark-gold flecks—were forcibly dragged into the swirl.
Grinding. Colliding. Fusing.
A thick, dark-red sweat began to seep from Gu Hanzhou's pores—impurities being purged by the sheer pressure of the evolution. His bones emitted a series of staccato cracks. Even [Black Order], resting across his knees, flickered with a rhythmic, ghostly light that mirrored its master's pulse.
"Faster!" the woman's voice echoed in his mind.
Gu Hanzhou reached into his coat and pulled out the fist-sized Blood-Ignition crystal core. He gripped it with both hands until his knuckles turned white. The vortex of dark-gold blood within him created a massive suction force, violently plundering the energy directly from the core.
CRACK!
The crystal shattered into dust.
In that instant, Gu Hanzhou's vision shifted.
He saw a dark-gold sun slowly rising within a fathomless abyss. His entire circulatory system was "ignited." The color of his blood shifted from a metallic gold to a heavy, profound, and divinely-tinged Imperial Gold.
Peak Awakening Phase — Absolute Perfection!
Not only that, but with the laws of the Ancient Court finally aligned, he had officially placed both feet upon the threshold of the Blood-Ignition Phase. He only needed one final spark to cross into the new realm.
Gu Hanzhou snapped his eyes open. Two beams of dark-gold light erupted from his pupils, scorching a shallow crater into the alloy wall opposite him.
He didn't pause. He drew a small blade and sliced his fingertip.
One drop.
Two drops.
The blood that fell was thick, heavy, and moved like liquid mercury. It dripped onto the white-haired woman's lips.
The moment the blood touched her, pale-purple tracers of light began to ripple beneath her skin. These tracers greedily drank in the life-force contained within the Imperial Gold blood, and her shallow, ragged breathing instantly became strong and rhythmic.
A minute later, the woman let out a long, shuddering sigh. Her snowy hair drifted around her as if caught in an invisible wind.
She sat up. Though still frail, the aura of a high-tier sovereign had returned to her.
"Gu Hanzhou," she said, using his true name for the first time. "Remember my name. I am Su Qingyue. From this day forth, you are no longer a wandering beast. You are the chosen... Sword-Bearer of the Ancient Court."
Gu Hanzhou wiped a smudge of blood from his lip and stood up. [Black Order] clicked back into its sheath.
"I don't care about being a Sword-Bearer," he said, his eyes turning toward the sound of sirens closing in on the clinic. "I only know that Lin Xiu must be going insane right now. And madmen are the ones most likely to leave an opening."
The Old Fox looked at the two monsters in his room and collapsed into his chair. "Madness... you're all mad. The sky of the Furnace District... has finally fallen."