The wet thud of a discarded heart hitting the cobblestones was the only sound that dared to interrupt Patriarch Jin Bolin's hysterical laughter.
He stood over the crumpled body of Jin Hao, his hand slick with crimson, his chest heaving.
"You thought you were favored by the heavens?" Bolin wheezed between jagged barks of laughter, staring down at his nephew's lifeless eyes. "You were just a rat who found a sharp stick!"
He turned to the twenty surviving elders who were still kneeling, paralyzed by the residual terror of their Ancestor's instantaneous annihilation.
"Stand up, you fools!" Bolin roared, his voice cracking with manic energy.
He kicked Jin Hao's body contemptuously. "Search him! Strip him bare! I want that artifact."
The elders slowly began to rise, their faces pale, still casting fearful glances at the pile of gray ash that had once been their greatest protector.
None of them noticed the single bead of crimson blood that had turned the Ancestor to dust.
It was hovering inches above the cobblestones, pulsing with a rhythmic heartbeat of its own.
As an elder reached for Jin Hao's bloodied robes, the bead flared with a light so intense it bleached the shadows from the alleyway.
Bolin whipped around, raising his blood soaked hand defensively. "What now?!"
The crimson bead expanded, elongating into a column of ruby colored light. The light solidified, weaving itself into the ethereal phantom of a woman.
She was breathtakingly beautiful, her features delicate yet holding an imperious authority.
She wore robes of a style unseen in the Myriad Rivers Domain, woven from threads of pure fire Qi. Her hair flowed around her like liquid magma.
But her eyes, glowing with an ancient power, were fixed on only one thing.
The lifeless body of Jin Hao.
For a second, the phantom did not move. The silence in the alley became heavier and more suffocating than the Nascent Soul pressure had been.
Then, a sound tore from the phantom's throat. It was a roar that vibrated the very air, cracking the mortar in the brick walls and shattering the remaining glass in the warehouse windows.
It was a sound of maternal agony mixed with a world ending fury.
"MY SON!"
The phantom's head snapped up, her glowing eyes locking onto Jin Bolin, who was still standing over the body, his hand dripping with Jin Hao's blood.
Bolin stumbled backward, his Golden Core quivering in absolute terror. The aura radiating from this phantom was not Nascent Soul. It was not even Soul Transformation. It felt like standing before a falling star.
"Who... what are you?!" Bolin stammered, raising a trembling hand.
"HOW DARE YOU?!" the phantom bellowed. "YOU INSIGNIFICANT DIRT! YOU DARE TOUCH MY BLOOD?!"
She thrust a single finger forward.
A beam of crimson light, no thicker than a needle, shot from her fingertip.
It pierced perfectly through the center of Jin Bolin's Golden Core, cauterizing the wound instantly.
Bolin didn't even have time to register the pain. His eyes rolled back and his body turned to a statue of grey ash before he even hit the ground, crumbling into dust exactly as his Ancestor had.
The twenty elders screamed, turning to flee in scrambling panic. They pushed past each other, desperately trying to escape the narrow alley.
"NONE SHALL LEAVE!" the phantom shrieked.
She spread her arms wide. A shockwave of crimson Qi erupted from her form.
It washed over the fleeing elders, incinerating them mid stride. Their bodies, their armor, their very souls were erased from existence in a moment, leaving nothing but twenty piles of smoking ash on the cobblestones.
The alley fell silent once more.
The phantom lowered her arms. The terrifying aura receded, leaving behind a sorrowful stillness. She drifted down to the ground, kneeling beside the crumpled form of Jin Hao.
She reached out, her translucent hands gently cradling his face.
"Hao'er," she whispered. "My child. I was too late."
She gathered his lifeless body into her ethereal arms.
"This entire world will burn for this," she promised the empty night, her eyes burning with a cold fire.
Holding her son tightly, the phantom's form began to unravel into ribbons of crimson light.
In a flash, she shot straight up into the night sky, tearing a momentary rift in the clouds before vanishing completely, leaving behind a ruined alley and the ashes of the Jin Family's leadership.
[Perspective: Arya Chen]
I sat in the quiet sanctuary of my study. Suddenly, a series of notifications scrolled rapidly across the blue interface in my vision.
[Subsystem Host 'Jin Hao' has perished. Harvest complete.]
[Inheritance Processed: Cultivation of Late Stage Foundation Establishment.]
[Inheritance Processed: Earth Grade Pill Spirit Physique.]
[Inheritance Processed: Earth Grade Talent.]
[All inheritances have been refined and integrated into Host's Nascent Soul.]
[Progress towards Peak Stage Nascent Soul: 20.3%.]
I stared at the numbers, a frown creasing my brow.
Half a percent.
I had expected the harvest from the protagonist to be... more.
Jin Hao possessed a Gold Luck aura, the mark of a 'Favored Son of Heaven'. His potential was supposed to be limitless.
Yet, the energy I received from his death barely moved the needle on my newly formed Nascent Soul.
It was a drop in the ocean compared to the staggering wealth of power I had inherited from Shi Ran.
"System," I asked, my mental voice laced with confusion. "Explain. Why is the harvest from a Gold Luck host so insignificant?"
[Jin Hao utilized the 'Celestial Fire Purging Palm'. This technique generates explosive power by consuming the user's origin essence. To sustain his life during combat, his unsolidified Gold Luck was continuously expended by the world's laws to repair and recover his damaged origin. This constant drain exhausted his potential and life force before the harvest could occur. Consequently, the tangible energy available for inheritance was limited to his depleted state at the moment of death.]
"Oh, so that's how it is," I muttered.
I stood up, smoothing the crimson silk of my robes. The death of Jin Hao meant the immediate threat was neutralized, but it also presented a golden opportunity.
The Jin Family's leadership had just been wiped out.
The Jin Estate, though emptied of its strategic reserves by Jin Hao's gluttony, still held the vast wealth of a Great Family… their treasuries of gold, their land deeds and their armories of standard equipment.
And it was currently unguarded by anyone capable of stopping me.
I pulled the black communication talisman from my sleeve.
"Feng Li," I transmitted.
"Young Master," the immediate reply came.
"Patriarch Bolin, their Ancestor and the core elders are dead," I announced.
I could hear a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the connection. "Understood, Young Master. What are your orders?"
"Assemble the Shadow Guard," I commanded. "Converge on the Jin Family Estate immediately."
I paused, letting the weight of my next words settle.
Thanks to the Foundation Guiding Pills I had provided, fifty men who were once stuck at the peak of Foundation Establishment were now newly minted Golden Core experts.
"I want Jin Estate picked clean. " I said, my voice cold as ice. "Locate their main treasuries, their armories and their private vaults. Load everything of value into storage rings."
"It will be done quickly and quietly, Young Master," Feng Li assured me.
I took a deep breath, the ruthless pragmatism of the villain taking full control.
The Jin Family, even without their leaders, still had hundreds of disciples, guards and lesser elders.
"Once the wealth is secured," I ordered, "you are to eliminate every breathing soul within the Jin Family compound. The Jin Family ends tonight."
There was a moment of silence on the other end.
Fifty Golden Core experts against a leaderless estate was a slaughter.
"Your will is absolute, Young Master," Feng Li replied.
The connection severed.
[Perspective: Su Lian]
The small safe house in the artisan district was a bubble of anxious anticipation.
Su Lian paced the length of the sitting room, the pale jade silk of her gown rustling softly. She was a picture of nervous devotion, pausing every few moments to look out the window toward the dark city skyline.
"He should have been back by now," she murmured, biting her lower lip delicately. "Did you hear anything, Suyu?"
Suyu stepped out from the shadows near the doorway. Her face was pale, her expression tight with suppressed panic.
"Young Miss," Suyu said, her voice trembling slightly. "I have received a report from our watchers in the merchant district."
Su Lian turned, her eyes snapping to the maid. "Well? Did he secure the carriages?"
"There... there was a battle, Young Miss," Suyu stammered. "A massive fluctuation of spiritual energy was detected. White fire and then... something else. An aura that terrified even our most distant observers."
Su Lian's hands clenched into fists. "And Jin Hao? What happened to him?"
"His aura vanished completely after the final energy spike." Suyu swallowed hard. "But that is not all. The observer reports that Patriarch Jin Bolin, the Jin Family Ancestor and twenty core elders were all present in that alley. And they... they were all annihilated."
"The Patriarch... the Ancestor... dead?" Su Lian breathed. "Jin Hao killed them?"
"We do not know for certain, Young Miss," Suyu admitted. "The observer dared not approach until the aura dissipated."
"And what of the Jin Estate?" Su Lian asked.
"That is the strangest part, Young Miss," Suyu said, looking genuinely horrified. "Our spies within the Jin Estate... all of them have gone silent. In the last hour, all communication has ceased."
A chilling smile began to spread across Su Lian's beautiful face.
"He did it," she whispered, her eyes gleaming with a manic excitement. "Jin Hao, that fool. He must have unleashed something that wiped out the entire estate."
PS: Come on guys, we just need 41 more Power Stones for a bonus chapter. Let's push it, haha.
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