The rain tasted like blood and ashes.
Lin Feng lay in the mud beneath the roots of a thousand-year-old spirit oak, his breathing so shallow that even the crows circling overhead couldn't hear him. Three days. Three days since the Windridge Lin Clan had become a memory. Three days since his father had shoved him into the escape tunnel with their ancestral heirloom—a simple jade pendant that now felt heavier than a mountain.
Don't look back, Feng. Don't seek revenge. Just survive.
His father's last words echoed in time with the pounding in his skull. The left side of his face was a map of scabbing cuts where a Blackscale Zhang cultivator's wind blade had grazed him. His ribs protested every breath—at least two were cracked. And his dantian... it felt like someone had taken a spoon and scraped it clean.
The Lin Clan's wind affinity bloodline, already diluted over seven generations, had finally guttered out in him. He was a noble in name only, his spiritual veins thinner than a commoner's.
A twig snapped.
Lin Feng froze, becoming part of the mud. His eyes, bloodshot and fever-bright, tracked the movement through the curtain of rain.
Two figures in black scales armor moved through the forest like ghosts. Zhang Clan hunters. Mid-stage Body Tempering, from the way they moved—each step precise, muscles coiled like springs. He could take one in a fair fight. Maybe. But two? With his injuries?
"Nothing here," the taller one grunted, kicking a rotten log. "The boy's either dead or halfway to the Southern Marshes by now."
"Lord Zhang wants confirmation," the shorter one said, voice nasal and unpleasant. "Says the Lin bloodline has to be completely eradicated. Something about an old prophecy."
Lin Feng's hand tightened around the jade pendant. Prophecy? His clan had been minor nobility for three centuries, never rising above managing a few spirit herb farms. What prophecy?
The taller hunter laughed—a sound like stones grinding. "Prophecy? The Lin blood was so weak their children couldn't even summon a breeze to cool their tea. Only reason they lasted this long was the old alliance with the Vermilion Bird Clan, and that broke fifty years ago."
"Still. Check the caves up the ridge. Then we head back. I'm not spending another night in this damned rain."
They moved away, their footsteps fading into the drumming downpour.
Lin Feng waited ten breaths. Twenty. Then he pushed himself up, mud sloughing off his ruined robes. Every movement was agony. He needed shelter. Medicine. Time.
But time was the one thing the world wouldn't give him.
He stumbled north, away from the ridge, following the fading memory of a childhood map in his head. There was a village at the edge of the Lin ancestral lands—Witherwood. A place for outcasts and the bloodline-impure. His father had once said, "Never go there unless you have no other choice."
I have no other choice.
The journey took hours. The rain turned to a fine mist that seeped into his bones. Twice he heard spirit beasts in the distance—low growls that spoke of empty stomachs. He clutched a rusted dagger, the only weapon he'd salvaged from the ruins.
When the wooden palisade of Witherwood appeared through the fog, it looked less like a village and more like a collection of despair.
Huts leaned against each other for support. The air smelled of damp rot and boiled medicinal herbs. And the people... Lin Feng's heart clenched.
A girl, maybe sixteen, was on her knees in the central mud, surrounded by three youths in slightly better robes. Her hair was matted with filth, but her eyes—gold-flecked and defiant—burned like captured suns.
"Please," she was saying, voice trembling but clear. "The medicine is for my grandmother. She'll die without it."
One of the youths—a pockmarked boy with the telltale scaled patches on his neck of a minor serpent bloodline—snatched a small pouch from her hands. "Impure blood doesn't deserve spirit herbs, Xia Ling. You know the rules. Your bloodline is cursed. Your grandmother's was cursed. You'll both die, and the world will be cleaner for it."
The other two laughed. One kicked mud at her.
Lin Feng watched from the shadows of a broken cart. His every instinct screamed: Walk away. You're injured. You have nothing. You are the last of your line. Survive.
But his father's face flashed before him. Not the stern clan patriarch, but the man who had once knelt in their garden, gently helping a fledgling wind-sparrow learn to fly. "We protect what is ours, Feng. Even when it costs us."
The Lin Clan was gone. But that didn't mean he had to be.
He stepped into the open.
The movement was clumsy, painful. He looked exactly like what he was: a half-dead fugitive covered in mud and dried blood. But he stood between the girl and the serpent-blood youth.
"Give it back," Lin Feng said, his voice raw from disuse.
The three youths stared. The serpent-blood boy's eyes narrowed. "Who the hell are you? Some wandering beggar? This doesn't concern you."
"It does now." Lin Feng's fingers tightened on the dagger. "The pouch. Now."
The boy laughed, but it was uneasy. He could sense Lin Feng's noble bearing beneath the filth. "You've got spirit, beggar. But you're one against three, and you look like a strong wind would knock you over."
They spread out. Basic combat formation. They'd been trained.
Lin Feng's mind raced. He couldn't win a prolonged fight. But he didn't need to win. He just needed to make them think he could.
He drew the dagger. The rusted metal caught the faint light. And then he did something his combat instructor had drilled into him: he assumed the Lin Clan's foundational stance—"Wind Embracing the Mountain." It was subtle. To an outsider, it just looked like a ready position. But to anyone with noble training, it screamed bloodline heritage.
The serpent-blood boy's eyes widened. He took a step back. "You're... you're from a clan."
"Give. Her. The. Medicine." Lin Feng let his voice drop, layering it with the command tone his father used with disobedient vassals.
For three heartbeats, the world held still.
Then the boy threw the pouch into the mud at Xia Ling's feet. "Fine! She's not worth the trouble anyway. Cursed blood brings cursed luck. You'll see."
They backed away, then turned and fled into the mist.
Lin Feng didn't move until their footsteps faded. Then his knees buckled. He caught himself on the cart, wheezing as pain lit up his side.
A small hand touched his arm.
He flinched, ready to fight, but it was the girl—Xia Ling. She'd retrieved her pouch and was looking at him with those impossible gold-flecked eyes. Up close, he could see the faint, intricate birthmarks on her neck—like phoenix feathers, almost invisible against her skin.
"You're hurt," she said. "Badly."
"It's nothing," he grunted.
"It's not nothing. Come. My grandmother's hut is close. We have some wound-paste. It's not spirit-grade, but..." She trailed off, her gaze dropping to his ruined robes, the subtle embroidery of wind patterns that even blood and mud couldn't completely hide. "You're noble-born."
"Not anymore."
She nodded as if that made perfect sense. "Then you're like me. An outcast."
She helped him stand. Her touch was surprisingly strong for someone so thin. As her skin made contact with his, something strange happened.
The jade pendant at his chest grew warm. Not just warm—it burned.
And a voice, ancient and resonant, spoke directly into his mind.
[SOVEREIGN BLOODLINE SYSTEM ACTIVATED]
[HOST IDENTIFIED: LIN FENG - LAST SURVIVOR OF WINDRIDGE LIN CLAN]
[SCANNING SURROUNDINGS...]
[POTENTIAL BLOODLINE PARTNER DETECTED]
[NAME: XIA LING]
[AGE: 16]
[BLOODLINE STATUS: CURSED/SEALED - DORMANT VERMILION PHOENIX HYBRID (0.1% PURITY)]
[PURIFICATION POTENTIAL: 99.9%]
[COMPATIBILITY WITH HOST BLOODLINE: 87% - EXCELLENT]
[FIRST MISSION ISSUED: FORM A BOND]
[OBJECTIVE: MAKE XIA LING YOUR WIFE]
[REWARD: 100 LINEAGE POINTS, WIND-PHOENIX FUSION BLOODLINE SEED, 'FIRST PATRIARCH' TITLE BUFF]
[WARNING: YOUR BLOODLINE IS THE LAST SEED. PLANT IT WISELY, OR FACE ETERNAL EXTINCTION.]
Lin Feng stared at the girl supporting him. Her head was bowed against the rain, her damp hair sticking to her neck where those feather-like birthmarks seemed to... glow faintly?
The System's words echoed. Make her your wife.
He was a fugitive with nothing but a rusty dagger and a death sentence. She was a cursed girl with a dying grandmother.
And a voice in his head was telling him to start a dynasty.
Xia Ling glanced up, catching his stare. "What? Do I have mud on my face?"
Lin Feng opened his mouth. Closed it. Then, for the first time in three days, the ghost of a smile touched his lips.
"No," he said. "But I think... I think we need to talk about your future."
[LINEAGE POINTS: 0]
[WIVES: 0]
[CHILDREN: 0]
[CLAN TRAITS: NONE]
[TERRITORY: NONE]
[DYNASTY STATUS: A SINGLE SEED IN BARREN SOIL]