Blossoming Path

The chamber thrummed with the sound of dripping blood.

Far above, the battle raged. The muffled thunder of clashes reverberating through the stone like distant storms. But here, in the bowels of the mountain, the air was still, the ritual circle glowing with a light that burned yet gave no warmth.

An Envoy dropped to one knee, his robes plastered to his frame with sweat and blood. His chest heaved, eyes wild, voice hoarse as he forced words past his ragged breath.

“Bishop. The unbelievers… they have breached the tunnels. They are inside the base.”

The figure seated before the ritual did not move.

The Bishop’s eyes remained fixed on the bowl, its liquid fire pulsing in time with the circle etched into the stone beneath him. His silence stretched so long the Envoy dared not raise his head, forehead pressed to the blood-slick floor.

Then the voice came; so soft it might have been mistaken for memory.

“Stop them.”

The Envoy flinched at the sound, bowing lower. His voice trembled. “We tried. They are too strong. We cannot—”

“Stop them.”

The words came again. Unchanged. Implacable. As if the Bishop had not heard or did not care for protest.

The Envoy swallowed hard, bile rising in his throat. His instincts screamed, but the command cut through all hesitation.

“There is not much time left.” The Bishop’s voice slowed further, its weight sinking into the stone itself. “The ritual is almost complete. Use every ounce of your life to stop them before they reach this place.”

The command rang in the chamber, final as a death sentence.

The Envoy did not argue again. He could not. He pressed his head to the floor once more, smearing a fresh streak of blood across the already stained stone, then rose in a single fluid motion.

The air boomed as he vanished, body moving with such speed it cracked the silence like thunder.

And the Bishop did not stir.

Not when the footsteps faded, not when the echoes of power roared up the tunnel. His eyes remained locked on the Phoenix Tears blazing in the bowl, his body as still as carved obsidian.

He understood what the Envoy did not.

If the intruders had reached this far, it was not through luck or weakness. Among them was someone strong—strong enough to carve a path through countless believers, strong enough that no ordinary wave of bodies would suffice.

Only blood.

Only sacrifice.

That was all that remained to delay the inevitable.

And delay was all the ritual needed.

The Bishop's gaze never wavered from the Phoenix Tears, watching as the brilliant orange droplets underwent their final transformation. The yang essence that had once blazed like captured sunlight was slowly being consumed, tempered by the accumulated yin of centuries. Each droplet darkened from gold to amber to deep crimson, the change so gradual it might have been mistaken for a trick of the flickering light.

But the Bishop saw every nuance, felt every shift in the cosmic balance taking place before him. This was the culmination of lifetimes of preparation—not just his own, but those of his predecessor, and every cultist who had come before; generations of faithful servants who had lived and died for this single moment.

The chamber itself bore witness to their devotion. Every stone had been carved with reverent precision, every sigil etched with blood and qi until the very walls pulsed with accumulated power. The ritual circle beneath him was a masterwork of forbidden knowledge, its lines traced with materials gathered from across the realm: bone dust from ancient battlefields, mercury that had never seen sunlight, herbs that grew only in places where great suffering had occurred.

Above, the sounds of battle grew closer. Stone cracked. Men screamed. The Envoys were dying, one by one, buying time with their lives just as they had been commanded. The Bishop felt each death through the ritual's connection, their final breaths feeding into the great working, their sacrifice adding to the ocean of yin that would birth their god into the world.

'Let them come. Let them tear through every defender, every trap, every desperate gambit. It would not matter.'

The Bishop's lips moved in silent prayer, words in a language older than memory spilling from him like water from a cracked vessel. His body had not moved from its position in hours; perhaps days. Time had become meaningless in this place where the boundaries between worlds grew thin.

The Phoenix Tears pulsed brighter, their transformation accelerating. Orange became red became something deeper, richer, pregnant with possibility. The Bishop could taste the change in the air, metallic and sharp, like breathing lightning. His own blood wept from his eyes in steady streams, each drop joining the intricate patterns carved into the floor.

For him, for every true believer, existence without the Heavenly Demon was not merely death; it was a negation of meaning itself. A universe where suffering had no purpose, where power served no greater end, where the strong were bound by the weak's petty moralities. Such a world was an abomination that demanded correction.

And correction was coming.

The Bishop smiled, blood painting his teeth crimson. Above, the eclipse continued its inexorable march across the sky. Below, the ritual circle blazed with unholy light. Between heaven and earth, the faithful prepared to welcome their master home.

Let the intruders come. They would arrive just in time to witness the dawn of a new age.

The Dawnsoul Bloom pulsed against my shoulder, its hunger growing more insistent with each step deeper into the labyrinth. The tunnels stretched endlessly before us, carved from ancient stone. The air hung stale and thick, moisture beading on walls slick with algae that glowed with an unhealthy phosphorescence.

We'd been fighting waves of cultists since entering the base, but their numbers were thinning now. Either we'd cut through most of their defenders, or they were being pulled back for some final stand. Neither possibility comforted me.

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The Bloom's tendrils twitched, and I raised my hand to halt the group. Footsteps echoed from ahead; measured, purposeful. Not the frenzied rush of fanatics, but something more dangerous.

The Envoy emerged from the shadows with a dozen cultists at his back. But these didn't move like soldiers preparing for battle. Without hesitation, two of them stumbled forward, their bodies beginning to swell grotesquely, skin splitting with the unmistakable signs of imminent self-destruction.

"Down!" I shouted, but Ren Zhi was already moving.

His hookswords linked together in a fluid motion, the curved blades spinning in a devastating arc that tore through the corridor itself. The explosion followed a heartbeat later, shaking the walls and filling the passage with choking fumes that burned my lungs.

Through the smoke, the Envoy struck with the desperation of a cornered beast. His blade carved through the air in vicious arcs, each swing intended to kill rather than wound. The narrow confines worked against us—we couldn't spread out, couldn't use our numbers to advantage. Every step forward had to be earned in blood.

Tian Zhan met the first assault head-on, his fists crackling with qi as he deflected a strike that would have taken his head. The impact sent shockwaves through the tunnel, stone dust raining from the ceiling. But the Envoy pressed immediately into a follow-up, his corrupted strength allowing him to match Tian Zhan blow for blow.

"Left flank!" Ren Zhi called out, his hookswords weaving defensive patterns as more cultists tried to swarm us from the sides.

I hurled a vial of caustic flame that exploded against the wall, the alchemical fire spreading in sheets to cut off their advance. But the Envoy didn't even flinch as the flames licked at his robes. His focus was absolute, inhuman.

Windy struck like lightning, his coils wrapping around the Envoy's sword arm. For a moment, I thought we had him—but the man's strength was monstrous. With a roar that echoed off the stone walls, he lifted Windy's entire serpentine bulk and slammed him into the tunnel wall hard enough to crack the stone.

"Windy!" I started forward, but Tianyi caught my arm.

"He's fine," she said, even as her wings sparked with deadly energy. "Focus on him."

The Envoy's blade came down in a overhead strike that would have split Tian Zhan in half, but Shaotian Ye intercepted with a palm technique that sent shockwaves through the air. The two forces met with a sound like breaking thunder, and for a moment the tunnel was filled with nothing but clashing qi and the screech of metal on stone.

Blood ran freely from wounds on the Envoy's arms and chest—wounds that should have slowed him, should have made him falter. Instead, he fought harder, each injury seeming to fuel his fanatical rage rather than weaken him.

'He's not going to stop. Not until he's dead.'

The Envoy proved me right by abandoning all defense, throwing himself into a berserker's assault that forced us all back. His blade work became wild, unpredictable, trading technique for raw aggression. One strike grazed Ren Zhi's shoulder, drawing blood. Another nearly took Tian Zhan's eye.

But overextension was its own weakness. When the Envoy committed to a thrust aimed at my heart, Yong Jin's wind-blades sliced forward with surgical precision. The steel shattered like glass, and the invisible edges continued through flesh and bone, severing the man's arm at the elbow.

The Envoy staggered but didn't fall. Instead, he looked down at his missing limb with something like satisfaction, as though pain itself was a form of prayer.

He reached into his robes with his remaining hand and produced a pitch-black seed. Without hesitation, he crushed it between his teeth.

I'd seen this before. In Gentle Wind. The agonized transformation as human flesh warped into something monstrous.

But Shaotian Ye was faster. His sword blurred through the air, cleaving the Envoy clean in half before the corruption could fully take hold. The two halves of the body hit the stone floor with wet thuds.

We pushed forward, stepping carefully around the spreading pool of blood.

GRRK

Claws closed around my ankle like iron shackles, the grip so tight I felt bones grind together. Blood poured from wounds that should have killed him instantly, yet his eyes still burned with scarlet fervor as he hissed half-formed prayers.

"Kai!" Tianyi's wing-blades flashed, severing the corpse's head from its shoulders.

I wrenched my leg free, stumbling slightly. The wound wasn't deep, but it would slow me down. As we continued through the winding passages, the encounter gnawed at my thoughts.

What was the Heavenly Demon to them that they would abandon their lives so readily? Was their faith in a being they'd never seen so consuming that they treated their bodies like kindling? Or had the corruption eaten so deep that they were no longer truly human at all?

"Focus," Ren Zhi's sharp voice cut through my spiraling thoughts. "Distraction is death in places like this."

He was right. Gritting my teeth, I forced strength into my injured leg and followed the Dawnsoul's insistent pull deeper into the base's heart.

The tunnels twisted endlessly, winding downward before curving sharply upward again, as though following some mad architect's fevered dream. My lungs burned with each breath of the corrupted air.

But finally, after what felt like hours in that lightless maze, a faint glow leaked from ahead.

We entered a vast chamber, so enormous that our torchlight couldn't reach the ceiling. And there, at its center, a single figure knelt unmoving before a ritual circle that pulsed with hellish light.

The Phoenix Tears blazed like captured stars, their brilliant radiance casting dancing shadows on the walls. But something was wrong with their color—what should have been pure orange was shot through with veins of deep crimson.

The man didn't acknowledge our entrance. He remained perfectly still, hands folded in his lap, eyes fixed on the transformation taking place before him.

My first impression was almost disappointingly mundane. T

he man knelt like an old monk at prayer; body broad but not monstrous, white hair held in place by a crooked bronze pin. His robe was the deep red of old blood, frayed and tattered as though he'd worn it for decades. If I'd passed him on any temple grounds, I might have mistaken him for nothing more than an elderly priest lost in meditation.

But something was wrong. Horribly, fundamentally wrong.

My legs stopped moving without my conscious command. Around me, I felt the others freeze as well—even Ren Zhi. Every instinct screamed that one step closer meant death.

The air itself felt thick around him, each breath becoming a struggle as invisible pressure crushed down on my chest. When I tried to gauge his cultivation level, my mind simply... slid away, unable to process what it was sensing. Like trying to measure the depth of an ocean by staring into its black surface.

Terror warred with desperation in my chest. I forced my trembling hands to reach for one of my strongest concoctions; Bloodsoul Bloom essence primed with Essence Purifying Elixir. An improvised one had almost killed an Envoy outright. If there was a time to use it, it was now.

I hurled the vial toward the ritual circle, praying it would be enough.

The Bishop's hand moved with casual indifference, as though brushing away a bothersome fly. Black energy erupted from his palm, and suddenly my own attack was racing back at us with doubled force. The explosion that followed felt like the world ending—stone cracking, fire spreading, the chamber itself seeming to scream.

Only Shaotian Ye's impossible speed saved us, his sword somehow dispersing the backlash that should have reduced us all to ash.

Then the Bishop rose, and I understood true terror.

Each movement carried an awful grace that spoke of power beyond mortal comprehension. When he turned those dark eyes on us—not the red corruption of other cultists, but something infinitely older and more terrible—I felt my sanity trying to flee.

"You do not belong here," he said, and his voice hit me like a physical blow. Each word carried weight that made my bones ache, my vision blur, my very thoughts scatter like leaves in a hurricane. "For that trespass, you will pay with your lives."

Black smoke began seeping from his body, and I watched in horror as the stone beneath his feet began to wither and crack. It looked like the antithesis of everything living and good in the world.

My legs actually began to shake. The Dawnsoul Bloom, always so eager for corruption, recoiled against my shoulder as though burned. Every fiber of my being shrieked at me to run, to flee, to get as far from this abomination as possible.

But I couldn't. Not when everything I cared about hung in the balance.

The Bishop smiled, and in that expression I saw the promise of our deaths written in absolute certainty.