The Eternal Sin

Over the night sky of the outer sect, the clouds moved thick as ink, choking the faint glow of the moon. Within Jiang Chen’s residence, the scent of burnt flesh and incense tangled together like venomous snakes, clinging to the air without dispersing.

"Cough, cough..." Meng Kai’s body twitched in Jiang Chen’s grasp. His chest heaved as he suddenly let loose a series of ragged, weak coughs.

Meng Ruyan’s eyes widened.

’Alive... he is still alive.’

For a fleeting instant, relief surged through her heart like a spring breaking through frozen earth. Yet it was quickly swallowed by a rising tide of dread when her gaze darted toward Jiang Chen.

’No... no, there must be a way. There must be a way out of this situation.’ Meng Ruyan’s mind raced for ways out of this difficult predicament, like a deer struggling to escape a forest fire.

Jiang Chen glanced down at the mutilated youth in his hand and let out a low chuckle. "What a lively fellow. Even after being carved to this state, he still clings to life like a cockroach."

He loosened his grip, allowing Meng Kai’s limbless body to thud unceremoniously against the wooden floor.

The impact drew out an agonizing gasp from the youth. His body convulsed in pain, his back arching slightly before collapsing again, trembling like a dying insect.

Jiang Chen raised his eyes to Meng Ruyan, offering a smile that was warm and terrifyingly friendly. "When you had a chance to run to save your own skin, you did not take it. You must really care about this nephew of yours, hmm? Usually, I would not concern myself with an enemy’s emotions. But since you have come as a guest, how can I, your host, not be moved by such familial devotion? I will grant you a chance. As long as you agree to become my slave, I will spare his life."

Meng Ruyan opened her mouth, but before she could find her voice, Jiang Chen raised his hand. With a thought, a severed arm from his storage ring manifested in his palm, still warm with residual heat.

Meng Ruyan’s pupils narrowed.

Jiang Chen parted his lips slightly and spat out a slender, shimmering object, the Wool Surgeon’s Needle.

The needle darted forward like a living thing, stitching flesh with impossible precision. The severed arm aligned itself, and in the span of a breath, it reattached seamlessly to Meng Kai’s shoulder. Even the skin had sealed, leaving only faint red stitch marks that would fade with time.

Jiang Chen withdrew the needle before returning his gaze to Meng Ruyan.

"Now that you have seen my sincerity, hurry and make your choice. Either you become my slave, or both of you die for your greed," Jiang Chen said, his eyes narrowing into cold slits.

Silence descended.

Meng Ruyan’s heart pounded violently, each beat echoing in her ears like distant thunder.

’This person... is not normal at all.’

Her thoughts surged, one after another, forming a turbulent current that refused to settle.

’We were the ones supposed to ambush him, but why? From the moment we entered, every step has fallen into his control. Liu Chanshin is dead, and little Kai is crippled. Even I am injured and being blackmailed. That earlier strike of his could contend against even fifteenth-layer cultivators. Yet he is only a tenth-layer junior, so how...?’

She clenched her fists in secret.

’If I agree to his terms, I lose my freedom. But if I refuse, we both die. There is no middle path. I also do not have faith in killing him. Should I just give up and hope for the best...? No. There is still one way.’

Meng Ruyan’s expression softened slightly as she lowered her gaze. "Little Brother Jiang... your methods are indeed formidable. This lady was blind to provoke such a figure. But surely a man of your ambition understands that a willing ally is worth more than a mere slave. If you let us go, the Meng family will owe you a debt as vast as the—"

Midway through her plea, a faint glimmer flickered within her sleeve.

Jiang Chen’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

In the next instant, a band of bluish beads slipped into Meng Ruyan’s palm. One of the beads flared with a blinding, dark azure light that enveloped her entirely.

Jiang Chen felt a sudden wrench at the base of his spine, as though an invisible hand had grasped the fabric of space and twisted it violently. His vision blurred. The ground beneath his feet shifted. The air around him distorted like rippling water.

When clarity returned, he found himself standing where Meng Ruyan had been.

And Meng Ruyan now stood where he had been.

She had already hooked her arm beneath Meng Kai’s body and propped him onto her shoulder. Without wasting a breath, she turned and fled.

Her figure burst through the shattered doorway like a streak of green light as she executed her movement technique.

"Petty tricks." Jiang Chen’s feet shifted into the rhythmic, ink-like patterns of the Traceless Ink Steps, and his figure blurred into a smudge of darkness.

Two breaths.

To Meng Ruyan’s horror, that was all it took to overcome the distance she had gained.

’Impossible!’ she screamed inwardly.

’I have seen the records of his purchase. It has barely been a month since he bought the Traceless Ink Steps. How could he possibly be so proficient at it? No, even if he has peerless comprehension skills and somehow achieved perfection in mastery, it should not reach this level of horrifying speed.’

Sensing him at her heels, she opened her mouth and spat out a mouthful of essence. It ignited in the air, forming a blazing tongue of fire that lashed out to engulf and incinerate him.

Jiang Chen did not flinch. His right arm swelled with the phantom image of a golden tiger’s maw as he unleashed the Heavenly Tiger Fist, shattering the fire into harmless sparks with a single powerful blow.

Not letting this moment go to waste, he reached out, his fingers hooked like talons to seize her throat.

Meng Ruyan’s hands flashed as another bluish bead ignited.

With a pop of displaced air, both she and her nephew vanished, replaced instantly by the charred, stinking corpse of Liu Chanshin.

Jiang Chen skidded to a halt, his expression darkening.

"Hmph." He turned to rush back toward the house, but the ground beneath his feet groaned and fractured suddenly.

Then, a forest of nearly a hundred ice vines erupted from the soil of his courtyard. Each was as thick as the leg of a mountain ape, twisting and coiling with the fluid lethality of a serpent. Their translucent bodies were studded with jagged crystalline shards that gleamed like a thousand daggers in the dark.

"The Frost Flower Burial Technique," Jiang Chen muttered, recognizing the peak-grade art from the Martial Scroll Hall.

He judged internally, ’She must have planted these Qi seeds while they were waiting for the sleep-inducing smoke to take effect. This will be a bit annoying.’

The vines lashed out with the speed of whip cracks, seeking to entangle his limbs and shred his flesh with their icy razors. Each movement carried a sharp, piercing chill, as if even the wind around them shuddered with cold.

But Jiang Chen moved like a shadow in the forest, his Traceless Ink Steps allowing him to slip between the gaps of the icy onslaught. A vine thicker than his waist slammed into the spot he had occupied a heartbeat prior, shattering the stone pavement into a crater of ice, but Jiang Chen was already three paces to the left, uprooting a vine and smashing it against another.

Swish, Swoosh~!

Dozens of vines attacked him in varying ways, but Jiang Chen evaded them all.

Still, even with the Traceless Ink Steps pushed to their limit, Jiang Chen soon realized that the sheer density of the icy forest barring his path made escape difficult.

’Tch, I have no desire to waste my precious essence fighting these ugly vines.’ Jiang Chen’s eyes flickered as a vine shot straight for his head.

He kicked it aside, breaking it into fragments that scattered across the courtyard. Two more vines shot out from underground, but he quickly dealt with them using the Heavenly Tiger Fist.

But then a vine lashed from his blind spot like a hunting snake and dangerously coiled around his arm, his robes were torn to shreds.

However, Jiang Chen showed no panic. He simply moved his spiritual essence and summoned two clones.

They moved in perfect coordination with his will, their fists striking in tandem. One smashed into the coiling vine, cracking its frozen body apart, while the other intercepted a descending strike aimed at Jiang Chen’s back.

The courtyard filled with the sound of shattering ice.

The vines did not relent.

They came in unending waves, some striking from above, others bursting from the ground without warning. Their movements overlapped, forming a net of lethal icy intent that closed in from all directions.

Jiang Chen advanced step by step.

His clones moved before him, clearing a narrow path. One leapt forward, driving its fist into a cluster of entwined vines. The impact scattered them into a storm of ice shards. Yet in the next instant, another vine shot forth and pierced straight through the clone’s chest, tearing it apart into dispersing strands of Qi.

Jiang Chen merely willed it, and the scattered essence gathered once more, reforming the clone in a blink.

Moments later, another clone was destroyed.

Jiang Chen advanced regardless. Suddenly, a vine thicker than the rest, having fused with nearly five others, came at him like an icy drill with immense force.

He directly raised his arm and struck upward. The Heavenly Tiger Fist collided with it head on. The vine trembled, cracks spreading along its surface before it exploded into countless fragments that rained down like frozen petals.

But even as he broke through one layer, more surged forward to replace it.

Jiang Chen had his hands full.

When suddenly, a shard of ice lodged into his thigh, sending a jolt of numbing, frost infected energy into his bloodstream.

Jiang Chen’s expression remained as cold as the ice attacking him. Without a moment’s hesitation, he drew his blade and sliced off the chunk of contaminated flesh, the Wool Surgeon’s Needle trailing behind to mend the wound in a blur of silver.

More clones were summoned as he hacked his way forward.

The Heavenly Tiger Fist roared again and again. Jiang Chen finally gave up on dodging entirely and, along with the clones, began bulldozing through the center of the grove, his body turning into a spearhead of unmatched violence.

Step by step, with an expressionless face, he carved a path through the icy forest, drawing closer to the residence.

Within the residence, Meng Ruyan’s breathing was uneven.

She was watching the fight, her eyes flickering with urgency. ’Curses, even that will not kill him. At this rate, in less than a minute he will break through the vines. No choice, I must leave now. Once I cross the boundary of the Silent Void Talisman, the commotion will draw people out, and he will not dare to act so brazenly in the open.’

Even though Jiang Chen would be alive and could go to the Enforcement Hall with accusations, she believed that as long as they escaped, the lack of solid proof of their involvement would protect them.

The death of Liu Chanshin could be blamed on a hundred different causes unrelated to them, and her family’s political weight could bury the investigation until it became a forgotten matter.

She shoved a handful of vitality replenishing pills into Meng Kai’s mouth.

"Hold on... just a little longer," she whispered.

Then she hoisted the boy and prepared to flee in the opposite direction.

But in her haste of survival, her mind clouded by disorientation from the earlier spatial swaps and the incense smoke filling the room, she failed to notice she was heading straight toward Jiang Chen’s concealment array.

In that instant—

A golden fist tore through space itself.

It emerged from nothingness like a judgment from heaven.

Meng Ruyan’s eyes bulged.

Jiang Chen had previously left this clone hidden within the array as backup.

Meng Ruyan had no time to use her treasure or activate a technique. She could only twist her body with desperate instinct.

The punch missed her heart but obliterated her left shoulder with the force of a shooting meteor. Bone shattered into fine fragments, and skin and muscle burst into a gory crimson explosion.

Her nephew was knocked from her grasp, falling face first onto the wooden planks.

Meng Ruyan’s world spun as she was sent flying toward the courtyard, toward the cluster of vines with razor sharp shards.

Another bead flared.

The clone that had struck her appeared in her place. It was instantly shredded by the twisting ice, while Meng Ruyan collapsed outside the concealment array’s boundary, kneeling in a pool of her own blood.

Her body trembled violently.

Blood seeped from her mouth, her nose, her ears, and most problematically, her shoulder was a mangled mess of hanging muscle.

Yet her eyes remained clear.

She crawled forward, dragging herself toward Meng Kai.

Her hand grasped his robe.

"Kai... hold on... Aunt is here..."

Her vision blurred.

Still, she persisted.

Struggling, she propped up Meng Kai’s body, preparing to retreat again.

Meng Kai’s only hand, hanging over her shoulder, the one Jiang Chen had reattached, suddenly extended its fingers, and a wind blade shot out, ruthlessly slicing through Meng Ruyan’s thighs!