A man, tall and powerful enough to wrestle a bear, was bound by chains inside a cell. His skin was brown, his eyes were pools of blackness, and he wore no upper clothes. The darkness and those imprisoned nearby had a full view of his scarred chest. The large scar resembled a handprint, but not a human one. It looked as if a burning bear had pressed its palm to his flesh. Gao Tong had created the mark, and this man vowed to someday kill him, not only for the scar, but as punishment for murdering his adopted family.

  The man had his eyes closed, but his ears were wide open. A great fight must be occurring on the surface. At first, it sounded like a festival, with cheers, laughter, and excited shouts. Then, the noise lessened to a whisper, as if a disaster had subdued the celebration. It rose again, no longer festive, but with the desperate sounds of war. It reminded him of the invasion by the Nether Lotus Sect, when they had killed the main family and massacred anyone strong enough to defy them. The Bleeding Heart Sect had lost all its core members. The only one who had survived was him. A servant. He had been loved, raised, and approved of by the main family for his talent, yet he was still just a servant.

  The thought made his stomach twist. Profound sadness threatened to drown him as the memory of the massacre returned, but he crushed the feeling as he always did. He was the last pillar and could not afford to be weak in power or in heart. He was the only one who could revive the Bleeding Heart Sect.

  The man had dark red hair, almost black. While chained to the wall, his limbs pulled taut, he wondered if something significant had happened outside. Perhaps an ally had finally heard his sect's plea and came to free them. Perhaps it was the Mirror Tide Empire. They might free them and incorporate them into their ranks. Or perhaps it was nothing, just his mind trying to find a way out of this hopeless situation. After all, he could not revive the Bleeding Heart Sect if he was not free, let alone save his comrades, who would sooner or later be refined into pills for cultivation.

  Still, he hoped. As the noise grew more fierce and desperate, his hope was a small flame fanned into a great fire. Yet, after an hour, the sounds lost their intensity, reduced to the occasional shout before finally dying down completely.

  The man opened his eyes. They were white, as if he were blind. When he was little, they had been a source of ridicule, but after being adopted by the main family, he learned they were the result of a bloodline. With these eyes, he could see the flow of qi. Though his vision was blurry now. His qi were restricted, and opening his eyes felt as if nails were being pushed through his eyeballs into his brain. Still, he pushed through the pain. His eyes were the only part of him not entirely suppressed, merely restricted to the point of torture. He tried to see the qi around him, and his heart skipped a beat.

  The qi around him churned like a sea in a storm, moving in an erratic pattern. Such a thing was normal when many cultivators fought, but in an instant, less than a heartbeat, he saw a tinge of red in it. His master had said that qi was colorless, and indeed it was, yet there were occasions when it had color. Some people said it was an imperfection in his bloodline, and he was inclined to believe it. Yet, the red was so vivid it looked like blood.

  At that moment, the pain overcame him. He instantly shut his eyes as tears of blood streamed from them.

  "What is that?" the man muttered, and against all odds, he decided it was hope.

  He waited with bated breath, his heart beating with more energy than usual, waiting for something. After moments of waiting, something truly did happen, something that surprised him so much he gasped. The door to his cell suddenly opened. He thought it must be his caretaker, yet he did not hear the usual footsteps. In fact, he heard no footsteps at all, and his hope soared.

  The moment the chains binding his limbs were cut and his qi was freed from its restrictions, he instantly opened his eyes. The pain was still there, but it had lessened, and he knew that in time it would be gone. He hoped to see who had entered, but his eyes saw nothing. No person stood before him, no clump of qi in the shape of a person. However, he noticed a place where the qi did not swim freely. Seeing that spot was like trying to look into a storm; the wind and water forced his eyes closed.

  After a moment, that spot was free of the strange effect. The man blinked several times before he finally realized what had truly happened.

  "I am... free," he muttered. And he had a feeling he would not have to fight for his freedom.

  While he was bewildered by this turn of events, and curious about who had freed him—and the fact that his eyes could not see them—he focused on what was more important. With his qi free, the man ripped the dangling chains from his limbs and ran straight to the opposite wall, where his brothers were also tied.

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  "Brothers, I am free!" he shouted, before he opened the cell and destroyed the chains that restricted them.

  From there, the man freed his people one by one. In total, there were a hundred cultivators. All of them, including him, were in the Lock Opening realm. Then, he led them out of the deepest dungeon and up to the lowest level, where the mortals were being held. He ordered them to be set free too, and when everyone was loose, they huddled behind him. No one was locked or bound.

  Leading them all, the man ascended the stairs with his heart beating like a drum. He cycled his qi in anticipation of a fight, yet he knew deep down that he would not need to. He had not freed his comrades silently, so the fact that no one from the Nether Lotus Sect came to check on them already told him all he needed to know about their state.

  Once he was outside the building, with his people behind him, his eyes took in the familiar sight of his sect. However, instead of the clean and neat place where his comrades had lived, joked, trained, and cultivated, he saw a sea of blood. Every surface was coated with it. Heads, organs, limbs, and the remains of people—none of them intact—were strewn across the place. Their eyes were frozen in terror, as if the last thing they saw was an unfathomable monster.

  Gasps sounded behind him, mostly from the mortals, but some came from the cultivators too. Even his own eyes widened in disbelief.

  "I-it's him!"

  Upon hearing the shout, the man, and everyone around him, turned to a single mortal in the center of the crowd. She was a woman with short hair and fair skin, but she wore a man's clothes. Realizing all eyes were on her, she instantly covered her mouth.

  "Sister," the man said. While he was a cultivator, he too had been a servant. "Do you know... who did this?"

  The woman gulped. "I-I didn't see him, only heard his voice. And he told me not to tell anyone about him." She pleaded with her eyes for him not to ask further, and the man complied.

  He turned back to the horrifying massacre. It was even more gruesome than the massacre inflicted upon his sect by the Nether Lotus Sect. One thing was certain in his mind. He did not want to antagonize the one who had done this.

  Whoever created this sea of blood.

  ***

  Sitting on his shield atop the water's surface, Liu Xing activated his robe's function to dry himself. The water on him instantly turned to vapor, briefly covering his invisible form in a cloud of steam. His feet dangled from his seat, submerged ankle-deep in the ocean. As he sat there, in the middle of an ocean where there was nothing but water as far as his eyes could see, he closed his eyes and peered into his consciousness through the hole made by the Flowing Meditation Method.

  Inside his vast, white mindscape, three cores danced. Their movements were chaotic. Each possessed its own gravity, pulling the others toward it. Yet, their momentum and gravitational forces interfered with one another, as if they were engaged in a three-way tug of war. The sight was mesmerizing. He felt he could have observed the dance all day and all night. However, after confirming that his cores, while dancing chaotically, would not collide for the time being, he closed the hole and opened his eyes.

  "This is amazing," Liu Xing muttered.

  His qi was abundant, and it moved through his qi paths with blinding speed. This was partly because he had successfully broken through to the third stage of the Core Splitting realm, but also thanks to all the pills he had looted from the Nether Lotus Sect.

  As before, he avoided pills made from human beings, but the number of pills created from acceptable materials was immense. He consumed them all. They made his bones and blood stronger, his muscles more efficient, his organs tougher, his qi paths wider, his qi movement faster, his affinity deeper, his mind sharper and more. All of these changes added up to increase his overall power. It was as if he had been reborn into a new and better body. Not to mention the wealth he now had inside his spatial ring. Its color was black with the carving of a snake. Inside were numerous spirit stones, treasures, talismans, trinkets, and more. He was wealthy beyond belief, and while there was some elation in his heart, he did not actually feel happy.

  After all, all this wealth came because he had massacred many, many people. His hands were literally soaked in blood.

  Liu Xing gripped the hilt of Harmony of Two Seas tighter. At this point, he realized something important, something he had refused to acknowledge.

  "I am... a demonic cultivator." His voice was carried by the wind, and he felt the world shudder, as if validating his assessment. He was truly a demonic cultivator.

  A demonic cultivator was a being to be hunted and exterminated. After all, those who trod this path used the people around them as resources to advance. He was a predator of his own kind, and something like that needed to be put down.

  Liu Xing inhaled deeply. While it was hard to accept, it was reality. One part of his mind blamed his gun. After all, it was the thing that enabled him to become a demonic cultivator. Yet, at the end of the day, his gun was merely a tool, and a tool's purpose depended on its user. A knife could be a harmless kitchen utensil, but it could also be a weapon used to murder.

  And Liu Xing had chosen to use this gun to kill people.

  He was truly a demonic cultivator, and it seemed the path for his advancement was one of death and destruction.

  "Still," Liu Xing muttered. "I need to take this path. At least for now."

  After all, he intended to continue to hunt and kill those demonic cultivators from the Nether Lotus Sect. He would make sure that either they or he would be the one to survive this whole ordeal.

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