This feeling—Yun Che had never experienced it before.

  It was not the sharp agony of a blade piercing his chest.

  Not the marrow-wrenching pain of a frigid core being torn from his body.

  Not even the icy spike that had moments ago driven through his soul.

  This was something that exploded from the deepest part of his body, from the very source of his bloodline, from some hidden corner of himself he had never known existed—

  A void.

  As if all the blood in his body had been drained in an instant.

  As if a thread within his soul—one he had never noticed—had been torn apart by brute force. And from the torn end flowed not blood, but something he had deliberately forgotten over the past seven years, something he had severed, something he had believed long dried up.

  Yun Che dropped to one knee. His left hand pressed hard against his chest, fingertips digging into flesh. Darkness swam before his eyes; a metallic sweetness surged up his throat.

  He did not know why.

  He only knew that to the north—the direction he had left seven years ago—something had shattered.

  Forever.

  “…Yun Che?”

  Behind him came the wary shout of the Three Sects’ cultivators, their voices muffled as though filtered through ten thousand layers of ice.

  Yun Che did not turn.

  Bracing himself with his sword sheath, he slowly rose. So slowly that every inch of bone seemed to groan under unbearable strain.

  “I said,” he murmured, his voice light as an undercurrent beneath frozen water, “do not block my path.”

  The woman in white arched her brows, about to rebuke him—

  Yun Che moved.

  There was no flash of sword light. No eruption of frost power. He simply gripped the sheath and stepped north.

  As his foot fell, the Nine Nether cold force around him burst forth like a dam collapsing. It was not defense. Not attack—

  It was burning.

  Burning spiritual power.

  Burning vital blood.

  Burning everything that could be burned—

  All for a single possibility.

  The possibility of arriving in time.

  With the second step, he was already a hundred zhang away.

  With the third, he vanished into the horizon.

  The woman in white stood frozen. That departing figure, wrapped in towering hatred, left her unable even to conceive of pursuit.

  “…He’s gone mad,” a male cultivator muttered.

  No one refuted him.

  Hanshui Town.

  The Yun ancestral estate.

  When Teng Huayuan stepped out from the final courtyard gate, the black banner in his hand was crowded with nearly a hundred twisted, agonized faces. The viciousness on his face had not faded; it had deepened.

  “Where is Yun Che’s sister?” His icy gaze pierced Yun Mo and Yun Ting, who knelt collapsed in pools of blood.

  Yun Mo trembled, unable to speak.

  Yun Ting clenched his teeth. “She… is not in the clan. Four years ago she was taken away by distant relatives. Her whereabouts… unknown.”

  A blood-red light flashed in Teng Huayuan’s eyes as he prepared to erupt in fury—

  Suddenly—

  From the northern sky, an Azure streak tore through the air!

  Before it even arrived, killing intent surged ahead like an ancient tide of frost, sweeping across the entire estate. The sheer density and ferocity of it forced even this Nascent Soul ancestor to narrow his eyes.

  The streak struck the ground.

  Ice shards exploded outward. From the shattered frost, a young man in blue robes stepped forth.

  This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road; report any instances of this story if found elsewhere.

  His face was pale as paper, blood still clinging to his lips. His aura was in utter disarray, the Nine Nether cold force raging across his body like uncontrolled Azure flames.

  And his eyes—

  Those eyes made Yun Mo and Yun Ting shudder.

  It was not anger.

  Not hatred.

  Not even grief.

  It was emptiness.

  And within that emptiness, something colder than eternal ice, darker than the nether abyss, was condensing.

  Yun Che did not look at Teng Huayuan.

  He first looked at the plaque above the gate, now stained with blood: “Yun Residence.”

  He remembered that plaque. His father had asked the town’s old scholar to write it. The day it was hung, they set off a long string of firecrackers. His mother had even given him an extra piece of braised pork.

  That was seven years ago.

  No—

  That was in another lifetime.

  He slowly turned and looked at Yun Mo and Yun Ting kneeling in the courtyard. He recognized them—cousins who had once taken him fishing and bird-hunting in the hills. He remembered Yun Mo scraping his knee falling from a tree. He remembered Yun Ting secretly stuffing crickets into his book bag.

  Now they knelt in blood like hollow shells.

  Yun Mo lifted his head. Seeing that familiar yet unfamiliar face, he parted his lips and uttered a broken syllable:

  “Che… brother…”

  Yun Che did not respond.

  He turned, finally facing Teng Huayuan.

  “My name is Yun Che,” he said evenly, as though stating a fact unrelated to himself.

  “The people you killed today… are my clan.”

  “I do not know why you came,” he paused. “But I know where you are going.”

  Teng Huayuan stared at the Foundation Establishment junior who had suddenly appeared and laughed.

  “Yun Che? Not Wang Lin?” He licked his lips, blood-light intensifying in his eyes. “No matter. That yin-cold spiritual power of yours shares the same origin as the one who killed my Li’er. Since you’ve come to die—”

  He raised his hand. Nascent Soul pressure crashed down like a raging sea.

  “I shall grant your wish!”

  Yun Che did not dodge.

  He endured the pressure that could crush a Golden Core cultivator to dust. Bones groaned. His knees sank into the fractured earth. Blood from his lips dripped onto the Heavenly Nether Pearl at his chest.

  He did not retreat.

  He slowly tightened his grip on the sword hilt.

  Deep within the sheath, the ancient will that had just awakened connected with his soul for the first time.

  A blurred thought, spanning ages, echoed:

  “Do you hate?”

  Yun Che did not answer.

  He drew the black sword another inch.

  Teng Huayuan sneered, about to increase the pressure, when his spiritual sense suddenly stirred—the tracking banner vibrated violently with bloodline resonance.

  “Oh?”

  He withdrew his hand and unfurled the banner. Ripples spread across its surface, forming an image.

  A girl of seven or eight crouched beside a well in a strange courtyard, washing clothes. Her clothes were worn but clean. Her delicate features bore seven parts resemblance to Yun Che.

  Teng Huayuan narrowed his eyes.

  Yun Che followed his gaze.

  He saw her.

  The faded clothes.

  The frost-reddened hands submerged in icy well water.

  In that instant, every expression, every sound, every trace of aura—

  Vanished.

  Teng Huayuan smiled. “It seems I have not killed them all. Good. I shall find her slowly… and kill her slowly.”

  “You killed one of mine. I kill your entire clan.”

  “Fair.”

  Yun Che said nothing.

  He remembered.

  That well. That crooked jujube tree. That half-closed wooden gate.

  His mother had once taken him there. A distant relative—kind folk from the countryside.

  His mother had still been alive when she said that.

  So long ago.

  He had thought he had severed the thread called “mortality.”

  He had not.

  It had always been there, tied to the softest, deepest part of his soul.

  Now it had been torn apart.

  What flowed from the break was not blood—

  But every letter he had never written.

  Every reunion he had missed.

  Every unspoken “Father, Mother, I am well.”

  And those frost-reddened hands by the well.

  His sister.

  His last blood kin.

  Teng Huayuan lifted a purple-black lightning sphere. “Enough. I’ll send you on your way. As for your sister—I will reunite her with you soon.”

  He hurled it.

  A Nascent Soul strike.

  Yun Che did not move.

  He lowered his head to the Heavenly Nether Pearl. The second cloud pattern upon it shifted—light blue to Azure, Azure to deep violet, deep violet to—

  Dark red. Like coagulated blood.

  “Buzz—!”

  A desolate sigh echoed from within.

  The lightning sphere extinguished three feet before him.

  Teng Huayuan’s pupils shrank.

  The ancient will spoke again:

  “Remember this hatred.”

  Yun Che raised his head.

  No tears lay in his eyes.

  Only two lines of blood that slid down and froze into crimson crystals before reaching his jaw.

  “I will find you.”

  “I will kill you.”

  “I will make you taste—”

  He paused.

  “The feeling of a bloodline cut off.”

  For the first time, Teng Huayuan felt a flicker of cold unease.

  Ridiculous. A mere Foundation Establishment ant.

  He prepared to strike again—

  The banner trembled once more. A white-robed figure appeared beside the girl, waved a hand, and shattered the image like water.

  A distant, cold female voice echoed:

  “This child—I protect.”

  Teng Huayuan’s face changed drastically.

  Yun Che did not hear it.

  He was already drowning in the rampaging Nine Nether cold force within him.

  Extremity.

  In ancient legend, the realm where all laws converge into “extreme.”

  Once entered—never reversed.

  Invincible among equals. Unmatched beneath Nascent Soul.

  The price—

  Eternal severance from the path to higher ascension.

  Yun Che did not know this.

  He only knew that the two Nine Nether frigid cores in his dantian were spinning wildly, drawing together—

  Fusing.

  The thing that had surged from his bloodline—

  Was carving a single word into his soul.

  Hatred.

  Written in blood.

  Inscribed with life.

  Unfolding across the remainder of his years.

  (The mourning ends. Hatred begins. Extremity forms. Blood kin scattered. Teng Huayuan plants the seed of clan extermination; Yun Che swears inevitable death. A white-robed woman intervenes. The younger sister’s fate remains uncertain.)

  (This night, the Yun clan falls.)

  (This night, Yun Che enters Extremity.)

  (After this night, the boy who once trembled at the word “home”… dies.)

  (What remains is the heir of the Nine Nether, the solitary ghost of Extremity, the bearer of blood vengeance, unyielding unto death—)

  (The Avenger.)