The sound of the wind cut through the night.

The abandoned house creaked with every stronger gust, as if it were trying to tear itself from the ground.

Yanyu and Ren Yao sat near the wall, cultivating in silence. A faint glow of Qi emanated from them.

Both breathed calmly, immersed in the circulation of their Qi flow.

Kyrian, on the other hand, remained motionless. He was seated on a simple chair before the broken window.

Outside, beyond the wind, the village remained in complete silence.

The wind dragged the ashes that covered the ground, and the moon illuminated the well at the center, the same place where he had found the formation.

The dark marks were still there, like open wounds in the soil.

Kyrian rested his chin on his hand and watched the horizon.

For an instant, his mind began to wander and sink into his memories.

The images returned, even though he thought he had forgotten them.

The metallic scent of blood. The screams of thousands of people and the deadly silence that came right after.

Kyrian slowly closed his eyes.

That day, he had still been a child. Wei Feng, the one who first showed him the cruelty of the cultivation world, the cruelty toward those without strength.

He had summoned the blood formation that covered the entire city. Hundreds of thousands of people died. Warriors, peasants, women, and children. Those he knew… all drained of their last trace of life.

He remembered the ground covered with dried bodies, reduced to skin and bone.

Kyrian remembered the sound of the wind blowing over those corpses.

The absolute void he had felt.

The feeling of helplessness as he watched everything, without the power to do anything at all.

He instinctively clenched his fist lightly, making his knuckles crack with a soft sound.

'Back then, nothing I did could have changed the outcome,' Kyrian murmured in his mind.

The chair creaked softly as he leaned forward.

The memories had resurfaced because of the village's formation, something that disturbed him deeply in some way.

And the energy used there didn't seem to be only blood, but something different.

The people seemed to have disappeared, but Kyrian understood what had truly happened after thinking it through.

The people had been turned into ashes. Their entire life essence drained and condensed into dust.

That kind of formation didn't just kill, it devoured everything, leaving behind only residue that spread across the village floor.

Kyrian took a deep breath, sensing the smell coming from the window. There was something truly strange about it.

Then, suddenly, the temperature began to rise slowly.

At first, a faint feeling in the air. Then, a wave of heat that made one sweat even at his level of cultivation.

Kyrian opened his eyes. The reflection of the moon gleamed in his green irises.

He rose slowly; the sound of his chair scraping the floor caught the attention of Yanyu and Ren Yao, who immediately opened their eyes, interrupting their cultivation.

Kyrian didn't answer their curious looks. His gaze was fixed on the broken window, something outside had changed.

The ground of the village began to tremble lightly, almost imperceptibly at first, but enough for the dust and ashes to begin rising.

The air grew hotter with every second, and the ambient Qi seemed to waver and be pulled away, as if being forcibly drained.

Yanyu stood up quickly.

"Do you see that?"

Kyrian didn't respond.

Outside, the ashes covered the entire ground. And now, as if obeying a call, they began to rise.

It wasn't the wind moving them. They simply floated upward, sliding through the air, forming small currents, and all the ashes followed the same direction.

The center of the village, where the well and the formation circle were.

Ren Yao took a step forward, surprised.

"That… it's moving on its own."

Kyrian narrowed his eyes as he spoke.

"The formation… it seems to have been reactivated. Or maybe it's been active this whole time."

The three of them immediately left the house. The heat enveloped them as soon as they crossed the door, a dry, suffocating heat that made it hard to breathe.

The night sky seemed slightly tinted red, but only within the bounds of the village formation, as if the array wanted to burn everything inside.

The ashes kept gathering. From every direction, they emerged from the houses, floating in straight lines, converging toward the dark circle at the village's center.

Kyrian approached until he stopped a few meters away, observing in complete silence.

'This formation…' he murmured in his mind, his gaze remaining cold and analytical.

The dark drawing on the ground began to glow in a reddish-orange hue, and luminous lines spread across the soil like roots expanding outward.

Yanyu placed her hand on her sword, her expression tense.

"It's getting hotter by the second. The air in the village feels like it's burning…"

Ren Yao covered part of his face, sweating despite his cultivation energy.

"What exactly is happening?" he asked aloud.

Kyrian didn't answer immediately. He could feel the formation pattern completing, but he didn't understand its purpose nor how it was happening, since earlier it had seemed deactivated.

As the ashes gathered, something appeared to be forming at the center of the array.

They didn't understand its purpose. Whatever was being created there didn't seem like a weapon or a technique, but something was slowly taking shape.

Minutes passed.

The ground still trembled faintly. The wind had vanished.

Then, suddenly, all the remaining ashes stopped moving.

The circle of the formation shone brightly, and a wave of heat burst outward in every direction.

Kyrian felt his body grow heavy, but he took a deep breath and closed his eyes, opening them moments later.

And then, his pupils transformed. Two white snowflakes replaced the sword-shaped pupils, and a celestial blue spread across his irises.

A cold breath spread instantly. The hot, suffocating air was swallowed by a freezing breeze that seemed to calm everything around. The temperature dropped within seconds.

Ren Yao shivered, but the suffocating sensation vanished.

Yanyu took a deep breath, feeling the pure air again, and looked at Kyrian. The cold surrounding him was not natural. It was pure and steady, emanating from his eyes, from the new, glacial energy within them.

At the village's center, the red light condensed.

The formation roared, and then everything compressed into a single point.

A sphere appeared.

Made of pure compacted ash, it floated a few meters above the ground.

From it emanated an intense, dense, yet controlled heat.

Ren Yao took a step forward.

"What is that…?"

Kyrian narrowed his eyes, observing. There was no more flow of Qi, only that solitary core spinning slowly in the air.

"An ash core…" Yanyu whispered softly.

The sound of the particles moving was faint but constant.

Kyrian analyzed it carefully, trying to understand.

"It seems that was the goal of the formation. All the life and vital energy drained from the people and plants of the village were condensed into this."

"Why would anyone do something like that?" Ren Yao frowned as he spoke.

Kyrian didn't answer.

The core trembled slightly, and the light it emitted began to flicker.

Suddenly, a cracking sound echoed, the sound of something breaking.

The formation on the ground began to fracture. The luminous lines shattered, bursting into sparks of energy.

The entire circle fragmented within seconds.

Yanyu stepped back.

"Is it going to explode?"

Kyrian shook his head, his gaze fixed on the core.

"No. It's actually… leaving."

The remaining core slowly rose, as if being pulled by something distant.

It floated several meters above the ground, then began to move, flying north, toward the rising mountains.

Ren Yao's eyes widened as he spoke.

"That… it's flying."

Kyrian watched the path the core took, then leapt onto the roof of the nearest house.

"Let's go."

The other two immediately followed.

Kyrian in front, Yanyu right behind, and Ren Yao covering the rear.

Keeping a safe distance, they followed the trail left by the core's lingering heat.

The reddish light floated steadily above, moving in a straight line.

Along the way, Kyrian kept his gaze fixed on the core, trying to decipher its pattern, what it was.

But what surprised him came soon after.

Another light, rising from the eastern horizon.

Then another, from the south. And another, from the west.

Soon, several spheres, ash cores, began appearing in the sky, all moving in the same direction.

Ren Yao paused for a moment to count.

"There are already eight…" he said, clenching his fists.

"That means eight villages have been completely destroyed."

Yanyu took a deep breath, her face tense.

"They sacrificed all those people just to create this? What is it even for?" Her voice trembled with anger.

Kyrian glanced sideways at her. She held her sword tightly, her fingers white with tension.

Her Qi fluctuated with restrained fury.

Ren Yao, meanwhile, seemed calmer, though his gaze hardened. Coming from royalty, he had seen and heard of many tragedies before.

Rebellions, massacres, famine. Yet even so, he could never grow used to it.

"We don't need to worry too much. If the mission record is correct… the leader of this organization is only at the 4° stage of the Qi Liberation Realm. It shouldn't be too hard to deal with him."

Kyrian didn't respond. He simply stared at the sky, his face expressionless while his mind wandered.

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