Yuan's steps echoed through the cave.
Slow, calm, steady.His black azure eyes never once left the figure lying in a pool of blood.
The middle aged man's white robe, once pristine, was now shredded by countless sword slashes.Stained entirely in his own crimson. Blood pooled beneath him, seeping into the floor, turning red what had once been pure.
As Yuan approached, the dying man stirred.
His voice ca as a faint, broken whisper,barely audible to the average mortal.
But Yuan heard it.
"Why… ? Why is it always… …?"
There was no defiance in his tone. No rage. Only the soft despair of soone who had asked this question too many tis… and never found an answer.
Yuan didn't feel pity. He didn't feel anything. But for so reason, he chose to answer.
His voice was cold.Devoid of warmth or judgnt.
"Why you?" he repeated softly. "It's simple. I wanted your spiritual herbs."
The words cut deeper than any blade.
The man's trembling body went still. His widened brown eyes stared blankly, and slowly, his head turned toward the voice.
As he moved, blood spilled from his lips. He coughed violently.
Wet, ragged, and loud.
Until his mouth overflowed with red, dripping down his chin like a broken vessel.
Yuan stood only a ter away now. The dying man didn't have to move much to look up into those emotionless, black azure eyes.
And he did.
He stared.
He burned the face and gaze of his killer into his very soul,so that even in death, even in the next life, he would not forget.
A young man,barely old enough to be called an adult.
His face, cold and emotionless, showed not a shred of sympathy.
He stood silently, staring down at the dying man with black azure eyes that held nothing but indifference.
Eyes that made it clear,he didn't care. Not about the blood. Not about the pain. Not about the man's final monts.
The dying man saw it all… and then, he began to chuckle.
A quiet, bitter sound that echoed weakly through the cave,interrupted by coughs of blood.
"I did nothing wrong… yet I was still killed," he said, voice filled with a deep sense of injustice and unwillingness to accept his fate.
"The cultivation world… truly is a cruel place. The innocent die without reason…"
His words were soft, but in them was a realization.
A clarity that struck him only in his final breath.
A mont of bitter enlightennt.
And slowly… the light in his deep brown eyes began to fade.
He was dead.
Yuan exhaled lightly.
His shoulders relaxed, the tension in his body slowly draining away. It was over.
For a mont, he stood in silence, unmoving, replaying the man's final words in his mind.
Then, a faint smirk touched his lips.
He let out a soft, ironic chuckle.
"You say you did nothing wrong? That you're innocent?" Yuan muttered, his voice low and cold as he stood over the lifeless body, his sword still faintly dripping with blood.
A faint smirk tugged at the corner of his lips.
"How foolish."
His voice echoed through the cave.
Quiet, but sharp.
Like a blade dragged across stone.
"In the world we live in,the world of cultivation,there is no such thing as innocence. This world is built on betrayal, bloodshed, and ambition. People lie, steal, kill, and destroy without a second thought… all just to climb one step higher on the path to power."
Yuan's gaze lingered on the corpse. But he wasn't really looking at it.
His eyes, glowing faintly with an azure glow, were distant. Thoughtful.
"Do you think the strong reached their heights with clean hands? Every cultivator who's advanced has done so by stepping over others. Through battle. Through sches. Through death."
He tilted his head slightly, as if amused by his own words.
"Even those praised as saints… they're no different. They just hide the bodies better. Behind robes of nobility. Behind a mask of virtue. But their hands? Their hands are stained too."
A chuckle escaped his lips.
Quiet. Bitter.
Amused.
"Right and wrong? Those are luxuries of the weak."
His azure eyes sharpened, the glow within them intensifying.
"In this world, the only thing that truly matters is strength. If you're strong, your actions are called justice. If you're weak, even your righteousness becos aningless."
He took a breath,slow and steady.
"You weren't killed because you did sothing wrong. You were killed because you were vulnerable. Because your karma led you to cross paths with … and I had the power to act on it."
His smile faded slightly, and his tone cooled into sothing quieter. Harder.
"That's all it takes."
A long silence followed.
Then, Yuan turned his gaze toward the cave entrance, where faint sunlight crept in through the stone opening.
"But I'm not above any of this, either."
He brushed the edge of his bloodstained robe with a quiet motion, as if acknowledging the weight of his own actions.
"One day, my karma will co too. One day, soone stronger may co for … just as I ca for you."
He exhaled softly.
Then, a small, hollow laugh escaped his lips. Not joy. Not sorrow. Just… sothing in between.
"And when that day cos… I'll simply have to accept it and then fight,survive and then cultivate higher."
With that, Yuan reached for the hilt of his sword, still embedded in the back of the corpse. With a single motion, he pulled it free.
The wound reopened, and fresh blood spilled out, soaking further into the already blood stained robe,now more red than white.
Yuan glanced down at his blade. It was cracked, coated with fresh blood, and glinted faintly in the cave's dim light. In the reflection on its surface, he saw himself.
A young man with sharp, angular features.
Black eyebrows.
Glowing azure eyes that slowly faded back to their natural black azure hue.
Raven black hair.
And lips stained with a faint hue of crimson, almost like blood.
His gaze lingered on his eyes. The glow… it puzzled him. He frowned slightly, confusion flickering across his face,only for a brief mont.
Then, as the glow completely faded, he blinked once and returned to himself,as if nothing had happened.
With a swift motion, he flicked his sword, sending droplets of blood splattering onto the cave floor. Satisfied, he returned the weapon to its sheath at his hip and turned his attention back to the corpse.
Yuan knelt down and inspected the body, calmly searching for the bag of holding. After a mont, he found it tucked inside the breast pocket of the man's robe.
Like the robe itself, the bag was white and untouched by the chaos of the battle. Not a single drop of blood stained its surface.
Yuan slipped it beneath his left sleeve and tied it in place with a thin string, letting it rest next to his own bag of holding.
With the most important item retrieved, he shalessly searched the corpse for anything else of value. But after a thorough check… he found nothing.
He then began to collect the rest of the fresh blood from the corpse. First, he retrieved a small glass bottle from his bag of holding, then placed it beneath the most severe wound. The bottle slowly began to fill on its own, drop by drop.
But Yuan didn't waste ti standing over a corpse waiting for it to bleed out.
He rose to his feet and began casually exploring the cave around him.
The room where he had fought the alchemist was simple,at the center lay a basic cultivation bed. Just behind it stood a black crystal embedded into the ground. Yuan narrowed his eyes.
He guessed this was used to signal the alchemist in case the alarming aning runes were triggered. Around the crystal, a few runes were inscribed on the ground.
Matching the structure and patterns of the runes he had encountered earlier outside.
His suspicions were confird.
Past the bed, another open passage caught his attention. Beyond it… was a spiritual garden.
Yuan's eyes lit up faintly, and a small smile crept onto his lips.
He stepped into the passage and entered the garden, curiously inspecting the size of it. It wasn't very large,barely ten ters across,but the spiritual herbs planted inside weren't common or even uncommon.
They were rare.
Truly valuable herbs used for cultivation.
Yuan slowly walked through the garden, identifying each herb one by one. He quietly muttered the nas of those he recognized, ntally cataloging their uses.
But as he moved from one plant to another, he quickly realized sothing.
Out of the twenty or so spiritual herbs planted here… he only recognized three.
Just three.
Yet those three alone were enough to aid him trendously in his cultivation
At that thought, Yuan began to chuckle softly to himself. With the herbs he had just found and the other resources he'd gathered so far,he could easily break through to the peak of the Blood Purification Stage in maybe eight years.
Which, compared to the ten years he had originally estimated… was sothing to be genuinely pleased about.
His chuckle deepened slightly as he recalled Li Yun's recent breakthrough. The irony wasn't lost on him. Li Yun, a mber of a prominent family, would likely need around eighty years to reach the ridian Awakening Stage.
And yet here Yuan was,without any clan, any support,on the verge of accomplishing it in a fraction of that ti.
If Yuan rembered correctly, the Li family only supported the direct heir. The rest of the younger generation had to rely solely on themselves, forced to prove their worth.
It was a system built on internal competition, political scheming, and divided factions,sothing that, to Yuan, already seed like a recipe for collapse.
"How foolish," he thought, shaking his head lightly.
But he wasn't a mber of the Li family. Their fate was none of his concern.
Letting the thought drift away, Yuan turned his focus back to the spiritual herbs. He began to carefully harvest the ones that were fully ripe, storing them safely in his bag of holding.
As for the others,those that hadn't matured yet,he dug them out along with their roots and the surrounding dirt, preserving them in the sa way.
This thod would keep the herbs alive for at least a few more days before their dicinal value began to fade.
After finishing the harvesting of the spiritual herbs, Yuan left the spiritual garden, leaving nothing behind.
He returned to the corpse of the dead man, picked up the filled blood bottle, sealed it with a piece of wood, and placed it carefully into his bag of holding.
With everything now taken care of, Yuan turned his gaze around the cave one last ti. Then, with a flick of his left arm, he released the hidden Azure Snake from beneath his sleeve.
The snake slithered out silently before igniting into azure flas, consuming everything in its path.
The corpse was reduced to ash.
flesh, robe, and all.
The cave's few furnishings were engulfed in flas, and even the faint traces left behind from harvesting the spiritual herbs were erased.
Within monts, nothing remained that could hint at what had taken place there.
Yuan, already outside, descended the small mountain peak with calm, unhurried steps,his hands resting behind his back, his expression serene.
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