Moonlight streamed through the sapphire-veined windows of Golden Lotus Hall, illuminating dust motes dancing like captive spirits. Li Jingyan poured steaming tea into a celadon cup, fingers trembling imperceptibly against the glaze. The scent of spirit-infused ginseng twined with something darker, bitter as betrayal – the Scatteressence Powder dissolving within its depths.
"Jingyan?" Master Li Lingfeng's voice, usually resonant as temple bells, held a filament of concern. He set aside the celestial topography scroll he'd been studying. "Your aura flickers like a guttering candle. What troubles you?"
Jingyan's heart hammered against his ribs like a trapped sparrow. Does he know? Can he scent the corruption in the steam? Panic tasted metallic on his tongue. He forced his body to bow lower, the picture of filial devotion. "Honored Master," his voice smooth as polished jade, "I am merely moved by the honor of serving you tea again after my... seclusion. The thought that such moments are fleeting stirs unworthy melancholy."
Li Lingfeng sighed, a sound like wind through ancient pines. "A cultivator of your promise cannot afford such fragility, Jingyan. It forms cracks in the Dao Heart, hindering the path to ascension."
"Forgive this unworthy disciple." The porcelain cup chimed as it touched the lacquered table. Look into my eyes, Master. See the devotion. "Yet my reverence for you, who has been more than a master – a father – eclipses all concerns for the Dao."
A rare warmth softened Li Lingfeng's stern features. "Ever the filial child." He lifted the cup, suspicion momentarily disarmed by centuries of trust. He took a long, unhurried draught.
Now! Jingyan's breath hitched.
"Hmm..." The master's brow furrowed slightly. "An unusual undertone. Ginseng... and something... ruptured?"
"A special blend, Master," Jingyan breathed, watching like a hawk circling wounded prey. "Infused with newfound gratitude."
Li Lingfeng nodded, setting the cup down. He began to speak – then froze. Beneath his celestial robes, his meridians screamed. His formidable zhenqi, a sea that had weathered eons, churned violently, fracturing into discordant wisps that tore through pathways like escaping ghosts. He tried to summon it, to command the tide, but his will dissipated like mist in sunlight. An ancient terror gripped him – the feeling of foundations collapsing.
Scatteressence! The forbidden powder of the Ghost Realm!
"Jingyan!" The word cracked like thunder, laced with agonizing disbelief. Pain, physical and soul-deep, etched lines onto his suddenly aged face. "WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO THE TEA?!"
The mask dissolved. Jingyan's posture straightened, the subservience evaporating into chilling poise. A slow, venomous smile spread across his lips. "Why, I merely added a refinement, Master. Scatteressence Powder. A fitting cordial for your imminent retirement. Pleasant, was it?"
The world tilted for Li Lingfeng. The cherished disciple, the promised heir to Golden Lotus Peak... This viper? "WHY?" The roar tore from him, raw as an open wound. "Centuries... I poured my knowledge, my hope, my trust into you! The Sect was to be yours! What drove this dagger into my heart?!"
"My heart?" Jingyan's voice dropped to a sibilant whisper. "My heart desired Sun Xiaolan! A passing infatuation! Yet you condemned me to a century of penitent solitude!" His eyes blazed with venomous triumph. "If your affection is so conditional, Master, why should my loyalty remain absolute? You sowed the seed of neglect; I merely harvest its bitter fruit."
Futility washed over Li Lingfeng. The disciple he'd nurtured was a stranger sculpted from malice. "Kill me then," he rasped, breath labored. "But even dead, the mantle of leadership will never grace your shoulders! There are elders, senior disciples – a Spirit Severing disciple is nothing!"
"Nothing?" Jingyan threw his head back, laughing, the sound echoing hollowly in the vaulted hall. He spread his hands, palms upwards. From his fingertips, a dark vapor began to weep – clotted, sanguine mist reeking of rust and despair. It coalesced, swirling around his hands into twin vortexes of hungry crimson.
"The Crimson Blood Devouring Art!" Recognition choked Li Lingfeng. Horror eclipsed the pain. This wasn't impulse. It was a decade-spanning ritual.
"See, Master?" Jingyan purred, stepping closer. "Not 'nothing' for long. And you... you provided the feast."
The sharpened claws descended. Ten fingers, cold as grave soil, clamped onto the crown of Li Lingfeng's head. The crimson mist became living serpents, slithering deep into bone and marrow. Agony beyond comprehension exploded – his very essence was being flayed open and ripped out. He convulsed, muscles locked in a death rattle, sweat pouring like rain as millennia of cultivation surged violently through his dissolving pathways, screaming out into the waiting void of Jingyan's grasp.
For Jingyan, it was rapture. A river of pure, liquid power flooded his core, filling emptiness he hadn't known existed. He felt his dantian swell, his meridians blaze with stolen fire. Wasted energy? A paltry cost. Each fraction absorbed was stolen time, stolen glory. He drank greedily, the Master's anguished gasps becoming a symphony to his ascent.
The stolen qi became a torrent, then a stream, then... thin drips. Half the night bled away before Jingyan finally released his grip, letting the husk of his former master slump to the icy floor. He raised his own hands, marveling. Golden light, deep and powerful, pulsed beneath his skin. He probed inward – Spirit Severing was a fading memory. In its place surged the raw, tempestuous power of the Tribulation Passage Realm. Exhilaration, fierce and primal, shuddered through him. Centuries condensed into a single night! The shadow was right. Power justifies all.
Below him, Li Lingfeng lay like discarded ash. Where there had been a pillar of the heavens stood a shattered pillar of salt. The fall wasn't just to earth; it was into an abyss of helplessness. To lose cultivation wasn't death; it was oblivion while breathing.
Jingyan gazed down, eyes devoid of pity. "Fear not, beloved Master. Jingyan keeps his promises. I will spare your life." His voice was oil-slick.
"Kill me!" The whisper was dust. "End it!"
"Death?" Jingyan chuckled, kneeling to trace a sigil on the Master's forehead. "No. You hold secrets yet – the Sect's hidden wards, forbidden vaults... A mentor provides until the last dreg." His fingers flew, weaving dark hieroglyphs of suppression into Li Lingfeng's flesh. Stone-cold rigidity seized the broken master – blind, mute, utterly entombed within his own body.
Jingyan erased psychic traces, swept away qi signatures. With a final contemptuous glance at the divine hall that would soon be his, he hoisted his paralyzed burden and melted into the pre-dawn gloom, speeding towards the Desolate Ridge. As he vanished into the shadows blanketing the peaks, a deeper shadow stirred within the hall itself. A figure detached from the darkness near the Jade Pillar of Oaths, watched the silhouette fade, and then slipped away like smoke, a silent witness to the crime.
Days bled into each other. Whispers slithered through Sword-Slashing Courtyard: "The Master... absent?" Golden Lotus Hall stood cold, its doors ominously shut. No edicts came. No guidance. The steady rhythm of the Sect faltered. Li Lingfeng, the compass by which the mighty mountain oriented itself, was gone. Anxiety, thick and cold, seeped into the marrow of every disciple. Panic, once confined to the deep of night, began to stalk the sunlit paths. Their mountain, their immovable pillar, had vanished without a whisper, and without its pole star, the Sect began to drift in a silent, terrifying void. Below them, in the deepest cellars only a master should know, the waning crescent moon painted a sliver of silver on the paralyzed, sightless eyes of the fallen dragon.