Mist drifted over the ruined courtyard, mixing with the greasy smoke of burning cedar.
Derrick Vance pulled himself up against the cracked courtyard pillar. His fingers slipped on splashed fountain moss and magistrate blood, leaving red smears across the stone.
His breathing came in ragged, wheezing gasps.
Yet when he looked up and saw the assembled elders whispering near the iron gates, panic twisted into desperate arrogance.
He had governed Ashford for twenty-five years. He knew the regional laws. An imperial magistrate had been killed inside the Vance estate, and if the provincial governor demanded answers, someone had to swing from the gallows.
Derrick pointed a trembling finger at Kaelen.
“Kneel, you unfilial beast!” Derrick bellowed, his voice echoing off the stone stables. “Kneel before the clan council and surrender the magistrate’s belongings!”
Kaelen stood five paces away, his left hand resting inside his hemp robe. His right arm hung limp at his side, completely dead from tendon strain.
He did not kneel. He did not even blink.
Every time Derrick opens his mouth, my ears pay a penalty fee, Kaelen thought. If I knelt every time an elder made a speech, I would never have time to finish my morning porridge.
Derrick took three limping steps forward, trying to puff out his chest.
“You have committed high treason,” the baron shouted, turning toward the town elders at the gate. “This boy acted without the patriarch’s command. He murdered an officer of the empire in cold blood!”
Derrick turned to the twenty clan guards who had gathered near the stables.
“Seize him!” Derrick ordered, spittle flying from his lips. “Strip his robes and put him in iron chains! If we deliver him to the provincial magistrate in chains, the clan may yet survive!”
Not a single guard moved.
The guards held their spears with trembling hands, their eyes fixed on the dead magistrate lying broken in the fountain basin. They were not fools. They had just watched Kaelen smash an Iron Bone expert with a shattered sword.
Nobody was going to touch the third young master for a baron who could barely stand upright.
“Did you hear me?” Derrick shrieked, his voice cracking with rage. “I am your baron! I am the head of Vance House!”
A low, raspy chuckle broke the baron’s speech.
Old Barnaby walked out from the smoke, carrying a rectangular black iron box under his one arm. The box was caked in dried hearth ash and soot.
“Nobody is seizing anyone, Derrick,” Barnaby grunted, setting the heavy iron chest on the stone garden table with a loud clatter. “You could not command a three-legged dog to sit, let alone thirty armed guards.”
Kaelen walked over to the stone table.
Using his left hand, he flipped the latch of the iron chest. The lid swung open with a screech of ungreased hinges.
Kaelen reached inside and lifted two objects into the firelight.
The first was the black-silk shrine blood-pact scroll tied with a blood-red cord, which Kaelen and Sera had stolen from the third founder’s altar and replaced with a weighted four-ounce paper turtle. The second was a thick ledger bound with beaten silver wire, stamped with the iron-hound seal of the late Hound-Lord Briggs.
Kaelen dropped both items onto the granite tabletop.
The heavy thud resonated through the quiet yard.
“What is that?” Elder Sterling called out from the courtyard gate. The elderly clan supervisor leaned heavily on a polished willow staff, his gray beard twitching. “Derrick, what documents are those?”
Derrick’s eyes went wide. The color vanished from his cheeks, leaving his skin the shade of wet clay.
“Nothing!” Derrick stammered, lunging toward the table. “Old household bills! Boy, step away from the clan archives!”
Before Derrick could cross the flagstones, a thin figure stepped smoothly through the courtyard gates.
Deacon Vane walked with quick, silent steps, his fox-like eyes scanning the carnage with professional relish. The ghost-market appraiser wore a long blue robe, his long sleeves tucked neatly into his belt.
“Household bills do not bear the scarlet wax of a shrine blood-pact, Baron Vance,” Deacon Vane purred smoothly.
The appraiser picked up the yellowed parchment with delicate fingers. He held it up toward the lantern light hanging from the garden trellis.
“Read it, Deacon,” Kaelen said, his voice flat and bored. “My arm is numb, and I want to go to sleep.”
Deacon Vane unfurled the parchment with a theatrical flick of his wrist.
“By the ancestral spirits of Ashford,” Deacon Vane began, his sharp voice carrying to every corner of the compound. “A covenant signed by Baron Derrick Vance and Magistrate Vane-Locke. The accompanying ledger names First Madam Evelyn Vance.”
The clan elders stepped through the gate, crowding around the table.
“Item one,” the appraiser read, tapping Briggs’s silver-bound ledger and the shrine covenant together. “Three years ago, First Madam Evelyn Vance and Magistrate Vane-Locke arranged payment to Hound-Lord Briggs for the poisoned-arrow attack on Kaelen Vance. The ledger bears their seals.”
A sharp collective hiss rose from the gathered guards.
Elder Sterling’s staff struck the flagstones like a hammer. “You crippled your own flesh and blood?”
Derrick backed away, shaking his head frantically. “The boy was struck by stray bandits! The manual was a copying error!”
“Item two,” Deacon Vane continued, raising the black-silk shrine pact over the murmurs. “Across thirty-six consecutive lunar cycles, First Madam Evelyn Vance administered Cold-Marrow Root in daily broth to the twelve-year-old daughter, Mina Vance, so Magistrate Vane-Locke could sever and harvest her Yin-Marrow on the full moon.”
Total silence fell over the courtyard.
Even the crackle of burning cedar seemed to fade into nothing.
To cripple a third son was ruthless, but selling a twelve-year-old daughter’s bone marrow to an outside official was an unforgivable crime against clan blood.
“In exchange,” Deacon Vane concluded, tapping the crimson yamen seal on the silk scroll, “Baron Derrick Vance received the first half of the Tier 2 Iron-Bone Tempering Manual.”
Deacon Vane set the scroll down and tapped the silver-bound ledger beside it.
“This secondary ledger from Hound-Lord Briggs confirms thirty-two silver transfers from Evelyn and Derrick’s private accounts,” the appraiser added cheerfully. “And when Derrick checks the third patriarch’s altar alcove, he will find only the four-ounce paper turtle Master Kaelen left in its place.”
Cassian Vance stood near the horse stalls, his hands trembling as he listened to every word.
The first young master looked down at his own bandaged chest. For years, he had believed his breakthrough pills came from clan trading profits and family sacrifice. Now he learned his cultivation had been purchased by butchering his sister and poisoning his brother.
“Father,” Cassian whispered, his voice trembling with horror. “You promised me the iron manual was an imperial reward.”
Derrick did not look at his eldest son.
The Vance clan elders looked at Derrick as if he were a rotting carcass.
Reading legal papers in the cold is a terrible waste of moonlight, Kaelen thought with mild annoyance. Still, watching Derrick’s face collapse into porridge makes up for the draft.
Elder Sterling stepped forward, his willow staff trembling with fury.
“You traded your daughter’s life for an incomplete manual,” the old elder whispered, his knuckles white. “You sold Vance blood to buy an Iron Bone breakthrough. You are no longer fit to bear the name of Vance.”
“Traitors!” Derrick screamed suddenly, his mind snapping under the weight of exposure. “All of you—I built this estate and defended this valley for thirty years!”
The fallen baron snatched his spare ancestral steel sword from the command rack beside the pillar.
His Rank 9 Mortal Pulse flared into violent life. Gray Qi swirled around his blade like a frantic dust storm as he lunged straight across the table.
His blade pointed directly at Kaelen’s throat.
“Die with me, you wretched cripple!” Derrick roared.
Kaelen did not flinch. He did not even take a step back.
With his left hand, Kaelen reached down to the flagstones. His fingers closed around the broken hilt and attached fragment of the spirit-iron broadsword he had shattered against Vane-Locke’s chest.
He did not channel a massive aura. He simply applied four-hundred-percent Transcendent Dao Intent through his fingertips.
Kaelen flicked the broken sword fragment left-handed.
The jagged fragment left his fingers with a high-pitched scream that tore through the air.
Clang.
The broken fragment struck the flat of Derrick’s ancestral sword three inches above the guard.
The four-hundred-percent force multiplier transferred instantly into the ancestral weapon. The finely forged steel blade shattered into four jagged segments, showering the stone table with bright blue sparks.
The kinetic shockwave ripped through Derrick’s wrist.
The baron’s thumb joint dislocated with a sickening crunch. The broken hilt flew from his grip, spinning across the yard before splashing into the muddy fountain pool.
Derrick spun halfway around from the impact and crashed face-first onto the cobblestones.
He lay there in the ash, clutching his broken wrist and sobbing into the dirt. His sword lay in pieces around him, destroyed by a discarded scrap of metal thrown with a slacker’s left hand.
Kaelen looked down at the weeping man.
“You are deposed,” Kaelen said calmly. “You are no longer baron or patriarch. If I see you on the manor grounds after sunrise, I will make you rebuild the kitchen stove with your bare hands.”
The clan guards immediately stepped forward, their spears lowered toward their former master.
Derrick looked up, terror completely replacing his rage. He saw the cold disgust in the eyes of his elders, his guards, and his neighbors. There was no mercy left for him in Ashford.
He scrambled to his feet like a beaten stray dog.
“Cassian!” Derrick shrieked, clutching his ruined wrist to his chest. “Run! Run to the river!”
Cassian Vance did not hesitate. The arrogant first brother, humbled and terrified by the display of godlike violence, turned and sprinted toward the northern postern gate.
Derrick stumbled after him, both men vanishing into the freezing mountain fog that rolled down from the pine ridge. Desperate for protection, father and son fled toward Red-River City to sell Vance clan secrets and northern mine maps to the Crimson Vulture Sect.
Running fifty miles on foot through frozen mud sounds exhausting, Kaelen thought, shaking his head. I would not run that far for a mountain of spirit stones. Fear really gives people terrible cardiovascular motivation.
Behind Kaelen’s eyes, a chime sounded in his consciousness.
[Burst Window Voluntarily Closed: Unspent Time Forfeited] [Multiplier Reset: 0h (1x Active)] [Cultivation Status: Mortal Pulse Rank 9 Peak (Stabilized)] [Total Wealth: 450 Low-Grade Spirit Stones]
The silver light faded from the edges of his vision. The overwhelming clarity of his senses settled back down into normal perception.
Kaelen stood in the quiet courtyard, his left hand tucked into his pocket.
Elder Sterling walked over to the stone table. The old elder looked at Kaelen with deep reverence, bowing his head slightly.
“The manor is yours, Third Master,” Elder Sterling said solemnly. “The council stands ready to follow your orders.”
“Clean the yard first,” Kaelen replied smoothly. “Station fifty guards at the perimeter gates. And make sure nobody touches my hammock.”
As Derrick and Cassian vanished into the fog to sell Vance secrets to the Crimson Vulture Sect, another shadow slipped past the rear servants’ quarters.
Madam Evelyn Vance held a velvet jewel box tight against her chest. Her dark silk skirts rustled against the gravel as she hurried down the narrow stone path to escape out the rear postern gate.
Her breath came in ragged white puffs.
She had heard the shouts in the courtyard. She knew Derrick had fled, and she knew the blood-pact had been laid bare on the garden table. If the guards caught her, she would spend the rest of her life in the stone cells below the moat.
She reached the top of the rear staircase leading to the gate.
A thin rime of blue frost coated the granite landing, sending a bitter chill through the silk hem of her gown.
Evelyn faltered at the head of the stairs, her heart seizing with dread.
At the bottom of the steps, a small figure waited beneath the stone archway.
Mina Vance stood quietly in the cold moonlight, her star-blue eyes clear and steady as crystals of deep blue ice crept outward from her small boots.