The absence of Li Jingyan, now acting Sect Leader amidst the chaos of Li Lingfeng's vanishing, plunged Shushan Sword Sect into profound disarray. Fear, sharp and cold, coiled through the grand courtyards and mist-shrouded peaks. To stem the tide of panic, the Sect's venerable Elders convened in hushed urgency within the Chamber of Reflected Swords. Moonlight, slicing through the lattice windows, painted nervous stripes on faces etched with worry.
Disaster upon disaster, Elder Wu Feng muttered, his usually serene aura frayed. First the Golden Lotus vanishes into thin air, now his favored heir cannot be found when leadership is paramount! Suspicion thickens like mountain fog.
But Li Jingyan reappeared soon after, cloaked in an aura of weary purpose. He spun a plausible tale: frantic searches for the Master, a desperate pursuit of clues in the wilderness. The Elders, desperate for an anchor in the storm, saw only the devoted, talented disciple. They saw the heir Li Lingfeng himself had groomed, his nascent power undeniable. They saw his experience handling Sect affairs under the Master's tutelage. His youth? A temporary hurdle overcome by their combined wisdom. His status? Acting Sect Leader. They clung to the frail hope Li Lingfeng might yet return. If not… well, time would bestow sufficient gravitas upon Li Jingyan.
The ceremony within the echoing vastness of the Golden Lotus Hall was swift, charged with uncertainty. Li Jingyan stood at the base of the onyx steps, head bowed low as Elder Wu Feng placed the ceremonial sword – Sunsplitter – into his trembling hands. The physical weight was negligible; the symbolic weight crushed him… and elated him.
"By the gathered wisdom of the Elders," Wu Feng's voice resonated, thin against the vaulted ceiling, "Li Jingyan, Disciple of the Golden Lotus, inheritor of his legacy, shall assume the mantle of Acting Sect Leader. Lead Shushan with the virtue of the mountains." A murmur rippled through the assembled disciples – relief, worry, but mostly submission to necessity. They bowed as one, a wave of reverence crashing at Li Jingyan's feet.
Jingyan ascended the steps. His footfalls echoed like judgment gongs. He turned, robes swirling, and settled onto the obsidian throne, its cold seeping through the silk but failing to touch the molten heat in his core. His gaze swept over the bowed heads, the sea of disciples paying homage. The breathtaking panorama of Shushan peaks framed through the open jade doors seemed a tapestry laid out solely for his enjoyment. Power, heady and potent, surged through his veins, amplified by the stolen cultivation resonating within him. Supremacy. And soon, Sun Xiaolan herself would be part of this dominion. His lips curved in a faint, icy smile utterly lost on the prostrate disciples. Only his knuckles, bone-white on the throne's armrests, betrayed the raw, sadistic triumph consuming him. Two dreams realized. The third, inevitable.
The Hall emptied, leaving Jingyan wrapped in profound, echoing silence and the scent of extinguished incense. He closed his eyes, savoring the lingering vibration of obeisance. This silence, this altitude, was intoxicant. He was the pinnacle.
A whisper of displacement touched the air. A sliver of molten gold flared, materializing before him. A ripple, and the chilling, spectral visage resolved from the light, its form indistinct but radiating an ancient malice.
"Congratulations," the shadow rasped, a dry leaf skittering on stone. "Li Jingyan, Acting Sect Leader. Toppling a titan, usurping his throne… impressive ruthlessness. My investment in teaching you the Crimson Blood Devouring Art yields fruit more delicious than anticipated. The heavens themselves must tremble."
Jingyan jolted upright, the fragile tranquility shattering. Fury warred with terror. "You dare show yourself here!" he hissed, scanning the hall's empty corners. "The risk! One glimpse, and my ascension becomes ash!"
The shadow's presence thickened, a suffocating cloak. Its voice dropped to glacial depths. "Foolish fledgling. Remember thy maker. I lifted thee from mediocrity. I gifted thee the weapon to rend a god." The spectral gaze seemed to pierce his skull. "One flick of my wrist, and every sect on this earth knows the apprentice devoured his master. Think thou any mountain could hide thee then? Any sanctuary exist?" The threat hung, cold and absolute.
Ice water cascaded down Jingyan's spine. The Golden Lotus Hall, his throne, suddenly felt like a gilded cage. He saw the intricate lattice of the Shadow's trap snap shut around him. The true victor claimed its spoils – a puppet enthroned upon a peak of corpses. The stolen power thrummed in his veins, mocking his sudden impotence. To rage was annihilation. He bowed his head, not in reverence, but in capitulation. The transition from sovereign to supplicant was seamless, a mask slipped on and locked in place.
"Your will," he breathed, the words thick with the sour taste of submission. "My actions serve your guidance." The defiance evaporated, leaving only hollow obedience.
"Wise. Hold thy throne until needed." The shadow's tone shifted, a serpent coiling. "Now attend: Celestial Master Sect on Mount Longhu stirs the hornet's nest. Zhang Songli calls for righteous fury against the Demon Sect. Thou shalt lend Shushan's full might to his crusade. Without hesitation."
Confusion cut through Jingyan's fear. The dark arts, the poisons… surely the Shadow was Demon Sect? "You… you align against your own?" he ventured.
"My allegiance belongs to oblivion," the shadow hissed, its form already fraying at the edges. "Follow. Question not." The golden shard flared once, consumed by a lick of unnatural black flame that left only stinging ozone. Silence rushed back in, a cold, accusatory presence.
Jingyan slumped back onto the throne, the obsidian biting deeper. Slave. The word resonated in the hollowed core of his stolen ascension. The price of power dwarfed the dream. The air in the Golden Lotus Hall tasted of cold ashes.
News, swift and inexorable, flew on demon winds. Li Lingfeng vanished. Li Jingyan ascended. Shockwaves ripped through the tranquil cultivation world. Li Lingfeng, one of the Four Pillars, an edifice of stability, gone? Whispers mushroomed in teahouses cloaked in secrecy wards and smoky taverns at the edge of cultivation: Assassination? Secret Tribulation? Rogue disciple? The name Li Jingyan was dissected – a meteoric rise shrouded in the Master's shadow. Who was this new power on Shushan?
In the serene, incense-heavy halls of Dragon Tone Monastery, the news struck like physical blows. Zhao Rui, Dun Che, and Sun Xiaolan exchanged glances thick with disbelief. The Li Lingfeng they had encountered mere days ago, who saw them off with such steady authority – gone?
Sun Xiaolan's face blanched. Shushan, despite the brevity of her time there, felt like a fragile new home, a connection to a lost lineage. "I must return," she murmured, her voice tight. "Something… something is deeply wrong." The warmth of the monastery felt suddenly stifling.
Zhao Rui and Dun Che exchanged a grim nod. Intrigue gnawed at them, but loyalty, perhaps a debt for past kindnesses, bound them tighter. "We see it through," Zhao Rui stated, the unspoken agreement heavy between them. The path back to Shushan's formidable peaks felt longer, colder.
Their arrival met eerie silence. The vibrant hum of flying swords crisscrossing the peaks? Gone. The courtyards that once buzzed with disciplined energy? Deserted. Only the sigh of the wind through the pines and the lonely cry of distant cloud cranes disturbed the monumental stillness. The grandeur felt hollow, abandoned.
"Where is… everyone?" Dun Che rumbled, his large eyes scanning the desolate Sword-Shattering Courtyard. "Did the whole Sect evaporate like Master Lingfeng?" His confusion was palpable.
Zhao Rui's gaze swept the silent pavilions, the wind his only companion. "Not a sound," he whispered, a knot tightening in his gut. "Like a tomb carved from jade."
They flew deeper into the heart of the mountain domain, the emptiness pressing down. Nearing the base of the ascent towards the Golden Lotus Hall, a solitary figure on a low-grade spiritual sword skimmed past an auxiliary peak.
"You!" Zhao Rui called out, his voice slicing through the quiet. The disciple, recognizing Zhao Rui as a former guest of high standing under Li Lingfeng, jerked to a stop, bowing hastily.
"Honored… honored guests," the disciple stammered, eyes wide with residual shock from the recent upheavals. "The Sect… Acting Sect Leader Jingyan… he has taken almost everyone to Mount Longhu." Relief laced his words at finding someone to explain the silence.
"Mount Longhu?" Sun Xiaolan leaned forward, her knuckles white where she gripped the harness of her cloud crane. "Why?"
"The Celestial Masters," the disciple explained, dropping his voice conspiratorially. "Grandmaster Zhang Songli calls all righteous Sects to unite. Against the Demon Sect. It's… it's vital, they say. Almost every major sect has sent forces."
As the young man bowed again and sped off, relief palpable at escaping interrogation, Zhao Rui exchanged a dark look with his companions.
"So Jingyan ascends, and instantly herds Shushan into Zhang Songli's war drum," Zhao Rui murmured, his voice cold. The name tasted like poison. Jingyan – Sect Leader. A shudder of premonition ran through him.
Dun Che spat onto the pristine stone path. "Bah! How do they not see the weasel? Appointing that two-faced snake! Shushan Elders must've been struck blindfolded!"
"His mask is convincing," Zhao Rui countered, eyes narrowed. "He played the devoted disciple perfectly. Fooled his own master for decades. Fooling desperate Elders? Simple." The calculation chilled him.
Sun Xiaolan hadn't spoken. She stood rigid, her face pale as new jade. Zhao Rui touched her arm gently. "Xiaolan?"
She flinched, then sighed, the sound ragged. "Jingyan… his ambition," she began, forcing the words out, low and ashamed. "Before… before the Master sent me away… he tried… he cornered me." Color stained her cheeks, not of embarrassment, but of fury. "Master caught him, punished him – a century of solitude. That's why I was sent to Dragon Tone. To be… away. But now… now he sits there…" Her gesture encompassed the distant, shimmering spires of the Golden Lotus Hall. "This was never my home. It cannot be."
Zhao Rui's world constricted to a point of frigid fury. His vision swam, edges tinged with crimson. His Xiaolan? Threatened? Violated? The stolen power thrumming within him resonated with the volcanic rage exploding in his chest. Jingyan. The name ignited like gunpowder. His eyes, usually steady, turned into shards of glacial obsidian. "He dared touch you?" The question was low, deadly, the calm before an ice storm.
Dun Che bellowed, the sound echoing off the peaks, startling flocks of birds into panicked flight. "The worm! Crawl into a man's shadow and bite his heel? Zhao Rui, why didn't the lass tell us? We'd have painted the Obsidian Throne with his guts!"
"Because I knew this!" Sun Xiaolan cried, gesturing at their fury. "I knew you would clash! I knew Master would be caught between student and guest! I knew Shushan would become your enemy!" Her voice broke. "And he… he didn't succeed. It seemed… better to bear it. To avoid worse." The helplessness in her eyes was worse than tears.
"And now?" Zhao Rui's voice was dangerously calm, the icy center of the storm. The image of Xiaolan cornered, that predator's grin… it fueled the chill within him. "Jingyan tasted power then and hungered. Now he has the power of a mountain range at his back. Do you truly believe he forgot? Or forgave? His ambition is boundless. You are an obstacle, a prize, a thorn all at once. He will come for you."
The brutal logic struck Sun Xiaolan like a physical blow. Her shoulders slumped, the hopelessness settling deeper. The silence stretched, filled only by the keening wind through the peaks.
Zhao Rui watched her for a moment longer, the volcanic rage condensing into cold, crystalline purpose. He lifted his head, eyes fixed on the southern horizon where Mount Longhu pierced the sky. The air crackled with unspoken intent. "Since Shushan is deserted," he stated, his voice devoid of its previous heat, chillingly matter-of-fact, "and we crave clarity… a change of scenery seems prudent." A grim, predatory light flickered deep within his frigid gaze. "Let us see what spectacle Zhang Songli prepares… and pay our respects to Shushan's new Acting Leader. Mount Longhu awaits."