Floating Cloud City was quiet.
Too quiet.
The kind of silence that comes before thunder. Farmers noticed it in the stillness of their oxen. Traders noticed it in the way birds didn't cross the sky.
And Li Fan noticed it in the stillness of qi.
"Yun Che's coming back," he whispered, perched atop the Xiao Clan's outer wall, invisible beneath a dusk-hued cloak of shifting light.
He had arrived three nights earlier, crossing the southern forests under cover of mist. He hadn't entered the city openly. He hadn't needed to.
The dead never use the front gate.
---
Floating Cloud City wasn't strong.
It didn't need to be.
Nestled at the border of forgotten provinces, it had always survived by staying beneath the notice of the world.
But that had changed.
Yun Che had once died here.
His body burned. His secrets buried. His soul sent away.
Now he was returning—as a rising star, bearing the flames of the Phoenix, the name of Frozen Cloud Asgard, and the grudges of a boy who had been broken here.
And the city would remember him.
Whether it wanted to or not.
---
Li Fan crept through their compound like mist through rafters.
He hadn't come to kill.
Not yet.
But the Xiao Clan's vitality had caught his attention.
Though weak by realm standards, their inner qi structures were… orderly. Balanced. Like seeds not yet watered.
"Interesting," he mused, crouching in the rafters above the main cultivation hall. "No wonder the boy came from here."
He recognized one aura.
Xiao Lie.
Yun Che's grandfather. Wounded. Slumbering. But possessing something far more precious than strength:
Stability.
Li Fan didn't touch him.
Instead, he fed on the residual energy of Xiao Clan's lesser members—young disciples, guards, men who wouldn't be missed.
But he only took the edges of their strength. Nibbles. Impressions. No corpses.
For now.
"I want to know the whole shape of this grudge," he said, walking barefoot through their scroll vault at midnight.
"I want to see what kind of hate raises a god."
---
On the fifth day, Yun Che returned.
The city didn't recognize him at first.
But the ground did.
The moment his feet touched soil, the air shivered.
And when he walked into the Xiao Clan compound like a man come home from war, people finally understood.
"He's back…"
"He's changed…"
"He—he's terrifying…"
Li Fan watched from a rooftop, legs crossed, face still.
He watched Yun Che embrace Xiao Lie. Speak gently to Xiao Lingxi. Bow toward the Xiao Clan's ancestral tablet.
And then…
He watched him walk straight into the hall of Xiao Sect's branch family.
And break it.
---
It wasn't a battle.
It was a correction.
Yun Che didn't kill them all.
He didn't need to.
Just a few cripplings. A few flames. A few broken dantians and seared pride.
And when he left them, smoldering and crying in their ruined courtyard, even the sky seemed to dim.
"I am Yun Che," he said, loud enough for the entire city to hear.
"And I don't forget."
Li Fan closed his eyes.
He had seen pride before.
But this…
This was personal vengeance refined into art.
"You hate beautifully," he murmured.
"I wonder what you'll become… when there's nothing left to hate."
---
That night, Li Fan went to the Xiao Sect's destroyed quarters.
The injured had been dragged away. But blood still stained the floor. Qi still trembled in the air.
And in the dark…
He fed.
Not on flesh.
But on the echo of suffering.
The impressions of technique. The collapse of pride. The structure of fallen cultivations.
He inhaled it like smoke.
And for the first time in days, he grew again.
Not stronger.
Not faster.
But colder.
His flame changed hue—tinged now with grey. Ash. A new element.
"I can eat death now," he said softly.
"Not just life."
---
Floating Cloud City would recover.
The Xiao Clan would rebuild.
But Li Fan had already taken what he wanted.
And Yun Che?
He had tasted vengeance.
And was already turning his eyes toward the Burning Heaven Clan.
"Good," Li Fan said, walking out of the city at midnight with a stolen cloak and new, quiet strength.
"Go. Burn them."
"And I'll follow… and feast on the ash."