Chapter 4: The Uninvited Guest
1514 Words
“Welcome, noble guests, to this most blessed of days!” The announcer's voice boomed across the main square of the Sky Peak Sect.
Crimson lanterns adorned every corner of the sprawling complex. The scent of expensive incense hung heavy in the air, mingling with the rich aromas of a feast prepared for thousands of guests representing the realm’s greatest sects.
On the high stage, Lin Xue stood draped in white silk embroidered with threads of pure gold. She was breathtakingly beautiful, yet her eyes remained as cold as ice, surveying the crowd with the detached arrogance of a goddess.
Mu Chen stood beside her, clad in vibrant red robes. Every so often, his hands pulsed with a shimmering golden aura, a blatant display of his stolen spirit root intended for anyone watching.
“You look tense, Mu Chen,” Lin Xue whispered without turning her head.
“I just feel as though someone has been watching us since dawn. Perhaps it is only my imagination,” Mu Chen replied, forcing a smile for a sect elder who offered a respectful bow.
“Do not be a fool. He is rotting at the bottom of the abyss. No one returns from that place,” Lin Xue said firmly.
Just as the sect priest raised his hands to begin the marriage vows, a long, dark shadow crept across the red carpet. The shadow moved against the natural slant of the sunlight, stretching forward until it touched Mu Chen’s feet.
“Stop.” A cold voice cut through the air from the main gate.
The guests turned in unison. There, standing at the entrance, was a man in tattered black robes. His hood was pulled low, masking most of his face in darkness.
Yet, the aura he radiated caused the flowers lining the walkway to wither instantly.
“Who are you? How dare you disrupt this ceremony!” a clan guard shouted, drawing his blade.
The man stepped forward. Each footprint he left on the white marble floor was a scorched, blackened mark. I have brought a wedding gift, long overdue.
Lin Xue narrowed her eyes. Her heart hammered against her ribs, a sensation she had not felt in a long time. That voice...
Han Ye slowly pulled back his hood. His pitch-black eyes locked onto the couple on the stage. There was no love in his gaze. There was no explosive rage. There was only a terrifying, hollow emptiness.
“Han Ye?” Mu Chen recoiled, his face turning as pale as a corpse. “Impossible! You should be dead!”
“I hate to disappoint you, Mu Chen. As it turns out, Hell was far too crowded to take me in,” Han Ye said. He strolled casually past the guests, who began to whisper in mounting fear.
“Guards! Kill him now! He is a demon in disguise!” Lin Xue shrieked, her voice cracking with panic.
A dozen high-ranking guards lunged at Han Ye, their weapons glowing with infused Qi. These were the elite fighters of the Han Clan, men Han Ye had once respected.
Han Ye merely raised a hand. Vanish.
There was no explosion, no spray of blood. Their weapons simply ceased to be the moment they touched the black aura surrounding Han Ye. They weren't broken; they were erased from existence.
The guards froze, staring at their empty, trembling hands.
“What did you do? What kind of power is this?” one guard stammered before collapsing, his entire cultivation base drained by the very air around Han Ye.
“Mu Chen, why don't you show them that magnificent golden spirit root of yours?” Han Ye said, continuing his steady climb toward the stage. “Show them how you stole it from me.”
“Do not listen to him! He is insane!” Mu Chen cried. He tried to manifest golden energy in his palms to strike, but his hands shook violently. The golden light flickered and rebelled, as if trying to tear itself away from his body.
“Look at that,” Han Ye said, pointing at Mu Chen’s chest. “The root rejects you. Every second you use it, it shreds your own meridians. You are a thief who doesn't even know how to hold onto what he stole.”
The guests began to trade uneasy glances. Rumors of Mu Chen’s sudden rise to genius status had circulated for months, but seeing the golden energy thrash wildly before their eyes offered a different kind of proof.
“Silence, you piece of trash!” Mu Chen screamed, driven to madness. He leapt from the stage, driving a fist wreathed in golden light toward Han Ye’s face. Die a second time!
Han Ye did not flinch. He caught Mu Chen’s fist with a single palm. The impact sent a shockwave through the square, flipping heavy banquet tables and shattering pottery.
Yet, Han Ye remained perfectly still.
“Is this all?” Han Ye whispered directly into Mu Chen’s face.
Black energy began to crawl from Han Ye’s hand onto Mu Chen’s arm. Mu Chen shrieked in agony as he felt his cultivation being gnawed away. Let go! It hurts!
“Xue-er, help me!” Mu Chen cried out to his fiancée.
Lin Xue stood frozen. She looked at Han Ye with an expression that was hard to decipher. There was terror, yes, but also a strange, twisted sense of awe at the sheer magnitude of his power.
“Han Ye, stop this. If you stand down now, I can beg the sect leader to show you mercy.”
Han Ye laughed, a dry, hollow sound that was painful to hear. “Mercy? After you held my shoulders so he could stab me? After you watched me die at the bottom of that gorge? You still have the nerve to speak of mercy?”
Han Ye tightened his grip. The sound of Mu Chen’s arm bones snapping echoed through the silent square. “I loved you once, Xue-er. But now, I cannot even remember what that felt like. To me, you are nothing more than a small stain I wish to wipe away.”
“Enough!” A majestic voice thundered from the heavens.
Suddenly, a blinding white light descended from the sky, forcing Han Ye and Mu Chen apart. A middle-aged man in pristine white robes, bearing the golden sun emblem on his chest, drifted slowly to the ground.
An Envoy of the Eternal Light Sect, the guests whispered, dropping to their knees in prostration.
The man looked at Han Ye with eyes full of hatred masked by a veneer of holiness. A foul creature like you dares to show its face on this holy day? You carry the disgusting stench of the Void.
Han Ye looked up, his black eyes unblinking in the face of the divine light. “The Eternal Light Sect?” Finally, the master of these dogs shows his face.
“Insolence!” The envoy raised his hand, and a massive sword of light materialized above Han Ye’s head. “For the peace of this world, I shall obliterate you here and now.”
Han Ye actually smiled. He could hear the Heavenly Emperor’s voice laughing uproariously inside his mind.
“See that, Han Ye? Those who call themselves holy are always the first to kill, for they fear the truth more than anything else.”
“Try it then,” Han Ye challenged.
As the light-sword descended with a speed that could cleave a mountain, Han Ye did not summon his black energy to block it. Instead, he spread his arms wide, letting the attack strike him directly.
A cataclysmic explosion followed, leveling the wedding stage and shrouding the area in a thick cloud of debris. Lin Xue was thrown backward, while Mu Chen crawled away, clutching his ruined arm.
As the dust began to settle, a collective gasp rose from the crowd. Han Ye was still standing, completely unharmed. In his hand, he held a small, faintly glowing object an ancient relic he had somehow retrieved from the heart of the explosion.
The Envoy of the Eternal Light Sect turned pale. “How is it possible for you to possess that relic?”
Han Ye looked at the object in his hand, then turned a chilling gaze toward the envoy. “This is only the beginning of the apocalypse you brought upon yourselves.”
Suddenly, the bright midday sky turned as black as midnight.
Violent winds began to swirl through the courtyard as bone-chilling screams echoed from the woods just beyond the sect's walls.
"What are you doing, Han Ye?" Lin Xue cried out, her voice trembling.
Han Ye offered no reply. He remained fixed on the relic, murmuring a silent incantation meant for his ears alone. Suddenly, the shadow at his feet erupted, swallowing the entire ceremonial area in a thick, suffocating darkness.
From deep within the gloom, the envoy let out a scream of pure terror, a sound that should have been impossible for a holy cultivator to make.
- Writer
