The wind was different now.

  Far from the forest clearing and the broken bodies left behind, the sky above Huajing City held a strange weight—as though the heavens themselves had turned to watch.

  And in the heart of the city, at the edge of the noble quarter, that weight finally cracked.

  ?

  It began with a whisper in the air.

  A sudden stilling of the incense in the Shen Family ancestral hall. A flicker in the flame. A pressure building behind the spirit mirror that no cultivator should ever ignore.

  Then—CRACK.

  A burst of spiritual backlash ripped through the quiet room, shattering one of the polished soul tablets with a sharp SNAP that echoed down the marble corridor.

  ?

  Shen Baolin, head of the Shen Family, snapped his eyes open mid-meditation.

  His breath caught.

  Not from fear.

  But from recognition.

  “Shen Huo,” he murmured. “Gone…”

  His qi surged into the room, scanning the fractured pieces.

  No trace of retreat. No soul tether left to reach.

  His son had died.

  And violently.

  Another shatter rang from the Wei estate. Then another—from the Yun ancestral crypt. By the time the sun passed its zenith, four noble households had felt the same sharp pain:

  Their sons—prized Core Formation heirs, were dead.

  ?

  Inside a tall, gilded tower of crimson jade, Elder Wei Jinhai stared at the remnants of his nephew’s soul tablet.

  It had been reduced to dust.

  He lifted his hand, the remnants glowing faintly across his palm.

  “Soul-wrecked,” he muttered. “Not just slain… Overwhelmed. Snuffed.”

  He clenched his fist.

  “Who dares—?”

  He already knew.

  There was only one type of spiritual pressure that could have done this. It hadn’t been brute force. It had been elegant, refined, deliberate.

  A pressure that disassembled rather than shattered.

  Resonant qi.

  A Twin Bloom.

  “Impossible,” he hissed. “They’re dead. They died with the heretics. The sects saw to it.”

  He turned.

  “Send word to the Pavilion. We must contact the other families.”

  ?

  In a shaded garden of silent illusions, Yun Meishan, matriarch of the Yun Family, sipped tea beneath a willow blossom.

  Three soul tablets lay cracked on the stone table beside her, leaking spiritual fragments into the mist.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  She did not scream.

  She did not curse.

  She simply breathed in the steam rising from her cup and narrowed her eyes.

  “One escaped,” she said.

  Her attendant stepped closer, head bowed.

  “Yes, Matriarch. A teleportation talisman was activated. One of the Lin-Fang model relics. Destination unknown.”

  “No,” Meishan whispered. “Not unknown. Home.”

  Her tea grew cold.

  “Have our dream-wardens ready the scrying pools. I want a name. A face. A thread of fate.”

  “And when you find it—”

  Her eyes glinted like moonlight through shattered glass.

  “We will unravel the roots.”

  ?

  In the highest level of Huajing’s central estate, Lin Zeyuan, ever the diplomat, stood quietly before the fractured remains of his cousin’s soul shard.

  He said nothing.

  But a moment later, he crushed it underfoot.

  “Sloppy,” he murmured. “A poor death.”

  His aides stood frozen behind him.

  “What would you like to do, Lord Lin?”

  He smiled.

  “Nothing… yet.”

  “But—?”

  “We let the city speak first. Let fear ferment. Then we arrive as the solution.”

  He turned, robes whispering with every step.

  “And when the time comes… we collect what’s owed.”

  ?

  In a bloodstained hall beneath a merchant compound along the southern walls of Huajing, the teleportation talisman flared to life.

  The survivor collapsed, his mouth open in a silent scream. Blood streamed from his lips. His body was scorched. His meridians—seared and twisted.

  He had seen something that shattered his will.

  He had felt a pressure that did not belong to mortals.

  He barely breathed out a single name—

  “Lotus…”

  Then he fell unconscious.

  ?

  Whispers spread quickly.

  ? “A massacre in the eastern woodlands.”

  ? “They say noble heirs were killed—Core cultivators.”

  ? “No survivors but one—and he’s not speaking.”

  ? “The pressure was too refined… too complete. Not rogue cultivators.”

  ? “Who did this?”

  The council halls began to murmur.

  And among the Four Pillars, subtle alliances formed like clouds darkening the sky.

  The ghosts of the Twin Lotus Clan had returned.

  And this time, they would not be so easy to bury.