Author's Note:(The Sovereign has claimed his crown of destiny, and his power has spilled over his loyalists. In this first part of the chapter, we will see the consequences of that blood oath. The semifinals have arrived, but the Hundred Sects are about to discover that they are no longer facing six individual geniuses; they are facing a single, six-headed monster. Let the synchronized massacre begin).
Chapter 33: Heritage, Treachery, and the Roar Beneath the Crimson Moon (Part 1)
The night following the fall of the Jade Labyrinth was unusually silent in the Celestial City. In the palaces and pavilions of the major sects, the Patriarchs did not sleep. Their minds spun around a single, terrifying truth: the Morningstar Clan was not only invincible in one-on-one combat; they now possessed the resources, spatial rings, and secrets of dozens of dead geniuses.
But in the Inn of the Jade Lotus, the temporary home of the desert tyrants, a metaphysical phenomenon that defied the laws of cultivation was taking place.
Following Samael's violent assimilation of the Celestial Destiny Fragment, the excess karmic energy had flowed through the Blood Oath into the chests of Kael, Violeta, Eris, Cedric, Xylia, and Elowen. It not only consolidated their realms and expanded their meridians, but it forged an invisible, dark, and absolute bond.
In the meditation room, the six heirs sat in a circle. Their breathing aligned unnaturally.
Kael closed his eyes and, without looking, knew exactly that Violeta was channeling frost three meters to his right. He could feel the calculating pulse of Cedric's mind as if it were his own thought. Eris could perceive her sister's stellar cold, while Xylia and Elowen felt the heartbeat of destruction and the sword.
Samael, standing in the shadows of the room, watched as the heraldic marks on his generals' chests glowed in unison with a violet and scarlet radiance.
In the Sovereign's retina, the golden letters of the System confirmed what his dragon eyes already saw.
[Patriarch System: Karmic Spillover Effect Stabilized.][Blood Oath Evolved: SOUL NEXUS.][Description: The extreme loyalty, forged in slaughter and bathed in the Sovereign's blood, has synchronized the spiritual frequencies of the heirs. In combat, they are capable of sharing instincts, anticipating movements at a subconscious level, and fusing elemental concepts without the need for verbal communication. They operate as a Martial Hive Mind.]
Samael smiled in the shadows.
"Open your eyes," his voice ordered, deep and serene.
The six generals opened their eyes simultaneously. There was a lethal clarity in their gazes. They were no longer just an elite team; they were six limbs of the same dragon.
"Tomorrow, Valerius Valois will try to corner us in the semifinals," Samael said, crossing his arms. "He will use the team format to overwhelm you. I don't want you to simply win. I want you to dismember them with such a level of perfection that the entire Empire loses hope of ever touching us."
The Dawn of Treachery
When the sun tinged the crystals of the Jade Coliseum gold, the stands were packed. The air was heavy, suffocating. The Head Judge, sweating under the murderous glare of Valerius Valois from the VIP box, raised his arms to silence the crowd.
"The Semifinals of the Summit of the Hundred Sects begin!" the judge announced, his voice lacking the enthusiasm of the early days. "The format will be Double Matches! Cooperation and the use of formations will decide the finalists!"
Samael, standing in the waiting area, observed the list of matchups projected onto the jade sky. It was an obvious trap. Valerius had paired the Morningstar heirs with the most lethal combinations from the sects allied to the Purple Light, seeking to counter their specific affinities.
But before Kael and Cedric could step out into the arena, Samael's Patriarch Eye detected an unnatural fluctuation.
Samael slowly turned his head toward his own rear guard. Among the disciples guarding the tunnel entrance, one of the minor guard captains was sweating profusely. His hand trembled near the seal of a containment formation hidden in his tunic. He had been bought. Or, more likely, blackmailed by the Valois assassins with the lives of his family in another city.
Samael didn't give a speech. There was no trial.
He extended his hand. The sheer gravitational force of the Void wrapped around the traitorous captain's neck, lifting him into the air as he kicked and choked.
Samael walked toward him, plunged two fingers into the folds of the man's tunic, and extracted a Heaven Grade explosive talisman that was about to be activated to collapse the tunnel on top of them.
"Loyalty born of love is noble," Samael whispered, his violet eyes piercing the terrified soul of the traitor. "But treachery, regardless of its origin, has only one payout in my empire."
Samael clenched his fist. The captain's neck snapped sickeningly, and his limp body fell to the stone floor. The other disciples gulped, instantly dropping to their knees in absolute submission. The Patriarch's tyranny was the shield that kept them alive, and no one questioned his methods.
Samael crushed the talisman with the Void and looked at his first two heirs.
"Cedric. Kael. The arena is yours."
The Butcher and the Architect (Kael and Cedric)
"First Match! Kael and Cedric Morningstar against the Blood Brothers of the Eternal Lion Sect!"
The arena trembled as two giants entered through the north gate. They were cultivators at Stage 8 of the Transcendent Realm, but their auras were intertwined by a body formation that temporarily elevated their physical strength to the level of an Initial Semi-Saint. Their bodies were coated in a dense, golden Qi armor, impenetrable to any conventional weapon.
Kael and Cedric walked toward the center. They didn't exchange words. The Soul Nexus was already humming in their chests.
The Lion Brothers roared in unison, leaping forward with the intention of crushing the Morningstars beneath a rain of boulder-sized golden fists.
Cedric smiled. His bicolored eyes flashed.
"Too predictable."
The strategist activated the [Seal Emperor's Forge].
Instead of attacking the giants, Cedric stomped heavily on the arena floor. Hundreds of silver metal Qi threads shot from his boots, infiltrating the jade tiles of the coliseum. In a microsecond, Cedric not only dismantled the defensive matrices the judges had placed in the arena; he controlled them.
Colossal pillars of spiritual metal emerged from the earth and crashed into the mid-leap giants, altering their trajectory. But Cedric didn't stop there. His Great Emperor mind hacked directly into the enemies' golden Qi armor. Cedric's metal threads tangled in the external meridians of the brothers, destabilizing their body formation and creating a minuscule gap at the nape of their Semi-Saint defense.
Cedric didn't even have to warn Kael. The Soul Nexus had already transmitted the exact coordinates of the gap a millisecond before it opened.
Kael moved.
[Sword Art: Phantom Gale Slash].
The acoustic void enveloped his sword. Kael vanished from the spectators' sight, becoming a silver blur that slid beneath the crushing fist of one of the giants. The silent speed of the technique allowed him to position himself behind the mid-air brothers.
Just as Cedric's matrix opened the gap in the golden armor, Kael's sword was already descending. The Vanguard abandoned the silence and unleashed the pure tyranny of his will.
[Sovereign's Slash].
The purplish and crimson light erupted. The slash was so clean, absolute, and devastating that it completely ignored the physical density of the giants. The bloodline crossed the necks of both Eternal Lion Brothers simultaneously.
The two decapitated bodies hit the sand with a brutal crash. Kael landed softly, sheathing the Whisper of the North, while Cedric's metal pillars dissolved back into the floor. They had massacred two experts with Semi-Saint power in less than three breaths, operating with a synchrony that terrified the Patriarchs in the boxes.
The Symphony of White Death (Violeta and Elowen)
Before the audience could recover from the shock, the judge, stuttering, announced the next match.
"S-Second Match! Violeta and Elowen Morningstar against the Supreme Champions of the Poisonous Serpent Sect and the Mist Swan!"
The opponents didn't waste any time. Knowing what the Morningstars were capable of, they unleashed their combined attack from the very first second. The Swan assassin filled the arena with a thick illusory mist that created hundreds of mirages, while the Serpent champion injected a black neurotoxic miasma into the fog. It was a death trap: if you breathed, you died; if you tried to look for the enemy, the illusions disoriented you until the poison melted your lungs.
Violeta and Elowen stood in the center of the cloud of death.
Through the Soul Nexus, Violeta felt Elowen's mild amusement. They didn't need to speak.
Elowen closed her eyes and raised her hands. Her Wood Dragon Bloodline resonated with the corrupted nature. Instead of curing the poison from the air, Elowen became a botanical black hole. She used her supreme alchemy to suck in tons of the neurotoxic miasma, compressing it between her palms. She didn't purify the toxin; she condensed it to form a small sphere of liquid poison, black and hyper-dense, so lethal that a single drop could rot an entire city.
Through the empathic link, Elowen passed the sphere of pure death to Violeta.
Violeta took the toxic sphere with her left hand. At the same time, she unsheathed her fine rapier with her right.
"Enough tricks," the ice dragon whispered.
Violeta executed the [Lunar Frost Waltz].
Her body spun with deadly grace. Dozens of arcs of Absolute Ice shot from her rapier. She didn't try to hit the mirages. Her frost froze the very moisture in the air. The illusory mist instantly crystallized and fell to the ground like heavy snow, shattering the illusion matrix and leaving the two enemy champions completely exposed and astonished at the other end of the arena.
The enemies tried to retreat, but they were already in Violeta's net.
Violeta activated the [Step Between Worlds].
Space tore. Violeta disappeared and materialized mere inches from the faces of the two champions. Before they could raise their swords, Violeta used micro-scale spatial manipulation. She folded the space directly around the mouths and noses of the enemies and teleported Elowen's hyper-dense poison capsule directly into their lungs.
The effect was instantaneous and horrifying. The Serpent and Swan champions fell to their knees, their eyes bursting with black blood, clawing at their throats as their internal organs dissolved in seconds.
Violeta flicked her rapier, clearing it of harmless frost, and walked back to a smiling Elowen. The clinical and suffocating execution left the arena paralyzed by disgust and terror.
The Plasma Storm (Eris and Xylia)
"T-Third Match!" shrieked the judge, pale as a corpse. "Eris and Xylia Morningstar against the Princes of the Eternal Flame Sect and Imperial Thunder!"
Two arrogant youths with halos of fire and electricity bounded into the arena. They were the epitome of pure elemental destruction among the Hundred Sects.
"It doesn't matter what tricks you use!" shouted the Prince of Thunder. "Absolute fire and lightning cannot be stopped by...!"
He couldn't finish the sentence.
Through the Soul Nexus, Eris and Xylia shared an overflowing fury and a plan so destructive that the entire coliseum would tremble.
Xylia didn't wait. Her eyes rolled back white, channeling the power of a monarch.
"Silence, scum," she decreed.
She unleashed the [Heavenly Thunder Mandate].
Thousands of white and black lightning bolts fell from the clear sky, but they didn't strike the bodies of the princes. They struck around them, instantly forging a hyper-dense electromagnetic cage, a cube of solid lightning that was impossible to escape without being fried alive. The two princes were locked in the center of the arena.
Eris, fifty meters away, felt the exact coordinates of the cage in her mind thanks to Xylia.
The redhead took a colossal leap into the sky. In mid-air, she materialized her immense weapon forged of fire.
[Heaven-Piercing Phoenix Spear].
She plummeted like a burning meteorite, but her target wasn't the princes. Her target was her own teammate's cage.
Right at the moment of impact, Eris injected the pure, absolute annihilation of the [Flame of Ruin] into the tip of her spear and smashed it directly against the electromagnetic bars of Xylia's prison.
The black fire of destruction fused with the pressure of the confined lightning. The result was not a simple explosion. It was the creation of a dark plasma furnace.
The interior of the cage became a vortex of electromagnetic ruin. The screams of the Princes of Flame and Thunder were devoured by the deafening roar of their own annihilation. When Xylia lowered her hand and the lightning cage dissipated, there were no corpses, no ashes, not even dust. Only two scorched shadows imprinted on the melted jade of the arena.
Pure Area of Effect annihilation.
In the boxes, the Patriarchs of the Hundred Sects shrank back in their thrones, bathed in cold sweat. It wasn't just individual power; it was the way the Morningstars moved, read each other's intentions, and combined elemental concepts that should be incompatible. They were a lethal hive mind.
In the VIP box, Valerius Valois smashed his fist against the obsidian wall, cracking it.
Terror had gripped the tournament. The Holy Son knew the heirs were already unstoppable, and the true monster, the Sovereign of the Void, still had to step into the arena for his rigged duel.
Valerius looked at his master.
"Make sure the Ancestor's puppet is ready in the arena. Today, Samael Morningstar will know hell."
(The coliseum holds its breath as the blood dries. In the second part, Samael will face the ultimate Valois heresy, and in the shadows of the inn, a Grand Elder will rise from her ashes).