Chapter 384 – The Sunmother’s Firstborn, Harvesting Ancestral Seal Seed, Erasing a Ghost Domain - Part 2

That night the axe vanished, it was as if the sky had fallen. Every man, woman, and child felt themselves hanging over a razor’s edge.

While panic reigned, the eight-year-old Naran mounted his direwolf Finn, gripped an ordinary woodsman’s axe, and plunged into the blizzard.

One boy, one wolf, one plain axe, gone for a full day and night.

When Naran returned, he was drenched head-to-toe in blood, eyes alight with exhilaration, and in his fist he carried the golden Khagan’s Axe, its edge crimson with fresh gore.

He snatched the golden axe back before it could reach Hudor’s hand.

In that instant his childhood peeled away. He became a lone eagle surveying the heavens, a lion-king in his prime. Only eight years old, he led a hundred tribal warriors straight into the Bronze Clad Tribe’s encampment, shattered Hudor’s rebel force like dry twigs, and then executed every traitor and every accomplice in pitiless fashion.

Blood and bones piled into steps beneath his boots.

Step by step he climbed, until he stood at the summit as the true Khagan

Li Yuan listened, speechless for a long time. He could picture the danger and the thrill of that day and knew it was entirely his son Naran’s legend, a glory that belonged to the boy alone.

Pride swelled in his chest.

He swallowed the urge to tell the woman before him that he could live forever. He couldn’t change the lifespans of Snow or Naran; the best he could do was try to guide them to the Deathless Tomb when their final hour came.

His own return to the Sunmother’s embrace would be the perfect ending for them both. The Sunmother’s firstborn would gaze down forever, blessing them, and they would reunite with him after death.

Death would not be farewell but homecoming.

If he confessed he might linger in the world for decades, that promise would crumble to dust. So Li Yuan merely said that although he was old, the Sunmother still favored him. He could still wander and see the world.

“You haven’t come back to stay?” Snow asked.

Li Yuan shook his head. “I missed you, that’s all. There are still tasks on my shoulders.”

“You should wait for Naran to return? He’ll be back in a few days. With the tribe swelling, a khagan has to temper himself in the frozen tundra and also look after his people.”

Li Yuan had planned to remain a while, but his mind had changed. “One god, one khagan, one khatun...that’s enough for the people of the Nine Flames. If I stay, it only plants softness in his heart.” He paused. “Better not to meet. But—”

He closed his eyes, thinking. “That doesn’t mean I can’t leave something for him. Pass me some paper and ink.”

The old Snow would have clung to him like a girl. Now she bore the weight of fate, history pressing on her shoulders.

A thousand protests shrank to a dignified, “Mhmm.”

Snow ground the ink, and Li Yuan took up the brush.

After a moment’s thought he began sketching little figures, adding notes beside each. These were his musings on power born from the Everflame.

The Ice Folk could never achieve his own Mortal World Transformation, yet they could still marshal the Yang energy in their bodies. With the Khagan’s Axe as a catalyst, they might attain a similar effect, growing taller, broader, and swelling to the size of a giant.

Anyone who mastered it would command Yang energy to a peerless degree.

When he finished, he wrote a title down the left margin—Nine Suns Divine Art. Beneath it he added,

First Form, Nine Suns Prosperous Dawn.

“This,” Li Yuan said solemnly, “is what the Sunmother entrusted to her firstborn, who appeared in a dream to the Khatun so that our tribe might pass it on.”

Snow’s eyes shimmered red.

She knew her man was leaving again.

Li Yuan drew her into his arms. “You said it yourself. I am the Sunmother’s firstborn. I’ll come back.”

The white-haired elder had arrived leaning on a walking stick, and he departed the same way. No one realized that their former Khagan had been among them; every gaze was fixed on the new Khagan who would lead them to glory.

The Western Extremes were unified, and Cloudpeak Province was unified as well.

The Khagan and Great Matron Tang reigned supreme in each respectively.

Beyond that Sheng'er tightened her grip on Cloudpeak Province with the help of the human-skin manacles with an army of Ice Folk behind her.

The ghost domain deep in the mountains, and the two new powers sprouting up around the nearby meat fields remained hidden behind the curtain.

West of Sword Mountain, the board was set. East of the range lay refugee camps from the Central Plains, serving as useful buffers.

Li Yuan’s escape routes were finally taking shape; anyone who dared invade would pay dearly.

He had come burdened with worries. He left still carrying a sliver of gloom, yet light-footed with joy, because his youngest son, Naran, had found his own path. It was a blazing epic exactly as his mother had foreseen, a life that would compress centuries of grandeur into 30 to 40 brilliant years.

What regret could there be?

Li Yuan was happy for the boy, and secretly thought his son might be greater than he ever was.

His youngest son could already snatch victory from the jaws of disaster, rule with iron-blooded speed, and climb a staircase of bones to the throne of the Khagan.

Li Yuan himself, at that age, had probably still been glued to cartoons and worrying about schoolyard bullies.

“Time to get back to work,” he muttered to himself.

The world was full of dangers, and more were on the way. It was best to get rid of them quietly while they were still

potential

problems.

Li Yuan had never liked waiting until calamity was pounding on the door.

His edge was simple; he moved in the dark. He was a man who did not exist. If he didn’t exist, no one could come looking for him. And being invisible was even safer than keeping a low profile.

Yet for all his non-existence, he was everywhere. Storm clouds across the realm were tied to him by a thousand invisible threads. He had no wish to stir those clouds, only to be sure they never swallowed him or wiped out his family.

His life, he felt, was far from finished. He had ages yet to live and countless lives still to taste. There was more wine to drink, more beauties to meet, more scenery to admire, and endless trivialities utterly unrelated to greatness.

In short, he did not intend to die.

So anything that might kill him...would simply have to die first.

˙·٠✧🐗➶➴🏹✧٠·˙

Late March. Spring rain whispered over a small township.

Deep in a lonely grove stood two neglected graves.

One stone read

Here Lies Master Li Yu

. The other read

Here Lies Beloved Father, Tang Qiu

.

A gust of ill wind rustled the trees.

A big-boned figure stepped from the undergrowth—broad shoulders, a brutish jaw, and a woman’s face thick with muscle.

Zhao Chunxin slung an executioner’s blade across her back and carried two jars of wine.

With two crisp cracks she broke the seals, splashed most of one jar over Li Yu’s mound, then tipped a share onto Tang Qiu’s.

She bowed. “Master, I’ve come again. You never would’ve guessed the chubby girl who could barely swing a crescent blade would one day reach fifth rank, eh?”

Pride coloured her words; bitterness lingered on her face. Rain and wine dripped from her thick lips while loneliness darkened her eyes.

“You’d never believe it. I’ve now become the

Blade Lord

of the Final Blade, one of the three blade lords of The Bladeseekers. So many disciples, so much power, more resources than I could ever spend... Your disciple is truly so happy. You in the heavens must be happy too...right?”

The smile she forced twisted into self-mockery.

She drained the first jar; its wine was laced with burning heart flowers, an herb she could never afford before yet now could use with abandon.

After all, she was a blade lord, and the other two lords were all members of the Lotus Cult.

Suddenly the scar-faced woman began to sob.

“I made fifth rank, and

then

they told me the truth. The Bladeseekers is nothing but a pig farm! They asked if I wanted my life in trade for justice, or strength in trade for tomorrow.” She laughed, ragged and wild. “Of course, I told them I wanted strength for tomorrow!”

Jerking the second jar to her lips, she coughed and swilled. “It still tastes like it did 30 years ago, exactly the same! Hahaha!”

Her head lolled sideways, and snores followed.

Amidst the spring rain, blade still in hand, Zhao Chunxin fell into a drunken sleep.

High on a branch, a sparrow watched her.

Moments later, a figure slipped from the shadows.

Fingers flicked; an invisible silken thread coiled around the sleeping woman.

The newcomer laid two small bouquets of white blossoms before the tombstones, bowed, and spared the dozing woman one last look before vanishing.

It was Li Yuan.

After arriving in Gemhill County, he had blended into the crowd like any ordinary soul.

Dusk was falling as he slipped out the northern gate and made for The Bladeseekers headquarters.

Along the road he passed two disciples in black lotus robes sharing an oil-paper umbrella. Their chatter told him they were heading to the Exotic Beast Valley for a shift change.

Li Yuan raised a hand. Silent blade qi drew a line across the air, snipping a single strand of hair from one girl’s head. She never noticed. The hair drifted down, only for a diving bird to snatch it mid-fall and carry it to his waiting palm.

He harvested a few more strands the same way. After nightfall he slipped into a deserted forest, ready to question the strands, ready to learn everything the hair could tell him about the Exotic Beast Valley and The Bladeseekers.

Birds overhead, razor-thin blade qi slashing out from miles away, the white wooden casket, and the Mortal World Transformation skill...together they formed an intelligence net so tight you could sieve sand with it.

Within a few days of quiet watching, Li Yuan had the swap-shifts, patrol routes, even the names and power rankings of every resident expert at two separate sites memorized.

A month later, when the weakest of those experts happened to be on duty, he slipped into the Exotic Beast Valley disguised as a junior handler. While

feeding

the exotic beasts he pinched the ancestral seal seeds as lightly as a pickpocket stole a purse.

The handler on shift that night had never known what hit him; Li Yuan rewrote the fellow’s fate with a pair of human-skin manacles.

After studying the man’s every habit, he planted a tidy instruction.

“Hide outdoors for one night and tell no one. Pretend your watch ended normally. A few days later, while cataloguing poisons for the Black Lotus Cult, you’ll fumble a vial, brush a drop across your skin, and drop stone-dead. An unfortunate accident, nothing more.”

He used the same recipe back in The Bladeseekers headquarters, slipping in a second time to lift the seeds from several sixth rank disciples who had gone mad but had not yet been carted away.

The instant each seed disappeared into Li Yuan’s body it became

legitimate

, the raving disciples went still, closed their eyes, and dropped into deep sleep.

Come daylight they would wake to discover themselves branded lucky. No exile, no lunacy, they’d merely be appointed new instructors, perhaps even future blade lords like Zhao Chunxin or Yang Teng.

Li Yuan passed through like a phantom, job done, no one the wiser.

A flex of the fingers and he was back in Dawn Manor.

The route was secure. There was no need to spend another night in Gemhill County.