The courtyard was quiet, too quiet.
Broken tiles lay scattered across the training ground, their sharp edges catching the faint evening light. In the center, a boy knelt, blood dripping from the corner of his lips, mixing with the dust at his feet.
Tianzhan. Eighteen years old. The joke of Stormwind Sect.
"You're still alive?" a mocking voice sneered. "I thought you'd be smart enough to stay down after the last beating."
A group of outer sect disciples stood around him, sneering, laughing. One of them, Bai Wei—a senior disciple with a cruel streak—stepped forward and kicked Tianzhan in the chest, sending him sprawling to the ground.
No one stepped in. No one ever did.
Tianzhan coughed violently, tasting iron. His fingers clawed weakly at the dirt as he tried to stand, but his body refused to move.
"You've been in this sect for five years and haven't even opened your meridians," Bai Wei spat. "No cultivation. No power. Not even a hint of spiritual energy. Just leave the sect and go back to whatever hole you came from."
They kicked him again. Harder.
But Tianzhan didn't scream. He didn't cry. He never did.
He simply stared up at the sky—blank, pale, endless.
That night, he lay curled in a corner of the disciple quarters, his body trembling with fever. His insides burned. The poison was already spreading.
He knew.
They'd finally done it.
Someone had poisoned him.
As the final breath slipped from his lips, the world grew distant. Cold. Dark.
But in that silence, something ancient stirred.
A ripple in the fabric of the world.
A golden spark shot down from the heavens—silent, unnoticed by all. It pierced the dying boy's chest and vanished inside.
Somewhere far beyond the mortal realm, a sealed soul trembled.
"So… this is the vessel fate offers me?"
A deep, cold voice echoed within the void.
"Weak… but not broken. And this body… a god-tier spiritual root? Hidden? Sealed? Hmph."
The soul of the immortal—once feared across realms, once betrayed at the edge of his ascension—descended into the vessel of the boy called Tianzhan.
And when his eyes opened again, they were not the same.
Gone was the blank gaze of a helpless youth.
In its place burned a cold, calculating fire.
"You poisoned this body."
His voice was low, hoarse… ancient.
"Now, I will poison your world with vengeance."