The cavern of the Blood Siphoning Sect was a monument to subterranean dread, a fifty-kilometer expanse of hollowed earth where the air tasted of copper and stagnant damp. At its heart sat the sect city, a jagged forest of polished obsidian spires and stone-carved fortresses that seemed to grow like malignant crystals from the cavern floor.
In the training grounds of the outer ring, the atmosphere was thick with the rhythmic, wet sounds of the Siphoning Arts. Hundreds of disciples stood over shackled slaves, their hands glowing with a sickly red light as they slowly unspooled the life force from their victims, refining the raw vitality into jagged wisps of qi.
The rhythmic drone was shattered by a sound of pure, unadulterated primal fury.
"AHHHHHHH!"
Derek Morrison who's soul was also that of the pale frame of Vex Spiritbane—lunged forward. He seized a lower-level disciple by the throat, the air humming with the residual pressure of a Golden Core foundation that felt unstable, like a pressurized boiler. With a snarl, he drove the disciple's head into the stone floor. The crack of bone echoed off the obsidian walls, a sharp punctuation to his scream.
The surrounding disciples cowered, their red glows flickering as they scrambled backward. Vex had always been known as a rising star among the True Disciples, a man defined by a murderous, erratic rage, but this was different. This was the scream of a man who had lost something precious.
"Why?! Why now?!" Vex roared, his voice cracking. On Earth, he had been a powerhouse in the making. He had felt the threshold of ascension to foundation establishment, the nectar of millions of souls ready for the harvest. And then—the cripple. The "Titan." The image of Takeshi with his soul-stitched to flesh and covered with lightning, burned behind his eyelids. "That monster... he killed me with his own tribulation! He burned me to ash!"
His gaze snapped to a nearby slave—a gaunt man trembling in heavy iron soul-shackles. Vex pounced, his thumbs sinking into the man's eye sockets with a sickening squelch. The slave didn't even have the strength to scream, only a pathetic, gurgling whimper as Vex vented his fury.
"My original body... lost," Vex muttered, his breath coming in ragged, shallow hitches. He stood over the cooling corpse, his hands dripping. "The connection is severed. I am trapped in this one vessel."
He went still, his eyes glazing over as his analytical, predatory mind began to churn. He remembered the way Takeshi's body had looked—not just healed, but rebounded. The blue and gold threads... the way the soul had been used as a physical lattice.
"The soul," he whispered, a terrifying calm beginning to settle over him. "It isn't just a battery. It can be needle, a thread and a method of progression. If that pathetic cripple could stitch his fractured shell together with his soul, what could I do with the power of a thousand harvested souls?"
He felt the eyes of the outer disciples on him—hundreds of them, frozen in terror.
"BACK TO WORK!" he shrieked, the sound bouncing off the sharp spires of the city. "Siphon faster! If your slaves aren't husks by sunset, I'll use your own marrow to fill my dantian! MOVE!"
The disciples scrambled back to their grisly tasks, the hum of the siphoning arts rising in a panic.
Vex turned on his heel, his obsidian-soled boots clicking against the stone as he marched toward his private residence—a spire of volcanic glass that overlooked the central plaza.
I will have my revenge on Earth, he thought, his jaw clenching so hard his teeth groaned. I will return. But I won't come back as a man. I'll come back as something the Heavens didn't intend. He knew the Sect's higher-ups forbade soul-manipulation beyond simple siphoning; they feared the heavens. But Vex didn't care for the rules of the Blood Siphoning Sect anymore. He had seen a new path, a forbidden geometry of the soul, and he would master it even if it meant practicing on millions of souls.
Great Beast Forrest Tempest Continent- Nearby Ruins of Flowing water sect
In the lightless depths of a limestone fissure, beneath the gnarled roots of a blackened cedar, a pulse of violet-black light flickered. There, nestled in the damp earth, was a small egg of shadowy flesh, its surface slick and translucent like a bruised grape.
With a sound like the tearing of wet leather, the egg began to crack.
A single, needle-thin shadow leech pulled itself from the rupture. It was barely three inches long. For a long minute, the creature lay still, its primitive nervous system firing as a dormant consciousness began to uncoil.
Xotl.
The name was a heavy weight, a title that felt too large for this tiny, writhing vessel. The leech's thoughts were fractured.
The Soul-Seed... the contingency. My main body... gone? The realization hit the leech, it had lost its main body and soul. This fragment of soul had been severed and hidden here not long ago, a fail-safe created after the Flaming Saber Sect's floating ark had nearly vaporized his original form during the attack on the Flowing water sect. His memories were only of up to just after that event when the main body split this fail safe off.
I have failed, Xotl thought, his tiny form rippling with a sudden, sharp spike of self-loathing. To have fallen so far that a mere seed must restart the cycle... I have been far too arrogant. I viewed this world as a pantry, yet I have been the one consumed. He wasn't the supreme entity he once was. The crushing weight of his current insignificance forced a rare moment of clarity: if he had been destroyed despite his Nascent Soul power, there were entities in this world far more terrifying than he had dared to imagine.
Xotl the shadow leech slithered out of the cavern and into the deep forest surrounding the ruins of the Flowing Water Sect.
He found his first meal near a stream: a Qi-refining Forest Viper. The leech didn't bite; it melted into the snake's shadow. Within seconds, the viper's flesh began to wither, its life force siphoned directly into the leech's growing mass.
Xotl moved through the undergrowth like a living stain. He didn't just eat; he harvested. He consumed a vast array of qi refining monsters. With every kill, the single leech grew bigger.
Starting back in the qi refining realm would be devastating for most, but for a creature of Xotl's lineage, the climb back toward the Nascent Soul realm would be far quicker. Some monsters weren't bound by the traditional rules of cultivation.
As he reached the edge of a clearing, he started to form his shadowy flesh into a human shape. He looked down at his fleshy, man-shaped hands. This wouldn't suffice. To find out what had happened to his main body—and to avoid the eyes of whatever power had struck him down—he needed more than a puppet of shadowy flesh. He needed a true human vessel.
The human settlements, Xotl thought, his gaze turning toward the distant smoke on the horizon. A shell of flesh to hide the shadow. I will find a man, and I will become him. And then, I will find what happened to me.