"Mmmph~Yun...Do not stop.."
"I won't. I'm going...faster~"
Two voices stirred within the quiet of the night, low and hushed, murmuring from behind a veil of translucent silk. The bedroom was lavish—too lavish for a minor official. The bed was oversized, draped in sheer gauze that fluttered softly in the moonlight. Pillows were scattered carelessly. And the scent of incense mixed with sweat lingered in the still air.
A woman moved atop a man, her breath quick, and her tone half-muffled. The man grunted, urging her faster, louder with each breath. They had long since stopped hiding the rhythm of their bodies from the night.
The man's name was Yun Wudao, one of the Village Chief's trusted aides, often seen carrying scrolls or whispering orders behind closed doors. And the woman was Yie Taxian, the Chief's second wife. Her looks had been what attracted the village chief to such a young girl, and with no regard to her age nor background, he married her. This all happened five years ago.
But for two years now, her affections had been spent on Yun Wudao in secret, their meetings hidden behind layers of lies and silk.
Tonight was no different.
The hours slipped away. Outside, the stars shifted, and the river's flow carried darker things.
By the time the sky began to lighten faintly with pre-dawn mist, their bodies had collapsed into one another, tangled and sweat-slick. Yun Wudao breathed heavily. Yie Taxian curled against his chest, her voice barely more than a whisper.
"Do you think he knows?" she asked. Her fingers curled slightly in fear, brushing the scar on his collarbone.
Yun Wudao pressed his lips to her brow, voice soft but filled with arrogant certainty. "Even if he does, he cannot act. I am the nephew of Baron Wang. My name alone shields you."
He raised his hand, flexing his fingers, feeling the faint current of Qi still circulating through his meridians. "And with my cultivation base, who would dare touch me?"
He had stepped into the first layer of the Qi Condensation realm. His soul body was that of the Tempest Wolf—a second-rank beast spirit, born of thunderclouds and wild winds. It gave him heightened strength, faster regeneration, and attunement to storm-based Qi with affinities for: wind, lightning, and water.
Though he boasted of its power, he knew well that a second-rank spirit could only bring him so far.
Before he could say more, a sharp noise rang out from beyond the courtyard walls. The crack of clashing weapons. With numerous horrified screams muffled by distance.
Yun Wudao rose and donned his black robes.
"Wait—where are you going? Its much too dangerous for you to journey down to the village! Please stay in bed with me."
She sat up, eyes filled with worry. In the dim light, they seemed to flicker between brown and yellow. Her pale skin, touched by moonlight, seemed almost translucent, and her long black hair spilled down her back like a curtain of night.
Yun Wudao turned to her once more, gaze briefly lost in her beauty. But the cry of battle pulled him back.
"I am the deputy," he said, adjusting his belt. "It's my duty to maintain order. Do not wait up for me."
He placed his hand on the door, but as he stepped out, his knees suddenly bent unnaturally inward.
His vision split. Everything doubled, as his sight turned inverted with a red hue. A thin line of crimson formed vertically across his entire body.
He tried to speak, but quickly realized that each side of his mouth was saying different things.
His body split into two, cleanly and silently, folding apart like paper soaked in rain. A rain of Blood pooled across the stone floor.
Behind him, Yie Taxian sat up slowly.
Her expression was calm, almost cold. The fear, worry, and affection she'd shown moments ago had vanished. In her hands were thin, glistening red threads, so fine they caught the moonlight like spider silk. They pulsed faintly with the trace of demonic Qi.
She stood and let the threads dissolve into the air. Her hair, once black as night, began to fade to white, streaked with faint shadows. From her fingertips, dark talons pushed forth.
She stepped to the vanity and pressed a hand to her cheek. Her skin was flushed pink—unusual for her normal complexion. She stared at her reflection, her lips faintly curving upwards.
"Perhaps you were good for something after all," she coldy muttered.
A voice echoed inside her mind, interrupting her from her self-admiration. It sounded calm and commanding.
"Ye Taxian, is the first stage complete?"
The voice belonged to a man, young yet oppressive in tone.
She straightened her posture. Her voice became respectful, even reverent.
"Yes, Lord Xie. Yun Wudao unfortunately had to have been...dealt with."
"Well done," the voice replied. "If you see any annoyances to our goals then swiftly remove them. The Heavenly Demon Pavilion's wrath is not to be questioned. These filthy villagers will repay their debt in blood." The voice coldly said, with hints of disgust.
"Glory to the demonic path." She immediately responded.
The mental transmission faded. She exhaled slowly. Her body trembled slightly, though whether from exhaustion or excitement, even she did not know.
Lord Xie Meng was the fifth inner disciple underneath the Sect Patriarch: The Heavenly Demon. He was a cold and calculative man whose only goal in life was the pursuit of the Heavenly Demon Sect's success, nothing else.
She recalled the day she joined the Pavilion four ages ago. She had been the obedient wife of a village chief who smiled in the daylight, and she was content with that - maybe even happy. But this man committed heinous atrocities behind closed doors—rape, infanticide, murder. He thought her blind to such actions.
She had played the part of the fool until a wandering female cultivator from the Derived Jade Enchantment Palace, a unique division comprised only of women under the Heavenly Demon Sect, passed through. This was the number one Sect in the Demonic path for centuries, in terms of cruelty and strength.
She offered her a new path, becoming a disciple of the Enchantment Palace and gaining a sisterhood of strong and powerful women. And with that offer also came the cultivation method: Divine Arachnid's One-Thousand Threads of Death. Such was an offer she just simply could not refuse!
That night, her eyes were opened for the first time, and she felt she had the strength to oppose any man in the world.
The affair with Yun Wudao had been orchestrated. Every kiss, every whisper, and every secret pulled from his lips like blood from a vein. He had been the one who ran the underground slave trade, funded gambling dens, and silenced dissent. As to be expected from the Village Chief's right hand man. But in the end, he was only a stepping stone.
She wrapped herself in his spare robes and gathered her hair into a high knot.
There was still work to be done.
...
Outside, the Fish-Tailed Dragon River twisted through the valley like a coiling serpent.
Its waters carried corpses. Broken carts. Severed limbs. Several charred remnants of life.
On a bend in the river, where the current slowed and stones jutted from the banks, a white cradle drifted ashore. Pure White Oak wood carved into a cradle's shape.
Inside lay a child.
Her eyes were mismatched—one filled with the warmth of fire with colors carrying a lighter tone, the other cold as twilight with colors on the darker side. Though both eyes possessed slit pupils, akin to that of a snake's.
Her skin was pale with a faint green cast. Her arms bore tiny rainbow scales that caught the moonlight like oil on water, and A thick forked tail curled beneath her.
The child did not cry, nor was any expression of fear on her face whatsoever. The blood and carnage that had been unleashed around her, and was evident in the river did not even seem to phase her in the slightest.
Her breathing was soft, almost silent. She slowly gazed at the world around her with a curious look. Though only corpses littered the lands and waters as far as her eyes could see.
At the edge of the Fish-Tailed Dragon River, a woman sat in stillness beneath an old willow tree. The branches hung low, trailing gently across her shoulders, and the leaves rustled faintly in the morning breeze. The scent of blood still lingered in the air, yet the river moved as if indifferent—its flow constant, its surface reflecting only the sky.
Ye Taxian rested one hand on the soft grass. Her robes, once immaculate, were now dusted with soil. The night's rain had passed, and the soil beneath her had grown cold. She did not move. Her gaze was fixed upon the horizon where the mountains met the clouds.
In her eyes, there was no trace of malice. Only a silence that went deeper than words, and something hidden behind that—a faint longing.
It was not the longing of a schemer or a soldier. Nor was it the hunger of a cultivator seeking advancement. It was something quieter: the distant ache for a world untouched by lies, a life unburdened by names and orders. She had once thought such things foolish, yet now, seated beneath this willow and watching the world move past her, she found herself imagining it.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a soft creak from the river.
She turned her head slightly.
A cradle, carved from pale bone and wrapped in black vines, drifted toward the bank. Bloodstained water lapped at its sides, but the cradle itself seemed untouched by rot. The vines shimmered with faint Qi, and thorns curved along its edges like the teeth of some slumbering beast.
Ye Taxian narrowed her eyes. She extended two fingers. A red thread shimmered into existence, smooth and white as silk. With a flick of her wrist, the thread snaked through the air and coiled around the cradle, dragging it gently to shore.
She stood and approached.
Within the cradle, swaddled in a layer of pale silk, lay a child no older than a few days. The girl's eyes were already open. One shone with warm hues—red, gold, orange, flickers of green. The other was cool—deep blue with hints of violet, touched with streaks of brown and dim light. Her pupils were narrow, and serpent-like.
The child stared up at her without fear.
Ye Taxian's expression remained unmoved. Her orders had been clear: no witnesses. It made no difference whether the eyes belonged to a soldier, a widow, or a babe. The Heavenly Demon Pavilion permitted no survivors in its shadow.
She lowered her hand, prepared to strike.
Yet the child smiled.
It was a small smile, without reason, without thought—one born purely from the strange instinct that newborns sometimes carry. Something in that smile made Ye Taxian's hand hesitate.
Out of habit more than interest, she frowned and leaned closer. She bared her teeth, making the ugliest face possible for her. Yet the baby simply laughed.
She even released a sliver of demonic Qi—cold, blood-soaked, and infused with the venom of the demonic threads. At its release, the air around them seemed to chill and a terrible feeling swept over the area.
Still, the child laughed. She reached out, as if trying to catch the drifting threads in the air.
Ye Taxian's brows furrowed. This child did not cry. She did not even blink. She watched the threads with curious amusement, giggling softly.
For a long moment, neither moved.
Ye Taxian's gaze dropped to the child's chest. There, half-hidden by the swaddling cloth, hung a black pendant. At its center rested a red stone, dark as dried blood. Strange runes curled around its edge, etched so finely they could barely be seen unless one looked closely.
She reached forward and brushed the cloth aside.
Her eyes moved further down. Beneath the child's back, coiled loosely, was a small forked serpent's tail. The scales shimmered in nine colors of the expanded rainbow.The end of the tail bore twin jagged blade-like barbs with gold and black rings.
Ye Taxian's thoughts scrambled at this revelation.
There were many races in the Realm of Gaea. Among them, the Serpentkin of the Eastern Divine Marshes were lesser known, but Ye Taxian was one who liked to know and understand the world around her.
They lived across the sea, beyond the Silver Emperor Continent. It was said their children were born from eggs hidden in riverbanks, and their royalty bore nine different colors of their corresponding bloodlines, that descended from the Monster, World Devouring Hydra.
But what was such a special child with all nine colors doing in Fish-Tailed Dragon Village?
"Whoever your parents were must have thought that you would find your way to a loving couple in the village. Unfortunately for them, we killed most of them. Only a few hundred villagers remain so that this wouldn't be counted as an all-out genocide that the imperial family would have to act against." Ye Taxian sneered as she gazed at the pathetic creature at her feet.
She inwardly had the thought to offer this child up to the sect, but even she - who turned her heart from the world couldn't do such a thing. With this girl's supposed royal blood, they could refine it and gain the powers of the serpent clan! Such a treasure would immediately be extracted, with little to no regard about the precious life that was lost in the process.
"Lucky for you that I'm the one who found you."
Ye Taxian's hands moved again. She lifted the child, weighing her gently. Her body was warm and soft. Ordinary, in every way a baby should be. The cradle beneath her creaked as the baby was pulled out of it.
She then narrowed her eyes and, with one foot, crushed the cradle into splinters.
Finally, Ye Taxian set the girl down in the grass and summoned her threads. One by one, they wrapped around the child—not tight, but firm, like a spider weaving a silk cocoon. She was halfway through the final thread when a presence flickered behind her.
She immediately froze as the blood in her body chilled, sending a shiver up her spine.
An ominous energy suddenly appeared behind her. It was both vast and suffocating. A pressure that made the air feel thin and brittle, as though even the wind dared not move.
Ye Taxian did not turn around, afraid that if she did only a sword would greet her.
The voice she had once only heard in transmission now spoke behind her in person. It carried no anger, yet her knees nearly buckled.
"What are you doing?"