The outer slums never truly slept. They just held their breath between screams.
Three nights after the Sovereign's sky-bleeding death, Lin Zhao returned to the place where everything changed.
The crater had already been claimed. Makeshift stalls ringed the edges now—scavengers selling charred talismans, broken spirit rings, and the occasional piece of glowing bone they swore belonged to a fallen elder. None of them noticed the thin boy in stolen gray robes moving between the shadows like he belonged there.
Lin Zhao wasn't here for trinkets.
He was here because the hunger had returned.
Deeper this time. Sharpened. Like a blade that had tasted blood once and now refused to be sheathed.
He followed the scent again—that wrong copper-orchid smell of someone carrying more qi than they deserved.
It led him to the eastern refuse wall, where the Azure Fang Gang had set up their nightly protection racket.
Four of them tonight. Better armed than the last group he'd drained. One carried a proper spirit saber that hummed with faint green poison light. Another wore a cheap but functional qi armor vest—third-hand, probably looted from a dead outer disciple.
They were laughing over a small fire, roasting skewered rat meat and passing around a cracked clay jug of rice wine.
Lin Zhao stepped into the firelight without hiding.
The laughter died instantly.
The one with the saber—a broad-shouldered man called Iron Jaw—squinted at the newcomer.
"You lost, little ghost? Tribute's already collected."
Lin Zhao didn't answer with words.
He simply raised his right palm.
A single violet thread, thinner than moonlight, stretched across the six meters of dirt and sank soundlessly into Iron Jaw's chest.
The big man's laugh choked off mid-breath.
His eyes rolled back.
Then his cultivation base began to flow—slow at first, then faster, a river forced uphill.
The other three leapt to their feet.
"Kill him!" one shouted, already drawing a curved knife.
They moved fast—faster than the previous group.
But Lin Zhao was faster still.
Not because he was strong. Not yet.
Because he was learning.
As the first knife came slashing toward his throat, Lin Zhao simply watched the motion. The way the wrist twisted. The slight forward lean. The unconscious tightening of the shoulder a heartbeat before the strike.
He didn't block.
He mirrored.
His own arm rose in perfect imitation—same angle, same speed, same twist of the wrist.
The knife met empty air.
Then Lin Zhao's palm touched the attacker's elbow.
A second violet thread bloomed.
The man's qi stuttered, then reversed.
He dropped to his knees, gasping, clutching at his dantian as though someone had reached inside and begun pulling his future out through his skin.
The third thug tried to run.
Lin Zhao didn't chase.
He just exhaled.
A faint violet mist rolled from between his lips—unstable, barely a meter wide, but enough.
The fleeing man stumbled as if the ground had turned to tar.
He fell.
Face-down.
Still.
The fourth and last one—the one wearing the qi armor vest—finally understood something very bad was happening.
He didn't attack.
He dropped to both knees, forehead slamming into the dirt.
"Mercy, senior brother! Mercy! I'll give you everything—the saber, the stones, the wine—please—"
Lin Zhao walked forward slowly.
He crouched in front of the trembling man.
Tilted his head.
Then spoke, voice soft, almost curious.
"Everything?"
The thug nodded frantically.
Lin Zhao reached out, not with violence, but with two fingers pressed lightly against the center of the man's forehead.
The last violet thread connected.
This time he didn't take everything.
Just enough.
The qi armor vest flickered once, then went dull. The man's cultivation base dropped from early Soul Condensation straight to the broken edge of Qi Gathering.
He would live.
He would never cultivate again.
Lin Zhao stood up.
Looked at the four bodies—three dead, one alive but empty.
Then he looked at his own hands.
They were no longer shaking.
Instead they felt… steady.
Warm.
Full.
The fragment inside his sea of consciousness pulsed once—slow, almost approving.
Like a predator acknowledging a cub's first clean kill.
Lin Zhao whispered to the night:
"So this is what it means… to take what was never given."
Somewhere far above Black Lotus City, among the floating jade islands of the true sects, powerful people were still searching the crater for traces of the Eternal Soul Sovereign's inheritance.
They had no idea the most dangerous fragment had already chosen its host.
And it was beginning to hunger.
End of Chapter 2
(Next up: Chapter 3 – The Girl Who Could Smell Stolen Souls)