RaizellV

  The war between the Spirit Sying Alliance, composed by the Wu Kingdom and the Six Great Sects, against the Saint Spirit Sect had raged for four years, yet there was no clear victor. What had begun as a full-scale effort to purge the rising evil from the nd had devolved into a long, drawn-out war of attrition, one where the Saint Spirit Sect never fully committed to a decisive battle. Instead, they operated in the shadows, striking where it hurt the most and vanishing before their enemies could retaliate in force.

  At first, the Spirit Sying Alliance had rallied together with a grand crusade. Elite sect disciples, kingdom soldiers, and veteran cultivators marched toward the suspected locations of Saint Spirit Sect activity, determined to stamp out the corruption before it spread any further. Their early campaigns yielded victories—minor hideouts were purged, corrupted vilges cleansed, and traitorous cultivators executed. It seemed that with enough pressure, they could break the enemy’s hold and wipe them out completely.

  But that was never the Saint Spirit Sect’s pn.

  The longer the war dragged on, the more it became clear that the Saint Spirit Sect had no intention of engaging in an all-out confrontation. Instead, they pyed the long game, waging psychological, economic, and strategic warfare.

  They never fought on the battlefield the way the kingdom and sects expected.

  Instead of unching mass invasions, the Saint Spirit Sect struck in precise, surgical operations—infiltrating, assassinating, and corrupting from within.

  Assassins targeted sect elders, kingdom officials, and key strategists.

  Key supply chains were raided or poisoned, leading to starvation and disease within military camps.

  Spies embedded in noble families turned once-loyal vassals into traitors overnight.

  Sect disciples sent to hunt them down returned as enemies—corrupted, brainwashed, or simply… missing.

  The worst part? Every battle they won only seemed to deepen the war.

  When the Wu Kingdom army sughtered suspected cultists, more would rise in their pce, emboldened by a bizarre fanaticism.When a sect branch destroyed a hidden Saint Spirit hideout, the next day, three innocent vilges would be burned down in revenge, their people missing or turned into mindless husks.

  The enemy fought with no honor, using civilians as bait, shields, and tools to spread terror.

  Though the Six Sects and the Wu Kingdom boasted greater numbers and military strength, they found themselves constantly on the defensive.

  The bordernds of the Wu Kingdom were the first to fall into ruin.

  Vilges emptied out—entire poputions fleeing further innd, terrified of being sughtered or taken.

  Cities swelled with desperate refugees, causing famine, poverty, and crime to spike in the kingdom’s heartnd.

  The sects, overwhelmed with protecting their own strongholds, could no longer afford to patrol the nds as they once did, creating gaps that the Saint Spirit Sect exploited ruthlessly.

  The kingdom’s forces were spread too thin, forced to choose between defending cities, fortifying the borders, or hunting the enemy in unfamiliar terrain. Every decision left another hole open elsewhere, and the Saint Spirit Sect always knew exactly where to strike next.

  At times, it felt as though the enemy was toying with them.

  Despite their strength, intelligence networks, and military discipline, the Wu Kingdom and Six Sects were being slowly choked.

  The war was not a war of conquest or territory. It was a war of attrition and corruption.

  The most disturbing part was that, despite having the upper hand in subterfuge, tactics, and battlefield control, the Saint Spirit Sect never escated the war beyond this deadlock.

  They could have struck harder. They could have pressed their advantage.

  Yet they didn’t.

  Why?

  That was the question on the minds of every sect leader, general, and military strategist.

  The years had not been kind to Cai Feng and Mei Liao.

  Though their cultivations granted them greater longevity than ordinary mortals, their once-vibrant expressions had dulled with exhaustion. Lines of worry etched across their faces, their eyes carrying the weight of unspoken grief. For four years, they had searched ceaselessly, tearing through the underbelly of the kingdom in pursuit of their son.

  Yet Feiyin remained a ghost, leaving behind no trail, no whispers, nothing.

  Cai Feng had once led armies, crushed insurrections, and quelled rebellions, yet now, he found himself at war with despair, the most insidious of enemies. Mei Liao, ever the composed and elegant woman, had been reduced to sleepless nights and endless whispers to the heavens, hoping that wherever her son was, he still breathed.

  They had exhausted every resource avaible, tapping into the intelligence networks of the Spirit Sying Alliance, searching every known Saint Spirit Sect encampment, interrogating captured enemies, and chasing down even the most fleeting rumors of missing children.

  But there was nothing.

  And then… they found the trial grounds.

  A hidden cave system, just like the one they had dreaded Feiyin was trapped in.

  The moment they breached the underground facility, storming in alongside elite sect forces, they were met with horrific sights—malnourished, feral children who had survived weeks in the dark, the stench of rot and blood thick in the air.

  Their captors fought back with madness in their eyes, some tearing at their own faces, others lunging with reckless abandon, willing to die before being captured. And when they finally subdued a handful, it did not matter.

  The Saint Spirit Sect had no prisoners.

  Every single one of them died before a single question could be asked.

  Whether by poison, hidden formations, or some horrific fail-safe embedded in their bodies, the results were the same—dead men told no tales.

  Frustration boiled over. Cai Feng had nearly torn the corpses apart in rage, furious at their enemies’ willingness to cut their own tongues before revealing even the slightest hint of information.

  But when the sect healers began their examination of the corpses, something chilling was uncovered.

  Their hearts… were hollow.

  A parasite had eaten away at them from within, consuming their hearts like a cocooned beast in a shell, hollowing them out into walking corpses until the moment they dropped dead.

  The Heart-Eating Worm.

  A parasite designed to ensure obedience, control, and death upon defiance.

  The discovery shook the entire alliance.

  It expined so much—why their enemies fought without fear, why they obeyed orders like machines, and why so many loyal sect disciples, captured in battle, ter turned against them.

  They weren’t being converted to the Saint Spirit Sect.

  They were being made into tools, with no choice but to comply.

  But for Mei Liao and Cai Feng, this horrific revetion brought something else.

  Hope.

  If children were taken for trials, if the Saint Spirit Sect was cultivating them as future soldiers, then it meant one thing:

  Feiyin was still alive.

  With his talents, there was no way they would have discarded him.

  It was the first time in years that Mei Liao’s world wasn’t suffocating beneath the weight of loss. For the first time, Cai Feng unclenched his fists without feeling helpless.

  Their son was alive.

  He had to be.

  And now, they had something to hold onto.

  But even after this discovery, after another three years of tracking leads, after storming every hidden camp, secret outpost, and suspected trial site they could find…

  Nothing.

  The Saint Spirit Sect had moved on.

  They had perfected their system, vanishing deeper into the shadows. Any evidence of future trials had disappeared, and their information networks had gone silent.

  Once again, the enemy was one step ahead.

  And once again, their son was nowhere to be found.

  The frustration and grief threatened to consume them all over again, but this time, there was something different.

  This time, they were certain he was out there.

  And no matter what it took, they would find him.

  But as the war dragged on, Cai Feng’s sharp mind noticed something else—something beyond just their son.

  The Saint Spirit Sect wasn’t merely an enemy of the Wu Kingdom.

  Their movements, their infiltration, their methods of control were all too systematic, too refined, too efficient.

  He had seen something simir before.

  In the final days of his former kingdom.

  When his homend fell to the machinations of unseen hands, when their military was turned against itself before they even realized they were fighting a war…

  The Saint Spirit Sect was not just a cult, nor was it merely a force of chaos.

  There was a pn.

  And this war?

  This war was not its end goal.

  Something else lurked beneath. Something far worse than anyone was seeing.

  And Cai Feng would not let history repeat itself.

  Late at night, in the stillness of their temporary residence, Mei Liao sat alone, humming softly to herself.

  A quiet, mencholic tune.

  Her voice trembled with emotion, her delicate fingers resting gently on her stomach—her round belly, now swollen with life.

  A second child.

  Yet the joy she should have felt was overshadowed by grief.

  Because the one who should have been here, the one who should have been the first to hold his younger sibling, to protect them, to ugh and scold them as an elder brother…

  He was still missing.

  A single tear slipped down her cheek, vanishing into the folds of her robe.

  "Feiyin…" she whispered, her voice barely above a breath.

  "You have to come back soon… Your little brother or sister is waiting for you."

  Her fingers curled slightly, gripping the fabric of her robe.

  "You have to survive. You have to… I know you will."

  And somewhere, across the nds, deep within enemy territory, her son trained in the shadows of the Saint Spirit Sect, waiting for the moment he could finally return.