Author's Note:(The legion has proven that they breathe, attack, and kill as a single organism. But the tournament allows no respite. In this second half, the Valois will try to use the dead to stop the Dragon. It is time for Samael to teach them that, in the abyss, he is the only ruling deity. And in the shadows of the night, the fire that the world thought extinguished will finally burn).
Chapter 33: Heritage, Treachery, and the Roar Beneath the Crimson Moon (Part 2)
The stench of ozone, evaporated blood, and charred flesh had settled over the Jade Coliseum. The semifinals had ceased to be a competition, becoming a slaughterhouse orchestrated with artistic precision. The Morningstar Clan, through the dark and latent Soul Nexus, had dismembered the best talents of the hundred sects without taking a single scratch.
But the silence blanketing the stands was not just of astonishment; it was a silence born of sickly anticipation. The final match of the day remained.
The Head Judge, his robes soaked in cold sweat, gulped as he looked at his scroll. He received a stern nod from the Purple Light Sect's box.
"Final Match of the Semifinals!" announced the judge, his voice drained of all color. "Patriarch Samael Morningstar against... the Hidden Champion of the Valois Family, Lord Morvan!"
An unnatural chill swept through the arena. The temperature plummeted.
Through the north gate, the figure that emerged did not walk like a young genius. His steps were stiff, heavy, dragging a tattered robe from a forgotten era. Lord Morvan had grayish skin clinging to his bones, and his eyes were two pits of pure darkness from which black smoke emanated.
In the boxes, the eldest Patriarchs stood up, stifling screams of horror.
"That is no youth from the Valois Family!" hissed the leader of the Celestial Sword Sect, instinctively stepping back. "That is the corpse of Morvan Valois, a butcher from three hundred years ago! They are using necromancy to stuff the soul of a Resurrected Ancestor into a preserved body!"
It was the worst of heresies. Valerius Valois had broken all the rules, sending a monster from the past with a power level equivalent to a Corrupted Semi-Saint to assassinate Samael.
The Resurrected Ancestor raised his rotting hands. An aura of coagulated blood and spiritual rot expanded, decaying the jade stone beneath his feet.
"I have returned from the cold depths of purgatory..." croaked the Ancestor, his voice sounding like two whetstones grinding together. "Your young blood, Patriarch of the desert, will be the chalice that restores my life."
Samael walked toward the center of the arena. His face was a mask of absolute tranquility. With his Qi Sea expanded to four hundred percent at Origin Stage 9, the pressure of a Corrupted Semi-Saint felt like a weak breeze against an obsidian mountain.
"Purgatory?" Samael tilted his head, offering a sharp, contemptuous smile. "They dug you out of your grave just so I could show you what true hell looks like."
The Ancestor roared. He unleashed his Dark Art: [Domain of the Corrupted Blood Sea].
A tide of black and reddish liquid, highly corrosive and steeped in wailing souls, erupted from the corpse's body and lunged at Samael like a tsunami, threatening to melt his flesh and devour his core.
The crowd screamed. It was an inescapable attack that covered half the arena.
Samael did not unsheathe the Odachi. He didn't use his own Blood manipulation. Instead, he raised his left hand, spreading his fingers.
"Zero Gravity," whispered the Sovereign of the Void.
Absolute Void is not an element; it is the end of existence. A sphere of total darkness appeared in front of Samael's palm. The Ancestor's tide of corrupted blood crashed into it... and simply vanished. It was absorbed by the Void's gravitational pull, compressed into nothingness, erased from the universe without leaving a single trace.
The Resurrected Ancestor halted his advance, his hollow eyes widening in pure shock.
"Impossible! That is my sacred technique...!" the corpse babbled.
"It was your technique," Samael corrected.
Samael took a single step. The Minor Law of Space bent to his will. The thirty-meter distance was reduced to zero. Samael appeared directly in front of the Ancestor, ignoring the Corrupted Semi-Saint's suffocating Qi barriers as if they were cobwebs.
With a brutal motion, Samael grabbed the Ancestor by the collar of his tattered robe, lifting him into the air. The corpse tried to dig claws of dark energy into his face, but they clashed harmlessly against Samael's Dragon Physique.
"I stole the destiny of their best genius yesterday," Samael murmured, his violet eyes gleaming with the golden hunger of the Celestial Fragment he had devoured. "Let's see what else the Valois have worth taking."
Samael activated his newly awakened passive skill. [Hand of the Usurper].
He wreathed his right hand in pure Void and violently plunged it directly into the Ancestor's chest. He didn't pierce the flesh; his hand penetrated the corpse's spiritual space, the place where the corrupted soul and the matrices of its techniques resided.
The Ancestor let out a tearing shriek that made the ears of the weakest spectators bleed.
Samael clenched his spiritual fist. He felt the very root of the Domain of the Corrupted Blood Sea, the condensed knowledge of three hundred years of necromancy and slaughter. With a cold and absolutely tyrannical yank, Samael ripped the technique from the enemy's soul.
A pulsating sphere of black and red Qi emerged from the Ancestor's chest, trapped in Samael's hand. The System blinked.
[Technique Successfully Extracted!][Dark Art: 'Domain of Corrupted Blood' (Semi-Saint Level) - Sealed and stored in Inventory. Can be devoured to upgrade the Host's Blood Law or transferred to a subordinate.]
Without the core of its forbidden art, the necromantic magic sustaining Morvan Valois's body collapsed immediately. The Ancestor's soul dissipated with a moan of agony, and the corpse withered, turning into dry dust and ash that slipped through Samael's fingers, falling to the arena floor.
Samael stood in the center of the coliseum, holding the extracted technique that glowed like a heart in his hands. He looked up at the boxes.
There were no cheers. There was no applause. There was only the absolute terror of the Hundred Sects.
They hadn't just witnessed a genius defeat an Ancestor. They had seen a monster physically rip out an enemy's martial legacy, stripping him of his heritage and his power in a second. The Morningstar Clan operated with a hive mind, and their Patriarch could steal techniques at will. They weren't cultivators; they were a plague that devoured legends.
Political Terror and Valerius's Abyss
In the supreme VIP box, Valerius Valois stumbled back, tripping over the remains of his shattered jade throne. His chest heaved erratically.
The Hidden Champion, his ancestor, had been reduced to dust. His family's millennial technique was now in the pocket of that damn desert barbarian. The leaders of the other sects looked at him not with respect, but with open hostility. By breaking the rules using necromancy, Valerius had crossed an unforgivable line, and even that hadn't been enough to put a scratch on Samael.
The Stage 3 Saint, the Supreme Elder of the Purple Light Sect, approached his disciple. The old man's face was grim.
"The balance of the continent has just been broken, Valerius," the Saint whispered, looking toward the arena where Samael was retreating with his generals. "That boy... that Sovereign... if he is allowed to leave this city, in a year there won't be an empire, a sect, or a god who can stop him."
Valerius clenched his teeth, his pride in tatters.
"Prepare the catacomb seals, Master."
"Valerius... if we use it..."
"I said prepare the seals!" bellowed the Holy Son, desperation tinging his voice with madness. "Tomorrow is the finale. I will force the judges to decree a Pitched Battle of Heritages. All the sects that owe us loyalty will attack them at the same time. And while the arena is in chaos... we will unleash the Sealed Saint Puppet. I want that ancestral corpse in the arena. I don't care about the political cost. If Samael doesn't die tomorrow, the Valois Family will cease to exist."
The Dream Beneath the Crimson Moon
Night fell over the Celestial Jade City. But it was no ordinary night.
Perhaps it was the immense bloodshed of the last few days, or perhaps the unnatural concentration of fractured destinies, but the starry sky was eclipsed by an astral phenomenon. A massive, heavy Crimson Moon rose over the horizon, bathing the jade towers and golden streets in a reddish, ominous, and suffocating hue.
In the Inn of the Jade Lotus, the Morningstar Clan rested. Minor wounds had been treated by Elowen, and the loot was being cataloged. In their chests, the Soul Nexus hummed softly, a constant melody of protection and brotherhood.
But in one of the darkest rooms of the west wing, someone was not resting.
Grand Elder Lilith lay on her silk bed, but her body was rigid. Her breathing was ragged, almost agonizing.
Since the fall of the labyrinth and Samael's brutal assimilation of Destiny, the Qi-laden atmosphere and the constant beating of the Soul Nexus resonating through the halls had begun to hammer against the heavy, rusted chains that kept her true bloodline sealed.
In her nightmares, Lilith didn't see the present. She saw fire. She saw the massacre of Dawn City. She saw her arm being severed. She saw how her entire life had been a chain of losses, ashes, and humiliation.
But beneath all that pain, deep within the old woman's withered core, a tiny ember refused to be extinguished.
The light of the red moon entered through the large window, illuminating her face, marked by the wrinkles of suffering.
Suddenly, a sharp pain, worse than any sword, erupted in the shoulder of her amputated arm.
Lilith's eyes snapped open.
She sat up in bed, panting, clutching her empty shoulder with her single sound hand. The pain wasn't physical; it was spiritual. It was the sensation of a phantom limb wrapped in pure lava.
The old woman looked at her empty side. In the air where her left arm should be, gray sparks and bluish-black flames began to materialize. They emitted no heat, but they devoured the oxygen in the room.
The air around her grew unbearably dense, filling with a fine rain of volcanic ash.
In the silence of the room, Lilith heard a sound that made her very soul tremble. It was not a dragon's roar.
It was the tearing, furious, and ancient screech of a phoenix.
Lilith's pupils, usually dull and tired, transformed. The iris turned an incandescent orange, and the pupil slit vertically.
The dark phoenix dwelling in her blood, fed by the tension of impending extermination and the power radiating from her Sovereign, had just torn its seal.
Lilith rose slowly. The burning ash swirled around her like a mantle of fallen royalty. She looked out the window at the colossal structure of the Jade Coliseum, bathed in the bloody light of the moon.
"Tomorrow..." Lilith whispered, her voice no longer sounding like a frail old woman's, but carrying the reverberation of a thousand extinguished fires. "Tomorrow they will discover why some ashes must never be trampled."
The final war for the continent was about to erupt at dawn. And the Empire had no idea that the true inferno would be born from within their own ranks.
END OF CHAPTER 33