In a swirling storm of blame and pain, Wèi Wúxiàn is pushed to his breaking point. But it is not until his tender-hearted A-yuàn becomes the target of their cruelty that he finally snaps, fueled by an almost primal urge to protect his innocent child...
The thought filled him with a dark, vindictive satisfaction.
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The cavernous Demon Slaughtering Cave was cloaked in impenetrable shadows, the feeble light of guttering torches casting an eerie blood-red glow over the jagged obsidian walls. The subterranean chamber's vaulted ceilings disappeared into the inky blackness overhead as if the cave existed in a void outside the boundaries of the material world.
In the center of this eldritch space sat Wèi Wúxiàn atop a massive flat rock formation, legs crossed in a posture of supreme dominance and control. His slender form was draped in flowing black robes without a hint of red in it — so dark they seemed to be woven from the infinite night sky itself. The rich brocaded fabric swirled and eddied around him like a cloud of ethereal darkness given corporeal form.
Wèi Wúxiàn's long, pale fingers idly twisted and caressed the intricate carvings of the slender bone flute Chénqíng in a mesmerizing dance. His face was tilted down, crimson eyes burning like the coals of a banked fire as he stared with cold, remorseless calculation at the crumpled form of a Lán disciple lying unmoving at his feet.
The young man's once handsome face was a ruin of livid bruises, dried blood encrusting the split skin below his shattered nose and brutally split lip. His white cultivation robes were shredded and stained a deep crimson, clinging damply to the disciple's alarmingly still form.
An aura of immense, unchecked power and resentful energy radiated outward from Wèi Wúxiàn in palpable, suffocating waves. The very air seemed to grow thick and cloying, resisting every indrawn breath. His night-dark hair spilled over his shoulders in an artful disarray, framing the sharp angles of his beautiful, aristocratic features composed into a rictus of terrifying, cruel calm. Full lips curved slightly in a smile that promised realms of torment to any who dared earn his wrath.
Wèi Wúxiàn's posture exuded an intoxicating mix of lethal, feline grace and overwhelming, dominating strength as his long fingers idly spun and twirled Chénqíng in hypnotic circles. His very presence seemed to leech every mote of warmth and life from the air around him, leaving only a deathly, unnatural chill in its wake.
The broken Lán disciple gave an involuntary, full-body shudder, as if his soul could sense the formidable resentment energy coiling around the fearsome cultivator even in its senseless, battered state.
Upon witnessing the unconscious Lán disciple's full-body shudder, Wèi Wúxiàn's lips curved into a satisfying, predatory smirk. His crimson eyes danced with dark amusement at the visceral reaction, revealing the disciple's soul was not so far gone as to be impervious to his overwhelming demonic presence.
Wèi Wúxiàn reveled in that frisson of primal fear, allowing the resentful energy crackling around him to intensify momentarily like a serpent flaring its hood. The smirk stretched wider, exposing a hint of sharp white teeth, as he drank in the unconscious man's instinctive recoil from his power with sadistic relish.
