The oppressive silence of Wuhen Village shattered.
Sikong Jian, the Imperial Bureau's prized 'Heaven-Hunting Hound,' stood at the village entrance, his white and gold robes immaculate against the decaying backdrop. Above him, a massive astrolabe spun lazily, its golden gears grinding the ambient spiritual energy into submission.
Behind Sikong Jian, twelve Imperial Enforcers drew their blades. Their combined auras, bolstered by the Bureau's Heaven-Sealing Formation, pressed down on the village like a physical weight, cracking the dry earth.
"Sovereign of the Void," Sikong Jian sneered, his eyes locking onto the pitch-black void where Lu Chen's providence should have been. "The Bureau decreed your existence an aberration. Did you truly think hiding in a mortal blind spot would save you?"
Lu Chen stood amidst the ruins of a collapsed shrine, his expression terrifyingly calm. Deep within his dantian, his newly formed Void Core pulsed. It was no longer just an abyss; it had digested the concentrated misfortune of Wuhen Village.
"Save me?" Lu Chen's voice was barely a whisper, yet it carried over the howling wind. "I wasn't hiding from you, Sikong Jian. I was eating."
He drew the Severing Edge. The legendary sword, once a beacon of righteous slaughter, was now coated in a sickly, gray membrane.
Void Sword Intent: Rotting Destiny.
Lu Chen didn't wait for the Enforcers to form their array. He stepped forward, vanishing into a blur of afterimages. He reappeared directly in the center of the Enforcers, swinging the Severing Edge in a wide, horizontal arc.
The strike didn't emit a blinding crescent of energy. Instead, a gray ripple pulsed outward, passing right through their defensive barriers.
"Fools! Form the Heaven-Binding Net!" Sikong Jian barked, forming hand seals.
The Enforcers moved to comply, but reality suddenly seemed to warp around them. The gray ripple hadn't cut their flesh; it had severed their luck.
The lead Enforcer lunged, but his foot caught on a perfectly smooth stone. He stumbled, his immense momentum carrying him forward just as his comrade thrust his spear. With a sickening crunch, the spear pierced the lead Enforcer's throat.
Another Enforcer attempted to channel his fire-attribute Qi, but a microscopic flaw in his meridians—something that hadn't troubled him in decades—suddenly violently flared. His Qi reversed, and he spontaneously combusted, screaming as his own fire consumed him from the inside out.
Within three breaths, half the elite squad was dead, killed by absurd, highly improbable backlashes. Their golden Qi Yun fractured, bleeding into the air.
Lu Chen's Luck-Binding Mirror flared to life behind his eyes, eagerly drinking the spilled providence.
Sikong Jian's arrogance vanished, replaced by primal terror. "Demonic arts! What have you done to their karma?!"
"I merely gave them what the Heavens promised," Lu Chen said, stepping over a burning corpse. "Now, it's your turn."
Sikong Jian roared, biting his tongue to spit a mouthful of essence blood onto his astrolabe. "Heavenly Edict: Eradicate the Void!"
A pillar of blinding golden light, thick with the concentrated will of the Imperial Bureau, descended from the sky, aiming to vaporize Lu Chen completely.
But just as the light was about to strike, the shadows cast by the village ruins violently elongated. They snapped upward, weaving into a dome of absolute, impenetrable darkness that froze the golden pillar mid-air.
The wind stopped. The burning Enforcer ceased screaming, his flames frozen like a macabre painting. The world had been submerged in a grayscale domain of absolute stillness.
Lu Chen's eyes narrowed. His Void Core spun fiercely, resisting the time-space lock. He gripped the Severing Edge, turning toward the thickest patch of darkness.
From Lu Chen's own shadow, a figure rose.
It was a woman clad in form-fitting obsidian silk, her face obscured by a mask of constantly shifting smoke. The scent of withered lotuses and old blood accompanied her.
"A flawless application of Dark Providence," the woman purred, her voice echoing from everywhere at once. "You turned the Imperial Bureau's own hounds into victims of cosmic irony. Marvelous, Chen Lu. Or should I call you Lu Chen?"
Lu Chen didn't lower his sword. Through the Luck-Binding Mirror, he looked at her. There was no golden Qi Yun around her. Instead, she was cloaked in thick, gray threads of obfuscation—the signature of the Shadow Sword Pavilion.
"An Absolute Stillness Array," Lu Chen noted coldly. "A Rank-Six artifact at least. The Shadow Sword Pavilion is certainly wealthy. Are you here to collect the Bureau's bounty?"
"The bounty?" The woman chuckled, pacing around him. "Ten million high-grade spirit stones and a fiefdom in the Central Province. It is tempting. But my Pavilion masters deal in futures, not just immediate payouts. I am Envoy Mo."
"Speak fast, Envoy Mo. I have a hound to put down."
"We want to offer you an alliance," Mo said, stopping a few paces away. "The Imperial Bureau is hunting you because you threaten their monopoly on the world's luck. The Azure Cloud Sect wants you dead to protect their fragile, stolen foundation. You are a predator of providence, Lu Chen. But even a predator needs eyes."
Lu Chen's expression remained impassive. "You want to feed me targets."
"Exactly," Mo snapped her fingers. "You possess a unique... talent. You erase 'Heavenly Opportunities' and plunder Qi Yun. The Pavilion possesses the most extensive intelligence network in the Nine Provinces. We know where every 'Chosen One', every 'Child of Heaven', and every luck-heavy genius sleeps, trains, and hides."
She leaned in, the smoke of her mask swirling. "We will give you their locations. We will disable the Bureau's tracking arrays so you can hunt in peace. In return, you keep their luck, their destiny, their spirit roots. We take the physical spoils—their storage rings, their ancestral artifacts, and their corpses."
Lu Chen stared at her. Through the Third Form of his mirror, Destiny Sight, he watched the karmic threads connecting Envoy Mo to the ether. He saw the crimson threads of betrayal woven deeply into her offer. The Pavilion wasn't looking for an ally; they were looking for a disposable weapon to destabilize the orthodox sects and the Bureau. The moment Lu Chen's bounty exceeded his utility, or the moment he was severely wounded, the Pavilion's assassins would drive a blade through his back.
It was a textbook cycle of betrayal.
And Lu Chen welcomed it.
Let them think I am their dog, Lu Chen thought, his lips curling into a cruel, razor-thin smile. I will use their network to gorge myself on the world's geniuses until my Void Core is vast enough to swallow their entire organization.
"An unholy alliance," Lu Chen said smoothly, lowering the Severing Edge. "I am amenable. But trust requires a down payment."
Envoy Mo's smoky mask seemed to smile. She reached into her robes and tossed a pitch-black jade slip to him. Lu Chen caught it, feeling the cold sting of shadow Qi.
"A token of our sincerity," Mo said. "First, a free tip: Sikong Jian's Heaven-Sealing Art is formidable, but because his Innate Spirit Root is wood-attribute, forcing the golden light causes a half-second delay at his third meridian. Strike under his left arm."
Mo took a step back, melting into the shadows. "Second, check the slip when you're done. The Azure Cloud Sect is hosting the Dragon Gate Banquet in three days. They are gathering the province's top fifty geniuses to forcefully siphon their luck to heal Fang Tianyou's fractured providence. It would be a shame if someone crashed the party."
With a final, echoing chuckle, the woman vanished entirely.
The grayscale domain shattered like glass.
Color, sound, and time slammed back into reality. The wind howled. The burning Enforcer resumed his agonizing screams.
Above, Sikong Jian's golden pillar of eradication finished its descent, crashing down toward Lu Chen with the force of a falling mountain.
Lu Chen didn't retreat. Armed with Mo's intelligence and his own monstrous instincts, he lunged forward, diving directly into the edge of the golden light. The holy energy scorched his skin, but his Void Core spun frantically, absorbing the brunt of the impact.
Sikong Jian's eyes widened in disbelief. "Die!"
As Sikong Jian pushed his Qi to the absolute limit to sustain the pillar, the inevitable happened. The conflicting wood-attribute Qi in his meridians clashed with the golden light. For exactly half a second, the flow of Qi stuttered at his third meridian.
Lu Chen was already there.
Sliding beneath Sikong Jian's guard, Lu Chen thrust the Severing Edge upward, aiming precisely beneath the hound's left arm.
Puchi.
The gray-coated blade pierced Sikong Jian's ribs, sliding effortlessly through his defenses and biting deep into his lung.
"Gah!" Sikong Jian spat a mouthful of golden blood, his astrolabe shattering into pieces as his concentration broke.
But the physical wound was the least of his concerns. As the blade penetrated his flesh, Lu Chen unleashed the Rotting Destiny intent directly into Sikong Jian's spiritual sea.
Through the Luck-Binding Mirror, Lu Chen watched as Sikong Jian's towering pillar of golden Qi Yun—a providence built on years of serving the Heavens—began to blacken and curdle at the edges. The rot spread rapidly, infecting his destiny.
Sikong Jian felt it. A bone-deep chill that told him his future had just been violently amputated. Panic, pure and unadulterated, seized the Imperial prodigy.
He violently kicked off the ground, tearing himself off Lu Chen's blade, and crushed a jade talisman on his belt. A spatial tear ripped open behind him, sucking him in.
"You... you are a plague!" Sikong Jian screamed as the rift closed, his voice trembling with a fear he had never known.
Lu Chen stood alone in the ruins of Wuhen Village, the surviving Enforcers fleeing in terror. He didn't give chase. A rotted hound would spread more chaos back at the Bureau than a dead one.
Flicking the blood off the Severing Edge, Lu Chen pulled out the shadow-jade slip Envoy Mo had given him. He injected a sliver of Qi into it.
A map of the Eastern Province materialized in his mind, highlighting a luxurious mountain resort owned by the Azure Cloud Sect.
The Dragon Gate Banquet. Fifty 'Luck-Heavy' geniuses gathered in one place to act as a battery for Fang Tianyou.
Lu Chen's black eyes gleamed with a terrifying hunger. Fang Tianyou thought he could mend the providence Lu Chen had shattered by simply stealing from others?
"Gather them all, Fang Tianyou," Lu Chen whispered to the wind, his Void Core vibrating with anticipation. "Set the table. I'm coming to feast."