“They have simple hearts and long-buried anger. Stir it, show them the illusion of irresistible support, and they will gamble everything…”
“Once civil war splits their halls, Paxton will be too busy saving his throne to face us. We either reap the spoils or storm the sect while they bleed. If Jared Chance returns, he’ll find only ruin waiting for him.”
Hearing this, Sheldon let the idea sink in. A heartbeat later, a twisted smile carved across his face—sharp, delighted, merciless.
“Brilliant! Turn his own blade against him… yes, that is the taste I want! Gather elders and disciples skilled at concealment and persuasion. Load them with treasures and promises. Send them into the Myriad Beast Mountains tonight. Let Paxton have a taste of his own medicine. Make sure Jared never gets to return!”
“At once, sir!” the elder cried, bowing before streaking away to arrange the covert mission. Thus, while the Infinite Soul Demon Sect retreated beneath the stars, a new conspiracy unfurled, silent as mist, lethal as poison.
Within the Myriad Beast Sect, peace briefly returned after Jared’s departure, like a quiet breath drawn before the dagger falls.
Word swept through the sect like a cleansing wind; the Infinite Soul Demon Sect had pulled back its forces. Hallways once echoing with shuffling feet now rang with purposeful steps, and disciples clasped one another’s forearms in fierce, incredulous relief.
Paxton and the other elders whispered Jared’s name with something close to awe, their earlier gratitude sharpening into a rock-solid reliance on the man who had delivered them from the brink.
Yet beneath that sun-lit calm, a riptide gathered unseen, as though the mountains themselves were holding their breath for the storm to follow.
On the ragged fringe of the Myriad Beast Mountains sprawled a bleak allotment set aside for the hybrid-beast tribe—a patch of scrub hills and dust where crooked huts leaned together like beggars in the wind.
No soaring stone halls here, no cultivation pools that shimmered with spirit light.
The folk who lived there were shaped by conflict and alchemy: half beast, half human, all wary eyes.
Some wore the faces of men above claws that rasped against the earth. Others walked fully upon talons, their muzzles lifting to scent a sky that had never welcomed them. In every gaze flickered the same dull glaze, the stupor of generations told they were lesser-blooded, too tainted for the sect’s proud bloodlines. Yet buried beneath that torpor smoldered an ember of defiance.
Deeper in the settlement, a cavern yawned like the cracked jaw of a fossilized wyrm. Torches guttered along the walls, throwing savage orange across a circle of hulking silhouettes.
At their center stood Garth Thornscale, the tribe’s fist and voice.
Nearly three meters tall, he was sheathed head to toe in dark crimson scales that caught the firelight like hammered iron. His leonine skull bore a single ivory horn that curved back over his mane, and a tail bristling with bone barbs dragged behind him, gouging the stone.
Strength and bitterness radiated from him in waves; no one in that tribe commanded more loyalty, or carried a heavier chain of hatred.
Now, before Garth, two figures cloaked in ink-black robes hovered like smudges against the fireglow, their presences muted, their motives anything but.
“Mr. Thornscale,” crooned the first black-robed man, his voice a velvet hook slipping through the torch-smoke. “We understand your plight, truly, we do… You wield huge power, yet because your blood is ‘impure’, the pure-blood beasts keep you penned in this wasteland. They toss you leftover cultivation scraps as if you were kennel dogs. Tell me, where is the justice in that?”
Garth’s gold-disk eyes narrowed—anger, humiliation, and a raw, near-invisible ambition swirling just beneath the surface.
The second black-robed man stepped forward, his tone crisp, almost businesslike. “Our Sect Master holds your tribe’s strength in the highest regard. He pledges that if you will rise, claim what has always been yours, and seize the reins of the Myriad Beast Sect, the Infinite Soul Demon Sect will stand behind you without reservation…”
“We will funnel resources, battle-arts, even a secret rite capable of mending the cognitive ‘gaps’ your people struggle against, tuning your minds to match any pure-blood elder. Do that, and you will no longer bow as mongrels. You will sit upon the highest seat of the sect, masters in both name and truth.”
The promise struck like sweet poison. Garth’s breath thundered in his throat.
Long-suppressed desire clawed at the walls of his restraint while the black-robed men’s words burrowed deeper, needling every scar of indignity he had ever endured.
“Mend our cognitive gaps?” The words rumbled from him, gravel dragged across steel.
“Precisely…”
The second envoy produced a pill the color of moonlit jade, its surface swirling with eerie indigo motes. “Behold the Enlightenment Pill, a proprietary marvel of our sect. It cannot rewrite the laws of heaven, but it will spark dormant potential, anchor the soul, and sharpen thought so breakthroughs come as easily as breath…”
“One nod from you, Mr. Thornscale, and this—along with further caches of power—flows to you unceasingly…”
