The stone chamber pulsed with a weight older than the men who stood within it. The walls seemed to drink in silence, vibrating faintly as if the earth itself recognized what was clawing its way through the rift behind Xiao Lei.

  The five summoned echoes—bell, serpent, blade, scabbard, and tusked beast—shifted uneasily, their outlines quivering. It was not fear, not yet, but hesitation: instinctive reverence before a presence that did not belong among them.

  Then the tear widened. Out stepped a wolf, twenty spans tall, carved from living shadow. Every contour bent the air around it, as if the world itself resisted its existence. The chamber dimmed beneath its silhouette, the ground trembling to the weight of phantom paws.

  Qingshan’s lips parted before he could restrain himself. “What… is that?” His own bell-echo quivered, its golden surface rippling like a servant forced to kneel. The sensation lodged in his chest, sharp and humiliating. He had never read of such a thing, never heard even whispers of an echo that could make another spirit yield.

  Rai Mu fared no better. His breath came shallow, eyes darting between Xiao Lei and the wolf that loomed over him. He had thought Xiao Lei formidable already—too cunning, too composed, even when pressed against superior numbers. But this… this was something else. For a brief instant, Rai Mu almost pitied Qingshan. Almost.

  Xiao Lei moved first. He didn’t wait for awe to fade into caution. His stride cut through the chamber, sharp and direct, and the wolf’s silhouette rippled forward with him.

  That snapped the bandits from their stupor. “Ha! Just smoke and shadow—scarecrows won’t save you!” one barked, laughter breaking brittle against the stone. Yet the edge in their voices betrayed strain. They unleashed everything.

  Rai Mu’s seals shifted in a blur. His shout rang clear, a guttural edge beneath the words. “Devastating Fist!”

  Qi twisted into the air before him, coalescing into a jagged phantom fist. It shot forward, cracking stone as it barrelled toward Qingshan.

  He snarled, fury cutting through his awe. “Rai Mu. You want to die so badly?” Golden light flared around him, claw of condensed qi raking outward to meet the blow. The chamber roared as fist and claw collided, shockwaves shaking dust from the ceiling.

  Even as their strikes clashed, the three remaining bandits moved. The sword and scabbard echoes fused mid-air, forming a weapon that gleamed with an unnatural light, hovering between its wielders like a living blade. The third bandit roared his incantation—“Crushing Trunk!”—and his nose warped grotesquely, elongating into a massive trunk. With brutal force, it swung down toward Xiao Lei, stone splintering beneath its arc.

  Xiao Lei caught the blur of movement too late—the massive trunk bore down, air splitting with its weight. Instinct snapped through his veins. His form dissolved, vanishing into smoke and shadow. Void Step.

  He reappeared behind the two bandits, claws unsheathing with a metallic snarl as he struck. But they had prepared. Sword and scabbard, fused into a hovering weapon, whirled forward like a guardian spirit. Steel rang against claw, the impact forcing Xiao Lei a step back, boots grinding furrows into the stone.

  His gaze narrowed, readying to strike again—when the trunk swept across the chamber once more, walls rattling with its force. He twisted aside, breath sharp in his throat, and in one fluid motion drew the Stormbranch Bow from his back. Cold air whistled down the chamber’s walls as arrows streaked like falling stars as they their target.

  The monstrous limb shuddered beneath the barrage, flesh groaning with a damp, rotting stench, the air thickening as if choked with swamp mist. Yet it only recoiled to lash forward again.

  A pulse of pain tightened behind Xiao Lei’s eyes. His thoughts scattered, then sharpened. Every strike he made drew another attack; every opening sealed itself. They were driving him into stillness, suffocating him beneath pressure that refused to break.

  “I have to end this quickly,” he muttered, barely audible beneath the storm of echoes. His gaze flicked sideways. Rai Mu staggered beneath Qingshan’s relentless assault, his serpent echo fraying under the golden bell’s tolls. He wouldn’t last.

  Xiao Lei’s chest rose once, deep and deliberate. Then the beat began.

  The Black Heart stirred. Its rhythm began slow, heavy as a war-drum. Then faster, thunder rolling through his ribs. Each pulse flooded his meridians. Power prickled along his skin. The air thickened. His aura swelled, a rising tide threatening to drown the chamber.

  The bandits faltered, exchanging startled glances. Even Rai Mu and Qingshan broke their clash to turn toward him.

  Xiao Lei’s qi swelled until it scraped the edge of eruption, pressing against the limits of his stage—then pushed past.

  A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

  Ninth stage. The very peak.

  But this time, the backlash was muted. The crushing strain that once gnawed his bones eased, receding like a tide. His mastery of the Black Heart had deepened—it answered with obedience, not rebellion.

  The chamber stood in silence, broken only by that pounding rhythm echoing from Xiao Lei’s body.

  “Ninth… stage? Impossible…” one bandit whispered, his warped trunk trembling mid-swing. The grotesque appendage hung frozen, absurd in its shape, yet powerless before the dread flooding his eyes—as though he had glimpsed a force no boy should command.

  Xiao Lei surged forward once more, the phantom wolf looming at his back. Its silhouette shimmered like fractured moonlight, each step sending a tremor through the chamber as if the air itself carried its weight. The fused sword-sheath construct whistled toward him in a brutal arc—yet before it could strike, Xiao Lei’s lips parted.

  The second echo art, The Shattered Howl unfurled.

  A sound tore through the chamber. It was not a howl, not truly. Broken, distorted, it scraped the edges of perception, more absence than noise. For an instant, the world seemed to split. Shadows thickened, light dimmed, and the very air wavered as though memory itself recoiled.

  The bandits staggered, their senses drowned in the false night. Even hardened killers froze mid-breath. Rai Mu fared worse. Already battered from his duel with Qingshan, he crumpled as if the marrow in his bones had been stolen, blood streaking his lips as he dropped to the floor, the cold stone pressing against his back. The sight of him folding so utterly under that sound etched terror into every witness.

  Xiao Lei did not waste the opening. The howl’s lingering resonance coiled through his meridians, driving his speed and strength beyond limits. He was upon the elephant-echo wielder before the man’s eyes had cleared.

  The spectral limb lashed up in reflex, desperate, wavering like a drowning man’s arm. Useless. Xiao Lei’s strike burned through it as though punching through mist. His clawed fist came down, and the man’s skull splintered apart, fragments spraying silence and blood alike. His body had not yet toppled when Xiao Lei vanished again.

  He reappeared before the remaining pair. Startled, they fused their echoes, sword and sheath locking once more into that hovering weapon. Sparks shrieked across the chamber as Xiao Lei’s fists hammered against it. Blow after blow fell, relentless, each impact rattling their bones as much as their defence. The construct faltered. Its glow fractured, then shattered outright, dissolving into a storm of fading motes.

  The two regained clarity in that same instant—but clarity brought terror. They were only fifth-stage cultivators, and he was a storm wrapped in flesh. Their last sight was the descent of twin taloned fists, each blow rending flesh and marrow, a storm of violence in motion. Then nothing. No sound, no thought, only the blackness of death, tinged with iron scent.

  Five breaths. That was all it had taken.

  Qingshan’s mind reeled. He blinked, once, twice, hoping the vision might fade. But the chamber floor was already painted with blood, corpses cooling under the flicker of qi-light. The nightmare did not lift; it only deepened.

  The boy—no, this youth—stood there with wolf-shadow stirring behind him, eyes as calm as if counting coins.

  Panic surged through his chest. He snapped his hand seals, summoning the golden bell. It descended around him, its surface glowing with holy lustre, enclosing him in a desperate cocoon. His voice cracked through the chamber, stripped of dignity, wild with plea.

  “Sir Lei! I—I’ll give everything! Take it! Please… please spare me! Anything… anything at all!”

  Xiao Lei did not flinch at Qingshan’s frantic pleas. His gaze was inward, sinking into the depths of his own body.

  For a heartbeat, the world fell away. Only the rhythm of his black heart and the coiling pulse of his marrow remained. Heat began to rise from within, jagged, excruciating, clawing along his veins and setting nerves ablaze. He bit down, tasting iron as his teeth cut through flesh to contain the scream that threatened to tear free.

  The heat coalesced, condensing into a speck so small it could have been dust. Yet within it, energy swirled like molten lightning, stretching and twisting, taking a form rough and malformed, jagged as if a child had fashioned a projectile from shards.

  Marrow and veins shivered under the pressure. Every second, Xiao Lei fought to keep his vitality from shattering. He knew the threshold was near. With a final, resonant exhale, he released it—the malformed missile surged forth.

  One heartbeat, and it was gone from him. The next, it tore across the chamber. Qingshan’s eyes widened. The golden bell’s shimmer flickered under the heat. The arrow cut through it like smoke, striking dead centre on his forehead.

  A scream wrenched itself from his throat, then broke and fell into silence, swallowed by the sudden emptiness that filled the space.

  Xiao Lei dropped to one knee, his echo dissolving behind him into faint flickers of light, leaving only shadow and the echo of his own ragged breathing. Each inhale rasped, raw and laboured, but he forced himself upright, staggering toward Rai Mu.

  Rai Mu froze, disbelief flashing across his features. Pride, arrogance, calculation—all crumbled in the face of Xiao Lei’s relentless mastery. He opened his mouth to speak, perhaps to express thanks, perhaps to marvel at the impossible—but pain seized him first. Warm, unforgiving, stabbing through his chest. He looked down, startled, to see the arrow’s shaft lodged in his heart, still clutched in Xiao Lei’s hand.

  He glanced at Xiao Lei, not in disbelief, but in muted disappointment—a recognition of inevitability. His shoulders sagged slightly, fists unclenching as the truth pressed down, and his gaze lingered on the projectile’s shaft. Xiao Lei’s voice was calm, cold, and final. “No witnesses.” With deliberate force, he drove it deeper.

  Rai Mu’s breath shuddered, then ceased. Silence fell, the chamber holding the weight of both awe and dread. Xiao Lei released the shaft from his hand, letting it drop. His own body sagged under the strain, collapsing to the floor beside Rai Mu, exhaustion clawing at every fibre of his being.

  Yet even as his chest heaved, and sweat plastered his robes to his skin, his eyes remained open—sharp, unyielding, and watchful, still tasting the remnants of the battlefield he had dominated.

  Around him, the chamber seemed to exhale, the echoes of struggle fading. The faint shimmer of dissipating qi hung in the air, pressing lightly on skin and spine, carrying an uneasy chill. Silence settled, heavy and suffocating, as if the space itself had been marked by the violence that had passed.