Chương 1: Volume 1: Reyn’s Abyss CityChapter 1: A Doorway Drenched in Crimson

Leaden, ash-gray clouds hung suffocatingly low over the jagged ridgelines, resembling a massive, blood-soaked shroud draped heavily across the heavens of the Thunder Abyss Mountains. The transition from late autumn had been brutal, leaving the mountain air sharp and bone-chilling.

A fierce morning gale, laden with fine, crystalline snow-grit, roared through the narrow mountain passes, howling across the desolate wilderness before lashing against the crumbling mud-brick walls of the village houses with a mournful, piercing shriek. The entire world was submerged in a gloomy, frigid malaise; the light was dim, the earth-qi was freezing, and even the mountain beasts had retreated into hiding.

Every corner of the landscape exhaled an oppressive, deathly stillness—a premonition of impending doom that made the heart tremble. It was amidst this biting cold and the cacophony of the storm that Reyn was jolted into consciousness. He didn't merely wake; he snapped into reality, his body recoiling from the straw mat like a coiled spring. Every muscle was taut with survival instinct.

His right hand blurred, darting beneath his pillow to firmly grip the hilt of a rusted, pitted short dagger—the solitary heirloom his father had left for his protection before vanishing into the unknown. At thirteen, the boy was gaunt, his frame thinned by years of relentless poverty. His shoulders were bony and sharp, and his thin, coarse tunic—faded to a dull white and riddled with patches—offered no defense against the mountain's icy breath.

Yet, the eyes that had been clouded by sleep moments ago were now terrifyingly lucid. The innocence of youth had been burned away, replaced by a cold, calculating vigilance and a depth of focus that far exceeded his tender years. Outside the courtyard, a series of violent, arrogant thuds erupted against the gate. The force was savage, each blow sending tremors through the ancient wood and shaking loose showers of splinters and dust.

"Open up! Everyone inside, get out here now! Stop playing dead!" A coarse, domineering voice pierced through the door panels, accompanied by the unmistakable, rhythmic clinking of iron and steel. Reyn's pupils constricted into pinpricks. It was the sound of blades being drawn—the metallic song of unsheathed killing intent. These men hadn't come to talk; they had come with steel in their hands and murder in their hearts.

"My son, hide in the secret passage we prepared. No matter what happens outside, you must not make a sound. Do not come out," came the voice of his mother, Ye Wan, from the kitchen. Despite the calamity at their doorstep, her voice remained eerily calm, devoid of panic but infused with a steel-like finality that brooked no argument.

"If an opportunity arises, do not worry about me. Just run." Reyn's knuckles turned white as he squeezed the dagger. He moved silently, his bare feet making no sound as he slipped into the narrow, hidden crawlspace. Holding his breath until his lungs burned, he pressed his eye to a tiny crevice in the wall, peering out into the courtyard with a heart like a drum. Ye Wan paused to smooth her disheveled hair.

With a practiced, fluid motion, she tucked a heavy iron wood-chopping cleaver into the small of her back, hidden by her clothes. She wiped the soot from her hands, took a deep, stabilizing breath, and walked toward the shivering gate. With a steady hand, she unlatched the wood and pulled it open. A blast of freezing wind surged into the small yard, carrying with it a suffocating aura of power. A crowd of men stood there, their faces masks of cold aggression—all elite members of the Lei Clan's direct lineage.

At the very front stood three figures, their presence so dominant they seemed to warp the air around them. In the center stood Lei Wanjun, the current Patriarch of the Lei Clan. He was draped in fine silk robes, his expression a void of indifference. Throughout the entire ordeal, he remained a silent statue, offering neither a word of restraint for his men nor a flicker of familial compassion. His silence was the ultimate betrayal, a cold endorsement of the persecution about to unfold.

To his side stood Lei Wanhe, the second-born of the family and Reyn's second uncle. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, his gaze drifting over the dilapidated courtyard with utter detachment. There was no brotherhood in his eyes, only the clinical observation of a predator watching a lesser creature being cornered. However, the true architect of this malice was Lei Wanren, the fifth uncle.

His face was a contorted mask of greed and violent intent, his eyes bloodshot with the madness of a man seeking to seize power by any means necessary. Every ounce of pressure, every blade drawn, and every drop of killing intent radiating through the air originated from his ambition. Behind him stood Lei Wanzhi, a thuggish enforcer who had long since sold his soul to the fifth uncle's whims.

"Sister-in-law," Lei Wanren said, stepping forward. He forced a thin, oily smile that didn't reach his eyes. His voice was mockingly polite, but his gaze remained fixed on the house like a vulture circling a carcass, devoid of a single shred of kinship.

"Our ancestral *Thunder Astral Scripture and the Thunder-Veined Tiger Tally are the clan's supreme treasures," Lei Wanren began, his voice dripping with a poisonous, feigned concern.

"By right, they must be held by the core lineage. My second brother has been gone for three months—no word, no trace. His life is a mystery. Leaving such artifacts in a remote courtyard, in the hands of women and children, is a reckless gamble. We are here to reclaim them for the clan's safety. Sister-in-law, be sensible. Hand them over." Ye Wan stood upon the threshold. Her frame was slight, a reed trembling in a winter gale, yet her spine remained a pillar of unyielding iron.

Facing her brother-in-law's predatory gaze, her expression remained frost-cold, her voice devoid of the slightest tremor.

"Lei Wanren," she spoke, each word a strike against a bronze bell.

"The Old Master bestowed the Tally and the Scripture upon my husband, Lei Zhenting, on his deathbed. The entire clan witnessed it. You were there. You knelt. You swore to uphold his final command. Now, before the incense has even cooled, you return to seize what is not yours, spitting upon our ancestors' legacy. Have you no shame?" Her words sliced through his facade, exposing the rot of his ambition. The oily smile on Lei Wanren's face curdled.

The warmth in his eyes vanished, replaced by a dark, jagged malice that distorted his features into a demonic mask. Nearby, Lei Wanjun remained a statue of indifference, his eyelids heavy, ignoring the scene. Lei Wanhe stood equally silent, his passive gaze a silent endorsement of the theft. Emboldened by their silence, Lei Wanren lunged forward.

"Presumptuous! A mere woman from a branch house dares lecture her elders? You know nothing of discipline!"

"Since you lack manners, I shall beat them into you!" He moved with the sudden violence of a viper. Ye Wan raised her hands to resist, but she was no match for the seasoned warriors. Two men surged from the flanks, pinning her arms and wrenching them behind her back with brutal, practiced force. Crack— The sickening sound of snapping bone echoed in the courtyard. Agony flared through her, yet Ye Wan only let out a muffled groan, a thin trail of crimson leaking from her lips. Behind the door, Reyn watched.

His heart constricted with a suffocating rage. His fingers dug into the wood until his nails bled, the splinters piercing his flesh, yet he felt nothing but the fire in his soul. Slap!! A sharp slap exploded against Ye Wan's cheek, the force so savage it whipped her head aside. Her silken hair billowed in a chaotic mess as a thin line of crimson leaked from her lips. Before she could draw a ragged breath, a second blow followed—heavier, more vicious, fueled by calculated cruelty.

The sickening thud of teeth clashing echoed. Dizzied and swaying, Ye Wan remained upright. She ground her teeth, her jaw locked in a stubborn refusal to show weakness. Nearby, Lei Wanjun and Lei Wanhe watched with detached indifference. Their eyes were frozen ponds, treating the brutalization of their kinswoman as a trivial farce, offering neither word of protest nor mercy. Lei Wanren stepped forward, his gaze burning with bloodthirsty intent. He crowded her space, his voice a dangerous hiss.

"I will ask one final time. Hand it over, or face the end." If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

"Surrender the treasure, and I will grant you and your son a path to survival. Persist in this idiocy, and do not blame me for discarding the last remnants of familial sentiment! My patience is at its limit!" Ye Wan slowly raised her head through a haze of agony and humiliation. She stared into the eyes of the heartless man before her—her own brother-in-law. A tragic, resolute smile curved her bloodied lips. She spat a glob of gore-flecked phlegm at his boots, her gaze as unyielding as tempered iron.

"You spit upon the decrees of our ancestors and clan laws," she rasped.

"You covet the legacy my husband bled for. You want the treasure? I would rather descend into hell than surrender it to a dog like you!" Those words ignited the tinder of Lei Wanren's violent soul. Driven by a twisted obsession for power and stung by her defiance, his sanity snapped. His killing intent surged forth, unchecked and feral.

"Fine! Since you seek the grave so eagerly, I shall personally escort you there!" His eyes turned a manic, bloodshot scarlet. With a guttural snarl, he lunged, his fingers hooking like iron talons around Ye Wan's slender throat. He hoisted her effortlessly, her feet dangling uselessly above the earth. Ye Wan gasped, her face darkening to a bruised purple as her lungs screamed for air. Her hands clawed frantically at his grip, nails carving deep, bloody furrows into his hand.

Yet, her struggle only fueled his madness. Ignoring every law of gods and men, he swung her frail frame with terrifying momentum, hurling her bodily toward the massive bluestone millstone. CRACK—!! The sound was heavy, wet, and bone-chilling. The impact instantly extinguished the last spark of life within her. Her body slumped like a broken marionette, sliding down the cold stone. Blood erupted from the horrific wound at the back of her skull, mingling with her hair and the dust in a gruesome pool.

Her eyes, once filled with warmth, began to glaze. With the last dregs of consciousness, she fixed her gaze toward the dark corner where Reyn lay hidden. Her lips trembled, shaping a silent, final command that carried her soul. Run. Live. Do not look back. Behind the heavy wooden door, Reyn stood as a statue of ice, his very lifeblood seemingly flash-frozen in his veins.

The world outside had dissolved into a vacuum of absolute, suffocating silence, broken only by the mournful howl of the mountain gale and the thunderous, agonizing roar of his own soul splintering into a million jagged shards. He had seen it—the visceral, systematic slaughter of his mother, beaten to death by the very kin who shared her name. A few paces away, the architects of this nightmare stood unmoved.

Clan Leader Lei Wanjun and Second Uncle Lei Wanhe were pillars of callous indifference, their faces masks of stone. They had witnessed every blow, heard every desperate plea for mercy, yet they chose the sanctuary of a complicit silence, watching with detached eyes as a woman of their own blood was extinguished in the dirt.

"Worthless trash! You brought this upon yourself by refusing the easy path!" Lei Wanren spat, flicking beads of hot crimson from his knuckles with a sharp, practiced motion. His expression held no trace of familial warmth, only the cold, predatory hunger of a wolf. He turned to the gathered men, his voice a serrated blade.

"Search every corner! Raze this hovel to the ground if you must. I want the Thunder Astral Scripture and the Tiger Tally. If so much as a scrap of parchment is missed, you will answer to me!"

"As you command!" The order unleashed a pack of scavengers. The kinsmen, driven by greed and fear, descended upon the small courtyard like a plague of locusts. Chests were smashed into splinters; heirloom tables were upended and crushed. They hacked into the earthen walls with axes and shredded the bedding into useless rags. In a matter of heartbeats, the sanctuary of Reyn's childhood—the only home he had ever known—was reduced to a skeletal ruin of debris and broken memories.

Deep within the suffocating darkness of the secret passage, Reyn clamped his teeth onto his lip until the copper tang of blood filled his mouth. He fought the primal urge to scream, knowing that a single sob would be his death warrant. He was a hunted cub in a den of monsters. Seizing a moment when the searchers were distracted, he pressed his body against the freezing soil, moving with the silent grace of a shadow. He slipped through a jagged window frame, his bare feet meeting the biting frost.

Sharp gravel bit into his soles, yet he felt nothing. The physical pain was a mere flicker compared to the inferno of hatred incinerating his heart. He moved like a wraith through the shadows, finally diving into the deepest corner of a discarded woodpile. He pulled rotting planks and frozen straw over his small frame, entombing himself in the dark. Above him, the cacophony of violence refused to abate.

"Nothing! We've scoured the entire perimeter!" Lei Wanren's voice rose in a crescendo of frustrated malice.

"Keep digging! The brat must be lurking nearby. I want him found—dead or alive!" He paused, his tone dropping into a chilling, authoritative register.

"Listen well. As of this moment, the truth is rewritten. Bandits raided this village tonight, butchering the mother and son of the Second Branch. The boy, Reyn, was abducted. Anyone who dares whisper a different tale will be branded a traitor and cast out to die. Do I make myself clear?"

"Yes, Elder!" the mob responded in a unified, terrifying roar. The lie was a second blade, twisting in Reyn's gut. They were erasing his mother's sacrifice and staining his father's honor with their fabrication. The search dragged on for an eternity as the wind sharpened. Only when the torches finally flickered out and the last of the footsteps retreated did a hollow silence return. Yet Reyn did not move. He remained coiled in the frozen dark, his body racked by tremors of pure, unadulterated loathing.

Then, a sound pierced the veil of the blizzard—a raw, guttural howl of absolute despair that Reyn recognized in his very marrow. It was his father, Lei Zhenting. Reyn clawed his way out of the straw, his stiffened limbs screaming in protest. He ran, a small, desperate ghost through the swirling snow, toward the front gate. Through the haze of white, he saw the final act of the tragedy. His father was a ruin of a man, clothes soaked in blood, a spear wound through his right shoulder.

Four kinsmen held sabers to his throat, forcing him into the red-stained snow. Zhenting's eyes, bloodshot and wild, were locked onto the white shroud covering the broken remains of his wife.

"Lei Wanren! Lei Wanhe!" Zhenting's voice was a jagged rasp of betrayal.

"How... how could you? She was family! My son... where is my son?!" Lei Wanhe looked down with the eyes of a dead fish. Lei Wanjun remained a silent observer. Only Lei Wanren stepped forward, a thin, cruel smirk playing on his lips as he looked down at his broken brother.

"Brother, your grief has clouded your mind," Wanren said, his voice dripping with sickening, oily faux-sympathy.

"Vicious bandits descended upon us while you were away. We arrived too late to save her."

"You lying dog!" Zhenting roared. With a final, suicidal surge of strength, he threw himself forward, lunging for Wanren's jugular.

"Enough," Lei Wanhe snapped. He stepped into Zhenting's path, driving his foot into Zhenting's knee with the weight of a falling mountain. The sound of bone shattering echoed through the silent courtyard like a thunderclap, signaling the birth of a vengeance that would one day set the world aflame. Lei Zhenting's legs shattered with a sickening crunch, sending him crashing into the gore-stained snow. A fine mist of crimson vapor erupted as his knees struck the frozen earth.

Lei Wanren stepped forward, his heavy boot grinding into Zhenting's spine, pinning him like a broken insect. His voice was a glacial rasp, devoid of any fraternal warmth.

"Zhenting, you should have known your place. Your greed for the ancestral treasures and clan opportunities sparked this fire. Today, the deaths of your wife and child are the price of your arrogance. The authority and destiny of the Lei Clan were never meant for your lineage!" Prostrate in the freezing slush, Zhenting spat a glob of gore. His eyes, bloodshot and wild, glared at his treacherous kin.

"You... heartless monsters... to slaughter your own blood... Heaven will not permit this..."

"Heaven?" Wanren sneered, his killing intent peaking.

"Enough. End this." Without hesitation, Wanren hoisted his greatsword. The blade traced a lethal, silver arc through the obsidian gale. Squelch—!! Steel met bone. Hot, steaming blood geysered three feet into the air, painting the pristine white landscape in macabre red. The father's head tumbled into the dirt, eyes wide and unblinking. Even in death, his final, desperate gaze remained fixed on the darkness where Reyn lay hidden—a silent, soul-piercing command etched into the boy's marrow: Live. Avenge us.

Throughout the massacre, Lei Wanjun watched in stony silence, Lei Wanhe lent his hand to the slaughter, and Lei Wanren led the purge. A monumental atrocity was finalized under the complicity of three brothers. Wanren kicked the severed head aside. His expression remained indifferent as he barked orders to erase the evidence: "Seal the village! Declare that the Second Branch was slaughtered by mountain bandits. Post a bounty of a hundred gold for the 'fugitives.' As for the brat, Reyn—dead or alive, find him!"

The torches flickered away, their light swallowed by the storm as the perpetrators retreated. The courtyard was left to the corpses and the falling snow. Reyn stood motionless in the shadows. He stood before the blood of his parents, amidst the ruins of his life. He did not cry. Not a single tear fell. The agony had transmuted into a frigid, eternal hatred that burrowed deep into his soul. At dawn, the boy finally moved.

His frozen limbs dragged him to an inconspicuous corner of the yard—a secret cache his father had dug years ago. He clawed through the permafrost to retrieve a weathered wooden box. Inside lay no divine artifacts or miraculous pills. There were only three low-grade spirit stones, a jade pendant carved with the 'Zhen' hexagram, and a tattered manual: the Qi Induction Scripture. On the last page, a location was marked in cinnabar: Xuanxiao Sect. Three thousand miles away. His only path to survival.

His only path to vengeance. Reyn gripped the spirit stones until his own blood stained their surfaces. He looked one last time at the courtyard soaked in the lifeblood of his kin. The executioner: Lei Wanren. The silent accomplices: Lei Wanjun and Lei Wanhe. The Lei Clan.

"I, Reyn, swear this oath." His voice was thin but sharp as a whetted blade.

"The debt of my parents' blood, the crime of my clan's betrayal... I will settle it all. Blood for blood. Lei Wanren, your life is mine. Lei Wanjun, Lei Wanhe, your indifference will be answered. Should I fail, let Heaven and Earth strike me down!" He stowed the box and vanished into the deep hunting trails of the back mountains. A solitary shadow, consumed by a fire that would never go out.