The war lasted two years. Two years of patrols, ambushes, siege battles, and long nights in cramped tents where the only sounds were the distant boom of formation artillery. Two years of watching squadmates die and being replaced by fresh recruits who would also die. Two years of learning exactly what the Blood Immortal technique could do, and exactly what it cost.

Meng Hao used it twice. Both times to save his own life when no other option remained. Both times, he felt the demonic corruption seeping into his cultivation base like oil into water, staining his spiritual foundation with something dark that wouldn't wash out.

The technique was effective beyond measure. He absorbed the life force of a Foundation Establishment Level Eight assassin in a moment of desperation, and his cultivation jumped from Level Three to Level Five in the space of a single heartbeat. The power surge was intoxicating — literally, the demonic energy flooding his veins with a warmth that felt like victory and smelled like corruption.

He advanced quickly. Too quickly. By the end of the war, he was at Foundation Establishment Level Nine, only a step away from Core Formation — a speed of advancement that should have taken a decade, not two years.

But the cracks in his foundation had widened. And the bronze mirror, his constant companion, had grown cool to the touch.

When the armistice was signed and the surviving cultivators were sent home, Meng Hao returned to the Reliance Sect not as a mediocre Outer Sect disciple who had survived through luck, but as a war veteran with a demonic cultivation base and a secret that would get him executed if anyone discovered it.

Patriarch Reliance met him at the gate. The old man looked at him for a long moment, studying something in Meng Hao's eyes that only he could see.

'Welcome back,' the Patriarch said. 'You look like war.'