Heir to the Dao Body

Thick morning mist, tinged with the smell of blood, rolled over the hills. Zhang Liang tightened his grip on a chipped hatchet and swung it at the lightning-struck tree. Before the blade could land, dark red beads of blood suddenly seeped from the dead wood, and the bronze bracelet on his wrist burst into dazzling blue light. As the tree’s growth rings split into a web of cracks, a fractured sword-shaped shadow shot out of the wood and plunged straight into the boy’s brow. “A bearer of the Dao Body inheritance...” An aged voice drifted down from the clouds. An elder in blue robes stood upon his sword, seven golden swords hidden in his sleeve alongside a blood-red compass. Zhang Liang had no idea he was an enforcement elder of the Heavenly Sword Sect. Nor did he notice Uncle Li, sharpening a blade at the village entrance, crushing a messenger talisman. The Xuan Yuan Sect mark on the hunter’s palm was growing hot. As the sword-shadow detonated in his sea of consciousness, unleashing memories from antiquity, the ice of the Nine Nether Sea shattered with a thunderous crash. A man in a bronze mask stroked a jade pendant of the same origin as Zhang Liang’s and sneered. Beneath his feet, blood vines coiled around a broken stele engraved with the words “Xuan Yuan.” In the reflection of the icy pool, the boy’s pupils glimmered pale gold. The Dao markings on his right hand were devouring the black aura of a demon sword, and he had no idea he had become the “living key” hunted by both righteous and demonic forces.