Legend of the Lightkeeper

On a little hillside behind the Guangdi Sect, butterfly wings once scattered glowing dust as children chased one another around the slope, laughing. That was the warmest part of Ji Xingchen's childhood, filled with the orchid fragrance of dew gathering at his mother's fingertips and the gentle warmth of his father's robe brushing the grass.

Then came the thunderous crash of the sect's protective formation shattering. Golden light broke apart into a rain of blood, the shadows of Spirit Hall trod over the elders' corpses, and poisonous vines wrapped around the Divine Silvergrass his mother had transformed into. Amid the shimmering fragments of a hundred-thousand-year-old soul beast's sacrifice, his father shoved him into a portal. Clutching only half of a scuffed jade pendant, he listened to his parents' final instructions and became the sole survivor of the Guangdi Sect.

During the year he wandered into Holy Soul Village, he scraped by in the mud, his feet layered with scars, while his parents' blood debt was carved into his very bones. Then, at six years old, he awakened his Martial Soul. In the faint glow of the Blue Silver Grass lay a second sword, shimmering with the holy radiance of the Guangdi Emperor. The instant his fingertips touched the Soul Power Orb, a crimson light burst across the entire village: Innate Soul Power at level thirty!

Spirit Hall offered him an olive branch that reeked of blood, but he clutched the jade pendant and coldly refused. Tang Hao looked up from the firelight of his smithy, and the refined black iron reflected the Death-Eyed Gaze hidden in Ji Xingchen's left eye. On the flagstone paths of Notting Academy, he met a blue-haired boy named Tang San, and their two pure streams of Soul Power gently touched in the morning light.

The Divine Silvergrass on the hillside was still waiting. The shimmering fragments of a dark-gold Soul Ring burned against the jade pendant. Holding his Twin Martial Souls, he stared ahead with a ruthlessness far beyond his years. “Spirit Hall owes the Guangdi Sect. It owes my parents. I will use your Soul Cores to collect that debt, one piece at a time.”... ...