The return to the Portable Clan Realm was anything but triumphant.
Wuxing's golden eyes burned with newly awakened knowledge, his pupils still dilated from the flood of ancestral memories. The weight of Wen Lian's final words pressed against his skull like a branding iron—*the real enemy wears our face.* Behind him, Wen Zixuan stumbled every few steps, his hands trembling as he clutched at his chest where the Heaven's Pulse Meridian now throbbed with an unfamiliar rhythm.
The clan's healers rushed forward as they crossed the boundary, but Wuxing waved them off with a gesture that sent crackles of golden qi dancing across his fingertips. The System's latest alert pulsed insistently in his vision:
**[Bloodline Synchronization Complete]**
**[Ancestral Mandate Unlocked: Tier 1 Authorities Available]**
**[Warning: Foreign Signature Detected in Bloodline Memory - 87% Match to Nine-Shadow Royal Seal]**
Elder Wen Rong's face paled as he took in their condition. "Patriarch, your eyes—"
"Assemble the council," Wuxing interrupted, his voice rougher than usual, as if scraped raw from screaming. "And bring me every historical record we have on the clan's founding. Especially the ones marked for patriarchs' eyes only."
The elder opened his mouth to protest, then thought better of it after meeting Wuxing's gaze. The golden rings around his pupils had thickened noticeably, giving him an almost inhuman appearance.
---
The ancestral hall smelled of old parchment and the faint metallic tang of preservation arrays. Wuxing stood before the clan's most sacred artifact—the Original Blood Tome, its pages forged from crystallized blood of the first Wen generations. Normally, touching it required days of purification rituals. Today, he flipped it open with bare hands, ignoring the way the pages seared his fingerprints.
The System reacted instantly:
**[Detecting Bloodline Encryption - Decoding...]**
**[Pattern Recognized: Memory Seal of the Ninth Patriarch]**
**[Bypassing Restriction...]**
The words on the page shimmered, then rearranged themselves before his eyes—not just revealing hidden text, but projecting a three-dimensional memory into the air above the tome.
A younger Wen Lian stood in this very hall, her face haggard with exhaustion. The scene was clearly centuries old, judging by the archaic style of her robes. She pressed a bloodied hand against the tome's surface as she whispered to someone off-screen:
*"It has to be this way. The corruption runs too deep. Seal this knowledge until a patriarch arises who can survive the crucible's judgment."*
The memory flickered, then shifted to show a man stepping into view—tall, broad-shouldered, with the same golden eyes that marked the Wen bloodline. But his robes were unmistakably Nine-Shadow Dynasty design, the insignia of their royal house gleaming at his collar.
Wuxing's breath caught. The resemblance was undeniable.
The man placed a hand on Wen Lian's shoulder with terrifying familiarity. *"You're making the right choice, sister. The blood must be purified, no matter the cost."*
The memory dissolved into static as the System blared a new alert:
**[Genetic Match Confirmed: Subject is Direct Ancestor]**
**[Designation: Wen Jian - Alternate Identity: Ninth Prince of Nine-Shadow Dynasty]**
**[Implication: Wen Clan Founding Documents Are Fabricated - True Origin—]**
A spike of pain lanced through Wuxing's skull as the System abruptly cut off. The tome slammed shut on its own, nearly crushing his fingers. Outside the hall, the sound of hurried footsteps announced Wen Qian's arrival.
"Patriarch," she gasped, her normally composed voice edged with panic, "we have multiple breaches at the realm's borders. The Nine-Shadow Dynasty isn't just attacking—they're tearing through our defenses like they know every weak point."
Wuxing's lips peeled back from his teeth in something too vicious to be called a smile. "Of course they do." He strode toward the door, his golden eyes burning brighter with each step. "They built them."
---
The battlefield was chaos incarnate.
Waves of Nine-Shadow cultivators poured through the fractured dimensional barriers, their black-and-gold armor gleaming under the artificial twilight of the Portable Realm. But these weren't ordinary soldiers—they moved with uncanny coordination, their formations shifting to exploit gaps in the Wen Clan's defenses that shouldn't have been visible to outsiders.
Wuxing watched from atop the command platform as another sector fell. The System's tactical display scrolled casualty reports too fast to read, but one pattern stood out clearly—every lost position corresponded exactly to weak points in the original realm construction blueprints. Blueprints only a Wen architect would know.
Xue Ming's voice rang out across the battlefield, amplified by some unseen artifact:
"Did you really think we'd let you keep what was never yours to begin with?" The Third Prince floated above the carnage, his silhouette backlit by the now fully risen Blood Moon. "The Wen Clan was always meant to be harvested. Lian's little rebellion merely delayed the inevitable."
Wuxing's fingers twitched toward the new power simmering in his core—the Ancestral Mandate Wen Lian had awoken. The System's warning flashed in response:
**[Ancestral Mandate Activation Requirements Not Met]**
**[Current Bloodline Purity: 89% - Required: 95%]**
**[Warning: Premature Activation May Trigger Genetic Collapse]**
A thunderous impact shook the command platform as a new group of attackers broke through. These wore no armor—just simple gray robes with their sleeves cut away to reveal arms covered in glowing Wen clan tattoos. Their eyes shone with the same golden hue as Wuxing's own.
Zixuan staggered back in horror. "Those are... our missing disciples! From the last hundred years! But how—"
Wen Qian's daggers were already in her hands. "They've been turned." Her voice was ice. "The Dynasty didn't just steal our bloodline. They rewrote it."
The truth slammed into Wuxing with the force of a spiritual avalanche. This wasn't just a war of territory or power.
It was a harvest.
And the Wen Clan had always been the crop.
---
The System chose that moment to deliver its most devastating analysis yet:
**[Final Genetic Sequencing Complete]**
**[Conclusion: Wen Bloodline is Artificial Construct - Primary Components:]**
**- 62% Nine-Shadow Royal Blood**
**- 23% Celestial Tiger Essence (See: Guardian Beast Xuanhu Origins)**
**- 15% Unknown (Matches No Known Genetic Profile)]**
**[Implication: Clan Founding Was Dynasty Breeding Program]**
**[Further Implication: System Origin Potentially Linked to Unknown 15%]**
Wuxing's vision swam as the pieces fell into place. The reason the Nine-Shadow Dynasty had never fully eradicated them. The purpose behind Wen Lian's imprisonment. Even the System's inexplicable loyalty—it wasn't just a tool.
It was a failsafe.
Xue Ming's laughter echoed across the battlefield as the turned Wen disciples raised their hands in unison, their stolen bloodline powers flaring to life. "Come now, Patriarch. Don't you want to meet your real family?"
The sky split open as the Blood Moon reached its zenith, bathing everything in crimson light. And in that moment, Wuxing made his choice.
He reached for the Ancestral Mandate anyway.
**[Warning! Warning!]**
**[Bloodline Purity Insufficient!]**
**[Override Confirmed: Engaging Emergency Protocols]**
The pain was beyond anything he'd ever experienced—like every cell in his body being torn apart and rewoven. But as the golden light erupted from his skin, as his scream tore through the battlefield louder than any war cry, one final System message flickered through the agony:
**[Unknown Genetic Signature Activated]**
**[Designation: ████████]**
**[Primary Function: Anti-Nine-Shadow Weapon System Online]**
Then the world went white.
---