CHAPTER 568: TWENTY MONTHS IN THE SECT

Han Yu continued reading the new changes and learned quite a bit.

The hall would also begin purchasing precursor herbs directly under advanced contracts. Registered suppliers would be offered quotas. Suppliers that met three successive quotas would be evaluated for Preferred status and granted access to a separate window with faster stamping.

Han Yu looked at the board. A clerk beside him clicked her tongue. Another supplier swore under his breath. Someone behind them laughed bitterly and said the hall was making them pets.

Han Yu saw something else.

Buffered prices. Guaranteed intake. A ladder.

He could climb that ladder and vanish into the machinery like one of the many cogs.

He turned away from the board with that small, unreadable expression he had perfected. At the edge of the walkway, the crimson river slid by like a long scar that would never heal. Far away the red moon watched with its wounded eye. Somewhere beneath that light, friends were being broken and rebuilt into something obedient.

He closed his hand until the knuckles warmed.

"This is just the start... This sect will bleed more," he said softly.

Then he walked back to his cave and began writing the next set of lot schedules, not as a gambler, but as a man laying rails that would carry him to the gate he intended to break.

The Blood Moon Continent’s sky was the same as always; red, heavy, and watchful. Its haze never cleared, and the air always seemed to hum faintly with restrained bloodlust. Yet for Han Yu, the same oppressive air that suffocated others now felt oddly steady.

After nearly two years inside the Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect, he had learned to breathe with it.

The new restrictions placed by the elders had trimmed his wings, but they had not caged him. While his bursts of profit were gone, the new system offered him stability, and stability was its own form of power.

The Alchemy Hall now acted as a giant heart pumping merit points in a slow, predictable rhythm. And Han Yu was one of the veins through which that blood flowed.

He had adapted perfectly.

Every seven days, he entered his cave that was more laboratory than home and worked for half a day, refining enough Blood Flood Pills to fill a week’s quota. He stored them neatly in storage boxes, sealed them, and delivered them to the Alchemy Hall in batches of ten and fifteen over the week.

To everyone else, he looked like a man who worked tirelessly, struggling to meet the demand, sweating every drop of merit from his meager skills.

Only Han Yu knew that he spent most of his days doing something else entirely.

In the quiet of his cave, when the air was still and the faint red glow from the Blood Moon River shimmered through the cracks in the rocks, Han Yu cultivated.

Not just his Qi, but his Soul.

Every night, faint motes of colored light drifted toward him; wisps of raw emotional essence from those he had inadvertently influenced. These were the echoes of resentment, irritation, and sorrow from countless disciples, elders and merchants who had been caught in the waves of the Blood Flood Pill’s economic turbulence.

They had never seen his face. They had never cursed his name. But their anger and frustration still sought out the true cause.

Han Yu’s body trembled faintly each time the energy touched his Soul Sea. The wisp of sorrow turned to violet mist, feeding his calm. The spark of anger melted into crimson vapor, tempering his Soul Qi. The flicker of surprise became translucent grey, sharpening his perception.

By the end of the twentieth month, his Soul Qi had grown by nearly fifty percent. His spirit sense spread twice as far now, easily touching everything in his cave, even reaching faintly beyond the walls into the neighboring empty caverns.

And this was when it was passing through obstacles. Out in the air he could now cover an area of two hundred meters with ease.

He no longer needed to strain to perceive the faint flow of Qi veins beneath the rock or the pulsing nodes of formation lines carved by past generations. His mind had become a lake with far deeper waters.

His cultivation base, too, had grown steadily.

He was now at the middle stage of Core Condensation, though not yet late stage. It was not because he lacked resources. His shelves were lined with enough Moon Blood Crystals to push him into a breakthrough at any time. But he restrained himself.

He had read deeply into the cultivation manuals of the sect, both those stored in his cave and those borrowed from the common libraries. He had learned about the unique dangers of the Moon Slaughter Arts: the risk of Qi deviation.

Unlike most sects that refined energy of heaven and earth, the Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect relied heavily on Blood Qi which was full of emotions. Blood, resentment, hatred, and obsession formed the foundation of their power. When a cultivator pushed their progress too quickly, their emotions warped under the pressure, and their mind cracked.

Han Yu had seen it happen with his own eyes.

A month ago, during a trip to the Merit Hall, he had witnessed a disciple convulse mid-conversation, screaming incoherently as red steam poured out of his pores. Within seconds, the man’s body swelled, eyes turning red before he exploded in a spray of blood. The guards dragged away what remained. No one even flinched.

That was the fate of those who lost control.

Han Yu had no intention of joining them.

So he cultivated slowly, methodically. He purified his Qi each time he advanced, removing all traces of madness before proceeding further. It was slower, but safer.

Despite this measured pace, he had become stronger in every sense. His merit points had multiplied through steady trade. His soul sea had deepened through the Eight Emotions. His mind was sharper, colder, and more disciplined than ever before.