Blossoming Path-Chapter 261: Monsters Still Bleed

The stump ached.

Not in the way lesser men described it; no phantom limb, no sentimental yearning for what had been cleaved from him. No, this was marrow-deep agony. The kind that throbbed with every heartbeat. The kind that should have felled him days ago.

But he had not stopped running.

The Envoy’s breaths were sharp, rhythmic, his lone arm pumping to propel him forward like a beast on the hunt. His ruined robes clung to him in tatters, plastered with dried blood, filth, and strips of blackened poultice. He had torn half of his robes, and it barely enough to stem the bleeding, nowhere near enough to heal.

Seven days without rest. Seven days without proper flesh.

'Unforgivable.'

The Phoenix Tears burned in his pocket, its presence constant; sacred, mocking. Every second he delayed felt like another lash across his back. The Bishop was waiting. The ritual was waiting. And he, for all his strength, was crawling through failure.

That was when he heard them.

Steel. Footsteps. Voices.

A patrol.

He crested the rise and saw them: six disciples. No familiar insignia; likely some backwater sect scraping together survival. They blocked the road with blades drawn, faces tense beneath half-polished helms. The lead one raised a hand.

“Halt. Identify yourself.”

He stopped. Not out of compliance. Out of irritation.

Even wounded, he should not have been stopped. Had he not faced that bastard child with the vines and fire and lived?

“You reek of death,” another disciple said, nose wrinkling. “You wounded?”

The Scarred Envoy grunted. “Yes.”

A flicker of arrogance in their stance. Predictable.

“Then throw down your valuables and kneel.”

His lips peeled back into a grin. The kind only war dogs wore.

Then he moved.

They didn’t expect the speed. He didn’t give them time. His feet struck dirt and the wind screamed. His lone arm caught the first man by the throat, crushed cartilage in a single squeeze, and flung him into the path of a sword slash. The next blade found its mark; his forearm.

Steel sank deep. Bone caught it. He didn’t stop. He twisted his wrist violently, snapping the sword at its hilt, the fragment buried in his flesh. With that same broken blade embedded in his arm, he ripped it sideways across the neck of its wielder, severing artery and spine in one wet motion.

The blood was warm. So warm.

His tongue darted out. The taste made his body shudder with pleasure. The first nourishment he’d had in days. 𝒇𝓻𝓮𝓮𝙬𝙚𝒃𝒏𝓸𝙫𝒆𝙡.𝓬𝓸𝒎

A spear grazed his thigh. He didn’t flinch. The wielder screamed. Too slow. Too human.

He grabbed the man’s face with his hand and slammed it down onto a jagged rock. Once. Twice. Bone gave. The others turned to run.

“No survivors,” he muttered.

The last three didn’t make it far.

By the time their corpses hit the earth, he was panting—not from exertion, but from ecstasy. He knelt among the bodies, using the broken sword still lodged in his arm to carve flesh from the fallen. Ribbons of meat. Strips of tendon. He chewed methodically, like a starving beast in winter. Blood dripped down his chin. His wounds pulsed again. But they were slower now. His breath steadied.

He stood, cast his gaze back toward the violet horizon. Plague-ravaged hills loomed ahead. The Bishop’s sanctum lay beyond.

He took one last bite, swallowed it down like a sacrament, and began walking.

He did not look back. The dead held no meaning.

Only the Phoenix Tears. Only the Bishop. Only the plan.

And he would not die until it was done.

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The slope greeted him like a familiar nightmare.

He didn’t remember collapsing. One moment, he had been walking, dragging his broken body step by agonizing step. The next, he was on his knees at the threshold, water lapping at his legs.

Hands reached for him. Voices barked. Familiar robes, masks, the scent of blood incense and iron.

“He’s alive—!”

“Get him inside!”

They touched him. He snarled and batted them away with his remaining arm, teeth bared, staggering upright. He pushed past them and stumbled forward. His body refused to fall. He would not fall.

The tunnel sloped down, deeper and deeper. Water clung to his skin. Drenched, soaked from head to foot, he left a trail as he moved, blood, filth, and water all mixing in his wake. The deeper he went, the colder the air grew, the heavier the silence.

Drip. Drip. Drip.

Water fell from the ceiling in steady intervals. The deeper chambers loomed ahead.

And then, at last, he saw him.

A figure standing before a low altar, shrouded in a layered robe of worn cloth. Candles circled him, untouched by the wind. The chanting stopped.

The Bishop turned.

“…Is it done?”

The words were smooth. Simply final.

The Scarred Envoy fell to his knees.

Blood-slick, eyes dim, one arm missing. A husk of the man that had left this place.

He bowed, forehead to the stone. “We have it. The final vial… of the Phoenix Tears.”

Drip. Drip. Drip.

The Bishop took a single step forward. The silence thickened.

“…And the rest of your squad?”

The Envoy didn’t lift his head. “All dead. My sister burned her life in a final attack. Our youngest… consumed the seed. Lost himself. The others died holding the line.”

The Bishop studied him.

“You came here on death’s door. Missing an arm.”

A pause.

“I apologize,” the Envoy whispered, throat raw. “I—”

“You did well.”

The words struck like thunder.

The Scarred Envoy blinked. His mouth parted, but no sound came. A single tear carved a path down his ash-streaked face.

He, the hound. He, the failure. He, the half-dead blade of the cult. Praised. It made every bit of pain and suffering he went through worth it.

“Thank you,” he rasped.

The Bishop extended a hand, palm open. “Give it to me.”

The Envoy didn’t move.

Silence returned. The drip of water filled the void once more.

“…What is the meaning of this?”

The Scarred Envoy lowered his head further, forehead scraping stone.

“…I beg a small request.”

The temperature dropped. No wind entered this place, and yet the candles flickered as if in fear.

The Bishop did not raise his voice. But the killing intent he exuded was suffocating. The walls themselves seemed to tense.

“You would dare?”

“I… know what I’m saying,” the Envoy said, voice quivering but resolute. “But please. Be cautious.”

A pause.

“There is a boy.”

Another pause.

“He is not what he appears. And if left unchallenged, he will be a thorn in our god’s path.”

The Envoy swallowed, tasting rust and stone.

“Strengthen yourself,” he said, voice ragged. “On the chance they find us… if they come—you must be strong enough.”

The Bishop’s gaze did not waver. The air tightened, the drip, drip, drip from the ceiling keeping time with the pressure building in the room.

Inside the Envoy, memory uncoiled like a lash.

Vines that moved like tendons. Roots moving like living beings. A never ending wellspring of qi.

The boy fusing with one of their Bloodsoul Blooms, and using it to siphon their qi. An act that would've crippled others, reversing the flow of their qi and destroying them from within.

And the village—a measly, laughable village—refusing to break. A blind killer bending hurricanes, a swordsman who endured despite the overwhelming advantage they held, the winged one tearing his sister from the sky. It had not felt like trampling peasants. It had felt like striking a tree that learned with every blow.

He had once been certain the surface had gone soft under warm suns and easy harvests, while they had honed themselves in rot and dark.

That certainty had cracked today.

He kept his head to the stone. “If they find us… we must prepare.”

The words landed badly. He felt the Bishop’s killing intent bloom. The candles shivered.

“You speak as if I could be found wanting. Blasphemy wears many masks.”

“It is not doubt,” the Envoy said, forehead scraping rock. “It is haste. For the ritual. For you.” He tasted blood. “I saw something above. Not just the boy. Something is driving them. We cannot be idle.”

A long silence.

Then the pressure eased, an bit at a time, like a blade sliding back into a sheath. The Bishop exhaled through his nose; reluctant, annoyed, and reached behind the altar. He withdrew a small jade phial banded in iron scripture.

“That draught was meant for the first hour of our Lord’s waking,” he said, almost to himself. “To anoint the vessel. Not to be wasted on the shepherd.”

He unsealed it anyway.

A thin, dark liquid caught the candlelight; oily, almost purple. He took the smallest sip. Color bled back into his face. The papery draw of his breath thickened; his shadow settled deeper at his feet.

His hand reopened, palm expectant.

“Now. The Tears.”

The Envoy’s shoulders shook. He held it up with both hands—one whole, one stump—arms trembling.

“Praise the Heavenly Demon,” he said, and the words came raw, unguarded. “The resurrection of our God is the long-cherished wish and mission of all believers, but it can only be done if you are safe.”

The Bishop’s eyes narrowed. “How dare you—”

“Praise… the Heavenly... Demon."

He placed the vial in the Bishop’s palm and, with that, something inside him let go.

He folded where he knelt. No cry. No ritual. His forehead met stone one last time and stayed there.

The Bishop stood very still.

The drip, drip, drip filled the chamber again.

“You were excellent,” he said at last, eyes lowered to the slack figure at his feet.

He lifted two fingers. The candles flared, their flames leaning forward like obedient hounds. Fire unspooled into ribbons, then into tongues, then into a single hungry blossom that fell upon the body and took it whole. The chamber filled with the sweet, foul scent of burning flesh and incense.

When the fire had finished speaking, the Bishop turned to the altar, the vial between finger and thumb; light a soft pulse within the glass, like moon trapped in a drop of blood.

After watching the scene for a while, the Bishop turned his body and moved into the depths of the cave.

'The unbelievers are more formidable than I thought.'

That Envoy was only able to return with his life intact by exhausting even his life force to escape.

It was absolutely impossible based on what he knew. Either their cultivation methods had weakened throughout the decades, or...

‘They became stronger.’

The Bishop held a hand to his chest. What once beat so faintly, like a whisper lost in the wind, now thundered with purpose. Years of quiet suffering, of prayers unanswered and strength waning, had hollowed him.

But no longer.

The fire that once flickered now roared, each heartbeat a drum of defiance, a hymn of renewal. The medicine's powerful effects, meant to nourish the Heavenly Demon after his awakening, surged through veins once dulled by time, and in that moment, he knew: the divine had not forsaken him—it had merely waited for him to rise.

His face twisted like a devil.

'Those treacherous sinners...’

If not for the weight of years pressing upon his bones, he would have long left this sanctum and purged the unbelievers who dared stop the Heavenly Demon’s return. But as the sole bearer of the ancient rite, his presence here was absolute; his aging body the final seal, his life the last key.

His fingers trembled; but it wasn't from fear or weakness.

The Bishop closed his eyes, and in the darkness behind them, he saw his mentor’s face: stern, worn, yet burning with conviction.

“We are the last flame, and we must never let it die.”

He had taught the rites, the chants, the sacred geometry required for their God's resurrection... but time had stolen much. Not all knowledge could be passed on. Some secrets, buried with the previous Bishop, had left scars in their legacy. And with those lost truths, so too was lost the path to their full might.

The cult had endured, confined to the bowels of the earth, hidden from the sun, from the world that had cast them out. They had waited, century after century, accumulating strength like embers beneath ash. The light of day was a distant memory, but the promise of rapture was not.

His expression twisted further, a grotesque blend of reverence and rage. And then, his gaze fell upon the vial in his hand; Phoenix Tears, shimmering with divine potency.

A sound escaped his lips: half sob, half laughter. The nightmare was over.

He raised the vial high, then lowered it to the altar, his voice rising in a chant older than empires, forbidden in every sect and scripture. He called the Heavenly Demon’s name, syllables soaked in blood and prophecy, and the chamber trembled in response.

The ritual would begin. The world will know soon enough what true fear is.