Dark clouds veiled the moon as lightning split the sky with thunderous roars.

"Help..." A woman crawled desperately forward, leaving a long trail of blood on the ground. Her swollen belly revealed she was heavily pregnant!

Su Xiyue turned her tear-streaked face toward the stunningly beautiful woman approaching behind her, voice trembling with fear. "Elder Sister... why are you doing this to me?"

"I should be asking the same question." Su Jin'er's voice was icy. "Why did Grandfather dote on you alone? Why did you monopolize all the family's glory? And now you dare steal the man I love!"

Su Xiyue stared in shock. "You... you also have feelings for Brother Ye?"

Every member of the Su family despised her—except Elder Sister, who had always been kind. It was even Elder Sister who often encouraged her to befriend Brother Ye!

How could she have never known about these hidden feelings?

"It was mutual affection, you fool." Su Jin'er's eyes burned with venomous resentment. "If not for that accursed engagement, I would have been Prince Ye's consort. What right does a useless, ugly imbecile like you have?"

"Just because you're the legitimate heir?"

"Just because you possess the Phoenix True Blood!"

Noticing Su Xiyue's startled expression, Su Jin'er smirked. "Wondering how I know?" Her chilling laughter echoed. "Grandfather wasted that priceless treasure to cleanse your meridians, yet you remain worthless trash!"

"Despite my exceptional talents since childhood, he always ignored me. Isn't that laughable!"

Staring at her once-doting elder sister whose eyes now burned with malice, Su Xiyue felt as though she'd plunged into a nightmare. She couldn't believe this was happening.

"I'll give you anything," she gasped, her bloodied fingers desperately clutching at her sister's skirt. Her voice trembled with pitiful pleading. "Whatever you want, Eldest Sister, it's yours. Just... just spare me, please?"

Little did she know, those words struck a raw nerve.

"You'll *give* it to me?" Su Jin'er snarled, her face twisting with rage. She stomped down viciously on Xiyue's swollen belly. "As if I'd ever need charity from a worthless wretch like you!"

A thunderbolt split the sky—

But even its deafening roar couldn't drown out Xiyue's agonized scream. "AHHH—!"

Blood gushed from between her legs.

A gruesome, crimson flood.

Su Jin'er simply watched, cold and unmoved, a perverse satisfaction swelling in her chest.

She'd had *enough*.

Why should she, a prodigy blessed by the heavens, grovel before this useless trash? Where was the justice in that?

"Don't do this to me..." Xiyue sobbed, her voice raw with despair. "Save me... I'm begging you, Eldest Sister!"

Su Jin'er burst into laughter—bright, mocking, utterly merciless.

Leaning down, she seized Xiyue's blood-streaked face, fingers digging cruelly into her cheeks. "Begging *me* to save you? Oh, Yue'er, Yue'er..." She tutted, shaking her head with feigned pity. "You really are as stupid as a pig. Haven't you figured it out yet?"

Her smile turned razor-sharp.

"*I* spread those vile rumors about you. *I* turned Grandfather against you. *I* arranged for you to be cast out of the Su family..." She leaned closer, savoring each word. "Every. Single. Thing. That's. Happened. To. You—"

A pause, dripping with malice.

"—was done by *me*, your dearest sister."

Word by word, light as a feather.

Yet each syllable struck like a hammer to the heart!

Su Jin'er no longer bothered to hide her malice, her beautiful face twisting into something monstrous. "Day and night, every single second, the one who wanted you dead the most... was me!"

Su Xiyue stood frozen, her breath hitching. A bone-chilling cold seeped into her veins, paralyzing her from within.

"But..." Su Jin'er leaned in, her voice a venomous whisper, like a demon baring its fangs, "Did you know? It was your beloved Brother Ye who orchestrated your ruin—your defilement, your unwanted child, the scorn of the world. None of it was my doing."

She paused, then smirked. "Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. After all, he destroyed you... just to be with me."

Every betrayal before paled in comparison to this final, crushing blow.

Her fiancé... and her dearest sister?

Su Xiyue's vision blurred with rage, her voice a raw, shattered scream. "No—!"

Agony. Suffocation.

Despair and icy dread swallowed her whole, dragging her into an abyss.

Su Jin'er's lips curled into a cruel smile. "If not for the Phoenix True Blood, I wouldn’t even spare you a second glance. You disgust me."

Realization dawned, and Su Xiyue thrashed in panic. "No, don’t—!"

Su Jin'er advanced relentlessly. "The Phoenix True Blood belongs to me. Wasted on a worthless thing like you... what a disgrace."

Her voice grew ever softer, yet the venom in her eyes sharpened like daggers. "As for that bastard child in your womb—don't worry, dear sister, I'll take care of it for you."

A crimson tide erupted...

What followed was a scene ripped from nightmares—vivisection, the brutal extraction of an unborn child, its tiny body dashed against the earth, its blood harvested in some unholy ritual. The atrocities unfolded mercilessly in the heart of the ancient forest.

Even the roaring thunder couldn't drown out the screams—shrieks so harrowing they seemed to tear from the throats of the damned, each cry more agonizing than the last.

Then, silence.

The night grew still as stagnant water.

A woman's corpse lay twisted in eternal torment, her abdomen ripped open, umbilical blood pooling thickly around her. Beside her, two lifeless infants. The horror of the scene would haunt any witness to their dying day.

Time stretched endlessly until, at last, an aged voice sighed from the void. "Pitiful..."

Just then—

"Waaah!"

A single, piercing wail shattered the silence.

One of the infants still lived.

"An innocent babe... It seems fate has spared you." Gnarled hands lifted the child, and in the next breath, both vanished without a trace—as fleeting as a dragon glimpsed through mist.

As though summoned from antiquity, then swallowed back into the abyss.

Not long after, two shadowed figures arrived in their wake.

They stood in silence, staring at the mutilated woman and the perfectly formed, motionless infant at her side. The weight of the sight pressed upon them, heavy and unspoken.

"My Lord!"

The two men immediately bowed their heads in reverence. Before them materialized a towering shadow—an abyss so profound it daunted the boldest gaze.

Cloaked in a vast, ink-dark mantle, the man's face remained shrouded beneath his hood, obscured from view. Only a few strands of hair, crimson as blood, cascaded down his chest.

His eyes, fathomless and unreadable in the darkness, flickered briefly toward the lifeless woman on the ground before he turned away without a word.

The two subordinates exchanged glances, shaking their heads as they followed their master's retreating figure.

"Nine months," one muttered. "Nine months searching for a woman with the Phoenix's true blood, and yet this one was just another ordinary mortal."

"But the aura of the Phoenix blood was unmistakable here," the other insisted. "The Master's spiritual sense never errs."

"Time is running out. The Master's condition worsens by the day. What are we to do if we cannot find her?"

"At least this woman wasn't the one. A dead host would only complicate matters further... We must press on. As long as she lives, we will find her."

Their voices faded into the night, swallowed by the oppressive silence.

Yet moments after the two groups departed, the woman lying in the pool of blood—long thought dead—suddenly snapped her eyes open.

Her pupils, sharp as a hawk's, gleamed with an unnatural intensity.

A thunderbolt split the sky, and the heavens unleashed a torrential downpour.