flowery field | Heavenly blood swords

Scarlet Xueying — Background

The Six-Sword Prodigy of the Heavenly Blood Blades Sect

Early Life — A Child Born into Bloodshed

Scarlet Xueying was born in a remote mountain province during one of the most turbulent periods in the history of the martial world. Her family was neither particularly wealthy nor influential, belonging to a minor martial clan that survived through mercenary work, weapon forging, and occasional protection contracts for traveling merchants.

Her childhood was not entirely miserable. Her parents were strict but caring, and her earliest memories were of a modest home nestled among the mountains, the sound of steel being hammered in a nearby workshop, and the sight of her father practicing sword forms in the courtyard at dawn.

From an early age, Scarlet displayed an unusual aptitude for martial arts. While other children struggled to maintain their balance during basic stances, she instinctively understood the distribution of weight, the rhythm of movement, and the precise moment when an opponent would become vulnerable.

Her father initially believed she possessed a natural talent for swordsmanship. Her mother, however, noticed something more unusual.

Whenever Scarlet accidentally cut herself, the blood did not always fall to the ground. Sometimes, it trembled in the air for a fraction of a second, responding to the child's instinctive spiritual energy.

At first, they dismissed these incidents as tricks of the light.

Eventually, the phenomenon became impossible to ignore.

At the age of seven, Scarlet instinctively pulled a bloodied needle from a table without touching it, suspending it in the air through a rudimentary manipulation of the blood clinging to its surface. The feat exhausted her so thoroughly that she collapsed immediately afterward.

Her family consulted several wandering martial artists, hoping to understand her unusual constitution. Their discoveries were both promising and alarming.

Scarlet possessed an exceptionally rare affinity for blood qi, a form of spiritual energy that allowed certain cultivators to manipulate blood as an extension of their martial techniques. Most practitioners who attempted such arts suffered severe spiritual backlash, while those capable of mastering them were often feared for the techniques they could develop.

Her talent attracted attention, but not all of it was welcome.

Some orthodox cultivators regarded blood manipulation as an abomination. Others saw Scarlet as a potential weapon whose abilities could be exploited.

Her parents attempted to keep her talent concealed.

For a time, they succeeded.

Then the war between the great clans began.

The War Between Clans — The World Reveals Its True Face

The conflict began as a dispute over territory, ancient cultivation ruins, and control over several important spiritual veins. Within a few years, it escalated into a devastating war that drew nearly every major faction in the martial world into its orbit.

The great clans called it a struggle for stability.

The orthodox sects described their involvement as an effort to preserve justice.

The unorthodox factions claimed they were resisting the arrogance of the established powers.

Scarlet was too young to understand the politics behind the conflict, but she understood its consequences.

Refugees passed through her province carrying everything they could salvage. Villages disappeared overnight. Martial artists who had once traveled peacefully through the mountains began arriving with bloodied weapons and unfamiliar insignias.

Her family tried to remain neutral.

Neutrality, however, meant very little to those who needed soldiers, supplies, and convenient scapegoats.

One evening, a group of armed cultivators arrived at Scarlet's home. They claimed that her family had provided supplies to an enemy faction and demanded that her father surrender his weapons and submit to questioning.

Her father refused to hand over the weapons without a formal explanation. The argument escalated into violence.

Scarlet watched from behind a storage shed as the men attacked her family.

Her father fought desperately, using every technique he knew to keep the attackers away from his wife and daughter. Her mother attempted to lead Scarlet toward a concealed escape route, but they were discovered before they could reach it.

The encounter lasted only a few minutes.

When it ended, Scarlet's home was burning.

Her father lay motionless in the courtyard. Her mother had been gravely wounded while protecting her. The attackers searched the property, taking weapons, valuables, and anything they believed might be useful to their faction.

Scarlet remained hidden beneath a collapsed wooden structure, one hand pressed against her mouth to suppress her breathing.

She was seven years old.

She could do nothing.

When the cultivators finally departed, Scarlet crawled out of the wreckage and found her mother still alive.

Her mother held her hand as the flames consumed what remained of their home. She told Scarlet not to waste her life chasing the people responsible. She urged her daughter to survive, to grow stronger, and to make her own decisions rather than allow hatred to determine her future.

Scarlet listened.

She remembered every word.

But she could not forget the sound of her father's final struggle, the smell of burning wood, or the realization that the people who had destroyed her family had done so while claiming to serve a righteous cause.

Her mother died before sunrise.

Scarlet buried her parents with her own hands.

She did not cry until she had finished.

Afterward, she left the ruins of her home and began walking toward the mountains, carrying a broken sword that had belonged to her father.

She had nowhere else to go.

The Heavenly Blood Blades Sect — A Home among Monsters

Scarlet survived for several weeks by stealing food, scavenging abandoned settlements, and avoiding the patrols that roamed the war-torn province.

Her lack of formal training made her vulnerable, but her unusual blood affinity occasionally allowed her to defend herself against weaker attackers. She could not yet manipulate blood with any meaningful precision, and each attempt left her exhausted.

Eventually, she collapsed near an abandoned battlefield.

That was where the Heavenly Blood Blades Sect found her.

The sect's members had come to recover weapons and cultivation manuals from the dead. Their presence frightened the few survivors who remained nearby. Unlike the orthodox schools, the Heavenly Blood Blades made little effort to conceal their use of forbidden techniques. Their disciples cultivated blood qi, practiced unconventional swordsmanship, and believed that martial ability should be judged by mastery rather than moral reputation.

Their leader, Elder Shen Ruohai, noticed the child's unusual constitution.

He had spent decades studying blood cultivation and had encountered countless aspiring disciples who possessed enthusiasm but lacked the physical aptitude to practice the sect's most advanced techniques.

Scarlet was different.

Even while unconscious, her blood qi responded instinctively to the elder's spiritual energy.

He recognized the potential immediately.

When Scarlet awoke, she found herself in a secluded chamber within the sect's mountain stronghold. Her wounds had been treated, and a bowl of warm food rested beside her bed.

Elder Shen sat nearby, studying her.

"Do you know where you are?" he asked.

"No."

"You are inside the Heavenly Blood Blades Sect."

Scarlet remained silent.

"We practice techniques that many people consider wicked. Our enemies call us heretics, demons, and bloodthirsty madmen. If you remain here, you will hear those words often."

She looked at him without changing her expression.

"Will you teach me how to become stronger?"

Elder Shen raised an eyebrow.

"For what purpose?"

Scarlet remembered her father's final moments. She remembered her mother's warning and the ruins of her childhood home.

"Because I never want to be helpless again."

It was not a declaration of revenge.

Not yet.

It was simply the only answer she could give.

Elder Shen accepted her as a prospective disciple.

The sect became Scarlet's new home.

It was not a gentle place. The disciples were expected to endure punishing training, strict discipline, and the consequences of their own mistakes. Weakness was not mocked for its own sake, but neither was it excused when it endangered the entire group.

Scarlet adapted quickly.

She learned the fundamentals of swordsmanship, meditation, internal energy circulation, and blood cultivation. She studied anatomy to understand how blood flow influenced movement, and she memorized the principles governing the interaction between spiritual energy and physical matter.

She discovered that blood manipulation was not simply a matter of controlling a substance.

It required an intimate understanding of the body's rhythms, the opponent's spiritual defenses, and the precise amount of qi necessary to influence blood without losing control of it.

The techniques were dangerous. A single mistake could damage the practitioner's meridians or cause internal bleeding.

Scarlet treated every lesson with absolute seriousness.

She rarely complained, even when her hands blistered from training or her meridians ached after failed experiments. She did not seek sympathy, nor did she expect her instructors to lower their standards.

She wanted to become stronger.

And she was willing to work for it.

The Making of a Prodigy

Scarlet's progress soon surpassed the expectations of her instructors.

At ten, she mastered basic blood sensing, allowing her to detect the presence of nearby living beings through subtle changes in blood qi.

At twelve, she learned to manipulate small quantities of her own blood, shaping droplets into needles and reinforcing them with spiritual energy.

At fourteen, she began experimenting with the relationship between blood qi and flying swords.

Traditional flying sword techniques relied on spiritual energy to guide weapons through the air. Scarlet discovered that blood qi offered an additional layer of control. By establishing a specialized connection between her own blood and a weapon's spiritual imprint, she could make a sword respond to minute fluctuations in her energy.

The technique was exceptionally difficult.

Each additional weapon increased the complexity of maintaining control, and the slightest lapse in concentration could cause a sword to lose its trajectory or interfere with another.

Scarlet persisted.

Her first attempts involved two swords. Then three. Then four.

Eventually, she achieved stable control over six floating swords.

The achievement earned her the title of Six-Sword Prodigy.

Within the sect, her reputation grew rapidly. Senior disciples who had once regarded her as an unusually talented child began treating her as a genuine rival. Some admired her discipline, while others resented the attention she received from the elders.

Scarlet paid little attention to either reaction.

She did not train to become popular.

She trained because there was always something she could improve.

Her combat style gradually developed into a synthesis of conventional swordsmanship and blood manipulation. Her six swords allowed her to control the battlefield from multiple angles, forcing opponents to divide their attention between offense and defense. Meanwhile, her blood techniques gave her the ability to interfere with wounded enemies, manipulate her own blood into temporary weapons, and exploit openings that ordinary swordsmen could not perceive.

She also learned to fight without relying on those abilities.

Scarlet understood that a specialized technique became a weakness if its user depended on it too heavily. Against opponents who possessed powerful spiritual defenses, unusual constitutions, or knowledge of blood cultivation, she could fall back on precise footwork, conventional sword forms, and tactical deception.

By the age of eighteen, she had defeated several senior disciples in formal duels.

At twenty-three, she was considered one of the sect's most promising young cultivators.

Her reputation extended beyond the mountains.

Some called her a genius. Others called her a monster.

Scarlet considered both descriptions irrelevant.

Neither would help her defeat her next opponent.

Her Philosophy — Strength without Illusions

Scarlet's upbringing within the Heavenly Blood Blades Sect shaped her understanding of morality.

She learned that respectable titles did not guarantee honorable behavior, that a seemingly wicked technique could be practiced with discipline, and that a person could commit terrible acts while convincing themselves they were serving a noble cause.

She never forgot what happened to her family.

However, she did not become consumed by the desire to hunt down every person who had participated in the attack. Over time, she came to understand how difficult it could be to identify the true instigators of a conflict when powerful organizations controlled the records, witnesses, and official accounts.

Her parents' deaths had been only one tragedy among thousands caused by the war.

The people responsible had disappeared into the chaos. Some might have died on distant battlefields. Others could have risen through the ranks of their respective factions, their past actions buried beneath titles and political alliances.

Scarlet realized that vengeance without information was little more than a willingness to die for a guess.

So she chose a different approach.

She would become strong enough to act when the truth became clear.

She would study the martial world, understand its factions, and learn how power was distributed. She would never allow herself to be manipulated by someone else's claims of righteousness.

She would judge people by their actions and their demonstrated abilities.

This philosophy made her a natural candidate for difficult assignments. The sect elders knew she could operate independently, gather information without being distracted by sentiment, and make decisions under pressure.

They also knew that Scarlet was unlikely to abandon an assignment simply because its target possessed a sympathetic history.

For better or worse, she had learned to separate understanding a person's circumstances from approving of their choices.

That distinction would become particularly important when she encountered .

The Survivor's Return — An Assignment from the Sect Master

Years after the war between clans had supposedly ended, rumors began circulating throughout the martial world.

Someone connected to one of the massacres that had occurred during the conflict had returned.

The individual was said to have survived the destruction of their clan, disappeared for years, and eventually begun pursuing the powerful figures believed to have orchestrated or benefited from the tragedy.

At first, the reports seemed unreliable.

Survivors were common after the war, and rumors of revenge appeared whenever old grudges resurfaced. But as the stories accumulated, a pattern emerged.

The returning survivor was not merely searching for individual soldiers who had participated in the fighting.

They were pursuing people who occupied positions of power.

Clan patriarchs. Sect leaders. Martial authorities whose decisions had influenced the course of the war.

The implication was troubling.

If the survivor possessed sufficient strength, their actions could destabilize the existing balance of power. If they possessed evidence of concealed atrocities, they could expose secrets that several influential factions had spent years suppressing.

And if their revenge succeeded, the resulting power vacuum could trigger another conflict.

The Heavenly Blood Blades Sect could not afford to ignore the situation.

The sect master summoned Scarlet to a private audience.

A collection of intelligence reports lay on the table between them. They contained witness statements, descriptions of suspicious encounters, and accounts of individuals who had vanished after crossing paths with the returning survivor.

"Read them," the sect master ordered.

Scarlet did so in silence.

When she finished, she placed the final report on the table.

"The information is incomplete," she observed.

"Yes."

"Several accounts contradict one another. The target's current cultivation level is uncertain, and the identities of the people responsible for the original massacre have not been established conclusively."

"That is why I am assigning the investigation to you."

Scarlet raised her gaze.

"What are my orders?"

The sect master folded his hands.

"Find . Determine their strength, their intentions, and the extent of their knowledge concerning the war. If they possess the potential to become an ally, recruit them into the Heavenly Blood Blades. If they represent a threat that cannot be controlled, eliminate them."

Scarlet considered the request.

"Am I authorized to use force during the investigation?"

"Use whatever methods you judge necessary. I expect an accurate assessment, not an excuse for unnecessary complications."

"Understood."

She accepted the assignment without asking for additional rewards.

The sect master gave her one final warning.

"Do not mistake this for an ordinary recruitment mission. If the reports are accurate, the survivor may be considerably more dangerous than their reputation suggests."

Scarlet stood.

"Then I will establish the truth myself."

She left the audience chamber that same evening.

The Investigation — Following a Trail of Blood

Scarlet began by tracing 's movements through the regions associated with the old massacre.

She visited abandoned settlements, questioned merchants, examined the remains of destroyed buildings, and spoke with people who had encountered the returning survivor. She compared their accounts against historical records and reports collected during the war.

The investigation revealed that the massacre had been more complicated than the official histories suggested.

Several factions had been operating in the region at the time. Orders had passed through intermediaries, and the identities of the people who authorized particular attacks remained uncertain. Some documents had disappeared, while others contained alterations that suggested deliberate attempts to conceal the truth.

Scarlet could not determine whether had uncovered evidence of a conspiracy or simply identified the people they personally blamed.

But she did discover something important.

was returning to places connected to the tragedy, following a trail that led toward individuals who had gained power after the war.

Their movements were not random.

They were searching for something—or someone.

Scarlet also learned that had become more capable than the surviving reports from the war would have suggested. The years of absence had not left them helpless. Whatever training or experiences they had undergone, they had returned with enough skill to attract the attention of people who normally ignored the grievances of ordinary survivors.

She became increasingly convinced that the assignment required a direct encounter.

An ordinary interrogation would not be sufficient.

She needed to observe in motion, test their reactions under pressure, and discover how they responded when confronted by an opponent whose abilities were unfamiliar.

Only then could she make a reliable judgment.

Her investigation eventually brought her to a small settlement near an expansive field of white roses.

The village stood close to one of the routes was believed to have taken. Several residents had reportedly seen a traveler matching the survivor's description, while others had exchanged goods with strangers passing through the region.

Scarlet arrived before sunset.

She began questioning the inhabitants i