Chapter 1 — The Abyssal King Returns

The late autumn wind blew across the bare hillside, carrying dry layers of road dust onto the worn hem of the man's shirt, leading a little girl by the hand towards the flickering light at the end of the horizon. His steps were wobbly, not because of age, but because of an exhaustion that had lasted for many days, a feeling so strange that sometimes he thought he was dying with each breath.

Nhiếp Bách Uyên could not remember how long it had been since he last ate a full meal. The hand that had once moved like thunder and lightning, making an entire mountain range bow, now trembled as it clasped his daughter's small hand, reassuring himself that she was still there, still breathing, still alive.

"Dad, I'm tired." Nhiếp Tiểu Yên looked up at her father with big round eyes, her voice hoarse from thirst. She was only seven, but her eyes held a resignation older than her years, as if she had learned not to complain.

"Almost there." Bách Uyên bent down and lifted his daughter into his arms, though his hands shook with fatigue. "There is a small town ahead. We will find somewhere to stay, with hot rice and warm water," he said so, but in his heart he was not sure of anything. The last bag of money was exhausted three days ago, after he tried to get a few coins by selling an old hairpin, the only thing left from a long ago time. The pawn shop owner looked at him with a questioning look, forcing the price down to a cheap level, and Bách Uyên, who once made an entire dynasty tremble with a frown, stood there, silently accepting, without a word of resistance.

His memories reached further back, to the days when he sat on the nine-tiered stone dais of Huyền Khương Hall. Countless spirit stones lit the chamber; civil and military officials prostrated themselves at his feet, and "Long live the Lord" echoed whenever he appeared in court. With a wave of his hand, he had once changed wind and cloud, made rivers and mountains bow. The magic power in his body had been bottomless—enough to suppress the vast Netherworld and force every wicked soul to lower its head.

But all of that, he threw away himself.

Seven years earlier, while Tiểu Yên's first cries still rang through the delivery room, a cold current slipped inside—so faint that only Bách Uyên, with his profound cultivation, could feel it. He held the newborn in his arms and sensed an invisible thread wound around her young soul, cold and sinister like a blade hidden in velvet, waiting to cut life short.

Even the wisest elders of the Underworld had shaken their heads at the contract. They called it the U Minh Deathbound Pact, a long-lost curse that, once embedded in a child's soul, silently drained her vitality with each cycle of the Black Moon Eclipse, a rare celestial event appearing only every few years. No one in the court could remove it completely. An ancient book recorded one clue from a hermit long dead: only the owner of the Heavenly Mandate Seal could surrender the source of power tied to the position of Supreme Lord and slow the pact long enough to find a cure.

Bách Uyên did not hesitate for a moment.

He clearly remembered the night he knelt before the ancestral altar in Huyền Khương Hall, personally removed the Heavenly Mandate Seal from his chest, feeling the huge stream of magic power that was once a part of his body leave like a flowing stream, leaving a cold, empty space in his chest. He instructed Chu Bách Thành, his most loyal General, to keep everything secret, then staged a fake death in the middle of the border battle, so that no one could trace the whereabouts of him and his young child.

He did not expect that his absence would pave the way for someone else to manipulate the entire court.

"What are you thinking, Dad?" Tiểu Yên asked, her head leaning on her father's shoulder, her eyes closed with sleepiness.

"Dad is thinking, soon I will have a real home," Bách Uyên said, his voice gentle, trying to hide the fatigue that was gnawing at every muscle.

Seven years of traveling around the world, from place to place, not daring to stay too long in one place for fear of leaving traces. Bách Uyên learned to live like an ordinary person in the most difficult way possible — from learning how to hold a hoe and sickle, to learning how to bargain for every single coin at the market, to learning how to endure the disdainful eyes of people for a poor wanderer with a small child.

He had never regretted it. Even if he had to live his whole life in poverty, even if he had to kneel before ordinary people, he would still choose this path as long as his daughter remained alive, breathing, and able to see sunlight each morning.

Ahead, the lights of Vân Khê Town appeared more clearly through the falling afternoon mist. It was a small town in a jungle-ringed valley, so far from the capital of Lam Vũ that it was almost forgotten on the map—and therefore safe. Thatched roofs stood close together, kitchen smoke rose into the air, and children's voices echoed from somewhere nearby. It was the kind of idyllic scene Bách Uyên had longed to belong to for years.

But as soon as he stepped through the town gate, a sharp pain tore through his chest, causing him to fall to his knees. The old wound he had carried since giving up the Seal of Heavenly Mandate left a dull ache in his meridians, flaring whenever his body was exhausted—painful as a thousand needles piercing him.

"Father!" Tiểu Yên cried out in panic, her small arms hugged her father tightly, tears began to fall.

"Dad, it's okay." Bách Uyên gritted his teeth and tried to get up, but his legs no longer obeyed his will. The whole world before his eyes began to spin, the images of Huyền Khương Hall, of Nguyệt Hinh's face on the last night, of Tiểu Yên's birth cry, all mixed together into a chaotic flow.

He struggled to stand up a few steps, then collapsed on the side of the road, right at the base of an ancient banyan tree growing right at the entrance to the town. Tiểu Yên cried, calling for her father in vain. Her cry rang out in the deserted afternoon, only the wind responded.

No one in town heard. Or perhaps, someone heard but was afraid to get involved in the affairs of a strange wanderer.

Bách Uyên gradually sank into darkness. His last clear thought was of his daughter crying beside him, and of the fear that, if anything happened to him, she would have to face the world alone, bearing the dark contract that silently gnawed at her life each day.

In his daze, he seemed to hear the pounding sound of horse hooves echoing from afar, then a clear, decisive voice rang out somewhere very close.

"Someone fell on the side of the road! It's a man and a child!"

The sound of hurried footsteps. A warm hand placed on his forehead, checking his breathing, then another voice, also that of the same woman, growled with worry but not panic, like someone used to facing danger.

"He's still breathing, just exhausted. Hurry, help him up and take him back to the dojo first. If you wait any longer, I'm afraid we won't be able to make it."

Bách Uyên no longer had the strength to open his eyes to clearly see the face of the person who saved him. He only felt himself being lifted gently, placed on the back of a horse, and the sound of his little daughter's crying stopped, replaced by the gentle comforting voice of a stranger.

"Don't be afraid, your father will be fine. I will take care of you both."

In that hazy moment between consciousness and unconsciousness, Bách Uyên, who was once the supreme power of an entire world, for the first time after seven long years, felt a strange feeling that he had almost forgotten for a long time - the feeling of someone, not out of duty, not out of fear of authority, but genuinely helping him just because it was the right thing to do.

Little did he know, the woman who had just bent down to check his breathing, who was about to change the rest of his life in ways he had never imagined, was the source of all remaining hope for his daughter — even though neither of them, on that fateful night, knew it.

The darkness finally swallowed his consciousness, but before falling into a deep sleep, Bách Uyên still held his daughter's small hand, squeezing it tightly like an unspoken promise: no matter how much he had to trade, no matter how many times he had to start over from scratch, he would never let his daughter face the cruel fate that lay ahead.

That night, in a small town called Vân Khê, thousands of miles away from the magnificent Huyền Khương Hall where he once reigned, a new chapter in the life of the former Lord of the U Minh Giới quietly opened, no trumpets, no drums, no ceremonies, only the faint moonlight shining down on the father and daughter lying on the side of the road, and a strange woman chose to stop, chose to take action, chose not to turn around and leave.