Han Yu felt a chill creep up his spine as the words continued.

He raised his trembling hand, and the blood gathered around him. A blade took shape—pure crimson, born from his hatred and grief. With that blade, he slashed the blood moon above. The heavens trembled, and the moon bled anew. A rain of crimson fell upon the village, upon the corpses, upon the bandits who still laughed among the dead.

Those touched by the rain screamed as their flesh melted into liquid scarlet. Their forms dissolved into the ground, merging into the rising tide of blood that poured back into the moon above. The moon pulsed once more, its light deepening until it shone like a ruby carved from the heart of the world.

Han Yu exhaled slowly, awed despite himself.

When the night ended, only one man stood beneath the crimson sky. The bandits were gone, their sins washed away in the flood. From that night onward, the Slaughtering Moon Ancestor swore to dedicate his life to mastering the blood that had answered his rage. He sought the essence of vitality, the language of bloodlines, and the secret of immortality that flowed within living veins.

Thus was born the Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect.

Han Yu sat back against the cold stone wall, his thoughts churning. The founding of the sect was not simply about cultivation... it was born from wrath, despair, and divine defiance. No wonder their techniques were tied so deeply to the manipulation of blood and life force.

He looked again at the bloodstains on the floor, the faint shimmer of the pool.

Perhaps Ju Fan had tried to reach that same level of communion with blood. Perhaps he had wanted to awaken whatever slumbering power his ancestors once commanded.

And perhaps, just as the Patriarch of his clan had once done, Ju Fan had gone too far.

The thought made Han Yu uneasy.

He closed the book softly and stared into the dim red reflections dancing on the pool's surface. In that stillness, the faint image of the blood moon described in the text seemed to hover there for an instant; mocking, eternal, and patient.

Han Yu looked away.

"Five hundred thousand years…" he muttered under his breath. "How many generations lived and died beneath that same red moon?"

His words vanished into the cave's quiet air, swallowed by silence. The Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect had endured countless ages, but as he looked around, Han Yu could not help but feel that the legacy of blood had long since curdled into something darker.

Han Yu turned another page of the history book, his eyes scanning every word with growing fascination. The text continued from where he had left off, recounting what happened after the Slaughtering Moon Ancestor's ascension.

After the Ancestor attained enlightenment through the Moon of Blood, he rose as a being both divine and cursed. His fury toward the heavens could not be sated, nor his hunger for retribution cooled. Thus began his march of carnage, an age historians would later call the Crimson Era.

Han Yu read on, his expression caught between awe and disbelief. The book described how the Ancestor, wielding his moon-forged blade, traveled across the lands and oceans, annihilating bandits, sects, clans, and kingdoms alike.

He slaughtered the wicked, but also those who dared to stand against him. Whether righteous or evil, those who raised a sword to resist him met the same fate.

He painted the skies red with the blood of his enemies. The rivers ran scarlet for years, and the soil of entire continents turned black from saturation. Yet, even in his madness, many knelt before him—not in worship of his cruelty, but in reverence for his might. They called him the Blood Sovereign of the Moon, and they followed him into battle.

Han Yu leaned back against the cold wall of the cave, letting out a low breath. "So, he really did go mad," he murmured. "A man who began as a victim turned into the very thing he despised."

The next passages confirmed his thoughts.

In the height of his slaughter, the Ancestor's spirit fractured under the weight of the countless lives he had taken. It is said that his soul became as divided as the phases of the moon—now serene, now wrathful, now despairing. When he finally realized the enormity of his actions, the Ancestor sought to bind his own bloodlust before it consumed the world entirely. Thus, he created the Slaughtered Moon Divine Blood Sect.

The sect was founded at the site of his first massacre. There, he summoned the Blood Moon once again, but this time he chained it to the heavens above, fixing it eternally above his domain. The wound he carved into the moon bled endlessly, forming what is now known as the Blood Moon River. That river flowed through the land like veins through flesh, its crimson current becoming the foundation of the sect.

Han Yu looked up from the text, his gaze drifting toward the faint reddish glimmer that occasionally flashed through the cracks of the cave ceiling. Somewhere far above, that same blood river likely ran, pulsing with life essence as it wound through the sect's many peaks.

The book continued with a detailed explanation of the phenomena.

The Moon Blood that flows from the heavenly wound carries within it the essence of the Slaughtered Moon Qi—the Ancestor's own creation. It is said that this Qi contains the condensed will of slaughter and the essence of vitality itself, but also madness, wrath, and despair. Few can endure its touch. Only those with bodies tempered by strong bloodlines or resilient spiritual foundations can refine it without harm.

For this reason, the Ancestor's successors devised a method to temper and distill the Slaughtered Moon Qi into a milder form. This refined essence came to be known as Blood Moon Qi—a power more stable, though still potent, and usable by the majority of cultivators within the sect.

Han Yu nodded as he read. "So, that's why there are so many types of Qi here," he muttered. "Each one born from the last."