Feng Yao had never seen the rain fall this hard before.
It wasn't the kind of gentle drizzle that nourished the earth and brought out the fragrance of blooming jasmine. This was something else—something colder. Harsher. The kind of rain that made the dirt bleed and turned graves to mud.
He stood there, unmoving, his bare feet sinking deeper into the wet soil as the villagers quietly dispersed. No one stayed long after the burial. There were no prayers. No incense. No final words offered to the heavens.
Just silence.
And the rain.
Yao clenched his fists so tightly that his nails bit into the skin of his palms. He didn't feel it. His eyes were fixed on the crude wooden marker jutting from the fresh mound of dirt.
Feng WeiBody Refining Stage VDevoted Father. Unyielding Blade.
Yao stared at those words until they blurred into meaninglessness. The ink was already beginning to run, smudged by the relentless downpour.
"Is this all a man's life becomes in the end?" he whispered. "A few lines on wet wood?"
No answer came. Just the soft slosh of footsteps behind him—then a pause.
"You should go home, Yao." The voice was soft. Familiar. It belonged to Uncle Shen, his father's closest friend and the village blacksmith. A broad man with arms like tree trunks, but eyes dulled by years of regret.
Yao didn't move.
"Staying out here won't bring him back," Shen said. "And you're soaked through."
Still, Yao said nothing.
There was a long moment of silence, broken only by the hiss of rain hitting the earth. Then Shen sighed and placed a small bundle at the edge of the grave.
A cloth-wrapped scroll.
"You already know what this is," Shen murmured. "Your father wanted you to have it. I... I wish he had more to give."
He turned to leave but hesitated. His voice lowered.
"Be careful, boy. The world is wider than this village, and not all of it is kind. There are eyes... watching. Stay quiet. Stay alive."
Yao watched him vanish into the mist.
Then he knelt.
Not to pray. Not to cry.
Just to be close.
The bundle sat in his lap. The cloth was old but clean, bound with rough twine. He untied it slowly. Inside was a brittle scroll case made of bone and wrapped in worn leather—cracked and yellowed with age. When he opened it, a faint metallic scent drifted out. Old sweat. Rust. Blood.
The first page was hand-written. His father's script—neat, sharp.
The Iron Skin Manual: Tempering the Body to Resist the World.
It was a mortal-grade body refinement technique. Basic. Crude. Slow. It had no flair, no secret arts. Just pain, repetition, and endurance.
His father had trained with it every day of his life. Had forced Yao to memorize its verses since he was nine. He'd hated it then.
Now, it was all he had left.
By the time Feng Yao returned home, night had already settled over Stoneshade.
The house was too quiet.
It wasn't large—just a single-room cottage nestled near the edge of the village, where the trees loomed tall and the wind always seemed to carry secrets. Smoke no longer rose from the stove. The faint scent of herbs and cooked rice—his father's meals—had long faded. What remained was the stillness of a place where life had been interrupted.
He slid the wooden door shut behind him and set the bundle beside the firepit. His fingers lingered on the cold stones. They'd eaten there just four nights ago. Stewed radish and salted boar. His father had barely spoken. Just sat there, eating quietly, his brow furrowed like it always was after returning from the village square.
"Yao," he'd said at the end of the meal, looking at him with unreadable eyes. "If anything happens to me, you survive. You hear?"
At the time, Yao had scoffed. He thought his father was being dramatic again, like when he scolded him for skipping posture training or sparring with wooden sticks instead of meditating.
He'd been wrong.
Now, alone in the dark, Yao moved to the side of the room where his father's training tools lay. A bucket filled with smooth stones. A thick rod wrapped in leather for striking his own limbs. A basin for herbal baths. All humble tools, but every one of them soaked in years of hardship.
He sat down cross-legged, resting the scroll across his knees.
Then, he began to recite.
"Iron Skin is born not of talent but of will. It does not make the body fly or glow or command the elements. But it makes the flesh remember pain. And endure it."
"Strike your forearms. A hundred times, every day. No less. When the bones throb, strike again. When the muscles swell, strike harder. Do not seek results. Seek endurance."
He spoke the words aloud, as he had a hundred times before. But tonight, they felt different. He wasn't just memorizing lines or following a routine. He was holding onto something—his father's voice, etched into ink and parchment.
He picked up the rod.
The first strike landed with a dull thunk against his right forearm. He winced. The second one bruised. The tenth made him grit his teeth.
By the time he reached fifty, his hands trembled. But he didn't stop.
Because somewhere out there, someone had killed Feng Wei.
And the weak couldn't avenge the dead.