The chilling truth of his fragmented identity, confirmed by the terrifying split and the Oracle's cryptic words, settled deep within Jianyu. He was not one. He was many. And in this world, that made him a heretic, a monster, or a god. The title "Saintbreaker" now clung to him, a whispered curse and a secret promise. He had survived the assassination attempts, but the sects would not relent. It was time to seek out the shadows he had cultivated.
He left Heifeng Cheng under the cloak of night, his male form, Xu Jianyu, now the primary manifestation. Niánmei remained a silent, internal presence, a reservoir of power and a ready disguise. He traveled towards the desolate, forgotten ruins where Ren Kaifeng had hinted at his hidden assembly. The journey was long, through wild, untamed lands that bore the scars of ancient spiritual wars, far from the polished jade of the sect territories.
He found them in a vast, crumbling underground complex, once a forgotten temple, now a sanctuary of despair. The air was heavy with the scent of dust, fear, and suppressed qi. As he descended into the main chamber, the sight that greeted him was stark, heartbreaking. Forty-seven figures, all male, knelt in silence. Their bodies were gaunt, their eyes hollow, muted by trauma and years of experimental failure. They were the discarded, the broken, the survivors of a world that saw them only as tools or test subjects. They were the forgotten sons.
Ren Kaifeng, his face etched with hardship but his eyes burning with a desperate hope, rose to greet him. He was a rogue cultivator, passionate and paranoid, but with an idealism that had somehow survived. He introduced Jianyu, not as the Saintbreaker, but as "the Ghost Who Walks," a figure of legend and impossible power.
Jianyu, in his male form, stepped forward. He looked at the kneeling men, their faces a tapestry of silent suffering. He felt no pity, only a cold, ruthless assessment. They were weak. But they could be forged.
"You are broken," Jianyu's voice, though low, resonated with an undeniable authority, cutting through the heavy silence. "You are discarded. You are nothing in this world. But you are not dead. Not yet."
He began to teach them. Not the gentle, flowing qi circulation of traditional cultivation, but a brutal, agonizing method he had learned from his own System, from the very process of his body's reconstruction. He taught them to re-map their meridians using pain-conduction breathing, forcing their atrophied qi pathways to re-open, to adapt, to strengthen. It was a merciless process, designed to strip away weakness, to rebuild from the ground up.
A few died during the training, their qi snapping from atrophy, their bodies unable to withstand the sudden, immense strain. Jianyu did not mourn them. He watched their demise with a cold, calculating gaze. He demanded strength. He demanded survival. He demanded obedience.
"You will not be victims," he told them, his voice a whip. "You will be blades. You will be shadows. You will be the ones who sever the threads of this world."
He named the new faction Yincai Wei (隐裁卫) – The Hidden Severance Guard. They were few, they were broken, but under his ruthless tutelage, they began to change. Their eyes, once vacant, now held a flicker of defiance, a spark of desperate hope.
Meanwhile, his female form, Xu Niánmei, was spotted near Qianci Yuan, a calculated distraction. The sects, still obsessed with the "Saint," would focus their resources there, unaware of the true power gathering in the shadows. Jianyu was building his army, a silent, unseen force, ready to unleash his vengeance.