The ripple flowed across the grove like a shimmer on water, and time peeled back—revealing fragments etched into the land. Flickers of ghostly motion emerged, replaying the events like a silent dream.
Li Shinsen was panting, wounded, and his antlers dimmed. The three robed cultivators pursued him without mercy, their faces obscured by strange bone-like masks. One of them hurled a black talisman that ignited mid-air, transforming into a spectral chain that latched onto the spirit beast's leg.
Li Shinsen turned, launching a desperate counterattack—his hooves cleaving through the air, his breath forming icy runes—but it wasn't enough. The robed figures moved like phantoms. Coordinated. Calculated.
One of them struck a pressure point beneath the antler with a flicker of black qi—and everything froze. The vision ended abruptly.
Luo Tian opened his eyes. His breath was heavy, his body trembling slightly—not from fear, but from the sheer pressure of the memory spell's strain.
"They captured him alive…" he murmured. "But why? And who are they?"
He stood in silence for a long moment, processing everything. Then, the monkey-child raised his hand again, his fingers weaving a series of slow, precise mudras.
"Let scent linger… carry me to the source."
The ground before him shimmered, and a trail of faint golden footprints appeared, glowing with Li Shinsen's residual energy. They stretched deep into the forest—farther than Luo Tian had ever dared to tread.
He followed them, his small body moving swiftly between roots and rocks. The trail was winding, hidden beneath layers of natural camouflage. He could sense the intent behind it: Li Shinsen had not run randomly—he was leading danger away from something.
After hours of silent movement, the trail came to a sudden end at the edge of an ancient, collapsed ruin buried beneath vines. Strange inscriptions, long eroded by time, lined the crumbling stone archways. Spiritual energy here was twisted, almost inverted, like the place had been cursed long ago.
But more importantly—he smelled blood.
Fresh blood.
Luo Tian crouched and pressed his hand to the cold earth. His golden eyes flickered again, and this time, he did not use a spell. He listened with instinct.
It was a faint weak heartbeat. It felt like it could be snuffed out at any moment. For a moment, there was a blank expression on Lou Tian's face, and soon it turned cold, and his eyes were tinged with red.
Luo Tian walked towards the ruin and easily tore apart the vines. When he entered, there was nothing except for the darkness, but Luo Tian could perfectly see in this darkness.
Luo Tian stepped deeper into the ruin, his golden eyes piercing through the unnatural darkness like twin suns. The air was thick with a nauseating mixture of decay and malice, and the faint heartbeat grew stronger, yet weaker at the same time—as if the life it belonged to was struggling against an unseen force.
He moved cautiously but with purpose, each footfall silent against the cracked stone floor. Shadows twisted and danced along the walls, shaped by the faint flickers of spiritual energy trapped within the ancient symbols.
At the heart of the ruin, Luo Tian found a narrow chamber where the darkness seemed almost alive, swirling like black smoke around a single, broken pedestal. There, lying curled in a fragile heap, was Li Shinsen—his magnificent antlers dulled and broken, his once radiant form pale and fading.
By now, Luo Tian's eyes were not golden. They glowed a deep crimson who made the spiritual energy in the ruin tremble. "Li Sinshen, what dis they do to you."
Li Shinsen's heart suddenly trembled as he heard the cold and detached voice of the stone monkey. It felt like a wild beast trying to hold back its ferocity. Li Shinsen slowly raised its head and looked at the stone monkey. His silver hair was still shiny as ever, and the two monkey eras on top of his head were twitching, and his tail moved in a slow, hypnotic way. But when he stared at those eyes, he felt a strange relief...and also a deep crushing fear.
Li shinsen struggled, but it spoke to his enraged friend. "They have stolen my spirit core and drained me off my blood, Luo Tian. You should run. These cultivators are cruel. They are simply monsters, and they are all strong, and they used me to lure Zhou Feng, then they tore apart his body into three parts, talking about how they have captured a remnant of the 'Demon King' and would use it to unseal a terrible demon."
Luo Tian stood there his crimson eyes were slitted, and he kneeled near Li Shinsen. "You can rest now...do not worry about me and focus on your journey to the afterlife and into the great sea of souls so you can gain a new fate as I can feel yours has ended long ago, rest my friend and I shall make them pay...now where are they?."
Li Shinsen moved its head and stared further into the ruin. "The Dark qi is becoming more rampant as time goes by, and I am afraid Zhou Feng has already perished."
With that, the head of the deer spiritual beast fell on the floor, and the vitality dimmed from its eyes. Luo Tian sighed, a sorrowful smile crossing his face before disappearing.
He stood in silence for countless seconds before he walked further into the ruins.
---
At the end of the ruins, there stood an alter where three pieces of a black monkey were neatly arranged, and on the floor, three headless people kneeled, and the fourth was not headless but he was kneeling as he began to speak.
Zhou Feng's spirit has already been consumed by the altar. "Bring about the end. Oh great, Shadow, take this sacrifice and awaken, The Mirror that Reflects Heaven, Six Eared Monkey."
At first, there was silence, but then the shadows moved, and from behind the masked cultivator, something pierced through his chest. The cultivator paused and looked down. A dark claw was holding onto his heart.
A rocky voice entered his ears. "Hey, thanks for the resurrection, but did you really have to tear apart my vessel like that, I mean, its spirit was enough, haha. What am I saying? You're already dead, and I have no more need for you."
The six eared macaque pulled his arms, he wore a black and red robe, and his black fur was present around his body. He had gold eyes and a nonchalant expression on his face.
He looked around the ruin and whistled. "Damn, I might have been sealed here for 500 years, and I did not think my Qi would corrupt the spiritual energy in this place by this much."
As the macaque was speaking, his six ears twitched, each one subtly rotating in different directions, catching every whisper of the wind, every vibration in the stone, every stir in the shadow.
He looked at the broken body of Zhou Feng on the altar, the remains of the once-mighty turtle beast now still. The six-eared macaque sighed, scratching the back of his head with lazy amusement.
"…Well, I did warn Heaven that trying to erase me would backfire," he muttered, then turned to the altar, eyes gleaming with playful cruelty. "But tearing up my kin like some sacrificial toy? That's just tasteless."
He stepped off the bloodstained platform, each movement casual but radiating a dangerous confidence. As he descended the short stairway, black mist slithered away from him like frightened insects.
But then—he paused.
His ears twitched again. His smile faded slightly.
A new presence had entered the ruin.
"…Oh?"
---
Further back in the hallway, walking like the wind guided him, Luo Tian emerged. His small form was cloaked in silence, but the crimson light in his eyes was now tempered—focused.
He had sealed away his sorrow for now. There would be time to grieve later. Vengeance, first.
The six-eared macaque's eyes locked onto the child.
He blinked.
Then he grinned. "Oh… now that's interesting."
Luo Tian's gaze met his.
There was no fear in the child's expression—only a cold, calculating quietness that reminded the ancient demon of someone… vaguely familiar..
"Are you his child, wait no that's impossible. You reek an unnatural scent, so you aren't a true stone monkey, interesting....but that does not really concern me, child. What is your name." Macaque asked with a friendly smile on his face.
Luo Tian frowned as he gazed upon the separated body of Zhou Feng and then the corpses of the cultivators. His bloodlust seemed to lessen, and he sighed. It seems they killed themselves faster than he could get revenge. He shifted his eyes towards the strange looking six eared monkey and replied. "I am Luo Tian. What may be your name... senior.".
Macaque laughed as he flashed towards the child and squatted to meet his eyes. "I am the six eared macaque."
Luo Tian tilted his head. "Uhm, ok... I don't really know who that is, but may I have the permission to bury my friends body."
Macaque rubbed his chin and looked at the kid. He really felt a strange kinship towards it, and the last time he felt that was when he met Sun Wukong, and he did not like wukong...of course that was because he betrayed him and thay story was for another time. "Well, they really did not need to kill him to resurrection me. They could have done it with a piece of his soul and a single piece of his flesh, but he also sacrificed his comrades, thinking it would give him benefits and I hate the ones who tried to do things a bit more than I like them too."
Seeing the impatience of Luo Tian as his tail moved quickly, macaque sighed and replied. "Yeah, you can, anyways it would seem that I'll be off, and you can take the storage rings of these cultivators."
The Six-Eared Macaque stood upright again and cracked his knuckles lazily, the sound echoing unnaturally loud within the cursed ruin.
"You're an odd one, Luo Tian. No questions about who I am, no attempt to fight, no awe, no fear. Just straight to burial rites. That's rare." He paused and tilted his head. "Either you're a fool, or you've already seen worse."
Luo Tian was silent for a moment. Then, he responded with a calm that was chilling for his age:
"I don't fear what I can one day surpass."
The macaque's brows lifted. "Hah! Cheeky brat… now you really do remind me of someone." He waved a dismissive hand. "Go on then. Bury them. I've no interest in the dead today."
Luo Tian walked past him slowly, his steps measured. He stopped in front of Zhou Feng's scattered remains and knelt beside them. With a sweep of his hand, earth stirred unnaturally—gathering to form a gentle mound behind the altar. With care and reverence, Luo Tian lifted each part of Zhou Feng's body piece by piece and placed them into the newly formed grave.
He didn't cry. Not now.
Instead, he pressed his palm against the grave and whispered softly,
"Return to the cycle. When we meet again, I will have surpassed even the stars."
Golden light pulsed once from beneath the soil—an acknowledgement, perhaps, or a farewell.
Then, without turning back, Luo Tian moved to the corpses of the masked cultivators. He crouched beside them, stripping the storage rings from their fingers and pouches from their belts. His movements were silent and efficient.
The macaque watched him with a bemused expression. "You're more cold-blooded than you look, stone brat. Are you sure you're not some demon cub?"
Luo Tian glanced over his shoulder, his eyes no longer crimson, but their gold was sharp like blades.
"I don't kill without reason. But if I have one... I won't hesitate."
The macaque smiled at that, wide and full of teeth. "Good. The world doesn't reward hesitation."
He turned, his six ears flicking in six different directions. "Well then, I suppose it's time for me to stretch after five centuries of rotting in silence."
Luo Tian's voice stopped him.
"Will you bring calamity to the world?"
The macaque paused mid-step. His back still turned, and he let the silence stretch for a few heartbeats before replying:
"…Only if it tries to chain me again."
With that, he vanished—no flash, no sound, just gone, as if space had casually forgotten to hold him.
The ruin began to quake softly.
Luo Tian stood still for a few seconds, then turned to leave. But just before he stepped out, he looked back once more at the bloodstained altar. The black mist was thinning now, dissipating as the demon's presence faded.
And on the pedestal, something glimmered faintly.
A small, cracked mirror.
Luo Tian walked over and picked it up. The frame was made of dark jade, its surface dull and fractured—but the moment he touched it, a chill surged up his spine.
[So I felt bad that my vessel died and you were friends with him, so I decided to give you a gift. It is a technique that allows you to bring out the reflection of yourself and others from reflective surfaces. It would probably take you a millennia to fully comprehend it, but I think you can do it.]
He sighed and did not think much of it. He went out of the scarface place and then took Li Shinsen's body and buried him in one of his favourite places.
He sighed and looked up at the skies. Heavens really wasn't fair huh. But he would endure as a new dawn comes by.