The rain began as Yuan Zhi crossed the threshold back into the sect.
Thin, black droplets fell from the grey sky, sizzling softly as they hit stone. They left no steam. No warmth. Just the faint stench of iron and ash.
It wasn't ordinary rain.Nothing in Black Rain Sect was ordinary.This rain didn't wash blood away.
It set it deeper into the skin.
Yuan Zhi passed through the outer gate in silence. His clothes were soaked and stained, a satchel of spirit roots tied to his side, and a new book of killing techniques tucked inside his robe. The black dagger Elder Mo had given him was gone — buried in the throat of a better-trained opponent.
The outer sect disciples watched him from beneath crumbling overhangs, their expressions sharp with something between envy and fear.
They didn't speak.
They had seen disciples leave before.
Few returned.
Even fewer returned... changed.
And Yuan Zhi's eyes now held something dangerous — not rage, not arrogance. Just clarity. And that frightened them more than anger ever could.
Back in the stone chamber, he lit the bonewood brazier and opened the Silent Blade Scripture.
No title page. No dedication. Just ten sections, each one etched in violent prose.
Presence is a weapon. And weapons are only useful when hidden.
Move when you are not seen.
Strike when you are not thought of.
Kill when you are already forgotten.
He practiced without pause, even as rain thudded against the cracks in the chamber roof. The sect never gave warnings — only consequences. Which meant another trial would come soon.
He moved through the first form: Step of the Hollow Reed.
Slow. Fluid. Absorbing breath. Releasing thought. Becoming silence.
His footsteps grew quieter.
Then he began the second form: Vein-Cutting Whisper.
It was a strike designed for death through cloth — to slice a man's throat through three layers of armor and leave him breathing long enough to beg.
He practiced it on straw dummies. On bonewood logs. On himself.
Small cuts. Precision. Control.
Three days passed before the summons came.
An acolyte in white arrived during the night — thin, ghost-eyed, mouth stitched shut. He handed Yuan Zhi a black scroll, then vanished like he was never there.
The seal bore no elder's mark.
Just a single word:
"Observe."
By dawn, Yuan Zhi stood at the edge of the Inner Disciple Courtyard.
It was different from the outer sect — cleaner, colder. The air here smelled less of blood and more of smoke and ink. Formation lines glowed faintly beneath the stone floor, and silver-laced banners fluttered from the towers.
This was the heart of the sect's cruelty.
And Yuan Zhi had been told to enter.
He followed the path through an arched corridor carved into blackstone.
At its end stood a raised platform — and atop it, a circle of inner disciples in ceremonial robes, each bearing a different clan emblem. They were gathered around something.
Yuan Zhi stepped closer.
It was a man.
An outer disciple.
Or what was left of him.
He had no tongue. No eyes. His arms were twisted and dislocated. He knelt on a blood-slicked stone slab, trembling.
Yuan Zhi didn't blink.
One of the inner disciples turned toward him — a woman with short-cropped hair and a spear taller than herself.
"Who sent you?"
"I was told to observe."
She stared at him a long moment.
Then smiled.
"Fine. Observe this."
She stepped forward and drove the spear cleanly through the kneeling man's chest.
He didn't scream.
He just… stopped.
The others laughed lightly, as if watching a minor stage play.
Another inner disciple — this one with jade rings across all his fingers — called out, "Toss the corpse to the bone pits. And send a message to the elder who backed him — we don't tolerate spies in the courtyard."
The woman with the spear turned back to Yuan Zhi.
"You're the one who killed Jue Min?"
"I killed a man who tried to rob me. His name didn't matter."
The circle went quiet.
One of the ring-fingered disciples chuckled.
"You've got poison in your spine. That'll either make you a killer… or a corpse."
The spearwoman nodded slowly. "Let's see which."
She tossed a jade token toward Yuan Zhi.
He caught it. It pulsed — warm, alive, marked with black script.
Trial Invitation: Initiate Tier
"Two nights from now," she said. "If you want to advance, survive it. If not... stay in your rat hole and keep chewing bones."
She turned and walked away.
Back in his chamber, Yuan Zhi turned the token over.
It wasn't just an invitation.It was a summons.
The sect had started watching him.
No.
They had already been watching.
He just hadn't climbed high enough to see it.
The night before the trial, he slept with one eye open. Not out of fear. But discipline. In this sect, even your dreams could be weaponized.
He saw flashes of things: a river of ash. A woman made of stitched corpses. A throne carved from living bone.
And laughter.
Always, that same hollow laughter.
He awoke at midnight.
His hand was already on his blade.
The Initiate Trial Grounds were beneath the sect — carved deep into the mountain roots, accessible only by a spiraling staircase laced with formation glyphs.
No torches.
Just glowing bone lanterns.
He was the first to arrive.
Then another came — a boy with sunken cheeks and twin sabers strapped across his back. Then a girl with ink-dyed robes and no shoes. Then two more, one muttering to himself, the other humming a funeral dirge.
Five total.
All marked.
All chosen.
The door sealed behind them with a sound like a throat closing.
An elder stood ahead. Not Mo. Someone new.His eyes were blindfolded with silk. His robes were stitched with silver veins in the shape of claws.
"Tonight," the elder said, "you may not leave until two things happen."
He held up two fingers.
"One. Someone dies."
"Two. Someone ascends."
He turned and disappeared into mist.
The floor shifted beneath them — sinking.
The trial had begun.