"Steel is not born sharp. It is shaped by suffering and soaked in intent."
— Scroll of the Nine Blades, Murim Record Vol. II
🌫️ Enter the Southern Wilds
The world reformed around them like a breath being drawn inward—warm, wet, and whispering.
Gone was the high silence of the broken time halls. Now, Jin, Su Ren, Lin Xue, and Ash-Eye stood at the mouth of the Wildbone Marsh: a region of tangled fog, blood-stained reeds, and whispering spirits.
The very air felt damp with memory.
Each step forward made the earth sigh.
The Murim martial clans once ruled this land before the great sect wars reduced them to myths. Now, only the wildest dared to tread here—sword saints without temples, oathbreakers, wandering cultivators, and beasts shaped by unspoken sins.
"This marsh remembers war," Ash-Eye muttered.
"And it remembers us."
"You were raised here?" Su Ren asked.
Ash-Eye didn't reply. He just stared ahead, where a crooked blade was stabbed into a skull-shaped stone at the edge of a rising path.
It was his.
🥋 The Sword Saints' Oath
The group passed shrines made from shattered iron masks and bone-handled blades.
Etched across a tree twisted into a perfect spiral were ten names.
Jin could only read five.
The rest had been crossed out not by time—but by intention.
Suddenly, a presence surged forward.
A Murim sword monk, blindfolded and barefoot, dropped from the trees like silence given weight.
His chest was bare, covered in blade scars, and his eyes were hidden beneath a strip of crimson cloth.
He bowed.
"You bear the Crown," he said in a cracked voice.
"Then you must face the Oath of the Uncut Path."
From behind him stepped ten more.
Women and men. Young and old. All silent. All with blades bound not at their waist, but strapped to their backs like burdens.
They formed a circle around Jin.
⚔️ Oath Duel: One Step, One Truth
Ritual Initiated: "One Step, One Truth."
Each move you take, you must speak a truth. Each truth you speak, your enemy grows weaker. Lie once—and the duel resets with double force.
Jin stepped forward.
The blind Murim swordsman raised his hand.
The duel began.
Step 1.
Jin: "I once wanted to be forgotten."
The swordsman flinched. A thread of qi unraveled from his blade.
Step 2.
Jin: "But now, I want to remember everyone I lost."
The monk staggered, coughing blood.
Step 3.
Jin: "I know I was stronger when I was cruel. But I've chosen silence anyway."
The monk's knees bent.
Then, the swordsman stood tall.
"Then remember this name," he said quietly.
"Gao Tenbu, Bladeless Saint of the Marsh."
He bowed. His sword disintegrated into mist.
The other ten stepped back.
🏯 Arrival at the Swordroot Pagoda
The trial passed, the marsh revealed its secret: a tower grown from living blades, shaped into the form of a pagoda—the Swordroot, a relic of the Murim Clans.
Within it, the last true Murim master still breathed.
"You're seeking dragons," said the gatekeeper, a young woman with one arm and a stare like mountain steel.
"You'll find one here. But not one born from blood."
Inside the pagoda, in a room covered with falling petals of rusted steel, sat an ancient man with a single sword buried through his own shoulder. He meditated, unmoving.
"That's Elder Seo," Ash-Eye said with bowed head.
"The man who taught me that silence is a weapon sharper than sound."
Elder Seo opened one eye.
"So. The Mourner comes not with vengeance, but with memory.
Good. Because there is one dragon left here, and she does not burn. She remembers."
🐉 The Memory Dragon
Elder Seo raised his hand.
The tower trembled. The petals stopped falling.
From beneath the floor rose a coiled being—not scaled, but clad in writhing manuscripts and bone-carved mantras: a Memory Dragon, shaped from oaths and regrets.
She didn't roar. She whispered.
"What do you carry, reborn one?"
"Flame? Ash? A name not yet buried?"
Jin stepped forward.
"I carry silence.
But I remember fire."
The Memory Dragon coiled around him, her many eyes closing one by one.
"Then I will grant you a gift—not power, but place."
"The Hollow Realms do not move for swords. But they move for memory."
She bit his shoulder—not in harm, but in binding. A sigil etched into his soul: a blade made of paper, glowing with runes of stillness.
You have received: "Oathblade of the Memory Dragon"
Grants access to Soul-Step: a movement art allowing Jin to step backward into the emotional imprint of a location for one breath of insight or evasion.
☁️ A Storm Awakens
The Wildbone Marsh trembled.
Not from battle—but from attention.
Somewhere far above, in the Eastern Emberfold, a cry echoed from another dragon.
It had felt the shift.
And in the Northern Wastes, an army stirred.
Sect banners unfurled.
The war for the Hollow Crown… was no longer hidden.