The Bone Lantern's crimson glow dimmed as Yi Mochen stepped from the underworld.
The mountain wind no longer howled—it bowed.
Around him, the mist parted to reveal a forest of dead trees, their limbs hung not with leaves but with skulls, hollow and watching. In his palm, the Black Lotus Seed pulsed. It was not alive. Not dead either. It whispered to him in a voice only he could hear:
> "There are still thrones left to burn."
He turned his gaze southward. Through fog and stone, he could feel it—
The imperial capital of Xiangxiu.
The city that cast him out.
The court that killed his mother.
The crown that buried truth beneath silk.
He didn't want the throne.
He wanted what lay beneath it.
---
Xiangxiu: The Empire That Pretends
The imperial capital stank of incense and hypocrisy.
Golden temples pierced the heavens, carved with dragons and false virtue. In the marble corridors of the palace, eunuchs whispered, nobles plotted behind fans, and the eleven imperial sons wore crowns they had not earned.
The emperor's heart had stopped weeks ago.
But the world was not allowed to know. Because that morning, a raven arrived at the palace gates with only two offerings:
A lotus black as obsidian.
And a message burned into its flesh:
> "Your heavens are next.
—Yi Mochen."
---
Inside the Inner Court
Crown Prince Jian Yu held the black lotus in his gloved hands. Its petals twitched. Still warm.
> "He's returned," he said. "Yi Mochen."
A sharp breath drew from the back benches.
> "But the Emerald Light Sect was protected by—"
> "He butchered them," Jian Yu spat. "And sent us this—as a gift."
He stood. His robes unfurled like shadowed banners, woven with talismans that no longer shimmered.
> "He means to claim the throne. Not as a prince. Not as a man. But as a demon."
Silence. Then whispers.
They all knew the stories.
They all remembered the child with the crimson mark—the exile who should have died at the gates of Xuanyang.
---
In the Forest of Bone Lanterns
Yi Mochen walked among the dead trees.
A slender figure approached. White robes, face veiled, feet silent.
She bowed low.
> "You summoned me, Mochen."
> "You still serve the Red Feather Cult?"
> "Yes."
> "Then you will be my dagger."
> "Who shall I kill?"
Yi Mochen looked toward the sunlit glow on the horizon.
> "The Crown Prince."
---
That Night
Feathers fell from the sky—red as blood, soft as silk.
They did not drift.
They aimed.
When Jian Yu opened his eyes in his private chamber, the assassin was already there. Cloaked in Red Feather silence. The black lotus sat on his pillow, blooming wide.
> "You," he choked. "You were—"
She said nothing.
The blade slid between his ribs, carved the lung before the heart.
> "Tell Yi Mochen..." he rasped.
> "I never forgot her."
Then he died.
Outside, it rained feathers.
Inside, the Crown Prince's blood steamed on silk.
---
Deep Beneath the Palace
A mirror of bone flickered. A pale eye opened behind it.
> "The Heartless One walks again…"
Chains groaned. Dust cracked. Something old stirred in its tomb.
> "We must awaken her."
---
In the Far North
The frost cracked.
Inside a mountain temple carved from ice, an elder woman opened her eyes for the first time in forty years. Her skin glowed faintly blue, her hair frozen in place like white silk threads.
> "The Crimson Dao... has resurfaced."
Her disciple, trembling, stepped forward.
> "Shall we intervene, Master?"
She said nothing.
Instead, she dragged one cracked fingernail across the frozen floor.
Where the line passed, the lake shattered.
---
Meanwhile, Yuhua
Corpses washed along the jade canals.
Each branded with the same mark:
A circle split in half by a single vertical line.
The old beggars knew it.
> "The Mark of the Silent Moon," they whispered.
"He's not just killing them. He's unmaking them."
---
Marshlands, Southern Edge
Yi Mochen stood by the river.
The fog whispered around him.
Behind him, a masked figure knelt.
> "The Blood Sparrow Syndicate failed," the assassin said.
"The prince's death is pinned on them. Your name remains unsaid."
> "Good," Mochen replied. "Let them fear shadows."
The masked figure hesitated.
> "What now, my lord?"
Yi Mochen turned toward the far-off Blackstone Mountains.
> "Now... we awaken the Silent Sect."
The assassin trembled.
> "But they were sealed for—"
> "Nothing stays sealed forever," Mochen murmured. "Especially not vengeance."
---
In His Private Quarters
Yi Mochen opened the lacquered box. Inside: seven jade slips.
Each one hummed with ancient qi—stolen, inherited, or won in blood.
He pressed his fingers to the first.
> Crimson Dao: Fragment One
"Emotion is a chain. Break it."
He closed his eyes.
But as the qi surged through his meridians, something inside his body trembled.
A vein blackened.
A tendon snapped and reformed.
He gritted his teeth.
Even now—after all this—his body was not whole. His cultivation surged, but the vessel could not bear it.
His weakness was a truth known only to him:
The heart of his body was flawed. The Crimson Flame inside him too vast, too volatile. No matter how far he pushed, he could never unleash the Dao fully.
Not yet.
> "I survived poisons, blades, the silence of the void," he muttered. "But if this weakness remains... the world may yet survive me."
---
And Far Below the Mountains…
A whisper passed through the tombs of the Silent Sect.
And one by one, lanterns of bone lit themselves.
---
The Songless Sky
In the depths of the sealed north, beneath temples erased from maps, something ancient begins to stir.
It remembers a time when heaven feared mortals.
It remembers Yi Mochen's bloodline.
And it remembers the name Crimson.
As one seer gasped before her soul was torn apart:
> "He's not just walking the Dao...
He's rewriting it."
---