The Wilting Dao Tree was older than the sect that forgot it. Its roots gnawed deep into veins of half-dead ore, once sacred when flame and forge still ruled these hills. Now they were hollow — caverns of black iron and forgotten chants, drifting echoes trapped in old stone.
The boy's cradle sat crooked on cracked rock. The bark flake pulsed in his fist, whispering marrow-deep dreams no newborn should hold.
No hand lifted him. No mother waited to hush his shivers. So when the wind howled and the cradle rocked, the boy rocked too — until one hungry gust knocked him free.
He fell, tiny bones rattling over stone. Down a shallow rut where roots coiled like iron snakes. Down, down, until the cradle's edge was only a memory and the darkness swallowed his soft breaths.
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Down here, the air smelled of wet rust. Old iron veins bled a ghost mist. Sparks that once fed spirit forges now drifted like sleeping embers — too stubborn to die, too weak to blaze.
Li Tianyin's tiny fist unclenched. The bark flake fell, landing on stone streaked with half-sealed runes. It hissed where it touched — a whisper, a promise.
Somewhere behind his sealed eyelids, a forge bell chimed.
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On Earth, he had crawled under benches, hunting rust flakes to melt into makeshift steel. He'd cut his palms a hundred times on burrs and broken tools — his marrow spilling slowly, feeding cold iron scraps that never breathed.
Here, the same crack in his bones opened again. One tiny vein split. A drop of thin, flawed blood smeared the ancient rune.
Stone quivered.
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Deep in the hollow root, the forge's true mouth awoke. An old anvil's spirit — a flicker, a coal of a coal of a coal — felt a living flaw for the first time in centuries. The cracked runes lit, spiderwebs of dull red winding through black stone.
The boy's breath rattled. Cold. Hot. Cold again.
And the bark flake burned.
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Tiny fingers twitched. As if forging the grip of a hammer he had never held. His marrow drank the ember's hiss. The Primordial Dao Embryo flickered in the flaw.
Above him, the Wilting Dao Tree dropped another bark shred. It drifted down the hollow root tunnel — like a prayer no one had time to finish.
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Below, Li Tianyin's first forge breathed.
A heartbeat.
A crack.
A promise that dead iron would hunger for living marrow again.
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End of Chapter 2
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