The first thing Master Yan made him do the next morning was sit under a freezing waterfall. No sword, no stance and no movement. Just sit and breathe. Which, in Wuye's current condition, felt a lot like dying slowly for the sake of philosophy.
"Hold the breath in your dantian," Yan instructed from the shore, arms folded inside his sleeves. "Not your lungs. Not your gut. Below. Imagine a second body inside yours — smaller, quieter, more patient than you."
Wuye shivered beneath the cascade, face pale, lips turning blue. "Second body doesn't seem to like this plan."
"It wouldn't," Yan said. "It remembers what you've forgotten."
A cryptic answer.
Wuye hated those but he endured. Water pounded his skull like a judge's gavel, drowning out thought, even pain. And slowly — so slowly it felt like an insult — his breath began to settle. Not deepen, not strengthen. Just… settle.
Inhale. Stillness. Exhale. Stillness.
Repeat.
Eventually, time disappeared. Only sensation remained: the freezing bite of water on skin, the hollow ache behind his ribs, the hum of something vast and empty at the edge of his awareness.
He wasn't cold anymore.
He wasn't anything And then it happened.
Something cracked inside him.
Not pain. Not memory.
Sound.
A bell. Not outside — within.
It rang once.
Deep and heavy, as if struck underwater. The world recoiled. His body trembled. For a moment, he swore the cave behind him collapsed, the sky inverted, and all his lives — Earth, Empire, and exile — blinked into one. Then the sound was gone.
He collapsed forward into the pool, coughing water.
Yan didn't move.
"You heard it," he said.
Wuye looked up, shivering, teeth chattering. "What… was that?"
"The first gate," Yan replied. "The bell of memory."
"Memory?"
"Of your spirit. Of your true shape, hidden under this stolen skin."
Wuye coughed blood into the stream. "Could've just used a mirror."
Yan smirked. Back in the cave, Wuye lay curled near the fire, wrapped in furs, steam rising from his skin. Yan tossed another herb pouch into the pot. The brew hissed like a snake.
"You've opened the first gate," he said. "Mental cultivation has begun but you'll wish you hadn't."
"Why?"
"Because from now on, the memories won't wait for permission."
Wuye turned his face toward the flame. "Earth or Empire?"
"Both," Yan said. "Neither. Whatever the soul refuses to bury."
As if summoned, the dreams returned that night. He stood in a hospital corridor, holding a clipboard stained with ink and blood. The fluorescent lights above buzzed like wasps. Down the hallway, a child was dying — his lungs filled with fluid, a mother screaming at an empty wall.
He turned the corner and found himself face-to-face with his brother — not Earth's, but the Empire's.
A boy, eyes wide, lips stained with tea.
"Wuye," the boy said, smiling then vomited blood all over his shoes.
Wuye jolted awake, gasping.
The fire was out.
The cave was dark but Master Yan sat nearby, carving wood by feel.
"You're bleeding again," he said, as if observing the weather.
Wuye wiped his nose. His sleeve came back red.
"I saw… my brother."
Yan nodded. "The real one?"
Wuye's voice cracked. "Does it matter?"
"Only if you plan to kill him."
A long silence then Wuye said, "Not yet."
The next day, the training changed.
Sword stances became breathing forms. Movements were slow — glacial — more like meditations than strikes. Each one built on the last. Still Blade in Chaos Wind became Silent Thread Between Worlds, and then Cut That Does Not Cut — a form that looked like stillness but carried the weight of violence buried beneath peace.
Wuye struggled.
His body disobeyed, breath stuttered and his mind wandered.
"Focus," Yan barked.
"I'm trying."
"Then try better."
Wuye's hands clenched. "You don't know what it's like."
Yan looked at him — really looked.
"I buried a son," he said quietly. "Then taught myself to forget how he screamed. Don't talk to me about what it's like."
Wuye's throat closed.
He bowed. "I'm sorry."
Yan didn't answer but that night, he placed a fresh mat beside the fire and left a bowl of steamed wild rice near Wuye's side.
Another dream.
This time: Earth.
An old TV playing a soap opera. His mother asleep in the chair. A beeping heart monitor that didn't stop — until it did. He looked down and found a sword in his lap.
Its blade was made of glass.
Its hilt was wrapped in hospital bands.
He tried to speak but his mouth was full of camellias.
He woke up screaming.
Yan didn't comment.
Just handed him tea.
This time, Wuye drank it.
"You'll go mad if you try to hold both lives," Yan said one morning, watching the steam rise from their cups.
"So what do I do?"
"Don't hold them. Let them bleed."
"That sounds worse."
Yan shrugged. "So is being reborn. Yet here we are."
Wuye's progress in mental cultivation was slow but it was his. He could now sit for hours without blinking. His breath flowed to his dantian without thought. He could sense the ripples in his own mind — not silence, but waves, crashing from two shores: the hospital bed of a dying man, and the palace courtyard where a prince drank betrayal from a porcelain cup. He began to map the terrain between them and in the center, he found something strange.
A void.
Not absence. Potential.
Like a blade yet to be drawn.
One evening, as the fire crackled and shadows danced on the walls, Wuye asked, "What is Void Severance, really?"
Yan looked at him.
Not with pity. Not with wisdom.
With grief.
"It is the art of cutting ties," he said. "To fate. To blood. To name."
"Even to yourself?"
Yan's eyes glinted. "Especially to yourself."
Wuye thought of the boy with tea on his lips, the man in the hospital bed and the corpse in the snow.
Then nodded.
"I think I'm ready."
Yan's voice dropped.
"Then beware the next gate."
"What's it called?"
Yan stirred the fire and said, very softly:
"The Door With No Lock."