The moon hung low and heavy, a pale disc bleeding light over the shattered remains of the Cloudveil Sect. Blood stained the white marble courtyard, the scent of burnt talismans and scorched robes still hanging thick in the air. Bodies lay strewn like discarded puppets, their strings violently cut.
At the center of the carnage knelt a man — his robes torn, his long black hair matted with blood. Even broken and beaten, he was striking. His golden eyes, dim now, once radiated the light of the sun itself. That man was Jiang Yun, the Solar Tyrant, the youngest cultivator in five hundred years to touch the threshold of Immortal Ascension.
But now… he bled like any other man.
Across from him stood Mei Lianhua, her white robes unblemished, her slender fingers wrapped tightly around the hilt of a sword.
"I trusted you…" Yun whispered, blood dripping from his lips. "You were my Dao companion…"
Her expression didn't waver, though something flickered in her eyes — guilt? Regret? No. Just calculation. "And you were a stepping stone," she said, voice as soft as falling snow. "Your cultivation. Your secrets. Your destiny. All of it was wasted on you."
Yun laughed, though it came out more as a choking cough. "You used the Heartsoul Vow. You said you'd never betray me."
"I meant it," she said, almost sadly. "Then. But time changes things, and so does power. You taught me that yourself."
Behind her, shadows shifted — figures cloaked in dark qi, the remnants of the Black Lotus Sect, enemies he thought vanquished years ago. Now, they stood by her side.
"I gave you everything…" he murmured, fingers curling weakly against the stone floor. "My trust… my love…"
"And now you'll give me your legacy." Lianhua raised her sword and pointed it toward his heart. "Farewell, Yun. May the heavens remember you as a fool. I'll take good care of the sect."
The blade pierced his chest in one clean stroke. There was no pain — only cold. The world slowed, the stars above dimming as if Heaven itself turned its face away.
As his blood spilled across the cracked courtyard, Yun's vision faded. He saw her silhouette framed by moonlight, and behind her, the sky began to split — a thin crack of golden light opening in the darkness.
He smiled.
So Heaven did see.
In his final breath, Yun willed his soul into that light — a whisper to the cosmos, a defiant scream to fate.
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Darkness. Then silence.
Then — a cry.
Thin. New. Instinctive.
He gasped, but no words came. No qi, no strength, no power. Only breath, wet and frail. His vision was awash in blinding white, slowly giving way to cold air and rough cloth scratching against bare skin.
He could not move. His limbs were small. Weak.
A sensation dawned on him, alien and infuriating: helplessness.
Where am I?
He tried to summon his qi. The sun within him. Even a flicker of divine flame. Nothing.
There was no sword. No Sect. No sky above.
Only silence… until the door creaked open.
Bootsteps echoed across worn stone — steady, unhurried. A woman stepped into view, her face plain, angular, unreadable in the gloom. She wore a gray apron over roughspun fabric. Dust clung to her hems, as if she had stopped sweeping only long enough to answer the knock that never came.
Her gaze drifted to the bundle on the doorstep without surprise, as though this wasn't the first time something had been left there to die or be raised.
She crouched, her joints popping faintly.
"Another one," she said.
Not cruel. Not kind. Simply tired.
She lifted the bundle with one arm, felt its weight, looked into his face — golden eyes flickering with impossible depth.
She frowned, not in fear or wonder, but with mild annoyance. "Eyes like that won't help you in here."
He was carried across the threshold into a world of muted browns and dim lamps. The air was thick with dust and the sharp scent of iron and boiled nettle. Wooden beams sagged overhead. The floor creaked with every step.
Children's voices echoed from far down a hallway, muffled by closed doors. None sounded joyful.
The woman carried him into a long, narrow room lined with empty cribs and worn shelves. She set him in the nearest cradle, thin straw rustling beneath him. A rusted lantern swung overhead, casting faint, flickering shadows on the walls.
"No name," she murmured, more to the room than to him. "No note. Typical."
She straightened and paused for a moment, staring down at him. Her eyes searched his face — not for beauty, nor innocence, but for trouble. She seemed unsure if she found it.
"You'll get a name with the rest, in the morning."
With that, she turned and left, her footsteps receding into the gloom.
The cradle creaked once. Then stillness.
Yun lay there, swaddled in someone else's rags, beneath a roof that smelled of time and neglect. The fire that once shattered mountains had been caged in a newborn's chest.
But it was still there.
And though he could not yet move…
He remembered.