The air was still, heavy with the scent of crushed lotus petals.
Mo Lianyin stood alone on the wooden bridge, its red lacquer peeling beneath his bare feet. His robe, once white as snow, was now streaked with blood—his blood. The pond beneath him no longer shimmered with moonlight. It was murky now, like his heart.
He had trusted them.
His master, revered across all nine sects.
His senior brother, the one who taught him how to wield a blade.
His lover—gentle smile, lying lips.
He had trusted them all. And they had thrown him to the wolves.
"I didn't die," he whispered to the water. "You should've killed me properly."
Behind him, the flames still crackled in the distance. The Temple of Serene Blades, his home for sixteen years, had been reduced to ash in one night. The heavens had cried blood-red rain, and yet no god had answered his pleas.
He dropped to his knees.
It wasn't just betrayal. It was sacrifice.
He had been the price for someone else's rise.
---
Ten days earlier
The temple was filled with laughter. It was his coming-of-age ceremony—Lianyin had finally reached the Fifth Stage of Inner Cultivation, faster than anyone in his generation. Elders praised him. Disciples envied him. But only one person made his chest ache with a smile.
Senior Brother Zhaorong.
"Here," Zhaorong had said, tucking a talisman into his sleeve. "For protection."
Lianyin's cheeks had warmed. He'd looked away, unsure how to answer. He had loved Zhaorong since he was thirteen.
But love had no place in the world of swords and spells.
---
Back on the bridge, Lianyin clutched the shredded talisman. The faint gold glow had faded long ago. Protection? No. It had been a tracking charm. They had known exactly where to find him when the time came.
The full moon rose slowly, illuminating the scar along his back—the mark of the Forbidden Seal, branded during the betrayal ritual. It bound his spiritual core, silenced his cultivation. He was no longer a disciple. No longer a cultivator. Just a broken thing, left to rot.
But the heavens made a mistake.
They forgot what humans do when they lose everything.
They fight.
---
A voice whispered in the wind.
"Do you wish for revenge?"
He turned sharply. The pond rippled unnaturally. A shadow stretched across the water, long and impossible. And then it rose—a figure cloaked in black, eyes glowing like silver moons. The air turned cold.
"I can give you the power they fear," the figure said. "But you will lose the part of you that still loves."
Mo Lianyin laughed—hoarse, broken.
"That part died already."
And so began the legend.
Of a fallen cultivator with a sealed heart.
Of forbidden arts lost to time.
Of blood spilled beneath moonlight.
And of a boy who once loved too deeply—and was never loved in return.
---
The moon hung low that night, veiled by clouds like a grieving widow in silk. Beneath its shadow, the Valley of Qianlong lay silent, the wind holding its breath as though it feared what would come.
Mo Lianyin was only seventeen when the world first tried to break him.
He was born into the prestigious Mo Clan, an ancient family of cultivators known across the five realms for their deep-rooted mastery of spiritual arts. But respect comes with a price — and for Lianyin, the cost was everything.
Even as a child, he never quite fit in. His beauty was unnatural — almost divine — with eyes like storm-swept lakes and hair as black as night rain. Servants whispered that he must be cursed, for when he cried as a baby, the lanterns flickered and shadows crawled across the walls. His uncle once said, "That boy walks too close to the underworld. Mark my words."
And perhaps he was right.
On the eve of his Awakening Ceremony — when a young cultivator's elemental affinity is revealed — Lianyin stood barefoot in the Temple of Trials. Every child of his age had already shown signs of power. Fire, water, wind, or earth — each Mo child had a path.
But not Lianyin.
He knelt in the center of the glowing formation, cold sweat sliding down his back. Elders watched from above, faces carved from stone. At the altar, the Sect Master, Mo Tianxue — his own cousin — raised the Blade of Truth and sliced open Lianyin's palm. Blood dripped onto the sacred stone.
Nothing happened.
No wind. No light. No flame.
Just silence.
And then… the shadows moved.
They slithered across the marble floor, writhing like serpents, curling around Lianyin's bleeding hand. The light in the temple dimmed as an unnatural chill swept through the room.
The elders gasped. One screamed. Another collapsed.
He wasn't an elemental cultivator.
He was cursed.
Darkness — the forbidden affinity.
"Stop the ceremony!" Tianxue's voice thundered. "Seal him!"
That night, Lianyin was dragged from the altar and chained in the catacombs beneath the Mo Clan's ancestral home. He could still hear the clang of the iron door behind him, still taste the copper of blood in his mouth. His own family branded him a heretic. The only one who had reached out to him — his mother — had died when he was ten.
There was no one left.
For five years, he was forgotten. No sun. No moon. No warmth. Just the echoes of his own heartbeat and the flicker of shadows that danced on stone.
But the darkness did not abandon him.
It whispered.
It taught.
It fed him power — the kind that no sect had dared to touch for centuries.
And it gave him a gift: the Seven Forbidden Arts — ancient techniques of death, illusion, resurrection, and more. Each one carved into his bones with pain and fire, rewriting the very soul of the boy they called cursed.
Now twenty-two, Mo Lianyin stands on the threshold of freedom. The chains have rusted. His mind is sharper than any blade, and his heart is no longer soft.
He is ready to walk the world again — not to beg for acceptance…
…but to burn it down if he must.
His first step beyond the shadows begins with a whisper.
"They left you to rot, Lianyin… Now let them feel what it means to be forgotten."
And somewhere, far across the realm, a prophecy begins to stir.
"When the shadow-bound boy walks beneath the blood moon, seven stars shall fall… and the world will never be the same."