The sun had long vanished from the sky, swallowed by the bleeding dusk, leaving behind only streaks of red across the clouds like the memory of old wounds. Mo Lianyin stood at the edge of the Broken Spirit Ravine, his silhouette barely visible against the growing night. The scroll in his hand trembled, its ink glowing faintly with an ominous red hue.
He had done what no disciple of the Celestial Path Sect had dared in centuries—unsealed the First Forbidden Art.
A whisper lingered in his ears, not from wind nor man, but from something older. It echoed within his bones like a lullaby of ruin.
> "Give us pain, and we shall give you strength."
His breath was ragged. The backlash from the art had nearly torn his spirit apart, yet something within him had clicked—like a chain snapping after years of pressure.
For the first time in months, he felt powerful.
Not accepted.
Not loved.
But powerful.
---
Back at the sect, rumors began to bloom like rot. The strange aura that surrounded Lianyin after his "death" did not go unnoticed. The elders dismissed it as mere illusion from a boy who had survived a massacre, but some disciples whispered otherwise.
"He returned too quickly."
"His wounds were too deep. No one should've survived that."
"His eyes... did you see them? Like frost over blood."
Only one person dared approach him still—Yan Zhen, a senior disciple known not for compassion but for his brutal honesty. She had always admired Lianyin's quiet diligence, but what she saw in him now sent chills down her spine.
"You've changed," she said one evening, her voice low as they crossed paths beneath the plum trees. "You walk like a ghost wearing flesh."
Mo Lianyin didn't respond at first. He only stared up at the falling blossoms, their pink petals torn apart by wind.
"Maybe I was always a ghost," he murmured. "Just waiting to die."
---
The Second Forbidden Art was hidden beneath the Temple of Eternal Silence—a place sealed to all except the dead. Or those who no longer feared death.
Lianyin offered his blood at the altar, his memories, and a single thread of his soul. The chamber responded, its ancient stones groaning as if mourning his sacrifice.
The second mark carved itself into his skin, a twisted rune over his collarbone that pulsed like a second heart. His vision blurred, and for a moment he stood in a world not his own—surrounded by shadows that wept and screamed in languages he couldn't comprehend.
When he returned to himself, something was gone.
He couldn't remember his mother's face.
---
Weeks passed. Mo Lianyin grew colder, his once soft gaze replaced by a calm too steady to be natural. The sect tried to mold him back into their image of righteousness, but their words rolled off him like water over obsidian.
He stopped bowing.
He stopped praying.
He stopped hoping.
Instead, he trained.
He trained with a hunger that terrified even the elders.
Not for revenge. Not for power. But because training kept his heart from thinking.
Each Forbidden Art exacted a cost. He had paid two already. But now he was addicted—to the silence, the numbness, the way the world bent slightly around him.
---
Late one night, Yan Zhen cornered him again.
"I dreamed of you," she confessed, voice trembling. "You stood on a throne made of bones. The sky wept blood, and your smile… Lianyin, you weren't you."
He looked at her for a long time. Then, in a voice that was almost kind, he asked:
> "And did I look happy?"
She flinched. "No. You looked… relieved."
Silence stretched between them. Then he walked away, whispering under his breath:
> "Then maybe that dream was the closest thing to peace I'll ever have."
---
In the solitude of night, Mo Lianyin sat beneath the moon's shadow, where his name had once meant mercy and light.
He opened the scroll to the Third Forbidden Art.
And began to read.
Even as tears streamed silently down his face.