The city spread before Mo Lianyin like a broken hymn. Towers of gray stone pierced the night sky, their windows glowing faintly with incense fires, yet the streets below were hollow—filled with shadows that whispered more than they breathed.
This was the City of Shattered Prayers, once a holy land where cultivators came to kneel before the gods. Now it was nothing but a graveyard of unanswered pleas. Every stone seemed to carry sorrow, and every breeze seemed to carry a faint sob.
Lianyin descended slowly, his robe brushing the ash-coated ground. His boots left faint prints among thousands of half-erased footprints from those who had fled or been taken. His pulse was steady, but his heart… his heart ached.
The closer he walked to the ruined prayer hall, the louder the voices grew. Ghosts of the forsaken. Each cry was heavy, pressing against his spirit:
"Why didn't they answer?"
"Why was I left behind?"
"Why him, and not me?"
It was suffocating.
But Mo Lianyin did not turn back. He walked forward, as if the weight of their grief was a mantle he was born to carry.
---
Inside the prayer hall, the floor was littered with shattered jade talismans and dried blood. A statue of the moon goddess lay broken, her head severed, her eyes gouged out. The sacred pool was black with ink-like poison, its reflection a smear of shadows.
Lianyin knelt before the statue's remains. For a moment, he was not the man wielding the Seven Forbidden Arts, not the cultivator marked by betrayal, but simply a child again—one who had once believed in divine mercy.
He whispered, voice low but steady:
"If even gods cannot protect their believers, then I will carve a path myself. If fate refuses to answer… then I will become the answer."
His words rippled through the empty temple like a vow written into the marrow of the world.
---
A figure emerged from the shadows. Cloaked in black, faceless yet human-shaped, it carried the scent of despair. A Wraith Priest.
"Blasphemer," it hissed, voice like stone grinding against bone. "You dare speak above the gods in their fallen house?"
Mo Lianyin rose, his eyes glowing faintly silver beneath the moonlight that filtered through a cracked roof. He did not summon a weapon. He only breathed, and the forbidden power curled like smoke at his fingertips.
"I do not blaspheme," he said. "I only speak the truth no one else dares."
The priest's shadow split into four, each taking shape with skeletal limbs and hollow mouths. They circled him, chanting broken verses in a forgotten tongue.
The air thickened. The shattered prayers rose again, louder this time, forming a storm that pressed into Lianyin's mind, dragging him into despair.
His knees nearly buckled. Visions crashed into him—his parents' blood, his uncle's betrayal, his sect's burning ruins. Their voices mingled with the city's:
"You failed us."
"You were too late."
"You will always be too late."
Mo Lianyin clenched his teeth until his jaw ached. His hand trembled.
And then—he laughed.
It was soft at first, then sharp, cutting through the chanting like a blade. His laughter wasn't madness but defiance.
"Despair?" he whispered. "Do you think you can show me despair?"
Silver light burst from him, wild and unrestrained. The Second Forbidden Art—Soul Severance—ignited, slashing through the illusions like fire devouring paper. The wraith-shadows screamed as their forms unraveled, splitting apart like smoke in a gale.
The priest staggered back, faceless head trembling.
Mo Lianyin stepped forward, the silver glow burning in his veins. His voice was quiet, but it cut through the hall like thunder:
"I was born in despair. I was raised by betrayal. If you think you can break me with sorrow, then you know nothing of Mo Lianyin."
With a single strike of his palm, the priest's body shattered into fragments of ash, dissolving into the poisoned pool.
---
Silence fell again, heavy and thick. Only the broken prayers lingered, softer now, less suffocating—as though, for the first time in centuries, someone had listened.
Mo Lianyin stood alone in the ruins, his breath steady. He looked up at the broken ceiling where a sliver of moonlight fell across his face.
For a moment, the silver glow in his eyes dimmed, replaced by something quieter—something human.
"Rest," he murmured to the forsaken voices. "If no one else will carry you, then I will."
The temple walls, cracked and ruined, seemed to shiver as though acknowledging his words.
And for the first time since he entered the City of Shattered Prayers, the silence felt less like sorrow and more like peace.