Unyielding Sword Sect, Year 372 of the Azure Dragon Era
Dust motes danced like frantic spirits in the pale shafts of afternoon light that pierced the gloom of the Discarded Records Pavilion.
They were the only lively things in this forgotten tomb of knowledge.
The air was thick with the scent of decaying bamboo scrolls and a silence so profound it felt heavier than any sound.
This was Gu Xuan's world.
His official title was Archivist, a position no one in the Outer Sect of the Unyielding Sword Sect wanted.
To the other disciples, who strode proudly with swords on their backs and Qi humming in their dantian, this place was a graveyard.
It was where ambition went to die, suffocated by the endless, useless history of a sect that only cared about the future—about the next breakthrough, the next powerful sword art, the next victory.
To Gu Xuan, it was a hunting ground.
With the quiet, efficient movements that had become his signature, he slid another heavy scroll back into its designated slot.
His face, plain and easily forgotten, was a mask of placid diligence. His cultivation, hovering at a thoroughly unimpressive Level 5 of the Qi Condensation realm, was just enough to avoid the worst of the bullying but not nearly enough to be noticed.
He was Gu Xuan: the quiet, reliable, and utterly mediocre archivist. A serpent hiding amongst the reeds.
As the heavy footsteps of two disciples echoed outside, Gu Xuan's movements didn't change, but his senses sharpened.
"Can you believe Elder Fei assigned me cleaning duty? Me! I should be practicing the Whistling Gale Sword Art!" one voice complained, full of youthful arrogance.
"Better than being that ghost Gu Xuan," the other sneered. "He's been in that dusty tomb for a year. I bet the dust has seeped into his meridians. At this rate, he'll never reach Foundation Establishment."
The voices faded, followed by a shared laugh that dripped with contempt.
Gu Xuan's expression remained unchanged, but deep within his calm eyes, a cold light flickered.
He let their disdain wash over him. It was a useful shield. While they chased fleeting glory, he was hunting for the truth.
His work was not just about sorting. For a year, he had meticulously read, cross-referenced, and memorized thousands of discarded records.
Mission reports, expense logs, clan histories that had been deemed irrelevant.
He wasn't just cleaning; he was searching for the ghost of a name: the Gu Clan. His clan. Purged from the official records, but whose shadow remained in these forgotten scrolls if one knew where to look.
Today, he was close.
His gaze fell upon two scrolls he had placed side-by-side on his humble worktable.
One was a geographical survey of the sect's back mountain from two hundred years ago.
The other was a revised map from fifty years later.
To any other disciple, it was a boring update. To Gu Xuan, it was the final piece of a puzzle.
A small creek, present on the old map, had vanished on the new one. In its place was a minor rock formation, dismissed in the survey notes as a "natural landslide."
But Gu Xuan had found another, far older text—a flawed manual on minor formations—that described a low-level concealment array known as the "Flowing Water Illusion."
An array that was often anchored by a loose, seemingly natural stone.
His heart, usually a placid lake, began to beat a little faster. He had walked the area a dozen times. He knew the rock formation they spoke of.
Waiting until the last rays of sunlight had vanished and the pavilion was cloaked in absolute silence, Gu Xuan slipped out.
He moved through the night with a practiced stealth that would have shocked the disciples who mocked him.
He found the place easily. The air here was still, the spiritual energy thin. No one would ever think to cultivate here.
He ran his hands over the collection of rocks, his Qi flowing from his fingertips, searching.
Finally, his fingers brushed against a floorboard-sized stone that felt different—it was smooth, non-porous, and thrummed with a nearly imperceptible hum.
Following the instructions from the old manual, Gu Xuan began to channel his Qi. Not with force, but with finesse, weaving it into a specific, complex pattern.
Sweat beaded on his brow. His Level 5 cultivation was barely enough. The stone resisted, then shuddered.
With a low groan of grinding rock, the stone slab receded into the earth, revealing a small, dark cavity no bigger than a shoe box.
There was no treasure chest, no gleaming weapon. There was only a single object, resting on a bed of faded silk.
It was a slip of black jade, so dark it seemed to drink the moonlight.
It was smooth, cool to the touch, and held no discernible aura of power. It felt utterly mundane.
Yet Gu Xuan knew. This was it. The reason a creek was erased from a map.
The reason his clan's name was whispered in some texts and violently expunged from others.
He reached in, his fingers closing around the jade slip.
The moment his skin made contact, the world vanished.
A torrent of information, ancient and profound, slammed into his mind.
It was not gentle; it was a deluge, a supernova of knowledge that threatened to tear his soul apart.
Golden characters burned themselves into his consciousness, weaving together to form a title that echoed with the power of the primordial cosmos.
The Primal Chaos Union Scripture.
His body seized, his breath caught in his throat.
He saw visions of dragons and phoenixes circling each other, of sun and moon merging, of the very universe being born from a singular, explosive act of creation.
The scripture wasn't just a cultivation technique; it was a philosophy, a Dao that stood in absolute opposition to the Unyielding Sword Sect's rigid dogma.
Then, the opening lines of the scripture seared themselves into his memory, a heresy so profound it made him tremble.
"Heaven and Earth are born from the union of Yin and Yang. The body is the vessel of the Great Dao. To deny the flesh is to deny the world. To unite as one is to touch the face of creation itself."