The coughing didn't stop as the stink hit him, sour and bitter, thick as the air in a leper's hall.
Radeon blinked the haze away. Darkness met him as his hands found rough stone.
"So. A cave."
Herbs, medicines, and cultivation manuals lay scattered around him.
He tried to stand, but pain stabbed through his joints, sharp as nails driven into bone.
He sank back, breath thin, a dull weight settling behind his eyes. Out of that weight, memories not his own crawled toward him.
'Rai. That was his name,' Radeon thought, and nodded once at the dead youth whose life he now wore.
Rai's body had been dead for almost a day. The organs already slowed, eager to drag him down after the boy.
Radeon needed something. Anything to keep the body upright.
His hand scraped over lime grit and cold stone. Glass kissed his fingers and rolled away.
He followed the faint clink, caught a small bottle, pulled the stopper, and sniffed once.
"Good enough."
He tipped the pills onto his tongue and swallowed. His gut clenched at once.
Heat surged up his chest and pried at his throat. He doubled over and vomited.
Black blood splashed the stone, stinking of rot and metal. Blindly, he clawed for a waterskin, found it, and drank every drop.
After a few hard breaths, he set himself to the old energy circulation he'd dredged up from Rai's memory.
'Breath Tempering stage. Could be worse,' Radeon thought.
Qi stirred through his limbs. Muscles clenched, then loosened. Organs that had sagged toward silence shuddered back into grudging motion.
His starved soul jolted as it brushed the stream of energy, and the old sight from his past life woke behind his eyes.
Six shades converged in front of him.
Colors ran from heaven down to hell, with asura, beast, human, and ghost in between, all twisted into hues that should never meet.
"A samsara realm about to roll back... or something worse. Someone's rotting it from the inside."
His thoughts cut off as pain knifed through his skull. The sight drilled in, cold and steady, beyond what his body could endure.
Sweat ran down his forehead, and crimson dripped from his nose to patter on the stone.
"This realm's hiding something. I need to know how and why they did it."
After a brief rest, his vision steadied. The world stopped spinning.
"Information. I need it."
His hands found the herbs by his feet. He crushed them for their oil and rubbed it into his jaw, neck and armpits. Then he changed into a clean robe and stepped out of the cave.
Warm light met his skin. Fresh pine rode a soft breeze, and for a moment, the mountain almost smelled kind.
The path down from the cliff wound through the trees, roots and stone underfoot, until it spilled him into the outer market.
Here, the air turned pungent. Stalls leaned into one another in warped lines. Canvas was patched with old rags, the wood gone soft with rot.
Every few paces, a crude latrine gaped beside the lane, its boards dark and swollen, the stink of waste rolling out to mingle with sour wine and boiled gruel.
Disciples in faded robes drifted through the filth, their belts bare of anything worth stealing. Their auras barely stirred the air.
A breath of power here, a flicker there. Nothing more than candle smoke in a storm.
'Everwritten Archivists Court. A sect with Court status should've been a top sect. But this...'
Radeon walked a few paces more, his face lifeless, bafflement dulling his eyes, then stopped beside a hunched disciple bent over a small steamer.
He lifted the lid. Buns puffed within, fragrant and hot. He spread five fingers. The disciple glanced up.
"You look half dead, junior brother," the man said, but he passed the buns over anyway.
"Just light on sleep," Radeon answered.
With a shallow bow, he moved on without another word, eating as he walked.
Rai had not been famous in the sect, nor had he been hated. A gray name among gray names. For Radeon, that was a perfect place to start.
With his gut steady and the pain caged, he made for the library. He wiped grease from his fingers and offered the clerk a brief bow.
"What is it?" the clerk asked without much interest.
"Old maps," he replied.
The man pointed him to a row of wooden drawers and went back to his ledger. Radeon checked the catalogue, then took the creaking stairs to the cartography floor.
There, he pulled an atlas off the rack and weighed it on his palm. The leather was dry and thin as old skin.
'Only a few centuries. Too young,' he thought.
He slammed the old book back into place and pushed on along the shelves. The stacks slid past him, labels for love stories, research diaries and historical writings.
Exhaustion bit at his lungs, forcing short, ragged pulls of air until he caught sight of a lower row of older works.
Dust coated their spines, but the faint gleam of their pages still pushed through.
The dates marked them as tens of thousands of years old or older still.
He read of phoenixes like common larks, immortal lands thick with abundance, ships slipping across a sea of stars.
Yet on his way to the reading hall, he had passed gaunt pigs nosed at dry troughs.
Thin faced folk watched him with hungry eyes, palms eager for alms at the first sight of kindness.
The pages felt real enough. It was the moment, the present itself, that felt forged.
"This doesn't add up," he said, the words coming out low and flat.
Radeon closed the book, his heart like stone. Now he knew where he was.
The northern part of a continent named Emperia Continent, worse than rural backwaters, since there were no spirit veins.
The sweet reek of pine sap that had once calmed him now lay thin and wrong in the air.
'Need strength. Fast. Best if I build a talented physique from scratch.'
Leaving a sect was no simple parting of ways. Each disciple was a strategic asset, each one nurtured over years. If he simply walked away, they would drag him back in chains of obligation and sect law.
But a disciple presumed dead on someone else's errand could have slipped into new names, new bodies, and a new lease in life.
For now he needed a tale they would believe. One that left him maimed beyond saving or gone for good.
As he mulled over how to stage his death, he reached the mission boards.
Radeon's breath burned and his legs shook, each short jog between postings scraping the bottom of what his patched together body could give.
Then he saw it, a mission for men who did not plan to come back alive.
Publish the success in the trade cities and bring glory to their name. Commissioned by Feather Sword School and Yew Sigil School. Overseen by Skyflight Sword Court.
Radeon plucked the parchment free and laid it gently on the abbot's table.
He wiped his face and let his features settle into the calm, restrained mask of a man who knew exactly how dangerous he was.
"Elder, I'll take this," he said.
The abbot studied him. The old man's sunken eyes held no malice, only a deep and tired concern.
A senior brother, his face tight with worry, snatched the sheet from Radeon's hand.
"Rai, have you lost your wits? This is folly. Are you so blind you cannot see how unclear their command is? Look at it."
Radeon cupped his hand in respect. His eyes dropped to the grass mat. He did not dare meet the man's gaze.
"Senior, this disciple seeks a chance to grow," he said. "With such thin talent, I may never see the Cornerstone Setting stage in this life."
It wasn't a lie. Radeon had seen hundreds of scholastic sects, and once their coffers swelled with gold, rot always followed close behind.
This place felt different. Too poor. Too honest to stomach what he needed to do.
'Riches don't rot in beggar courts. They sit in the fat bellies of the great sects and courts that commission missions like this.'
"Rai," the abbot said softly, "the true road is long and hard, and we are granted but one life to tread it. Are you certain this is the road you mean to take?"
Radeon bowed, but did not step back. His silence was his respectful assent to the old man's questioning gaze.
Seeing no wavering in the young man's eyes, the abbot pressed his seal to the scroll and slid it toward Radeon.
"Abbot. Let me keep the mission parchment."
The old man had lived long enough to see through Radeon's intent to survive, and the quieter hunger beneath it.
"Take it. If it keeps you alive." The abbot pushed the parchment back across the table.