Li Chen entered the lowlands three days later.
By then, his body had stabilized barely. The broken arm had begun to knit, crooked and stiff. His ribs still flared with pain whenever he breathed too deeply. Qi flowed unevenly through his meridians, pooling where it should not, leaking where it should remain contained.
Any orthodox cultivator would have stopped cultivating entirely.
Li Chen did not.
He walked.
The mountains receded behind him, replaced by rolling hills and scattered villages clinging to rivers and trade roads. Smoke rose from chimneys. Farmers bent over fields. Children ran barefoot through mud.
Normal life.
Li Chen passed through it like a ghost.
He kept his Qi suppressed at all times, forcing the Heaven's Mark to lie dormant beneath layers of restraint. It was exhausting. Several times a day, dizziness threatened to take him. Each night, blood soaked his bindings anew.
Still, he walked.
By the fifth village, he heard his name.
"they say he slaughtered sect disciples alone"
"marked by Heaven itself"
"bounty's real, I swear it Iron River Sect seal and all"
Li Chen stood in the shadow of a teahouse, hood drawn low, listening.
Three cultivators sat inside Qi Condensation, late stage. Their robes were mismatched, bearing symbols of no unified sect. Loose cultivators. Scavengers.
One of them slapped a jade slip onto the table. A faint image shimmered above it: a rough likeness of Li Chen, eyes cold, hair disheveled.
"Rogue calamity," the man said with a grin. "That's what they're calling him now. Foundation Establishment elders want him dead."
Another laughed. "What, a Qi Condensation brat? Even if the rumors are half true, three of us"
The third raised a hand. "Don't underestimate it. Heaven's Mark isn't given lightly."
Li Chen turned away.
He did not kill them.
Not yet.
Killing indiscriminately attracted attention. Attention brought pursuit. Pursuit drained strength.
He had learned patience.
That night, Li Chen camped beside an abandoned shrine at the edge of a forest. The stone idol had lost its face long ago, worn smooth by rain and time. Moss crept across its surface like rot.
He sat before it, cross-legged, and circulated Qi.
Pain followed, as always.
But something else came with it.
The Heaven's Mark pulsed faintly, reacting to the land, to the people nearby, to the cultivators who spoke his name. Threads formed again thin, luminous, insidious.
Karma.
They reached toward him like grasping fingers.
Li Chen inhaled slowly.
He did not cut them.
Instead, he measured them.
Each thread vibrated differently. Some were light, fleeting curiosity, rumor, fear. Others were heavy, anchored by intent.
Murderous intent.
Li Chen's eyes opened.
Three presences approached through the forest.
The same cultivators from the teahouse.
They were cautious now, suppressing their Qi, spreading out in a crescent formation. Amateurish, but not foolish.
Li Chen stood.
He did not draw his blade.
He stepped into the open.
The cultivators froze.
"So it's true," the leader said, eyes gleaming. "You really are just a boy."
Li Chen looked at him calmly. "You should leave."
The man laughed. "Heaven's Mark, broken meridians, unstable Qi You're wounded prey."
Li Chen nodded once.
"Yes."
Then he moved.
He surged forward not with speed, but with intent. The Heaven's Mark flared violently, reacting to his will. Pain tore through his chest as the threads snapped taut.
Li Chen reached inward and cut.
Not fully.
Just enough.
The karma threads anchoring the three cultivators recoiled not severed, but distorted. Their coordination faltered instantly. Confusion flashed across their faces.
"What did you"
Li Chen's blade sang.
The first man died without understanding why his talisman failed to activate.
The second managed to scream before Li Chen crushed his throat and drove Qi directly into his heart, rupturing it from within.
The third ran.
Li Chen let him.
He stood amid the bodies, blood dripping from his sleeve, breath ragged. The backlash hit moments later Qi rebounding violently through damaged meridians. Li Chen dropped to one knee, coughing blood into the dirt.
His vision blurred.
He laughed softly.
So this was the price of partial severance.
He rose slowly and dragged the bodies into the forest, stripping them of resources before burning what remained. By dawn, nothing was left but scorched earth and drifting ash.
Word spread anyway.
It always did.
Within days, Li Chen felt it more threads, heavier, converging from different directions. Cultivators were moving. Organized ones.
Iron River Sect had not sent pawns this time.
Li Chen did not flee.
He altered course.
Toward the borderlands places where sect authority thinned, where ancient grudges slept beneath ruined cities and unmarked graves.
Toward chaos.
As he walked, Li Chen reached a conclusion that settled cold and absolute in his heart:
He could not cultivate like others.
He could not advance by accumulation alone.
Every breakthrough would require severance of karma, of fate of enemies.
Heaven had marked him as a calamity.
Very well.
Li Chen lifted his gaze toward the distant horizon, where dark clouds gathered unnaturally.
Let the world learn what that meant.