Pain.
Ye Fen was hammered awake by bouts of dull throbbing, as if someone were driving a chisel repeatedly into his brain. He forced his eyelids open to find his vision clouded by a hazy, grey light. A bitter, sour stench lingered at the tip of his nose—the smell of scorched herbs mixed with old wood and stagnant dust.
He was lying on a rigid wooden plank bed, covered by a thin blanket with fabric so coarse it chafed his skin.
Where... am I?
Memory was like a sheet of frosted glass—blurred and indistinct. The annulment... the Great Hall... many faces, piercing voices, and...
Blood.
His fingertips seemed to retain a lingering warmth—slick, with the metallic tang of iron. Right, the blood-letter. He had used his own blood to write something. What was it? He couldn't recall.
Then there was Nalan Yan's face.
That elegant face had drained of color in an instant, leaving only shock, her pupils shrinking to the size of needlepoints. This image was exceptionally vivid—so clear it caused a sudden, inexplicable pang in his chest.
He tried to move his fingers.
Every inch of his body ached with exhaustion; a deep fatigue seeped from the very marrow of his bones. Dou Qi... He instinctively tried to sense his Dantian, but it was hollow—emptier than the day of the annulment. It felt as though he had been completely hollowed out, leaving only a faint, almost imperceptible trace of warmth.
It's over.
The moment the thought surfaced, it was snuffed out by another voice.
That voice echoed directly within his mind—cold, ancient, and laced with a high-altitude indifference.
"Awake?"
Ye Fen froze.
Who?
He tried to bolt upright, but his vision went black. He slammed back onto the bed, the back of his head hitting the hard wood with a crack that made him hiss in pain.
The voice let out a derisive snort.
The laughter was light, yet it felt like shards of ice scraping against his eardrum.
"Meridians clogged, Dantian withered, soul unstable." The voice paused, delivering its verdict: "A total disaster."
Ye Fen opened his mouth, but his throat was too parched to make a sound. He swallowed hard before squeezing out a raspy whisper: "Who... who are you?"
Dead silence followed in his mind.
After several breaths, the voice spoke again, this time with unabashed distaste.
"Ant. Learn to control this broken carcass first."
Ye Fen was stunned.
Broken carcass? Ant?
A surge of fury flared up, making his chest feel tight. He roared internally, "Who the hell are you?! Why are you in my body?!"
No answer.
Only a cold silence, like a stone submerged in the deep sea.
Ye Fen panted, staring at the blackened rafters above. Terror arrived as a postscript, mingling with his nameless rage and throwing his mind into chaos. It wasn't a dream. That voice, and that strange power that had seized control of his body to write the blood-letter... none of it was a dream.
There really was something inside him.
Something... he couldn't identify.
He clenched his fists, nails digging into his palms until they left deep white crescents. It hurt, but the pain brought a sliver of clarity.
I have to find out.
He closed his eyes, straining to "listen," to "search." His mind was a void; aside from his own breathing and heartbeat, there was nothing. It was as if the voice had never existed.
Playing dead?
The fire in Ye Fen's heart flared again. He simply started cursing internally: "Hey! Come out! Don't hide if you've got the guts! You occupy someone else's body but don't even dare to give a name? What kind of thing are you?!"
Still no movement.
Exhausted from his mental tirade, his chest heaving, he watched a spider slowly crawling along a rafter. It had woven half a web, which swayed precariously in the draft.
After a long while, just as he thought the voice would never return, it spoke.
This time, the tone held something different. It wasn't anger or mockery, but rather... a kind of scrutiny.
"Noisy."
Just one word.
Yet Ye Fen felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. It wasn't fear, but a far stranger sensation. The weight behind that voice was too heavy—too heavy for any living person.
"You..." His throat tightened. "What do you want?"
"A transaction."
The voice was succinct.
"I shall help you seek vengeance and reclaim all you have lost. You shall provide the physical vessel, and... the variable."
Ye Fen's head throbbed.
Vengeance? Variable?
"What transaction? What variable? Explain yourself!" he pressed urgently.
The voice offered no further explanation, dropping only a final sentence: "The current you has no right to ask. Survive first."
Survive?
Before Ye Fen could parse the meaning, footsteps approached from outside.
They were light, hesitant, and stopped at the door.
Creak—
The door pushed open.
Ye Fen instinctively closed his eyes, leaving only a tiny slit. An elderly man in a faded grey robe with thinning white hair entered, carefully carrying a coarse ceramic bowl. It was the Third Elder, Ye Chengzong.
Ye Chengzong walked to the bedside and placed the bowl on a small, peeling wooden side table with a soft clink. He didn't call out to Ye Fen immediately. Instead, he stood there, looking down at the boy with a complex gaze.
Ye Fen could feel that gaze—it was heavy, making it hard to breathe.
After a moment, Ye Chengzong spoke in a low, gravelly voice: "Since you're awake, stop pretending. Drink this medicine."
Ye Fen opened his eyes.
The Third Elder avoided his gaze, turning to pick up the bowl. The wrinkles on his face were deep, like carvings, and the veins on the back of his hand bulged and trembled slightly as he held the bowl.
"Third Grandfather," Ye Fen croaked.
Ye Chengzong's movements paused as he handed the bowl over. Inside was a pitch-black liquid with a pungent, nose-stinging odor. Ye Fen took it; the ceramic felt cold against his fingertips.
"How is... the family?" he asked.
Ye Chengzong didn't answer immediately. He walked to the window, his back to Ye Fen, staring at a withered scholar tree in the courtyard. The yard was silent, save for the whistling wind.
"That thing you wrote," Ye Chengzong's voice was very low, as if afraid of being overheard, "the contents... have spread."
Ye Fen held the bowl, motionless.
"In small circles," Ye Chengzong added, still not turning around. "Some curse you for being reckless, for bringing calamity to the clan. The Nalan family... is not someone we can afford to provoke right now."
He paused, his voice dropping even lower.
"There are also those... who are secretly cheering."
Ye Fen's grip tightened, the rim of the bowl digging painfully into his thumb.
Cheering?
He recalled the cold, mocking faces in the Great Hall, and Ye Qingya's sneer: "A waste should have the self-awareness of a waste." Were those cheering because they truly thought he was right, or were they just enjoying the spectacle?
"Who is cursing the loudest?" Ye Fen asked suddenly.
Ye Chengzong's back stiffened.
He remained silent for a long time before saying, "Qingya... he led a few of the younger generation, clamoring to have you bound and delivered to the Nalan family to beg for forgiveness."
Ye Fen curled his lip.
As expected.
Ye Qingya, his "dear" cousin. In the past, he had followed Ye Fen around like a shadow, calling him "Brother Fen" with sickening sweetness. The moment his Dou Qi began to regress, the boy had turned on him faster than one could flip a page.
"And the Clan Elders?" he asked.
Ye Chengzong turned around, the deep wrinkles on his face etched with exhaustion.
"They're in an uproar," he shook his head. "The First Elder's faction is adamant that you've brought ruin to the family and demands severe punishment. The Second Elder remained silent, but by the look of it... he also thinks you've caused unnecessary trouble. I..."
He didn't finish, but Ye Fen understood.
The Third Elder's branch was weak and influential. When his grandfather, Ye Xiaotian, was alive, they had a voice. Once he passed, only this old man was left to hold the line. For him to come here with medicine and speak these words was already a significant risk.
The steam from the medicine rose, stinging Ye Fen's eyes.
He tilted his head back and gulped down the bitter, numbing liquid. It felt like a trail of fire burning from his throat down to his stomach.
Ye Chengzong looked at the empty bowl, appearing as if he wanted to say more. On that aged face, guilt and worry were intertwined. His lips moved, but ultimately he only sighed and took the empty bowl.
"If your grandfather were still here..." He stopped halfway, shook his head, and muttered, "Never mind."
He turned toward the door, his steps somewhat unsteady. At the threshold, he stopped, still not looking back, and left only one sentence:
"Lately, stay inside. As for Qingya... I'll keep an eye on him."
The door clicked shut.
The room returned to silence, save for the lingering scent of herbs. Ye Fen stared at the empty doorway for a long time. The Third Elder's final words and that look... weren't entirely reproachful. There was something else in them—something heavy that pressed against his heart.
A sliver of warmth tried to form, but it was quickly swallowed by a deeper sense of isolation.
Grandfather...
Ye Xiaotian had passed away many years ago. Ye Fen was small then, remembering only that his grandfather was tall, had thick palms, and a booming laugh. After he left, the Ye family declined day by day, and Ye Fen's life within the clan became increasingly unbearable.
He stared blankly at the empty space.
At that moment, the cold voice in his head rang out again without warning.
This time, beyond the disdain, there was something else—a faint, almost clinical interest.
"The 'little gift' left by the Ancient Clan in your meridians... I have cleared it away."
Ye Fen froze.
Ancient Clan? Gift?
"What gift?" he asked instinctively.
"A sinister Dou Qi mark hidden deep within the Ren Meridian, devouring your foundation and causing your Dou Qi to regress year after year," the voice said as casually as if discussing the weather. "The technique was quite subtle; a common Dou Wang might not have even noticed it. Whoever did this 'cared' for you very much."
Ye Fen's mind exploded.
The regression... wasn't an accident?
Someone sabotaged me?
The Ancient Clan... the Nalan family? Or... from within the Ye family?
Countless thoughts surged forward, making him dizzy. He wanted to press for more, but the voice gave him no chance.
"Starting tomorrow, follow the first stage of the Emperor's Incineration Manual to draw Qi."
The voice paused, and the words that followed hit Ye Fen's consciousness like frozen pellets.
"If you fall into a death-like coma again," the voice said, "you might as well just find a rope and hang yourself."
The moment the words fell, a strange heat suddenly emanated from deep within Ye Fen's lower abdomen.
It was faint.
But incredibly clear.
Like a spark falling into a long-dried oil well, silently igniting something.
He instinctively clutched his stomach, filled with uncertainty.
The heat wasn't painful; instead, it carried a strange warmth that slowly diffused through his limbs and bones. Wherever it passed, his aching muscles seemed to loosen. In his empty Dantian, a faint, almost imperceptible current of air began to stir.
This is... the Emperor's Incineration Manual?
Before he could process it, a massive flow of information forced its way into his mind.
It wasn't text or images, but a "feeling" branded directly into his soul. How to breathe, how to draw the thin fire-attribute energy from the world, how to circulate that weak strand of Dou Qi through specific meridians...
Simple, brutal, and undeniable.
Ye Fen groaned, cold sweat beading on his forehead. The volume of information was overwhelming, making his head swell and his vision blur.
By the time he managed to digest the information, silence had returned to his mind.
The voice had vanished again.
As if it had never been there.
Only the subtle heat in his lower abdomen and the Qi-refining method known as the Emperor's Incineration Manual proved that none of it was an illusion.
Ye Fen sat on the bed, panting, his fingers unconsciously stroking the knuckle of his left index finger.
It was bare.
The simple ring his mother had left him had been pawned for half a bag of brown rice during his hardest years. He remembered kneeling at the pawnshop door, clutching the warm ring, his nails drawing blood from his palms.
The rice was long gone, and he had never been able to redeem the ring.
He thought he had forgotten.
But as his fingertips brushed the empty skin, that familiar, sharp sting surfaced clearly.
He closed his eyes.
When he opened them again, the sliver of confusion and alarm had been suppressed by something much heavier.
Regardless of what that thing in his body was, regardless of whether it was the Ancient Clan or someone in the Ye family who wanted him dead... he now had something different.
Even if it was just a single spark.
He had to make it burn.
Just then, hushed voices drifted in from outside, approaching his secluded courtyard.
One voice was noticeably fawning and cautious—it was Ye Qingya.
"Deacon Li, this way, please. Watch your step... this dilapidated yard has been out of repair for years; the path is treacherous. This is it. Ye Fen lives here."
The other voice, middle-aged, was cold and business-like.
"Hmph. The Elders' intent is to question him further. We need to know... what that challenge letter was all about. Some things must be made clear, face-to-face."
The footsteps stopped outside the courtyard gate.
Ye Fen looked up, staring at the thin wooden door with its peeling paint.
Deep in his lower abdomen, that spark-like heat gave a soft, rhythmic pulse.