The screams were distant at first—faint, like they drifted from a dream. But Lin Chen wasn't dreaming.
He was shackled to a cold iron pillar, blood dry at the corner of his mouth, wrists bleeding from struggling. Torchlight flickered across the jagged stone walls. He could feel it: demonic qi—filthy and stinking, polluting the air like rotting incense.
A cultist stood before him, face masked in black varnish, a silver lotus etched over his brow.
"You are awake," the man said, in a mellifluous voice. "Good. The game begins soon."
Lin Chen coughed, tasting blood. "Who are you?"
The man tilted his head. "We are the Night Lotus Cult. The ones your sects pretend do not exist."
Lin Chen's mind reeled. The Night Lotus—a death cult exiled from the mainland a century ago. Rumors said they communed with demonic spirits, exchanging their humanity for twisted power.
"We don't want to kill you," the cultist continued. "We want you to make a choice."
He stepped aside, revealing a massive iron gate slowly rising across the chamber. Beyond it, Lin Chen saw a pit—no, an arena, lined with dark qi crystals and dripping banners of severed limbs and talismans.
"In that pit is a man. You will fight him," the cultist said. "If you win, the village lives. If you lose, well… there will be fire."
A faint orange glow flickered from a high cavern window. Smoke.
"They're already burning it, aren't they?" Lin Chen rasped.
The cultist smiled under his mask. "Not yet. But time is short. And your opponent is eager."
Two brutes dragged him to the gate. Lin Chen's knees buckled—he hadn't recovered from the ambush days earlier. His qi core felt unstable, half-dampened by the drugs they'd forced down his throat.
The gate opened. He was shoved in.
The pit stank of blood and burned hair. Torches lined the perimeter, casting grotesque shadows. Across from him stood a man in torn robes, half-starved, arms like iron cords, eyes sunken and feral.
"My name is Jien," the man said, softly. "I'm sorry."
Lin Chen blinked. "What?"
"I have to kill you," Jien said. "My sister—she's sick. They promised medicine if I won."
Something inside Lin Chen broke. This wasn't just a fight. It was a punishment with no clean outcome. Either a village burned, or this man's sister died. Or Lin Chen died.
He drew a shaky breath. Then he whispered an invocation.
From the shadows of his robe, the Cloak of Night pulsed.
Formless is the blade that strikes from despair.
His fingers flexed. The cultivation technique was forbidden—demonic-adjacent. But it was the only way he could match a man fighting with the desperation of a dying sibling.
Jien charged first. A blur. Lin Chen barely sidestepped, pain lancing through his ribs.
He focused, whispering: "Second form: Shadow Veins."
Dark energy erupted from his body—like living tendrils that extended his reach, his speed, his reflexes. His eyes flickered silver-black.
They clashed. Steel met shadow. Dust exploded with every blow. Lin Chen ducked low, parried a brutal hammer-fist, and countered with a flick of qi-infused shadow blades.
But he was tired.
And Jien… Jien was heartbroken, relentless.
A punch slammed into Lin Chen's gut. He coughed blood.
"Stay down!" Jien shouted, voice hoarse. "Please!"
"I can't," Lin Chen growled. "Because I've already killed too many by staying still."
He drew in everything—the stolen qi from the Cloak, the embers of Phoenix fire still dormant inside him.
And struck.
One blow. A piercing stab of shadowlight through Jien's chest.
The man froze.
Blood oozed from his lips. "She'll die now…"
Lin Chen caught him as he fell. "No," he whispered. "She won't."
The cultists roared in celebration above. But Lin Chen barely heard them. He was kneeling in the blood-soaked sand, cradling a dying man.
Jien's breathing slowed. "You… fought well… Don't… let them make you a monster…"
His hand went still.
Lin Chen sat there for what felt like hours.
That night, in the stone cell they threw him back into, he dreamed.
He stood in a field of burning lotuses. Children screamed in the distance. He turned, and standing there was Xu Mingyan, cloaked in flame and snow.
"You think this was your only path?" she asked.
"There was no time. No choice."
"There's always a choice. Sometimes… it just costs your soul."
The flames licked his legs. Shadows wound around his hands. In the dream, he looked down and saw his reflection in a pool of blood.
His eyes were no longer his own. They burned black.
He woke gasping, drenched in sweat, the Cloak of Night clutched tightly around him like it was alive.
Mei Ling was there. They'd broken in, somehow. She didn't speak. Just knelt and held his hand.
"You killed him," she said softly.
"I didn't want to."
"I know."
"They gave me a choice… but there was no real one. Not really."
She nodded. "That's how evil wins. By turning the good into monsters… through impossible decisions."
He looked down at his hands. They still trembled. Not from fear. From the realization that he'd crossed a threshold—and the only way back might be worse.
"I won't be their puppet," he said. "But if I have to walk into darkness to stop them—then I will."
Mei Ling looked at him, and for a moment, her eyes filled with sadness. "Then let me walk with you. So I can remind you who you are."
They escaped before dawn, thanks to Tian Feng's frost talismans and Shang Yu's brute force. The village was still standing—barely. Lin Chen gave Jien's sister a vial of the last healing potion he had.
She asked where her brother was.
He couldn't speak.
So he knelt and bowed to her—deep, until his forehead touched the bloodstained ground.
As they rode out, Lin Chen didn't look back.
But the weight he carried did not stay behind.