The Thousand Silk Valley bloomed like a wound.
Petals of ghost-lotus floated down from the cliffs, catching the wind like whispers of old sins. Towering pagodas wrapped in iridescent silk spanned the ravines, suspended by nothing but spirit thread and the will of the Matriarch who ruled them.
Yun Xue.
Ren Zhe stood at the edge of the cliff, his cloak fluttering behind him like shadow peeled from the sky. He had not eaten in three days. He had not rested in a thousand years. But his eyes burned with purpose.
Meimei sat on a nearby stone, her thin arms wrapped around her knees.
"You're not going to sneak in, are you?" she asked.
"No."
"You're just going to walk into a sect fortress?"
"Yes."
She frowned. "Are you always this dramatic?"
He didn't respond.
Because it wasn't drama. It was doctrine.
His bones were buzzing. The buried arts were no longer just tools—they were instinct. Muscle memory crafted from millennia of cultivation in pure darkness.
And deep in that silence, a single voice echoed.
Hers.
"If you fall, I will wait."
"If you return, I will kneel."
Lies. Every one.
He stepped off the cliff.
And didn't fall.
A single bone rod extended from his palm, spinning into a staircase of calcified light. He descended with the calm of a king reclaiming his throne.
The valley stirred.
In the pagodas, veiled disciples glanced out of windows, their spiritual senses twitching. A ward cracked. A warning bell rang once—then shattered. A spiderweb of sect defenses began to activate.
But not in time.
Ren Zhe reached the gates.
Two guards moved to stop him.
They didn't reach him.
A single flick of his wrist, and their nerves unraveled like threads pulled from a loom. No blood. Just silence.
He passed beneath the archway. The silk above twisted in the wind, trying to wrap around him.
It recoiled.
The curse etched into his soul—the Bone Scripture—radiated an energy older than the valley itself. A language older than cultivation.
Inside, hundreds of disciples gathered, blades drawn, formations spinning into place.
A woman descended from the sky.
Clad in red. Eyes sharp as razors. Presence like thunder.
Yun Xue.
Ren Zhe's heart didn't falter. But something ancient inside him cracked.
She hadn't aged.
Not a day.
Ten thousand years, and her face was still carved from memory. Her gaze met his.
And she knew.
Her mouth parted slightly. "You…"
"I'm back."
Gasps. Murmurs. One disciple fell to his knees as the aura around Ren Zhe expanded like the breath of a tomb.
Yun Xue stepped forward.
"I thought you died."
"You made sure of it."
She didn't deny it.
"I thought I had to."
That was worse than a lie.
He drew the bone blade from his palm. Not metal. Not spirit-forged. Pure ossified hatred, shaped by centuries.
The disciples moved.
Yun Xue raised a hand.
They stopped.
"You want answers?" she asked.
"No. I want blood."
"Then listen before you drown in it."
He hesitated.
Just enough.
She turned to the crowd. "Clear the courtyard. Now."
No one argued.
When they were alone, she spoke again.
"They told me you were corrupted. That your cultivation had become parasitic. That you had started pulling power from the dead."
"I did."
She flinched. "Then they were right."
"No. I pulled power from myself. From what was left after they destroyed me."
She stepped closer. "They showed me your soul. It was… twisted. You were already lost."
"You didn't even look."
Silence.
He could feel it—beneath her robes, under the flesh of her heart—guilt. Hot and sour and old.
"I signed your sentence," she said softly. "To protect something."
He laughed. It was low, broken. "Let me guess. The sect. The empire. The world?"
She didn't answer.
So he pressed. "You betrayed me. You buried me. And now you wear red like a crown."
"I wear red for the blood I spilled."
That almost stopped him.
Almost.
Then she said, "You had to be buried. Not because of power. But because of what followed you."
Ren Zhe froze.
"What do you mean?"
Her next words dropped like stones into his spine.
"There was something in the grave with you. Something that spoke."
He stepped back.
That couldn't be true.
He had cultivated in silence. Alone.
Hadn't he?
"It whispered," she said. "To those who went near. It showed them futures that never happened. It bled into dreams. And when we finally sealed the grave… it stopped."
"No," Ren Zhe said. "You're lying."
"I wish I was."
She opened a scroll. Unfurled it on the ground. It was old—tattered and charred. Marked with sect sigils and blood pacts.
It showed a diagram.
Of a seal.
Built above his body.
And inside that seal, something else.
A second soul.
No.
Not a soul.
An echo.
A shadow.
"You're not alone," it had whispered to him once. In a voice that sounded like his own. "We're the same. We never die."
Ren Zhe stumbled.
Ten thousand years.
He had cultivated.
But never once questioned what whispered back.
Far beneath the earth, in the place where his coffin once lay, the soil stirred.
The seal had broken when he emerged.
And something else was now free.
It moved.
It learned.
It remembered.
Back in the courtyard, Yun Xue watched him.
"You're not the only one who returned."
"What is it?" he asked.
"I don't know."
"But you feared it more than me."
She nodded.
"That's why I did it," she said. "Not to kill you. To trap it."
Ren Zhe's hand trembled.
He could have killed her.
He still could.
But now… now the world had changed again.
A second enemy.
Worse than sects.
Worse than betrayal.
Worse than death.
His blade vanished into his wrist.
Yun Xue exhaled.
Then he said, "I'm going to find it."
"And then?"
"I'll bury it. Forever."
"And after that?"
He turned away.
"I don't know."