The Crimson Soul Sect did not sleep. Not truly.
Even at midnight, shadows moved across the mountainside like hungry ghosts. Some were cultivators pushing past their limits in silent desperation. Others were less human — the things that came out only when the bells stopped ringing.
Xu Mingyan had begun to see them all.
Since the shard awakened something within him, his senses had sharpened — not outwardly, but inward, as though a mirror had been turned on his soul. He no longer walked through the sect like a scavenger. Now, he stalked.
And he was starving.
It had been a week since the shard fed on his memories, and since then, he had not slept for more than a few hours at a time. Whenever he closed his eyes, the whispers returned — dozens of voices clawing at the edge of his sanity.
"Deeper.""Not enough.""Burn yourself brighter."
The shard did not ask for Qi. It didn't care for spiritual herbs or pills.
It wanted pain.
So Xu Mingyan gave it pain.
He reopened old wounds, revisited every humiliation. He sat in freezing rain, inhaling the grief of the land. He offered blood. Not much — not yet — but enough to keep the glow alive.
And in return, the shard revealed fragments.
A stroke of a blade that could cut soul threads.A breathing pattern that numbed pain and stoked fire.A mantra that did not cultivate with the world, but against it.
He called it: Soulbrand Cultivation. A path made of scars.
His opportunity came on the twelfth day — in the form of a corpse.
A senior outer disciple named Hu Geng had been found face-down near the latrine pit, limbs twisted, eyes burned black. The elders called it "Qi deviation." Everyone else whispered "curse."
Xu Mingyan, ever the dutiful worm, volunteered to drag the body to the Furnace.
No one else wanted to touch it.
The Soul Furnace sat atop a plateau that reeked of iron and despair. It was a crater, half-natural, half-carved, filled with a dark crimson flame that never went out. They said it was fed by the regrets of the dead.
Here, disciples offered blood, pain, even souls, in exchange for breakthroughs.
Xu Mingyan waited until the patrols faded. He dumped Hu Geng's corpse at the edge, then knelt beside it. His heart thudded in sync with the shard's pulse.
He did not mourn.
Instead, he slit the corpse's wrist and pressed the shard against it.
Nothing happened.
"More," the shard whispered.
Xu Mingyan didn't flinch. He carved a symbol onto the corpse's chest — something he had glimpsed on a cursed scroll days before. His fingers moved with unnatural certainty, as though the shard guided his hand.
The corpse twitched.
Then screamed.
Not aloud. Not with a voice. But in Xu Mingyan's mind — a psychic howl that froze his blood.
A rush of images. Hu Geng's last thoughts. His hatred. His desires. His fear.
The shard drank deeply.
Xu Mingyan gasped, blood leaking from his nose and ears, but he held on.
And when the ritual was done, he saw the world again — clearer than ever.
Threads of Qi had become ropes. Emotions bled from every surface. The Furnace no longer frightened him. It welcomed him.
And the shard?
It grew teeth.
Later, in his hut, Xu Mingyan etched what he could remember onto a stolen bamboo scroll. The breathing technique now had a name: Soulburn Spiral. The mantra had evolved, responding to each feeding. And now, he could feel it rooting inside him like a second heart.
But the cost...
His dreams were no longer his own.
He began to see faces he had never known. Lives not his. And sometimes, when he looked into the cracked mirror by his cot, he didn't recognize the man staring back.
His eyes were darker.His smile was wrong.And once, just once, the reflection moved before he did.
One night, a girl came to him. Young. Barefoot. Her outer sect robe hung in tatters.
"You're the one who took Hu Geng," she said.
Xu Mingyan did not deny it. He simply looked at her, waiting.
She bowed low. Too low.
"I want to learn. I want to burn."
He studied her. She had nothing — no talent, no cultivation. Her eyes had the same hollowness his once held.
"No," he said finally. "You want revenge."
She looked up, teeth bared.
"Yes."
Xu Mingyan handed her a shard — a splinter he'd carved from the original.
"Feed it," he said. "Then come back."
She ran off into the dark like a dog unleashed.
He watched her go, then whispered:
"Let the Crimson Soul Sect rot. I'll build mine in its ashes."
And in the distance, as if in answer, the Furnace flared.
For a moment, it burned white.
For a moment, even the stars blinked.
And deep underground, something answered back.
Author's Note:Chapter 5 marks a shift — Xu Mingyan is no longer crawling. He's learning to walk among monsters by becoming something worse. The shard is both his gift and curse — his own kind of demonic cultivation that feeds on trauma, not talent.