Three days after the Furnace ritual, the outer sect compound stirred with tension.
An inner sect envoy had arrived.
That alone was rare — the inner disciples rarely lowered themselves to acknowledge the outer ones unless it was for recruiting servants, punishments... or when someone had drawn attention.
Xu Mingyan kept his head down, but even he couldn't ignore the shift in pressure across the mountain. Qi thickened in the air. Whispers curled through the corridors like mist.
"The Smiling Blade is here...""Someone caught her eye.""Someone's about to die. Or worse — be promoted."
Her name was Ji Xuelan.
An inner sect genius, known for three things: her lethal grace, her unnatural smile, and the trail of broken prodigies she left behind.
When she arrived at the outer training ground, all fifty disciples lined up in silence. No one spoke. No one breathed too loudly.
Except Xu Mingyan.
His shard pulsed.
Ji Xuelan stepped lightly across the dirt, her robe trailing behind her like smoke. She didn't look at anyone. Not until she reached him.
Then she stopped.
Tilted her head.
And smiled.
"You," she said, voice smooth like oil over steel. "What's your name?"
Xu Mingyan straightened slowly. He had already burned his old fear. What stood before her now was not a worm — but something rising.
"Xu Mingyan," he said simply.
Her smile widened, unnaturally so. "Interesting."
He was summoned that night.
Not to a disciplinary court. Not to be punished. But to the Pavilion of Silent Steel — the place where inner sect disciples tested potential recruits.
Xu Mingyan walked in, barefoot, wearing his bloodstained robe and a blank expression.
Ji Xuelan waited by a low table, flanked by two other disciples in silver masks. Their auras pressed down like iron chains. He did not bow.
"I want your technique," she said, pouring tea like she was offering wine at a funeral. "The one that masks your Qi and carves soul memory."
Xu Mingyan said nothing.
She raised a brow. "You can't hide it from someone like me. I smelled your path from three valleys away."
Still, he remained silent.
She set down the cup. Her smile did not fade. "Of course... there's another option. A fleshbound pact. Share your cultivation seed with me — and I will let you live long enough to thrive."
Xu Mingyan laughed. Once. Sharp and cold.
"I don't make pacts," he said.
Ji Xuelan stood. "Oh, sweet boy. You already did."
In his chest, the shard screamed.
Xu Mingyan dropped to his knees, vision splitting.
Blood ran from his eyes, ears, and nose. The two masked disciples stepped forward, but Ji Xuelan raised her hand.
"Wait. Let's see what crawls out."
And crawl he did — through fire and madness.
The shard had changed. It was no longer a passive parasite. It spoke now, not in whispers, but in ancient words — a tongue he did not know, but understood.
"She carries the seal of the Pale Pact.""You are prey. Unless you claim the Predator's Mark.""Do you burn, Xu Mingyan?"
He didn't answer with words.
He bit his own thumb, drew blood, and slammed his palm to the floor.
The world shuddered.
A ring of black flame erupted around him — not fire, not Qi, but raw memory. Every humiliation, every moment of despair — all of it made manifest.
The masked disciples recoiled.
Ji Xuelan clapped once, delighted. "Finally. A mongrel worth feeding."
That night, he did not return to the outer sect.
He was moved to the outer-outer sect — a polite term for those being watched. They gave him a new hut, far from the rest. Isolated. Cold.
But inside... he wasn't alone.
The shard had evolved.
A second voice had emerged.
It spoke less, but understood more. It whispered only when he was still.
"She wants your seed not to steal it, but to bury it.""The Smiling Blade harvests souls, not allies.""Refuse again... and next time, she'll take your bones."
Xu Mingyan didn't sleep that night. He etched symbols into the wood of his walls. Formulas born not from manuals, but from blood and madness.
He was building something.
A rite.
A way to turn Soulbrand Cultivation from a scar into a weapon.
The next morning, the girl returned.
The one he'd sent with the shard splinter.
She stood at his door, face blank, hands shaking. She dropped a sack at his feet.
It held a severed hand. A sect badge. And a heart still beating.
"I fed it," she said.
Xu Mingyan smiled.
"Then you've earned your name."
Author's Note:Xu Mingyan has moved from cursed survivor to active threat. Ji Xuelan — the Smiling Blade — represents a new kind of danger: beautiful, seductive, and drenched in blood. The Pale Pact she carries is old, and it's not the only one of its kind...