The night the Xuanye Sect fell, the heavens did not remain silent.
They screamed.
Black clouds rolled over Tianyuan's northern mountains like a living tide. Lightning forked endlessly through the sky, illuminating the peaks in violent flashes of white and violet. Each strike carved cracks into ancient stone that had stood for centuries.
The mountain gates of Xuanye Sect, once majestic and revered, were now reduced to broken pillars and shattered jade steps.
Blood flowed down the stairs like a narrow river.
The scent of iron mixed with burning incense and collapsing spiritual formations.
At the summit platform, surrounded by ruin, stood a single figure.
Lin Xuanye.
His long black robe, embroidered with silver threads of the Night Dao, fluttered violently in the storm winds. The hem was torn. One sleeve was missing entirely. His chest was stained dark red, blood soaking through layer after layer of spiritual silk.
Behind him lay the bodies of elders who had once guided him.
In front of him stood the future.
And the future had come to kill him.
More than thirty cultivators hovered in midair, forming a radiant circle that sealed the summit. Their spiritual pressure crushed downward like mountains stacked upon mountains.
Golden Core.
Nascent Soul.
Even two Spirit Severing Realm experts.
This was no ordinary raid.
This was extermination.
At their center floated a man in white and silver robes, his expression calm, his eyes cold as frost beneath moonlight.
Han Tianyu.
Eldest disciple of Xuanye Sect.
His sworn brother.
The man Lin Xuanye once trusted more than his own shadow.
Lightning illuminated Han Tianyu's face.
There was no anger there.
No hatred.
Only quiet disappointment.
"Senior Brother," Han Tianyu said gently, as if this were a routine sect discussion. "You should have handed it over willingly."
Wind howled across the summit.
Lin Xuanye coughed.
Blood splattered onto the stone beneath his feet.
"You waited," he said hoarsely. "Ten years… you waited ten years."
His spiritual sense swept outward again, even though he already knew the result.
The inner mountain was silent.
The medicinal peak was silent.
The sword pavilion was silent.
Everyone
Dead.
Not defeated.
Not captured.
Erased.
Han Tianyu's gaze did not waver. "The Nine Nether Samsara Dagger does not belong in your hands."
A tremor passed through Lin Xuanye's body.
Not from fear.
From fury.
"I brought it back from the Black Moon Ruins," Lin Xuanye growled. "I nearly died for it."
"And you were rewarded beyond your destiny," Han Tianyu replied evenly. "Without me, you would have perished in the beast tide. Without me, Xuanye Sect would never have risen."
The surrounding cultivators began tightening their spiritual formation. Golden light descended like chains.
"Destiny?" Lin Xuanye laughed.
The sound was cracked, raw, almost broken.
"When we starved together in Canglan City, was that destiny?"
"When we fought through the first beast tide, back to back, was that destiny?"
"When I gave you half the spirit marrow I found beneath the Azure Rift, was that destiny too?"
Han Tianyu's jaw tightened slightly.
But only slightly.
"You were never meant to stand above me."
The words fell like a blade.
Lightning struck the summit platform.
For a moment, both men stood in stark white illumination, past and present split in a single flash.
Lin Xuanye understood then.
This had never been sudden.
This had been inevitable.
He had grown too quickly.
Too brilliantly.
Too far beyond the balance Han Tianyu was willing to accept.
The Nascent Soul pressure descended.
Crack.
Lin Xuanye's left knee shattered against the stone.
The summit fractured beneath him.
He forced himself upright, veins bulging along his neck as he resisted.
"You could have asked," he rasped.
"And you would have refused."
Han Tianyu finally raised his hand.
Behind him, one of the Spirit Severing elders spoke.
"Enough talk. Kill him."
Spiritual chains shot forward like spears.
They pierced Lin Xuanye's shoulders.
His dantian trembled violently.
His Golden Core, brilliant and radiant moments ago, began cracking.
Pain unlike anything he had endured tore through his body.
But it was not the pain that broke him.
It was the silence behind him.
The silence of a sect that trusted him.
The silence of disciples who called him Master.
The silence of people who died because he believed in the wrong man.
He lowered his head.
Rain mixed with blood.
Then
Slowly
He laughed.
It began as a quiet chuckle.
Then grew.
Then echoed wildly across the summit.
Even the storm seemed to pause.
Han Tianyu's brows furrowed.
"You've lost your mind."
"No," Lin Xuanye whispered.
Black light flickered faintly beneath his torn robes.
Embedded in his chest
A dagger.
Pitch black.
Its surface was etched with ancient runes that seemed to devour the surrounding light. It did not reflect lightning. It did not glimmer.
It absorbed.
Nine Nether Samsara Dagger.
The artifact that changed everything.
The artifact Han Tianyu truly wanted.
The artifact rumored to defy fate itself.
"You wanted it so badly," Lin Xuanye said softly.
He wrapped his hand around the hilt.
The runes pulsed.
The storm winds howled violently.
The Spirit Severing elder's eyes widened.
"Stop him!"
But Han Tianyu's gaze sharpened.
"What are you doing?"
Lin Xuanye lifted his head.
His eyes no longer held anger.
No longer held pain.
Only clarity.
"In this life… I misjudged fate."
Spiritual energy reversed direction violently within his body.
His already cracked Golden Core began collapsing inward.
The surrounding cultivators sensed something wrong.
"Suppress him!"
They unleashed their full power.
The summit platform shattered entirely.
Mountains trembled.
But it was too late.
The dagger responded.
Black radiance exploded outward in a silent shockwave.
All sound vanished.
All color drained.
The world itself seemed to dim.
Han Tianyu's calm mask finally broke.
"You're insane!"
Lin Xuanye smiled.
"If I cannot surpass you in this life…"
He drove the dagger deeper into his own heart.
Blood surged down his chest.
"…then I will carve a path from the past."
The black light expanded.
Runes ignited across the sky like inverted stars.
The cultivators' attacks froze midair.
Time
Stuttered.
Cracked.
Shattered.
Lin Xuanye's consciousness was pulled violently into darkness.
Not death.
Something deeper.
A void without direction.
Without sound.
Without form.
Then
A whisper echoed through the abyss.
Ancient.
Genderless.
Beyond comprehension.
"Samsara acknowledged."
Fragments of his memories began unraveling.
Childhood.
Canglan City.
College dormitory.
Spiritual Tide.
First awakening.
First meeting with Han Tianyu.
First beast tide.
Everything spiraled backward.
Faster.
Faster.
Faster
Until even the concept of "self" began dissolving.
His final thought burned like iron.
This time…
I will not trust.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
And the heavens fell silent.