The ashes of the Falling Star Sect still clung to Li Fan's robe as he walked beside death incarnate.
Yan Mei had not spoken since they left the blood-slick courtyard. Her blade remained sheathed, but the pressure she emitted was a whisper away from apocalyptic. Even the forest trembled as they passed birds abandoning trees, spiritual beasts crawling deeper into the shadows.
Li Fan's gaze was steady despite the pain radiating from his half-healed neck. He was used to being ignored. Feared was new.
At last, Yan Mei stopped before an ancient tree, its bark veined with glowing symbols: a Formation Tree, long thought extinct.
She pressed her palm to the trunk. The sigils flared.
A shimmer of reality peeled back, revealing a pocket dimension hidden within the forest. A cave entrance. Cold mist wafted out, carrying scents of dried lotus, stone, and something deeper old knowledge.
"Inside," she commanded, voice like frost.
Li Fan didn't hesitate.
The cave walls pulsed with primordial Qi. Glyphs spiraled across the ceiling in forgotten languages. In the center, a meditation stone cracked from time and use. Yan Mei stepped into the dim blue glow and finally turned to face him.
"You spoke of formation mastery, alchemy, soul arts, refinement."
Li Fan inclined his head. "I've studied them all. Not from sect manuals, but from what the sect buried beneath its feet."
He reached into his robe and pulled out a palm-sized seal blackened, cracked, and bound with golden thread. He unwrapped it.
The seal pulsed. The air screamed.
Yan Mei's eyes sharpened. "That's not a modern artifact."
"No. It's pre-War era," he said calmly. "Seals of the Scholar-Kings. You can only activate them with blood and truth."
She stepped closer. "Truth?"
"You ask for knowledge. But knowledge demands sacrifice."
Without waiting, he cut across his palm and pressed it to the seal. Golden light surged, bathing the chamber in symbols.
In its glow, images flickered a battlefield of glass, a temple upside down, a masked cultivator holding the severed head of a god.
Yan Mei's lips parted, ever so slightly. "These visions…"
"Proof," Li Fan whispered, eyes reflecting the storm of images. "The Dao cracked long before our time. Techniques today are corrupted blueprints of a forgotten truth."
She stared at him, unblinking. "And you want what in return?"
He met her gaze.
"Your protection. Your sword. Your silence."
A moment stretched like eternity.
Then she stepped forward, blade flashing from its sheath not toward his throat, but his palm.
She pressed her hand to his, mixing their blood upon the stone floor.
"I bind myself to this pact," she said, her voice solemn. "If you lie, I'll end you slowly. But if you speak truth…"
Her lips curved cold, beautiful, terrifying.
"…I will help you burn the heavens."
High above, hidden among clouds, a mirror blinked to life.
A cloaked figure watched the blood-bound pact from an unseen sanctum.
He smiled.
"So the Ghost Blade chooses the Broken Scholar," he whispered.
He raised a brush and painted a new name on his scroll: Li Fan Anomaly Class Red.