Li Fan sat cross-legged on the meditation stone as Yan Mei loomed in the shadows, her obsidian blade resting across her lap. The cave was silent, save for the slow drip of condensation from the stalactites above. He had closed his eyes, but he wasn't meditating.
He was remembering.
The Soul Forge wasn't supposed to exist anymore. The texts he'd pieced together hinted at a place buried beneath the sect's oldest halls, a workshop where thoughts were made real, where cultivators didn't just refine weapons they refined themselves. Mind, spirit, soul. He had found it six months ago by accident Or fate.
His hands moved through the air, not idle but inscribing invisible runes. One by one, they sank into the meditation stone, pulsing faintly. Yan Mei didn't interrupt, but her gaze never left him.
"Qi pattern resonance," she said finally. "You're stabilizing a layered seal matrix."
He didn't respond. The eleventh rune resisted. A flaw. A break in symmetry. He sliced his finger and let a single drop of blood fall.
The seal snapped into place.
The ground beneath the stone trembled.
A hidden circle beneath them engraved in celestial script lit up, illuminating the chamber. Blue light raced along unseen channels, crawling across walls like veins of the earth awakening.
Yan Mei rose slowly, blade now in hand.
"You brought us to a sealed array chamber," she said. "Why?"
Li Fan stood. "Because this cave isn't a cave. It's the last chamber of the Soul Forge."
With a gesture, he activated the final rune. The wall behind them vanished dissolving into motes of light revealing a massive chamber beyond.
Inside, hundreds of half-formed weapons hovered mid-air: swords without edges, bows without strings, talismans with no core. Each pulsed with trapped memories of failure, sacrifice, obsession.
And at the center of it all: an anvil made of obsidian and bone, suspended above a pit of black flame.
Yan Mei stepped through the threshold cautiously. "This place… it's older than the sect. Older than anything I've seen."
Li Fan moved to the anvil. "This is where the Ancients created the first soul-bound weapons. Where they realized that the Dao was not a gift, but a prison that needed breaking."
He reached out. His fingers brushed the anvil's edge and the black fire surged upward, engulfing his hand.
Yan Mei's blade moved in a blink. "Idiot"
But Li Fan didn't scream.
Instead, the flames wrapped around his fingers like a second skin. Glowing symbols etched themselves into his bones.
"It recognizes me," he said through clenched teeth. "Because I've walked the path of the Forgotten Flame."
"Then it's bound to you," Yan Mei said warily, lowering her sword. "But why bring me here?"
Li Fan turned to her, and for the first time, there was no smile on his face.
"Because what I'm about to forge requires more than flame," he said. "It needs a bond."
Before she could respond, the chamber pulsed again violently. The half-forged weapons began to tremble. One by one, they shattered, releasing cries of trapped spirits.
The black flame rose, high and wild.
From the shadows above, a voice rasped like sand over bone:
"WHO DARES UNLOCK THE SOVEREIGN'S FORGE?"
A creature dropped from the ceiling, landing silently. It wasn't human. Its face was a mask of polished bone, its body a network of translucent nerves coiled around a hollow frame. In its chest burned a flickering purple core.
Yan Mei was already in motion her blade slashing in a silver arc but the creature vanished. Reappeared behind her. Clawed fingers slashed toward her spine.
Li Fan shouted a word in a language no longer spoken. The ground rippled. A formation circle sprang to life beneath Yan Mei's feet, deflecting the strike with a shield of inverted Qi.
The creature hissed.
"You shouldn't be able to speak the True Tongue," it growled.
Li Fan's eyes glowed faintly. "I shouldn't be able to do a lot of things."
He stepped forward, calling up six different formation rings. Alchemical fire sparked in one palm, while the other drew symbols mid-air sigils of balance, war, entropy.
Yan Mei landed beside him, blade now humming with spiritual resonance.
"Is this a guardian?" she asked.
"No," Li Fan replied. "This is a memory fragment. A soul echo from the last master of this forge."
"Can it die?" Li Fan's expression darkened. "Only if we kill it before it remembers it's already dead."
The creature screeched and lunged.
High above, in the void between realms, a spectral eye blinked open.
It had felt the Soul Forge awaken.
And somewhere deep in the Celestial Record, a forgotten prophecy began rewriting itself.