The smell of burning sandalwood clung to the temple halls, masking the rot beneath.
Chains rattled. Blood dripped from the rafters. Dozens of cultivators—once proud, robe-wrapped masters of the Inner Sky Realm—now knelt with their tongues severed, their Dao Cores shattered, and their eyes carved with the Sigil of Silence.
Above them sat the one who had betrayed them all.
Patriarch Dao-Lan, Eternal Master of the Thousand Truths Sect, clothed in silver light, drinking from a cup of liquid karma—golden, thick, stolen from the blood of his disciples.
And at the center of it all…
Yi Zhen.
Sixteen years old.
Eyes wide with fear.
Chained naked to the Pillar of Purification.
A boy who had only begun to walk the Dao of Harmony.
They told him he was born under a cursed omen: the Sky that Never Echoes.
No celestial spirit answered his birth. No fate threads weaved his path. He was "Dao-deaf"—a spiritual cripple, good for nothing but scrubbing stone steps.
But then he heard the voice.
> "All Dao is false. But the scream of betrayal is truth."
It came to him one night, whispering from beneath the sect's sacred lake. He followed it, and found something older than the Heavens. Something sealed in black lotus roots, pulsing with anti-Dharma.
He should've walked away.
---
Now the Patriarch smiled down at him.
"You found it, didn't you? The thing beneath the lake."
Yi Zhen's mouth bled. He couldn't speak.
"You touched what was never meant for mortals."
The Patriarch sipped again. "So now… you will feed it."
Behind him, the Elders stood silent. Eyes lowered. Not one defended the boy.
Not even his master.
Not even his brothers.
Yi Zhen's scream echoed through the inner halls as the Flesh-Cleansing Fire was lit beneath his feet. It devoured his skin first. Then his meridians. Then his Qi sea. His Dao Path was shattered into screaming fragments. His Inner Sky bled.
But he never blacked out.
> "They did not kill you… they offered you."
---
His soul was falling.
Drifting into a place no cultivator should ever see—beneath the cycles, beneath the karma, beneath the world's dreaming breath.
There was no light here.
Only a voice—dry, ancient, and so quiet it sounded like the end of sound itself.
> "You were born into the world of false Daos..."
"...and for that, you were silenced."
"...Now inherit the Dao they fear to name."
Yi Zhen's soul cracked.
In its place grew something else.
A Root.
Black. Blooming upside-down. Feeding not on Qi… but on suffering.
A cultivation system that should not exist.
One that walks backwards—against the flow of Heaven.
Each realm forged through trauma, grief, and revelation.
And so the boy opened his eyes.
The fire was still burning. His body was ash.
But the chains had melted.
Yi Zhen stood. No longer needing flesh to move.
His breath came not from lungs, but from will.
His Dao… was no longer part of this world.
A single word drifted from his lips—an instinctual mantra written in the bones of forgotten gods:
"Return."
And the screams began.
The Elders fell first.
Their Dao Cores inverted, shattered by memories of their own sins.
Their meridians erupted as if guilty.
Yi Zhen did not lift a finger. He simply remembered their betrayal—and the world did the rest.
Only the Patriarch remained.
"You—What Dao is this?! It goes against causality! Against—"
Yi Zhen tilted his head.
> "What Dao? You mean the one that let you burn your disciples alive? The one that turned their silence into incense?"
"I... I did it for balance!" the Patriarch screamed, begging. "To preserve the sect!"
Yi Zhen stepped forward, hollow eyes burning with the memory of flames.
> "Then let your balance burn with you."
The temple collapsed. The Thousand Truths Sect became a crater.
No survivors.
No graves.
But the black lotus kept blooming.
Some say they saw a boy with no shadow, walking toward the East of the Sky, where no stars shine.
Others say he's dead.
That he never existed.
But in the realms beyond Heaven, something has begun to twist.
The Dao trembles when his name is spoken.
And somewhere, etched in the language of screams:
> "What if the true path… was the one Heaven cast away?"