Yue Lian stood at the edge of the crumbling altar, blood dripping from her left palm, the echoes of her battle with the Cultivator Tribunal still reverberating across the shattered ruins. Around her, the once-hallowed Hall of Obsidian Oaths was ablaze, not with fire, but with golden mist—soul fragments of those who had tried to stop her.
In the center of the altar sat a book unlike any other: black as death, yet glowing faintly blue, bound not in silk or skin, but in something colder—bone.
They called it the Bone Lantern Scripture, a cultivation manual said to be written not in ink, but in the condensed memories of a thousand slain sages. Each page pulsed like a heartbeat, each glyph burned like an unanswered question.
For centuries, this Scripture had been sealed beneath the Temple of Judgement, condemned as heresy, its owner—the "Tyrant" Yan Zhuo—burned from history.
And yet Yue Lian had found it.
Not by luck. Not by chance. But by inheritance.
The bone charm her master had given her—an unremarkable thing, always warm—had flared to life in this place. It had opened the path through the Weeping Hollows, guided her through the Windless Caves, and now pulsed in time with the Scripture.
A test.
A warning.
A promise.
Her breath caught as her fingers grazed the cover. Visions exploded behind her eyes.
She saw Yan Zhuo—not as the world had painted him, the tyrant who drowned cities and defied heaven—but a man alone, bleeding, kneeling at the mouth of a burning forest, offering his cultivation to save mortals cursed by a Celestial Decree.
She saw him betrayed—by sects he had once protected.
She saw the moment they named him monster.
And in his silence, the Bone Lantern was born.
Yue Lian screamed as the Scripture opened.
Not from pain—but from memory.
Her dantian surged violently. Her Golden Core trembled. But the Scripture didn't consume her. It welcomed her.
It recognized her.
And it began to rewrite her cultivation path.
Gone was the rigid structure of Heaven's Mandate. Gone were the borrowed techniques of the Azure Sky Sect. In their place bloomed a flame unlike any spiritual fire—blue, cold, and heavy with ancient sorrow.
The Bone Lantern Flame.
It did not destroy—it preserved.
It burned through lies and seared through illusions, restoring truth where history had imposed silence.
A voice spoke, not aloud, but inside her mind. Deep. Familiar.
"If one soul dares to remember, then I am not yet gone."
Yue Lian fell to her knees, clutching her chest as the Bone Lantern Flame rooted into her meridians. She wept—not for herself, but for him.
For Yan Zhuo.
For the man who died so others could forget him.
When she rose, her qi had changed color.
Her eyes were no longer golden, but a ghostly silver-blue. Her aura pulsed like a funeral bell. And in her hand, the Bone Lantern Scripture closed, sealing itself with a sigh—like a tired truth finally heard.
Yue Lian was no longer just a wandering cultivator.
She was now the heir to the Tyrant's Path.
And soon, all of the Nine Heavens would remember the name Yan Zhuo—even if she had to burn the sky to make them listen