The rain came without warning.
Not a gentle drizzle, but a cold, lashing downpour that struck the outer sect courtyard like knives made of glass. Most disciples retreated indoors. Training grounds emptied. Meditation zones fell quiet. But under one crooked pavilion, half-collapsed from neglect, one figure remained.
Lian Xue.
Kneeling alone and Soaked to the bone.
She didn't move, even as her spiritual robe clung to her small frame, water trailing down her arms like blood. Her fingers trembled as she traced flame sigils in the mud.
Poorly. Weakly. Wrongly.
Again and again.
She bit her lip hard enough to bleed.
One mistake. She failed to hold the shape of the "Contain" glyph. Again. Her flame cracked sideways, burst out of form, and scorched her sleeve.
It was the sixth time today and the sixteenth failure this week. If she failed again, she'd lose her outer disciple status and then—just like her past life—she'd be sold to the Flame Weavers as a living resource, her flame siphoned and injected into divine clan cauldrons to temper weapons.
Lian Xue swallowed her panic.
"Try again…" But her spiritual thread faltered.
Her control was collapsing.
Just as it had before. She had no idea that she was already being watched. In the shadow of the ruined bell tower, Shen Yao leaned against the broken bronze, arms crossed, eyes calm.
His gaze held no sympathy. Only precise calculation.
She's one mistake away from being discarded. Exactly like his first life that was the moment he had failed her — by doing nothing. Back then, he believed it wasn't his responsibility. That his flame path didn't permit distraction.
That mercy was weakness.
Now?
He understood something deeper.
Mercy is a blade. It wounds more cleanly than vengeance.
He stepped out from the shadows.
"You're doing it wrong."
Lian Xue flinched.
She turned, startled, eyes wide with disbelief. "Senior Shen?"
"You're breathing too shallow," he said. "Your flame won't listen to fear."
She bowed clumsily, slipping in the mud. "I—Senior, I didn't mean to—"
He didn't let her finish and raised his hand.
With a snap of his fingers, a thread of Silent Flame unspooled from his palm and shaped itself into the sigil she'd failed to draw — perfect, stable, gleaming with a white-blue glow that made the air itself vibrate.
Lian Xue's mouth fell open.
"That's… not even a Tier-1 glyph."
"Correct. But I shaped it with fire that's stronger than you'll ever touch unless you survive the next six months."
He stepped closer and for the first time, she saw it. The fire behind his eyes.
It wasn't just strength.
It was purpose. Rage. Will honed to a knife's edge.
The Shen Yao she remembered had always been coldly distant — never terrifying. But now, he was terrifying and she didn't recoil.
She leaned closer.
"What do I do?"
"Burn," he said softly.
The training began before dawn the next day and there was no pity.
Shen Yao woke her before the morning bell. Fed her one roasted flame pellet. Then dragged her to the east gorge, where the wind screamed like a wounded beast and the spiritual energy choked like smoke.
Here, flame arts were hard to shape which is why he made her shape them here.
Again and again.
Each time she failed, he didn't speak. Didn't correct.
He simply narrowed his eyes and moved closer.
By the end of the third day, Lian Xue couldn't lift her arms. Her knees bled from kneeling on volcanic gravel. Her flame threads burned out halfway through even simple formations.
She collapsed.
"Senior Shen… I can't—"
He crouched beside her.
"I once thought like you."
She blinked, tears mixing with ash.
"I once begged for mercy. Not from others — from fate. I thought if I obeyed, endured, tolerated… the world would bend."
His voice dropped.
"It doesn't. Mercy isn't given."
He pressed two fingers to her forehead.
"It's taken."
And with a pulse of silent flame, he branded a minor Karmic Anchor Sigil onto her spiritual sea. She gasped. Her flame roared — stabilizing.
"What did you—?"
"I gave you something Heaven never will," he said. "A second chance."
By the seventh day, Lian Xue's flames no longer sputtered.
They sang.
Not loudly. Not with power. But with clarity.
She could now shape Tier-1 glyphs without guidance wheather it is to hold them or release them. More importantly, she no longer apologized when she failed.
She gritted her teeth and tried again.
Shen Yao didn't praise her.
He didn't need to.
She had stepped off the path of submission.
Now she walked behind him.
Soon, she would walk beside him.
That night, Shen Yao returned to his chamber, deep beneath the sect's main compound, where even the elders had forgotten the old vaults existed.
He sat in silence before a broken cauldron.
Inside it?
The Silent Flame Seed.
It pulsed now.
Awake and Growing.
His soul flame fed it daily, and in return, it evolved — not just in power, but in awareness.
The Infernal Immortality System spoke:
[Flame Node 1: Echo of Karma — Stabilized.]
[System Integration 7% → 9%.]
[Sinflame Ledger: Target Yun Cheng has reached Divine Confession Threshold. Expect pursuit.]
[Tribulation Core: Unstable growth detected. Early absorption possible.]
Shen Yao breathed deeply.
"The system is accelerating," he murmured.
He had expected the first Resonance Node to take a month. Instead, it awakened in nine days. His decisions were shaping more than fate.
They were shaping reality but the world never watched idly.
On the other side of the sect, beneath the Jade Pavilion, Elder Qin Zhen sipped hot tea in silence as one of his soul scouts reported the latest events.
"She's improving," the scout said.
"Too quickly," the elder replied.
"And the boy?"
"Shen Yao is more dangerous than expected. His flame… it warps the surroundings subtly."
Qin Zhen's fingers twitched.
"That's not cultivation. That's Systemic Contagion."
He stood slowly.
"Summon the Flame-Eaters. If he doesn't kneel by the Flame Trials, we'll cut open his core."
Back in the darkness, Shen Yao opened his eyes and smiled coldly.
"They're moving," he whispered.
A flick of his wrist summoned a scroll.
His own Black Parchment inked with karmic threads.
It listed names.
Yun Cheng. Qin Zhen. Elder Ruo. The Fire Weaver Matron.
Each one glowed faintly.
Each one would burn.
He tucked it away.
The Infernal Dao wasn't a straight path.
It twisted like smoke but he would walk it, dragging fate and flame behind him, until nothing stood between him and the Immortal Flame Crown.
And Lian Xue?
She had taken her first step.
Next would come the real fire.
The kind that killed gods.
She was no longer just a girl who had once saved him — now, she was the mercy he would turn into a weapon sharper than vengeance itself.