Three silent men knelt inside a cold mountain temple cloaked in black, eyes bound with crimson thread, each exhaling fog despite the fire roaring in the hearth.
None of them spoke.
None of them had to.
Because above them, a name burned across a floating jade talisman:
Wang Lin.
And beside it, in blood-scripted red:
Target Class: Cataclysm.
The scroll fell into ashes.
One of the kneeling men rose.
He wore no blade.
No charm.
No badge of the Heavenly Sky Sect.
But in his palm… spiritual runes pulsed like veins.
The elder standing in the back of the temple, hood drawn, nodded once.
"The order is sealed. Eliminate him before the egg hatches. Burn the evidence. No corpse."
The man disappeared.
Not by spell.
Not by step.
By disappearance of presence.
As if fate itself forgot he existed.
Meanwhile, at Pavilion Seventeen, Wang Lin sat under the rebuilt archway, robe loose over one shoulder, skin still marked faintly from the void trait integration. The egg hovered beside him in a gentle drift of violet mist, rotating slowly in place.
He didn't sleep.
He didn't need to.
His thoughts were fixed — not on the sect, not on the fight, not even on the trait he had just earned.
But on the feel of the void.
It had tasted like silence.
It had moved like memory.
It had stared back at him… like it knew him already.
| "The void remembers the pieces of every soul it brushes." |
"That include mine?"
| "Yours was never whole to begin with." |
Wang Lin didn't smile.
He didn't frown.
He just accepted it.
"I think I like being incomplete."
| "Good. Because something's coming." |
He stood.
No warning.
No buildup.
Just motion.
He stepped into the middle of the courtyard.
The air was wrong.
A scent — not blood. Not Qi. Something colder.
And then—
The air tore open like silk, and the assassin appeared.
No face.
Just robes.
Just runes.
Just death.
The man didn't waste words.
He moved — instantly.
A blade forged of raw spirit energy erupted from his palm.
He dashed forward.
Wang Lin didn't dodge.
He stepped into the attack.
The blade struck his shoulder — sliced open muscle, grazing bone.
But Wang Lin's palm caught the assassin's wrist mid-strike.
Their eyes locked.
| "Be careful." |
"I've felt worse pain," Wang Lin muttered.
He twisted the assassin's wrist with one fluid snap — a sharp, fast motion that cracked the bone.
The man didn't cry out.
He spun backward and flicked his other hand — releasing a spray of red spirit needles, each glowing with anti-healing seals.
Wang Lin raised his hand.
Voidstep.
Gone.
He appeared behind the assassin.
Crushing Palm.
The air compressed around the assassin's back.
But the assassin turned mid-blow—
And smiled.
"You're slower than I remember," the man said.
Wang Lin's eyes narrowed.
"…I know that voice."
"Of course you do."
The assassin dropped his mask.
And there, underneath the hood…
Was a face Wang Lin had watched die before.
"Feng Lian," Wang Lin whispered.
The assassin grinned.
"I told you we'd meet again."
"You… died."
"I almost did," Feng Lian said. "But you weren't the only one who got a second chance."
His aura flared.
Not red.
Not blue.
Gray.
The color of abandonment.
Of erased timelines.
| "He's like you," | Long Shan whispered. | "Touched by the outside. But not accepted by it." |
"Why come now?" Wang Lin asked, voice low.
"Because you're doing what I couldn't," Feng Lian said. "And the Order's afraid."
"So they sent you to kill me?"
"No." Feng Lian's smile vanished. "They sent me to test you."
He dropped into a stance.
"I'm going to hit you as hard as I did when I hated you."
"Do it."
The two vanished.
Air burst.
Stones shattered.
They clashed again and again, bodies spinning, fists colliding, spirit flaring across the battlefield in streaks of white and violet.
Wang Lin's left arm went numb from one of Feng Lian's strikes.
Feng Lian bled from his mouth after one of Wang Lin's knees hit his ribs.
It wasn't a duel.
It was reliving an old wound.
And it only stopped when both men collapsed, panting, on opposite sides of the ruined platform.
"…You didn't use the egg," Feng Lian said between coughs.
"I didn't need to."
"You could've killed me."
"I could've," Wang Lin said. "But then I'd lose the only person who remembers what they did to me."
Feng Lian lay back and laughed, blood dribbling down his chin.
"Still arrogant."
"Still standing."
| "He wasn't lying." |
"I know," Wang Lin said. "They're scared of the egg."
| "More than scared. They're preparing a sealing ritual. One that doesn't just stop growth… it erases potential." |
"I'll break it."
| "You'll have to fight an entire generation of cultivators to reach it." |
Wang Lin stood slowly.
"I've fought worse."
He held out a hand.
Feng Lian stared at it for a long time.
Then took it.
| "The path forward just got bloodier." |
"Good," Wang Lin said.
"I brought sharp steps."