The once blood-red sky of the inner world had now faded into a deep, somber blue. Grains of black soil squirmed beneath the wooden hut, like newborns learning to breathe. Ye Lin knelt on the still-warm ground, his fingers digging a small hole before the fake family photo.
"[YOU'RE MAD]," hissed the butterfly tattoo on his arm, its voice now little more than dusty wind. "[PLANTING MEMORIES IN THIS WORLD?]"
But Ye Lin had already made his choice. From the tear in his pocket, he pulled out a dried corn seed—the only real thing left from his former body. A charm he always carried, the last relic of his mother.
"Keep it safe, Lin'er. This corn is a seed of life."
Three seconds after the seed touched the soil:
The sky rumbled not with menace, but with the song of ancestors.
The photo on the hut wall came to life, the child in the image turning his head to smile at Ye Lin.
Foreign hands rose from the earth but not to drag him under. They danced, fingers made of black roots weaving ancient symbols into the air.
The First Keeper raged at the edge of the dimension, thousands of mouths screaming in unison:
"YOU ARE NOT ALLOWED TO CHANGE THE RULES!"
But the scream was fading now, like a voice echoing from the end of a long tunnel.
In the ruined village of Luoshui:
Ye Lin's physical body long presumed destroyed suddenly turned green. Wild grass sprouted from the old wound on his chest, forming a strange spiral pattern. A small child hiding behind a tree watched as glass flowers began to bloom around the body.
In the Space Between:
The false Patriarch suddenly felt pain. For the first time in millennia, his energy leaked flowing like a river toward Ye Lin's inner world.
"[WHAT]"
The butterfly tattoo on Ye Lin's arm glowed red. "[HE'S BEING EATEN IN REVERSE!]"
But Ye Lin wasn't absorbing.
He was sharing.
The soil of his inner world now nurtured a tiny sprout. Not ordinary corn but something with transparent stalks, glass-like shimmering leaves, and fruit that...
The fruit was shaped like miniature human hearts.
"[YOU HAVE CREATED A NEW PATH]," whispered the small shadow, now no taller than Ye Lin's knee, its face clearly that of Ye Lin at age five. "[BUT HE WILL RETURN IN ANOTHER FORM.]"
Ye Lin nodded. In the distance, at the fading edge of the dimension, he saw them an army. Hundreds of cultivators with eyes as black as the Patriarch's, all clad in the robes of the Venom Leaf Sect.
War was coming.
But this time, Ye Lin smiled.
He watered the new sprout with the last of the corn soup in his bowl.