The night air was cold, as though the heavens themselves had exhaled frost into the earth. The ancient halls of the Zhou family seemed darker than usual, their silence too heavy, like a living thing pressing down upon the heart.
Zhou Fang and Zhou Tian walked side by side, but their silence was not the peace of harmony—it was the silence before lightning splits the sky. The space between them was fragile, trembling like glass about to crack.
A single lantern burned along the corridor. Its flame flickered restlessly, painting the walls with shadows. Those shadows stretched long and crooked, as if unseen hands were reaching out from another world, clawing at the fabric of reality. The dim light revealed not warmth but distortion, as though the very mansion held secrets too dangerous for the sun to touch.
Finally, Zhou Tian spoke. His voice was low, but beneath that calm tone lay decades of weight, secrets pressed into every syllable.
"Fang… there are questions a man should never ask. Some truths are poison. Once swallowed, they change you forever."
Zhou Fang's eyes glimmered, his gaze sharp, steady, but behind that composure flickered an abyss.
"Patriarch, ignorance is not safety—it is a chain. A man who fears poison is already poisoned. I would rather bleed from truth than rot inside the lies of silence."
The lantern flame bent sideways, as if nodding to his words.
Inside his mind, thoughts rippled like an ocean in storm:
The world believes power lies in talent, in rank, in bloodline. They are wrong. True strength is not in what others boast of, but in what they fear to face. Strength is knowing the secrets others tremble to utter—and not breaking beneath them. If my mother still lives, then the foundation of what I've been told is ash. And if it is ash, then I shall burn it further and forge anew with my own fire.
Zhou Tian's brow creased. The aura of the old patriarch shifted. No longer a calm mountain, immovable and ancient. Instead, he was like a storm hidden in clouds, silent yet crackling with restrained destruction.
"You think you are ready," Zhou Tian said. His words were slow, measured, as if dragging each syllable from the weight of memory. "But your mother's truth is no single thread. It is a web—a web that stretches across clans, across blood, across enemies. Touch one strand, and the entire net trembles."
Zhou Fang's lips curved faintly, a smile neither warm nor mocking, but sharp.
"A web? Then let it tremble. What spider survives the fire?"
The corridor seemed colder. Beyond the walls came faint echoes—the banquet's laughter, the clatter of cups, the sound of musicians playing a festive tune. But those sounds arrived dulled, blurred, like voices from a dream leaking into nightmare.
Here, in the silence of stone and shadow, Zhou Fang's true story began.
Zhou Tian stood still for a long moment. His gaze wandered into the dark, as if measuring how much truth the night itself would allow him to speak. Finally, he exhaled, a breath that carried resignation.
"Very well. I will tell you of your mother. But you must understand—my knowledge is little. Even now, I do not truly know her origin. Only this: she came from the Immortal Realm."
Zhou Fang's expression hardly shifted, yet inside him, his certainty deepened.
The Immortal Realm… of course. No creature of this earth knows it. Here, mortals think 'rankers' are the ceiling. They cannot imagine cultivators, or realms above their comprehension. My mother did not belong to their chains at all.
Zhou Tian's eyes grew distant, sinking into the abyss of memory. His voice slowed, deepened, turning into the chant of a man confessing sins to himself.
"I met her long ago, when I was twenty-six. Then, I was weak—no more than a Tier-C ranker. My power was fragile, my future uncertain. I was wandering the void, searching for resources. That was when the impossible occurred."
His hands, usually steady, trembled faintly.
"A portal appeared before me. Sudden, vast, its edges shimmering like shattered glass floating in air. But beyond it lay not reflection. No—what lay beyond was something my mind could not measure. For one moment, I thought I stood before the universal gate itself—the threshold to either fortune or annihilation."
Zhou Fang listened silently, his gaze deep.
"At my level, even a low outsider could have killed me easily. Terror filled me. Yet even greater was curiosity—the whisper that if I did not step through, I would forever remain bound to mediocrity. I entered."
The lantern crackled. Its flame bent sideways, elongating, casting monstrous shadows on the walls, as though eager to reenact what was spoken.
"The land I entered was unlike any world I knew. It was desert. Endless. Lifeless. A horizon of ash and gold. No stars above, no sun, no moon. Only a sky the color of silent death. I searched for the portal again and again, but it was gone, as if it had never existed. Days passed. Then weeks. Half a month I wandered, and the desert offered no mercy. My water was gone, my hope nearly so. I believed I would die in that barren eternity."
He paused. His eyes flickered with the hollow glint of a man remembering thirst and despair.
"But then, far away, I saw figures."
Zhou Fang's heart stirred slightly.
"Hope returned. But instinct whispered caution. If they were hostile, I would die. So I hid among the dunes, a shadow beneath shadows, and I listened."
Zhou Tian's voice sank lower, quieter, yet each word was sharp as a dagger.
"They spoke of ruins. A ruin that opened once every ten thousand years. A place brimming with opportunities. They said if one could seize even a single chance, power would follow. Yet they also spoke of themselves with bitterness—'We are low-born,' they said. 'The great clans send their prodigies here. If we find anything, it will be stripped from us.'"
A faint tremor crossed his voice.
"Then one mentioned a name—Lin Mo'an. The eldest daughter of the Lin clan. They said she was ruthless, colder than winter, beautiful beyond mortal measure yet deadly as a sword. That she was the most gifted of her generation. And that she too had entered these ruins."
The corridor seemed to breathe, as if the mansion itself was listening.
"I realized then that I had stumbled into truths not meant for the world of mortals. These were not wanderers. They were children of a higher realm."
Zhou Tian's eyes darkened.
"Yet as I hid, suddenly—they sensed me. My aura concealed, my breath held… still, they knew. One shouted, 'Who goes there? Show yourself! If you hide longer, you will die where you stand!'"
His fists clenched.
"In that instant, I understood. My concealment was nothing to them. Before such bloodlines, my existence was like an insect buzzing in silence. I had no choice. I stepped out."
He stopped speaking. The lantern's flame shook violently, throwing distorted shadows across the walls.
Zhou Fang's eyes narrowed, unblinking. His heart, however, was calm—not with peace, but with an abyssal stillness. He had heard enough to know: his path was not bounded by mortals, nor even by the rankers of earth. His destiny was tethered to the web his mother left behind.
And once touched, that web would tremble across realms.