Lu Chenyuan jolted awake from the hard wooden cot, cold sweat soaking his brow. His chest heaved violently, as though he had just clawed his way up from the depths of a dark sea, every breath carrying the suffocating weight of drowning.
He gasped for air, then instinctively raised his right hand, opening his palm.
Outside, the moonlight had grown strange—viscous and frigid—like a thin layer of corpse-wax poured over the world. In that cold luminance, the firewood hut was painted in deathly stillness.
On his palm, he saw the familiar rough calluses born from years of menial labor. Yet, in that instant of his gaze, something monstrous stirred.
His five fingers softened as though their bones had melted, lengthening grotesquely. Thin membranes stretched between the joints, and beneath his skin, crimson, pupil-less eyes cracked open one after another. They rolled with sluggish malice, surveying the world… and their host.
He felt them turning inside his flesh, each rotation bringing a clammy, crawling sensation—like wet worms writhing beneath his palm.
More terrifying still, a cold will slithered up his arm, seeking entry into his mind.That will brimmed with greed for the world, hunger for flesh, and contempt for the fragile spark known as Lu Chenyuan.
It wanted to awaken.It wanted to devour him.
A flood of dark intent surged from the depths of his heart.
He saw Zhenhaichuan—its fishermen, woodcutters, farmers, scholars—flash through his thoughts. Yet in an instant, every face twisted into ants and maggots, scrambling beneath his feet.
No pity arose within him. Only an aloof detachment, as if all living beings were nothing but fodder for his hunger.
Even the lofty cultivators and immortals revered by mortals—when their figures surfaced in his mind, they stirred not awe, but cold disdain. Indeed, he realized with cruel clarity: if those of shallow cultivation beheld him now, it would be they who trembled in fear.
"Again… that dream."
In the dream, he stood upon a vast, indescribable palace of glazed glass. Around him lay the broken remains of stars. Beneath his feet stretched a twisting, bottomless void.
In his hand was a sword.A sword that seemed to gather all the light of the world, and shoulder all its sins.
He could not see his face, yet he felt the boundless grief and unshakable resolve that welled from within.
Countless voices—familiar yet strange—cried, cursed, and pleaded. Among them, one woman's voice rang clear. Within it was disbelief, the kind born of ultimate betrayal:
"Why…?"
The sound pierced his heart, splitting it with pain.
And yet, without hesitation, he swung the sword.
One stroke tore open the heavens, leaving behind a wound that bled with ghostly blue fire—a scar that would never heal.
The thunderous roar of that dream overlapped with a real clap of thunder outside, shocking him fully awake.
Looking down at his palm's grotesque transformation, his stomach churned violently. A savage impulse rose within him—to hack off his own hand at the wrist.
But he did not move.
Lu Chenyuan gritted his teeth, veins bulging across his temples as he forced himself to endure, suppressing the abyssal madness within.
"Heart like a still pond, unmoved by waves.Breath like a hidden fish, unseen in the depths.Where the body stands, the heart remains."
Silently, he recited the nameless meditation verse his master had taught him. He dared not make a sound, barely even dared to breathe.
Within the deathly silence, the walls of the hut seemed to close in. Shadows pressed tighter, turning the narrow space into a coffin closing upon him.
Then—
A dog barked outside, followed by the sharp shouts of the Night Patrol from the Demon Suppression Bureau:
"Keep sharp! The Tide Festival is near—don't expect your cleansing stipend if you slack! More and more heavily-tainted Dao-corrupted are slipping through. Heard Old Wang from the Salt Fish Guild vanished last night."
"When they found his boat, every silver-scaled fish belly-up—scared to death by something. In the cabin, nothing but his torn raincloak and an empty net."
Another voice asked, "Chief, if we run into a Dao-corrupted out of control, how do we handle it?"
"Idiot! First suppress. If you can't, kill on the spot! The Celestial Bureau will arrive soon—don't you dare botch this!"
Their footsteps came and went.
Only then did his twisted hand reluctantly retract, shrinking back into its human guise. The scarlet eyes beneath his skin closed, vanishing as though that terrifying vision had been nothing but a dream.
Lu Chenyuan finally let out a breath, though his body felt hollowed, his sweat-soaked shirt clinging to his frail frame.
What terrified him was not only the monstrous hand—but that fleeting instant when his heart had looked upon all beings with utter indifference.
As though that was his true form.And Lu Chenyuan, nothing but a prison of flesh he had worn too long.
Why was such a thing dwelling within him?
He did not know.Only that if he allowed that will to grow, one day… he would never wake again.
The only thing he could rely on now—was the strange meditation his "mad beauty" of a master had left him.
That verse stirred no spiritual energy, granted no cultivation. It was but a simple breathing method, crude and shallow.
Yet, against the demon lurking in his flesh, it was strangely effective.
Outside, the Night Patrol had long since gone. Silence returned to the hut.
But for Lu Chenyuan, that silence no longer brought peace.
He suddenly felt that his small, frail body was like a reflection of the vast heavens themselves—beneath its ordinary shell, madness and corruption surged, ready to devour all.
This was a diseased world.
It was said that more than three thousand years ago, a great calamity struck. The Celestial Abyss was severed, and the immortal realm was forever cut off from the mortal world.
The court's edicts declared: from that day onward, the Nine Provinces' celestial heart was fractured. The righteous qi waned, while the turbid yin of the Nether grew ever stronger.
Thus, if a cultivator wavered in focus or strayed in virtue, they easily attracted outside corruption—transforming into unspeakable abominations.
The officials called this descent "Dao-corruption," and the sickness itself "Dao-stain."
But Lu Chenyuan was no cultivator. He was an ordinary man, struggling to survive in a cruel world. Why, then, did he bear the signs of Dao-corruption?
Ordinary mortals did not mutate so. Such curses came only to those who had touched the Dao, who had tasted its power.
He lifted his eyes to the night beyond the rotting wooden window.
Above the ink-blue sky hung a brilliant full moon, flooding the earth with silver light.
The fishermen of Zhenhaichuan called tonight's moon the "Dragon King's Open Eye," a sign of great harvest. Families hung dried squid at their windows to pray for fortune.
They saw only purity in the moonlight, only joy in the omen.
But beside that flawless silver orb, Lu Chenyuan alone beheld a thin, ghostly-blue crack stretching silently across the heavens.
A blemish upon jade, a scar upon a smiling face.
Its shape was identical to the wound he carved in his dream, with a single stroke of his sword.
No one else could see it.Not the fishermen, not the merchants, not even the passing cultivators.
Only he, Lu Chenyuan, who each night awoke from the nightmare—and opened his eyes to see this eternal "Scar of Heaven."
Was it a dream's echo, or reality itself?
Worse still, for half a year now, faint echoes had seeped from that rift—like the voice of a stone cast into an endless abyss, its sound returning across eons.
And disturbingly, the pulse of that echo… beat in time with his own heart.
He had once asked his master, the so-called "Drunken Sword Immortal." The woman, beautiful and unrestrained, had only burped drunkenly, pointing at the sky with a jade-like finger, her smile lazy:
"Foolish boy, that's no scar of heaven. That's just the Dragon King's belt coming loose—left a crack when he wasn't careful."
"You must've stolen dried fish from the kitchen again. The Dragon King's angry, so he crept into your dream to scold you."
"You're lying. Last time you said it was a wound I left behind, back when I was an Immortal Emperor."
"Heh! You little brat, still bringing that up? I only said that to humor your ridiculous dream. You came to me swearing you'd cut a hole in the sky with one stroke. What was I supposed to say? That you poked through the window paper with a rolling pin?"
"To cleave the heavens with one sword—do you think that's something a mortal can do? Only the fabled Immortal Emperor who soared beyond the Abyss would be worthy of such a feat. What, are you offended that I called you an emperor?"
Lu Chenyuan had shaken his head, casting away the tangled thoughts.
At dawn, the scar visible only to him would vanish.
Hunger gnawed at his belly. He rose from bed.
His master's wine jar had run dry again last night. If he didn't earn a few coins today, he'd hear her scolding soon enough.
He pushed open the hut's door. The night air carried the dampness of firewood, mixed with the stench of cheap wine.
Beneath the crooked old locust tree in the yard, a figure slept soundly against the trunk.
Clad in loose azure robes, her stunning form could not be hidden. Ink-black hair spilled freely, strands lifted by the wind to brush across a face too beautiful to belong to the mortal world.
Her brows were sharp as blades, her eyes like peach blossoms even in slumber. Her nose proud, her lips full and soft—features that should have clashed, yet together formed a paradoxical harmony of heroism and allure.
Beside her lay a crimson wine gourd, emptied and discarded.
This was his master.
He knew only her surname—Situ. She had never told him her name.
Lu Chenyuan picked up the gourd, shook it—empty. With a sigh, he resigned himself, removing his outer garment to drape it over her.
At that moment, she stirred in her sleep, furrowing her brows. With a sudden motion, she seized his wrist.
Her hand was cold, yet soft beyond reason.
Her lips moved, murmuring words slurred with wine, yet heavy with loneliness:
"See… this time, I've won again…"
Boastful words, yet tinged with indescribable sorrow.
Won what? Lost to whom? He wondered—but then she muttered again:
"Don't go… stay, drink… with me…"
And fell once more into deep slumber, though her grip on his wrist remained tight.
Watching her defenseless face, the shadow cast by his nightmare slowly lifted.
He did not pull away. Instead, he sat beside her, leaning against the rough bark of the tree, eyes fixed on the waning moon—and the eternal scar only he could see.
They should not remain in Zhenhaichuan.
In half a month, the grand Tide Festival would begin. Then, the entire region would swarm with eyes of the Great Zhou Immortal Court and the Nine Provinces sects. His anomaly would surely be discovered.
For him, the festival might be no celebration, but a guillotine.
Yet… he found he could not leave.
Each night, he heard a voice.A voice that crossed millennia, speaking directly to his soul with ancient, imperious weight.
"…Come…"
At first faint, but with each passing day—louder, sharper, more desperate.
Like a dragon, shackled for a thousand years, roaring for release.
The call stirred the monster within him, making its suppression harder each time.
And still, some strange instinct told him: the source of that voice held the key to breaking his curse.
He had tried leaving, walking ten li from Zhenhaichuan. But the call did not weaken—it grew violent, nearly driving him into full Dao-corruption.
Only when he returned did it calm.
He was trapped.
He feared death. He feared becoming a monster. More than anything, he feared never again being able to buy wine for his master, never again staying by her side.
But since fate had caged him here, so be it.
The Tide Festival would be a storm. Cultivators, demons, spirits—all would gather here. Danger, yes. But also answers.
Perhaps, this festival would be his chance to step onto the immortal path. To uncover what called him from the scar in the heavens. To end his curse once and for all.
If only he had cultivation. A few techniques, even the shallowest arts, would grant him a blade against fate.
But his master—She had taught him words, principles, even that strange meditation. But she had never once taught him the Dao.
And yet, when drunk, she boasted of swordsmanship peerless under heaven.
He was not blind to her depths.
But memory, dulled by ten years of mortal smoke and fire, left only blurred outlines.
His gaze drifted, unfocused, back ten years.
To a world drowned in blood.
The savage laughter of bandits. The gleam of cold blades. And the hopeless despair of a child.
Then—sword light.
Not mortal sword light.
Cold as the moon. Sharp as lightning.A light that cleaved heaven and earth apart.
He remembered not how the sword was drawn, nor how the bandits turned to ash.
Only the silhouette in azure robes, blood-soaked, walking against the light—like a banished immortal, descending upon him.
It was she.
At the age of seven, she had saved him.
And whenever he asked, she only laughed and scolded him for daydreaming.
But in his heart, he knew otherwise.
That sword never left its sheath again.
Perhaps because this world no longer held anything worthy of its edge.