The air above the Xuan Clan's ancestral grounds thrummed with a living pulse—ambition, anxiety, and raw power woven into one vast, trembling note. It was a day of reckoning for the martial world's youth, the stage where legends were minted and dynasties born.
The Tournament of the Ten Dragons and Phoenixes, held once every seventeen years, was more than a contest. It was a celestial reordering—an arena where sects and clans could seize fortune and write their names into the next generation's heavens.
The venue itself was proof of the Xuan Clan's terrifying reach. A colossal arena of white jade and obsidian lay cradled between seven mountain peaks, each crowned with pavilions belonging to the world's strongest powers. Silken banners embroidered with lightning-wreathed tigers, fiery sparrows, and glacial serpents snapped in the cold wind. The air carried the rich scent of spirit herbs and the sharp, metallic tang of condensed Ki. Thousands of disciples, elders, and masters filled the mountain basin, their mingled voices swelling like a living ocean.
This was the heart of the martial world—restless, burning, and alive.
At the far edge of that storm stood a youth who seemed to belong to another realm entirely.
He was painfully handsome—features too exact, too precise, as if a sculptor had shaped him from divine stone. Yet it wasn't his beauty that drew the eye; it was his stillness. While others shifted and murmured with nervous energy, he was unmoving, a shard of silence amid thunder. His eyes, colored like twilight at the edge of dusk, carried a distance that chilled the heart. It was the look of someone peering through a dirty pane of glass at a world he no longer recognized. His jet-black hair held the memory of some forgotten catastrophe.
The line shuffled forward. His turn came.
The registrar—a middle-aged Xuan Clan official with a neatly trimmed beard and the faint arrogance of routine—didn't even glance up. His brush hovered above a ledger, dripping vermilion ink.
"Name," he intoned, the word dull from repetition.
"Li Tie," came the reply. The youth's tone was level, expressionless, devoid of pride or excitement. It was not an introduction—it was a statement of existence.
The registrar scribbled lazily. "Martial arts stage."
"Early Stage of the Profound Concept."
The brush froze mid-stroke. A single drop of vermilion ink fell and bloomed on the page like a wound. Slowly, the man's head lifted. His eyes widened as they took in the strange-haired boy before him—too calm, too young.
"And your affiliation? Which great sect or clan do you represent?"
"None."
The single syllable landed like a hammer.
None?
A rogue Cultivator—no, a rogue martial artist—reaching the Profound Concept Stage at such an age? Impossible. The registrar's pulse quickened.
He leaned closer, his voice trembling despite himself. "Young master… your age?"
The youth's twilight eyes finally focused on him. "Seventeen."
Air left the man's lungs in a quiet rush. Seventeen? The number rang in his skull like a temple bell. He had heard of sects burning entire spiritual mines to push a prodigy to the Peak of Ki Manifestation by sixteen. He'd read about heirs of great clans enduring blood-soaked trials just to touch the Profound Concept Stage by nineteen. But seventeen—and unaffiliated? That was not genius. That was heresy against the heavens.
"And… your affiliation again?" the registrar stammered, desperate to confirm he hadn't misheard.
A faint flicker passed through the youth's gaze—an irritation so small it was almost imagined. "The same," he said quietly, the faintest edge sharpening his tone. "None."
The registrar flinched as though cut. Hastily, he reached into the chest beside him, drew out a black token, and stamped it with a trembling hand.
He offered it with both palms.
The obsidian token was heavy, cold to the touch, and engraved with the number 657. Above the number was the emblem of the clan that ruled the martial world: the Black Tortoise, its shell carved in impossible detail. From its back rose three serpent heads, their jade-inlaid eyes gleaming faintly—the Xuan Clan's symbol of dominion over Heaven, Earth, and Water.
Li Tie took the token. His long fingers closed around it, his expression once again a mask of detached indifference. But as he looked down at the three-headed tortoise, a symbol of the establishment that had likely turned a blind eye to the annihilation of his own clan two years prior, something cold and sharp flickered in the depths of his lost eyes.
The cacophony of the tournament grounds was a distant, meaningless roar. Here, in a deserted corridor high in the arena's outer ramparts, Li Tie had found a moment of silence. He sat perched on the wide sill of an arched window, one knee drawn up, his form a stark silhouette against the vast, open sky. His twilight eyes were open, but they saw nothing of the majestic peaks or the swirling banners. They were turned inward, drowned in a sea of grey memory.
His face, so sharp and handsome, was a canvas of absolute nullity. No anger, no sorrow, no ambition. It was the void after the supernova, the stillness after the earthquake. It was a look more unsettling than any scowl of hatred.
Why did I have to survive?
The question echoed in the hollowed-out chambers of his mind, not as a cry of anguish, but as a flat, factual inquiry. He had truly wanted to die. In the aftermath, buried in the rubble that was once his home, the weight of his extinguished world had been a physical pressure greater than any mountain. To simply stop breathing, to let the Monad's Breath still forever, would have been a mercy. It would have been easy.
Then, as if summoned by his despair, he felt it.
A flicker. A tiny, impossibly distant finger of flame in the absolute darkness of his soul.
He hadn't understood it at first. It was a sense he'd had ever since Jin Yue was born, this intrinsic, silent awareness of her existence. When she was happy, the flame danced. When she was sad, it guttered. When she slept, it burned low and steady. In the cataclysm, for one heart-stopping moment, he thought it had been snuffed out. But no. It had remained, fainter than ever before, a lone star in an empty cosmos, but it burned.
She is alive.
That knowledge was the chain that bound him to this wretched existence. It was the barbed hook in his heart, pulling him forward when every other part of him begged to lie down and cease. It was the only reason his lungs continued to draw breath, the only reason his heart continued its tedious, mechanical beat.
How did I survive again?
His mind, detached, began to inventory the past two years. There was no clan. No father. No soft lap of a mother. There was only a rogue cultivator, a ghost with a famous name he dared not speak. It was a life of constant, grinding motion. Training until his muscles screamed and his meridians felt scorched, not for glory, but for the single-minded goal of becoming stronger. Working menial jobs for a handful of copper coins, swallowing his pride along with the bland, cheap food that was all he could afford. Sleeping in damp caves or on the roofs of deserted buildings, always with one hand on the shard of shade-blue ice he kept wrapped in cloth, a cold reminder of what he had lost and what he must find.
These two years haven't been easy, he acknowledged with a stark, internal finality. The lazy boy who calculated the optimal angle for napping was dead, his bones buried with his clan.
He could not rest. He could not slack off. Not even if some deep, atavistic part of him screamed for the sweet release of idleness. The comfort of stillness was a luxury he had forfeited the day his sister was stolen.
Somewhere, beyond the sky he was staring at, in a realm he could not yet reach, a tiny flame flickered. It was a little dimmer today, or was that just his fear? He couldn't tell.
It didn't matter.
She was waiting.
And so, the ghost in the window took a slow, deliberate breath, the Monad's Breath cycling automatically, pulling in the pure, cold energy of resolve. He pushed himself off the sill, his feet landing silently on the stone floor. The moment of introspection was over. The mask of detached indifference slid back into place. The tournament awaited. It was not a path to glory; it was a staircase. And he would climb it, step by bloody step, until he could reach that flickering flame and bring her home.
Two days later, the tournament was set to begin. The main arena buzzed with the energy of countless gathered disciples, the air thick with their collective nerves and ambition. The stands were a sea of colors from various sects and clans, all focused on the vast fighting platform below.
High above, on a sturdy stone balcony built into the mountainside, the leaders of the seven major powers were seated. It was a place of honor, offering an unobstructed view.
They were, for the most part, men in their middle years, some with streaks of grey in their hair or beards. They were the heads of great families and sects, but they were still men, their power lying more in their influence and hardened experience than in any world-shattering ability.
At the center sat Xuan Feng, Patriarch of the host clan. He was the exception. While the others merely seemed formidable, his presence had a weight to it that made the air around him feel stiller. He was the only one among them who had touched the legendary Unity Stage, and it set him apart. He watched the crowd below with a calm that was unnervingly complete.
To his right was Bai Zhen of the Bai Clan, a man with the broad shoulders and calloused hands of a lifelong martial artist. He looked less like a noble patriarch and more like a veteran drill sergeant, his sharp eyes scanning the disciples for physical flaws in their stances.
Beside him, Star Weaver, Han Suyin of the Heavenly Astral Palace sat straight-backed, her fine robes embroidered with simple star patterns. She was known for her tactical mind, and her fingers tapped restlessly on her armrest, already calculating potential matchups.
On Xuan Feng's left, Jian Shixin of the Profound Sword Pavilion was a lean, sharp-featured man. His arms were crossed, and his gaze was critical, dissecting every young disciple's posture with the uncompromising eye of a master swordsman finding fault in a novice's grip.
Mo Jiao of the Mo Clan sat with a languid posture, a faint, unreadable smile on his face. He looked more like a scholarly official than a fighter, but his calm demeanor was known to hide a deep knowledge of the body's vulnerabilities.
The Patriarch of the Blazing Sun Immortal Palace, Zhuo Ran, was a man with a restless energy, his brow often furrowed as if he found the whole process too slow. He had the weathered complexion of someone who spent most of their time training outdoors.
Finally, there was Shan Guo of the Shan Clan. He was a picture of quiet observation, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes, however, were constantly moving, taking in the reactions of the other leaders as much as the scene below. He was a man who understood that power was not just about strength, but about knowing when and how to use it.
They were not gods. They were powerful men, the pinnacle of what most in the martial world could hope to achieve. They watched, they judged, and they waited to see which of the youths below had the potential to one day sit where they were sitting.