FAILURE!
Shen Longwei lay at the bottom of The Ravine of Broken Oaths, his body a shattered mess sprawled across sharp rocks. Thirty meters above, standing under a gray sky was his martial brother Zhou Chen looking down with the wicked smile of a man admiring his handiwork.
"Nothing personal, Junior Brother." The words echoed off the ravine walls, each syllable a cutting edge. "But the Celestial Sword Pavilion can only have one dragon, and d it was never going to be a fraud like you."
Fraud..
The word might have hurt worse than his broken ribs, worse than the blood painting his robes red even worse than the damaged core.
Longwei tried to summon Qi - any Qi and found only a painful emptiness. Zhou Chen's palm strike didn't just damaged his core, It had shattered it. Twenty years of cultivation reduced to dust in a single moment of betrayal.
He remembered the impact, Zhou Chen's hand against his chest during what was supposed to be a friendly spar and then a surge of hostile energy. The sensation of something inside him cracking like porcelain dropped on stone.
Then the fall.
"The elders agreed you should simply... disappear," Zhou Chen continued, clearly enjoying the sound of his own voice. "Your existence was an embarrassment to the sect, a genius who wasn't a genius at all just a mother's desperate sacrifice."
Longwei's fingers curled against cold stone.
MOTHER.
"Oh, you didn't know?" Zhou Chen's laugh grew. "Your saintly mother begged and begged Grand Elder Xuan to accept you when you were five. You know, since... you had no talent or nothing, just a mortal playing at cultivation but she loved you so much that she burned her own cultivation base to inflate yours."
NO
"How does it feel...." He paused. "Knowing every breakthrough you celebrated was merely her life force feeding you, every technique you thought you mastered with 'natural talent' merely her dying gift. She was a Core Formation cultivator, you know. Could have lived another three centuries but Instead, she chose to make you into something you were never meant to be."
No...
"She died when you were twelve, I imagine the pain was... considerable. Burning from the inside as her sacrifice consumed the last of her and you... you, being too young and too stupid to even notice."
"You just kept rising, being fed by a corpse."
Longwei's clenched his jaw so hard he started to taste blood.
His mother with her gentle hands andl warm smile. The way she'd grown thinner, paler and weaker in those final years, he had thought it was just an illness and Natural decline.
But It had been him, he had killed her. Every advancement had been another piece of her soul torn away.
"The elders have known for years," Zhou Chen said. "Why do you think they kept you at arm's length despite your 'achievements' huh? You were an embarrassment they tolerated because your mother's sacrifice couldn't be undone, better to let you live out her gift than admit the sect had accepted charity."
A pause... The wind howled through the ravine.
"But now you've been exposed, your core is but sand and your reputation will be as well, once I return with news of your tragic accident during a solo mission." Another laugh. "Oh, and... Yating... Sends her regards by the way."
"YEAHHH... She wanted me to let you know that she was never yours, and also...." Zhou's smile got more devious.
"...the engagement was just politics. You know She's been warming my bed for two years now?"
Longwei closed his eyes.
Jiang Yating, was his betrothed. The woman he'd planned to marry and build a life with, he'd noticed her distance recently, the way she pulled back from his touch the excuses to avoid private time. He'd blamed it on his cultivation focus, his emotional unavailability.
But she'd simply found someone more useful..
"She always said you were always too cold," Zhou Chen continued. "Too obsessed with advancement. Ironic, isn't it? You sacrificed love for power and now you have neither."
Footsteps above, Zhou Chen turning away.
"Die well, Junior Brother. If the fall didn't kill you, the blood loss will or the cold, even the spirit beasts that hunt these ravines at night." A final glance downward. "I'd say I'll remember you, but honestly by tomorrow I'll have forgotten your name."
Then he was gone and the whisper of a movement technique went silent.
Longwei still lay there, life draining out of his body.
The sky above was darkening, Clouds rolling in from the east and rain was coming too, probably. The ravine floor was already damp, decades of accumulated runoff water created a thin mud-ish layer beneath him.
He should move. Try to survive.
But why?
His cultivation was gone and not even just damaged or weakened but just gone. His golden core, the foundation of everything he'd achieved was less than memory. Even if he survived the night, he would be a cripple. A Mortal, which was less than the servants who cleaned chamber pots in the outer sect.
His reputation was destroyed, Zhou Chen would make sure of that, he would spin whatever tale he wished and who would question the word of a Core Formation disciple against a dead man?
His sect, No, his home had cast him out. Not with honor or even with an ounce of dignity for a formal expulsion but with a quiet assassination disguised as misfortune.
The woman he'd loved had betrayed him, not recently or even as a moment of weakness but systematically for years.
And his mother, his gentle loving mother had died because of him, he had consumed her life force, her existence all without knowing. Every moment of pride in his achievements was built on her Life.
What was left?
What possible reason could there be to keep fighting?
"PRIDE?" a cold voice whispered in the background of his mind. "They expect you to die here like a dog, Zhou Chen is probably already composing his story. The elders will nod solemnly and move on and Yating, Yating will shed a decorative tear and then... let Zhou Chen comfort her."
"Will you give them that satisfaction?"
Longwei's eyes opened.
The sky was darker now, about an hour had passed maybe more but he hadn't noticed, his Blood loss was making him drift.
But the voice was right, It was his voice... The part of him that had clawed through twenty years of cultivation, that had pushed past every barrier refusing to be ordinary even when the universe demanded it.
That part didn't care about the truth of his mother's sacrifice or even Yating's betrayal or the sect's abandonment. That part only knew one thing:
Shen Longwei Did Not Die On His Back.
With a grunt of agony that echoed off stone walls, he rolled onto his stomach.
The pain was excruciating, like his shattered core were spamming lightning bolts of despair through his meridians. At least two ribs were broken, maybe more and his left arm moved strangely... dislocated shoulder. He was still bleeding through a dozen cuts.
But none of it mattered.
HE BEGAN TO CRAWL.