The Ritual Hall of Flame was vast, built from scorched blackstone veined with gold like frozen lightning. In the center burned the Phoenix Brazier, the heart of the Blazing Sun Sect's founding flame. It was said the first Sect Lord had stolen it from the divine beast Vermilion herself.
Today, it waited to judge Shen Li.
He knelt before it, silent, spine straight despite the weight pressing down on him. The Heir's Robes hung off his shoulders, dyed in sacred red but faded with age, too large—his father's. No tailor had dared alter them.
The elders stood behind him in a crescent. Elder Wei, the voice of the conservative faction, stood with arms crossed, lips curled in disapproval. Beside him, Elder Yun, silver-haired and sharp-eyed, tapped her cane once against the stone to break the silence.
"Let the heir speak."
Wei snorted. "He has not earned the title yet."
"Let the flame decide that," said Yun.
Shen Li said nothing. He drew the ritual dagger, its edge engraved with the names of the last ten sect heirs—some of whom had died before they could claim the title. The steel was cold. Too clean.
He spoke:
"By the flame that birthed the sect,
By the blood that binds its heart,
I, Shen Li, accept the legacy of fire.
Let it burn through me. Let it shape me.
And should I falter, let it consume me."
He pricked his thumb.
The blood hissed as it struck the flame. The brazier roared—more than fire. It exhaled.
A surge of spiritual heat swept outward in a pulse. Gold calligraphy—ancient, unreadable—spiraled up and around Shen Li's body. One symbol branded itself briefly over his heart.
Pain lanced through his meridians. His breath hitched, and a faint echo of laughter—deep, and full of pride—rang in his ears.
No one else heard it.
The ceremony ended without fanfare.
Outside the ritual hall, a garden of scorched roses bloomed beneath frost-tipped statues of past Sect Lords. Shen Li stepped down the wide stone stairs, flanked by Elder Yun on his left, and silence on his right.
The courtyard filled slowly with disciples and branch family members. Some bowed. Others watched with carefully neutral faces.
A whispered voice drifted behind him.
"He doesn't even have his father's presence."
"They say he relies on temperance. A shame. We need fire."
Yun gave a dry laugh. "They forget your father had presence because he was feared. You may yet earn something deeper."
"Respect?"
"No," she said. "Loyalty. The kind that bleeds for you, not because it must—but because it chooses to."
A junior disciple, barely fifteen, bowed stiffly as they passed. His eyes flickered with resentment.
Yun waited until they were out of earshot. "That one's father was punished during the collapse of the Northern Garrison. Your father made an example of him."
"I remember," Shen Li said. "He begged on his knees."
"Do you plan to lead as your father did?"
Shen Li looked up the mountain path, where the sealed Sect Lord's Hall sat like a tomb of silence.
"…I don't know yet."
Later, Shen Li stood in the Inner Council Chamber. Twelve stone seats ringed a glowing firecore in the center. Four seats remained empty—elders who had left, defected, or died.
Wei spoke first. "The ceremony is symbolic. The sect's strength is not."
He gestured toward Shen Li. "He has not yet reached Core Formation."
"He is nineteen," said Yun. "His father broke through at twenty-one. Shall we burn the boy for not rushing the heavens?"
A chuckle came from Elder Han, oldest among them and half-blind. "Better to burn now than fade slowly."
Shen Li stood, hands clasped behind his back. "You think me too weak."
"I think the heavens are cruel," said Wei, "and the world hungers for what we can no longer protect. Five years ago, rival sects dared not whisper our name. Now they circle us like vultures."
Shen Li let the silence breathe.
"Then let them watch," he said. "Let them believe I am weak. I will teach them how fire sleeps."
That night, the stars burned like eyes across the black silk sky. Shen Li lit incense in the Hall of Names, where the names of all sect heirs and lords were etched into obsidian.
Ten generations. Nine glorious. The last… missing.
His father's name was absent.
Custom forbade it. One could not inscribe the name of a Sect Lord who had not died or formally abdicated.
And yet no one had seen Shen Tian in three years.
"Is this still your sect?" Shen Li asked the flame. "Or mine now?"
The fire didn't answer.
But the incense smoke curled, and for a moment, the gold-etched names shimmered. The last name blinked faintly—
Shen Tian (Name Withheld)
And below it, space for the next.
Shen Li stared into that empty space. Then he turned away.
"Then I'll earn the right to carve mine in fire."
The old Incineration Pavilion sat on the mountain's third peak, abandoned since Shen Tian's disappearance. Its copper bells no longer rang, and ash choked the stone gutters. Even the disciples avoided it. Too many spirits lingered there—none ghostly, all remembered.
Shen Li preferred it that way.
He sat cross-legged in the center of the scorched training ring, his robes folded neatly beside him, hair bound tightly. A single flame floated before him—no wick, no oil. Just fire, suspended by will.
He breathed in.
First breath: draw heat.
Second breath: gather ash.
Third breath: forge the will into fire.
This was the Blazing Sun Sect's foundational technique—Emberheart Scripture. Most used it to ignite their inner flame. Shen Li had altered it.
Instead of feeding it with external spirit stones, he starved it.
He inhaled spiritual energy not from outside, but from within—burning his own blood essence in slow, calculated draws. It was agony in practice. Reckless, according to every elder. But it had one advantage.
His flame obeyed only him.
Sweat dripped from his brow. The floating flame bent, then coiled like a serpent, curling around his chest before sinking into his core.
A faint thump echoed in his dantian. Not his heartbeat—but something deeper. Something older.
Why do you starve yourself, heir?
Are you punishing your flame? Or yourself?
He didn't answer the voice in his mind. It was only memory.
Shen Li opened his eyes. The flame had vanished. In its place, his core glowed faintly orange—early Foundation Establishment, just shy of breakthrough.
He exhaled.
"I'm not ready yet," he said aloud. "But I'm getting there."
He stood, shoulders stiff from strain, and turned toward the locked gate of the pavilion.
A gust of wind swept through the open roof, rattling the rusted bells.
They rang once.