In an instant, the figure of Hei Xuan—who had been seated aloft the tree branch—evaporated like bitter smoke, drifting back into the depths of Chen Tian's consciousness. There—in that bottomless, shadowed space—a white eternal blossom floated, a fragile throne for the will of the Sky Demon Emperor. Behind him, the eight wings of the Darkness Night Phoenix unfurled, a manifestation of an ancient demon.
He lounged atop it, one leg draped, crimson hair trailing in empty air. Around him, inky mist writhed like hungry serpents.
"Hmph… the soul-sea of this brat still reeks of mud. Not even starving spirits would bother with him."
With a snap of his fingers, he transformed Chen Tian's soul-sea into something wider, bluer—rippling like rivers of starlight. Ancient pillars rose from the depths, arrayed around the Eternal White Blossom's throne.
"Not bad."
◇
Back in the real world, Chen Tian rose slowly. Dried blood crusted his skin, his ragged clothes clung like burial shrouds. Ancient wind sighed through the air, carrying the stench of wet grass and darkling pools of blood.
The sky loomed gray—like carrion clouds refusing to collapse. Thick mist swallowed the path he once walked, now a mud-river frozen in place. Every corner of Qinghe Village lay littered with the remnants of lives too lazy to live.
He gazed across the village—ramshackle huts beneath the ashen sky, bamboo walls riddled with holes, thatched roofs on their last breath. Not a single soul stirred. The villagers had known, ever since Chen Tian had risen a few hours prior, that his return was a horror whispered by every anxious ear.
"That Chen Tian… even revived once his Martial Soul appeared."
"Yeah, I saw it! Li Wu and the others died gruesomely."
Two drunkards in the tavern spoke of it—how he, hair now blood-red, had taken wine without paying and left without word. No one dared interrupt or provoke him—when death walks cloaked in mist, the wise become stone.
Chen Tian stepped forward. Each step in the cold mud felt like a fresh wound on mortal earth. He walked toward what he once called home—a decrepit shack on the village's edge, isolated, surrounded by skeletal trees like dead fingers rather than greenery.
That place… didn't even deserve the name 'home.'
Four rotten beams supported a roof with eight gaping holes. The walls had more holes than planks; the door hung from a single rusty hinge. Moss and wild roots choked the ground, as though the world itself conspired to erase its existence.
At that rickety doorway, Chen Tian lingered, as if waiting—for hope, or curse, or simply a breeze that might greet him. Nothing came. The world stayed deaf.
He exhaled—not from fatigue, but from ingrained human habit not yet dead.
"I… was born in this place?"
He whispered softly. No reply. Only ancient wind, and rancid mist. Once, at this threshold, Chen Tian had learned to spell his own name. Now even the letters lay faint on the edges of his mind—like his mother's face, his father's laughter, and foolish childhood dreams of greatness in Qinghe that even time refused to keep.
"It was here I first learned hunger—before I learned fullness. Here, I learned to hate the world, before I was shown how to love it."
From his throne atop the eternal mist, Hei Xuan gazed upon the shack as though staring into the gutter of hell. To him, only hell is worthy of a home. And a place like this? Not even a street demon would stoop to dwell here. Hei Xuan laughed within the soul-sea.
"Haha! This? A home? Hahaha… what is this place, brat? Even pigsties in demon camps are worthier. If I were born here, I'd rather roam as a restless spirit."
Chen Tian offered a thin, bitter smile. He pushed the door—it fell immediately. Inside, nothing but a worn mat, a cracked water jug, and a grimy cloth pouch holding his 'treasures.' Inside that pouch lay the fragments of a poor boy's belief in fairness: stale bread, a threadbare cloak, a scrap of cloth bearing his name—small relics of nights long past, now archaeological trace of a nearly erased human.
He sat for a moment, his gaze lost in the leaking ceiling—more holes than wood. His eyes emptied.
A half-forgotten memory surfaced.
"Tian'er… Father and Mother will wait for you in the Heavens."
Soft, distant—who spoke, and when? That line, damn it, still remained.
Chen Tian drew a cold, damp breath, the air thick with earth and poverty. He slung the cloth pouch around his waist.
"Nothing left to leave behind."
Hei Xuan chuckled in response.
"Hmph. If I were you, I'd torch this stinking hut. Maybe the mortal gods would drop by from the smell."
Chen Tian stayed silent. He stepped out, lingering at the doorway, looking once more at Qinghe, this time for the last time.
The world before him was no longer home. Just a cluster of half‑dead huts, stinking mist, and hollow silhouettes who'd rather stay silent than say hello. He knew this—this walk would shed more than bricks and boards. It would shed the last trace of himself as a human.
No hands waved. No faces watched. Just broken time too lazy to care.
Chen Tian lifted his head. The Three‑Eyed Moon Wolf Martial Soul glimmered faintly on his wrist, its spiral eyes rotating in slow defiance.
"Enough. From this moment, I will not bow to this world."
He took his first step.
The muddy earth recorded it. Gray mist swallowed his back.
Where to? The nearest city. Stone‑Gloom City—small province under Tengjian Province, one of a hundred provinces in the Dustfall Mortal World. Where humans huddled like corpse‑spawn, and power's law was more obscene than heaven itself.
Hei Xuan grinned.
"Hah… finally. Mortal world, brace yourself. Old Hei is bringing a little catastrophe."
Chen Tian walked on, each step making the soaked earth groan. The mist fidgeted behind him, unwilling to let a creature like him leave. But he didn't glance back.
Nothing worth looking at.
Nothing worth calling home.
"Each footstep is a grave for memories. Each print drowns a name, a voice, a face I once called family. But why mourn something that never bothered to live for me?"
In the distance, the village's lone crow cawed once, then took flight low, leaving its perch too frail to hold a soul.
Chen Tian stared into the fog. Through the thin haze, faint outlines of old memories tried to stir—but failed.
"This world… will not miss me," he whispered. Then, as if to confirm he remembers:
"And I… never wanted to be remembered."
From the depths of the soul-sea, Hei Xuan chuckled.
"Heh… this world's rotten. But sometimes, that rot is why creatures like me stick around for millennia."
His voice echoed through the soul-sea.
"But you're right, brat. The world needs no memories. Only those cruel enough to leave a mark."
And… because this world was made to be forgotten. And those who refuse to be forgotten… are demons too stubborn to die.
Chen Tian's steps carried him farther. His figure blurred; only footprints in the mire remained. Mists slowly swallowed Qinghe, dissolving memories, names, grudges. Above, that final crow cried—not in farewell, but in warning.
That night, the mortal world lost a loser. No name was recorded. No prayers offered. Yet as the mist covered Chen Tian's footprints, the universe—too arrogant to notice—had released a tiny ember. A spark that, when sufficiently enraged, would set the mortal sky aflame.
And in the depths of heaven, on the ancient tombstones of forgotten gods, the primordial wind whispered softly.
A name, unclaimed—now began to etch itself upon the cracked walls of destiny.
Chen Tian.
Not a hero's name. Not a title of a prodigy or divine scion. Just a single name—destined to be remembered not for virtue, but for the hell he'd leave in his wake.
In the Mortal Realm's depths, old mist swirled.
The final crow soared north.
Toward Stone‑Gloom City.
Toward the next chapter.
Miles stretched ahead, a pitiful crawl toward immortality through a wasteland where even the wind seemed too weary to move. The mud clung to flesh like a parasite, fusing with the ever-thickening haze that hung in the air like the breath of something long dead. The last crow had vanished into the colorless sky — a sky not blue, not gold, but the pallid shade of a corpse left too long in the rain.
Dawn came not with the promise of warmth, but as a sickly pall, pale and wet, like light bleeding through damp shrouds. And at the end of that weary road, beyond fields rotted by time and men's sins, loomed the silhouette of Stone‑Gloom City.
They said the city had stood since before the first god spat blood and collapsed upon the Mortal Realm. Its walls were black — not paint, nor brick, but a darkness that had settled over centuries like soot upon the ribs of a corpse too stubborn to fall apart. Its watchtowers hung heavy and crooked, like giant bone fragments straining against the sky's apathy. The streets below were sludge and cracked stone, littered with broken carts, rusted blades, and hollow-eyed men who carried the world's debt like old, unpaid sins.
The air was thick, a blend of mist, stale blood, and sour wine — a cocktail potent enough to wrench bile from the gut of any traveler foolish enough to take shelter here. Yet in Stone‑Gloom City, even vomit was collected, distilled, and reborn as liquor. Waste was currency, and sin was trade.
The city breathed like a wound left open too long. It sang in curses and shouts, a living hymn of filth unwilling to heal.
"Move, pig‑mud!"
"Raise the price a thousand, and I'll gut your throat on the counter!"
"Heard some village whelp raised hell in Qinghe yesterday. Slaughtered five, they say."
"Hah. What village brat hasn't killed? Drinking stale wine's already a crime against heaven."
At the edge of this forsaken ruin stood Chen Tian, clothed in threadbare rags, his blood-red hair a mess of tangles like a delinquent freshly clawed from a shallow grave. In his eyes, no glimmer of hope — only the stubborn flicker of defiance that spoke: This filth? It fits me well.
He wiped a smear of mud from his cheek and let a thin smirk curl the corner of his mouth. Without a word, he stepped into the city like a petty thief slipping into a tavern of false gods. And as his feet touched that cursed soil, he muttered to himself, a vow dressed in scorn.
"Hmph… Stone‑Gloom City. Its liquor stinks less than its people. Good. Cities this rotten… easier to burn."
The marketplace had already awoken, though dawn still hid behind grey veils. Vendors hawked foul-smelling brews from rickety carts, while weapons dealers boasted of rusted knives sharp enough to pierce a dragon's heart. Street urchins strummed on cracked two-string lutes, and crude betting pits swarmed with gamblers placing coin on which poor bastard would bleed out first.
Chen Tian walked among them, a phantom stitched from stale liquor and dried blood. Two city youths spotted him, their noses wrinkling at his scent.
"Yo… look at that hair. Red as butcher's runoff. Which corpse‑pit did this one crawl from?"
"Judging by the stink… Qinghe's burial mounds."
They laughed. Chen Tian glanced their way, his crooked smile returning like an old habit. He crouched, plucked a stone from the gutter, and tossed it — no aura, no show of force. A dull crack, a youth toppling into the sludge.
Chen Tian spoke dryly, voice rough as grave dirt.
"Heh… next time you laugh, leave the ghost-stench behind. That's a scent I wear exclusive."
"You… what are you?!"
He grinned wider, eyes gleaming like a wolf's beneath a storm-lit sky.
"Someone who'll make this city even filthier. Remember this face."
They stood silent as he vanished into the crowd, the weight of his words clinging like cold mist. Somewhere above, in the sea of his soul, Hei Xuan's laughter boomed.
"Hahaha… good, brat. First blood in this sewer. In places like this, either you foul it first — or you drown in its rot."
Chen Tian answered without pause, his tone ice against that ancient heat.
"Then let it drown. I'll stain this city with my name."
He moved deeper into the maze of stalls and shadows, the scent of scorched snake-skewers, cheap liquor, and fresh blood thick in the air. Each step brought a wet squelch beneath his boots. The mist behind him swirled and curled, unwilling to release a creature that should not have risen. The sky above remained silent, its grey pall an indifferent witness.
The market exhaled its eternal decay.
And in that ancient city, a defiant brat planted his first step in the mire.
The Mortal Realm paid no heed.
They had just loosed a spark.
And one day — when furious enough — that spark would set god-bones ablaze and scrawl its name in ash across the heavens.