“There are enemies that live in the world, and then there are enemies that live within your memory. The tter never die… they only wait.”

  I. The Rain That Wasn't WaterThe sky above the Northern Wastes hung low and gray, as if mourning the sins buried beneath the earth. Winds howled like orphaned spirits, and the rain fell not as water but as fragments of spiritual ash—soft, gray specks that melted the bones of weak cultivators and blinded mortals who wandered too far.

  Aduin stood atop the shattered remains of an ancient jade bridge, cloaked in a bck, tattered robe that rippled with a will of its own. A thin line of blood curved from the corner of his lips. He didn’t wipe it away.

  “This pce... again,” he murmured, eyes narrowing.

  The Northern Wastes—once known as the Xian River Domain—was where his nightmare had begun six years ago, when he had first touched the forbidden inkstone hidden beneath the river’s belly. It had been there that he’d lost his first Master. It had been there that he died… and someone else was born.

  But now, the ashes in the wind carried a scent he hadn’t inhaled since that day—a scent of betrayal and cold iron.

  “He’s here.”

  II. The One with No ShadowFrom the mists stepped a figure, slow, deliberate.

  He wore a long crimson cloak sewn from Spirit Famine Silkworms, a fabric no longer legal in the central provinces. A half-mask of carved obsidian covered his face, hiding the disfigurement left by the war against the Nine Sun Lotus Sect. And though his face was half-gone, Aduin recognized the gait, the mocking silence, and the aura that radiated like a river of venom under calm waters.

  “Zhou Yanshi…”

  The name left his lips like the whisper of a bde.

  Zhou Yanshi had once been Aduin’s closest martial brother in the Yunn Spirit Hall—until he had turned traitor, revealed the scroll's secret location to the Storm Lantern Pavilion, and framed Aduin for the death of their master.

  Zhou stopped several paces away, silent. His gaze, though veiled by the mask, was sharp.

  "So you still live,” he finally said, voice like paper on rusted hinges.

  "Disappointed?" Aduin replied, his voice a quiet dagger. “I thought you’d be deeper underground by now.”

  Zhou chuckled lightly.

  "If I wanted you dead back then, I would’ve left you with a slit throat under the River of Bones. But here you are… soaked in rot, surviving on fumes of forbidden essence. You’ve become exactly what they feared. You’ve become me.”

  Aduin’s eyes burned. He took one step forward.

  “Don’t ftter yourself. I didn’t rot for your sake.”

  “No,” Zhou agreed. “You rotted for hers.”

  Aduin’s heart froze.

  III. Her Name Unspoken“You dare speak of her?” Aduin's voice cracked like a fault line.Zhou tilted his head.

  “You think she died in the ambush, don’t you?”

  Aduin’s expression wavered. His fingers tightened around the hilt of his concealed bde. The one he hadn’t drawn in two years.

  Zhou’s smile widened beneath the mask.

  “You still believe Yu Xiaoqin was crushed in that burning shrine? You poor bastard.”

  Silence stretched for several breaths before Zhou whispered, “She’s alive, Aduin.”

  Time stopped.

  The wind itself seemed to hold its breath. Even the ashes in the air slowed.

  “You’re lying,” Aduin growled.

  Zhou’s reply came like a scalpel.

  “She begged me not to tell you.”

  Aduin's knees nearly buckled.

  Yu Xiaoqin—his childhood friend, the one who had been his only family in the Yunn Hall, the one who had stayed when others left—had been dead for years.

  He had buried her himself.

  Hadn’t he?

  “Where is she?” he demanded, but his voice came out hoarse.

  Zhou Yanshi reached into his robe and drew out a small, white spirit talisman, blood-marked and pulsing faintly.

  Aduin stepped forward instinctively—but then, with a flick of his wrist, Zhou crushed the talisman into dust.

  “You’ll have to come and find her.”

  IV. Beneath the SurfaceEnraged, Aduin summoned the Rot Sutra, invoking the Fourth Layer he had only just mastered. His soul fme flickered with ancient script, his body surrounded by whispers that echoed from centuries-dead cultivators.

  Zhou ughed.

  “You want to fight me now? After so long? After you’ve finally become strong enough to catch up?”

  He reached behind his back and pulled free a pair of bdes—one bck, one rust-red. Twin sabers from the Shadow Crane School, each with fifty-nine notches along its spine—one for each person he had killed with them.

  “Come then, Aduin. Let’s bury this past, one scream at a time.”

  V. A Duel Etched in BoneTheir csh shattered the stillness like a meteor colliding with the earth.

  Aduin moved like a whisper, his bde slicing through air, bending wind and ash. But Zhou was faster than memory itself, his crimson cloak fluttering like a bloodied banner as he spun and cut with lethal grace.

  Steel screamed. Ash exploded.

  Each strike was not merely strength—it was history. Each parry contained seven years of betrayal, grief, hatred, and buried longing. They knew each other’s styles intimately—fws, habits, hesitations. But something had changed.

  Aduin was no longer fighting with guilt in his bones. He was fighting with rot in his blood, and the difference was terrifying.

  Zhou began to slip. His smile faded.

  Aduin's bde pierced his shoulder, and Zhou reeled back.

  “You’ve changed,” Zhou muttered, wiping blood from his lips.

  “You made me change,” Aduin replied, stepping forward.

  But just as he moved to deliver the final strike—

  Zhou smiled again.

  VI. The Trap SprungFrom the ground, eight spirit locks exploded upward, shackling Aduin’s limbs with spiritual chains forged in the Mountain Forge of the Yi Warden Sect. They sizzled against his skin, binding him in pce.

  “Did you really think I’d come without preparing?”

  Aduin grunted in pain as the seals tightened.

  Zhou walked forward, clutching his wounded shoulder, and crouched before him.

  “You are strong, Aduin. Stronger than me now, perhaps. But strength means nothing when you walk into my web.”

  He leaned close, breath warm and venomous.

  “She’s not dead. But she soon will be. I only came to give you the courtesy of knowing.”

  Then, with a final whisper, Zhou dropped a jade locator bead into Aduin’s p.

  “If you reach her in time, perhaps she’ll still remember your name.”

  Zhou vanished into mist.

  Epilogue: The Sound of Her VoiceHours ter, after breaking the chains with everything he had left, Aduin stood alone, battered, bleeding, heart torn between fury and hope.

  He lifted the locator bead, and as his spiritual energy touched it, a projection flickered.

  There she was.

  Yu Xiaoqin. Alive. Imprisoned. Her voice distorted, faint—but unmistakably hers.

  “Aduin… is that you?”

  The bead flickered, dimmed.

  Aduin fell to his knees, the storm rising behind him, tears falling silently down his cheeks.

  She was alive.

  But for how long?

  [TO BE CONTINUED...]