Hex-Edge: Requiem of a Fractured Swordsman

The world dissolved into a whirlwind of pear blossom petals and screaming ink.

Lin Wufeng's consciousness was torn from the present and hurled backward through time, his mind unraveling like a spool of silk thread pulled too tight. The scent of rotting plums from the Blood Marsh was replaced by the cloying sweetness of osmanthus cakes—the kind his nurse used to sneak him before bedtime.

Memory Fragment 1: The Choosing Ceremony

—Celestial Strategy Pavilion's Ninth Heaven Sanctum, Winter Solstice—

Six-year-old Lin Wufeng knelt on freezing jade tiles, his thin sleeping robes soaked with nervous sweat. The chamber's twelve pillars were carved with writhing dragon shapes that seemed to move in the flickering torchlight.

"Look at the meridians!" A voice echoed—Elder Wen's, though twenty years younger. His clear eyes (not yet blinded by forbidden knowledge) reflected the glow of a silver bowl holding what looked like liquid shadow. "This child's energy channels are pristine vessels. The perfect blank scroll."

A woman's hand, its fingers adorned with emerald rings, reached down to tilt Lin Wufeng's chin upward. The Cloud Soaring Manor's Mistress of Whispers studied him like a merchant appraising jade. Her sword's green tassel brushed his cheek, smelling of rain and metal. "Pretty enough. But can his mind hold the divisions?"

The Patriarch—then still fully human, his face unmarred by the bone mask—pressed something cold against the base of Lin Wufeng's spine. A needle sheathed in glistening frost. "The Alchemy of Twelve requires twelve fractures. Our Frost Needles will keep the cracks...manageable."

Young Lin Wufeng screamed as the first needle went in.

Memory Fragment 2: The Night of Splintering

—Scriptorium of a Thousand Cuts, Two Years Later—

Bound to a chair carved from black meteorite iron, eight-year-old Lin Wufeng had learned not to scream anymore. His small body was a canvas of scars and fresh ink—the Celestial Tome's characters crawling under his skin like living things.

The twelve sect masters stood in a circle, chanting in a language that made the torches burn blue.

Xiao Qi's Birth: When the Frost Moon Sect's Grandmaster drove an ice-coated needle through the occipital lobe, the child personality splintered off—a vault for everything innocent and pure.

Li Feng's Forging: The Netherworld Patriarch carved a bloody sigil onto Lin Wufeng's palm, channeling the boy's suppressed rage into what would become his most violent persona.

The Betrayal Witnessed: Through tear-blurred vision, young Lin saw Ying Sha's father—the Cloud Soaring Manor's chief strategist—turn his back as the others began the final ritual.

"They didn't just break you."

The Hollow King's voice came from everywhere and nowhere. In the memory's shadows, a figure flickered between man and child, its edges bleeding darkness.

"They built a prison with twelve locks. And I—" A skeletal hand pressed against young Lin's chest. "—am the key rattling inside."

Memory Fragment 3: The Truth Beneath

Just as the vision was about to reveal the ritual's final stage, the world lurched violently. Something was pulling at Lin Wufeng's soul, dragging him back to the present—

—Where the reborn Patriarch's rotting fingers were buried wrist-deep in his chest, extracting strands of golden light that smelled of burning childhood memories.

"Thank you for remembering," the abomination crooned, its voice now a chorus of the twelve masters. "The Tome's final seal needs exactly twelve drops of—"

A horsetail whip wrapped around the Patriarch's throat, its white strands turning black where they touched undead flesh. Bai Yu, his monk robes half-torn away to reveal scars matching Lin's own, screamed through bloodied teeth:

"Idiot! The memory was never yours—it's the Tome's trap !"

Behind them, the walls of the Blood Marsh Fortress began to bleed.