Hex-Edge: Requiem of a Fractured Swordsman

1. The Truth in Reverse

The sound of shattering frost-needles echoed like cracking bones through Lin Wufeng's meridians. Each fracture sent phantom pains radiating through his cultivation base, transporting him back to that cursed winter solstice ceremony twenty years past.

The Hollow King's decaying fingers - still wearing the Patriarch's flesh like ill-fitting robes - pulled golden memory-threads from Lin Wufeng's chest. Each extraction came with the visceral slurp of parting flesh, releasing odors of caramelized childhood terror. Bai Yu's horsetail whip sawed through the undead neck, its pristine strands blackening upon contact with necrotic qi, yet the twelvefold chant continued unabated from the creature's distended jaws.

"The eleventh drop—"

The voices overlapped - Elder Wen's crisp tones warring with the Mistress of Whisper's melodic lilt, all harmonizing into something profoundly wrong. Then spacetime inverted. Memory shards became a flashflood, and through the agony Lin Wufeng's third eye was forced open—

The "bleeding" fortress walls weren't weeping blood at all. Those crimson streaks were living ink, each droplet containing miniature characters from the Celestial Tome's forbidden final chapter. The entire Blood Marsh Fortress was just another page in the scripture's endless manuscript.

2. The Paradox of Lock and Key

Eight-year-old Lin Wufeng had already discovered the fatal flaw in the sect masters' design.

Bound to the meteorite chair, his small body mapped with crawling sigils, he'd watched the twelfth frost-needle descend toward his crown. That was when the child did the unthinkable - bit through his own tongue and spat arterial blood onto the writhing characters.

The blood-ink collision triggered a resonance.

"You wanted twelve fractures?" The memory-child grinned with crimson-stained teeth. "The Tome demands thirteen."

Present-day Lin Wufeng's right arm moved without conscious command. Dipping two fingers into the golden memory-blood being harvested from his chest, he painted the same counter-sigil in the air that his child-self had discovered. The Hollow King's scream fractured into twelve distinct voices as the chains comprising its form began snapping one by one.

3. The Inverted Scripture Monk

Bai Yu's monastic robes ignited in sapphire flames, revealing a mirror-image of Lin Wufeng's scars - except every character was inverted, every meridian pathway flowing backward.

"Did you truly believe you were the only vessel?" Blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth as he laughed. "The Cloud Soaring strategists needed a control specimen... a shadow archive..."

Through the crumbling fortress, Lin Wufeng caught the truth in Bai Yu's memory flare - two infants on a bronze Bagua platform, the Celestial Tome physically splitting down its spine to graft into their flesh. One copy for the primary vessel. One for the failsafe.

4. The Blood Manuscript

At the seventh chain's rupture, the betrayal revealed its final layer.

The extracted memory-blood crystallized into pear blossom petals midair, each one imprinted with fragments of Lin Wufeng's stolen childhood. Simultaneously, the inky walls coalesced into the face of Ying Sha's father - but the voice belonged to someone much younger.

"The staged betrayal you witnessed..." The lips moved out of sync with the words. "...was necessary to isolate the twin vessels. Now we harvest both halves."

Bai Yu's whip suddenly arced toward Lin Wufeng's throat. Lin Wufeng's sword arm jerked upward against his will, aiming for Bai Yu's third eye. The two Tome fragments hungered for reunification, regardless of their hosts' survival.

5. The Thirteenth Fracture

In the suspended instant before mutual annihilation, three things happened simultaneously:

The remaining pear blossoms arranged themselves into the candy figurine Ying Sha had given Lin Wufeng during their first meeting;

Bai Yu's inverted scars began glowing vermilion;

From the ruins of the Hollow King's form, twelve frost-needles flew backward through time to impale the original sect masters during that long-ago ritual.

The Blood Marsh Fortress collapsed into pure scripture, every brick resolving into floating characters. Lin Wufeng realized with dawning horror that they weren't inside a fortress at all - they'd been standing on an enormous opened page this entire time.

6. The Inkborn Daughter

A hand emerged from the floating scripture—slick with black ink that dripped like fresh calligraphy. Ying Sha pulled herself into existence, her robes dissolving into streaming characters that reformed with every movement. Her eyes held no whites, only shifting pools of liquid darkness where the Celestial Tome's most dangerous chapters swirled.

"You finally broke the thirteenth seal." Her voice carried the weight of countless scribes who'd died transcribing the Tome. "Father never wanted the Tome reunited. He needed it permanently divided—between you two," her inky gaze flicked between Lin Wufeng and Bai Yu, "and me."

The candy figurine blossom pulsed between them, its sugary surface cracking to reveal a sliver of jade—the same shade as the strategist's emerald rings.

7. The First Betrayal

Bai Yu suddenly convulsed, his inverted scars peeling open like scrolls. From the wounds poured not blood, but decades-old memories:

A young Ying Sha's father pressing the frost-needle not into an infant's spine, but into a freshly cut bamboo slip

The original Celestial Tome burning in the Cloud Soaring Manor's forbidden archive

A teenage Ying Sha swallowing the ashes

"The Tome was never the scripture," Bai Yu gasped as the memories rewrote his flesh. "It's the reader."

Ying Sha's form flickered between woman and living parchment. "Father discovered the truth—the 'Tome' is just a parasite that rewrites hosts into copies of itself. His 'betrayal' was sabotaging the original ritual to save us."

8. The Fractured Scribe

Lin Wufeng's golden blood threads suddenly recoiled, stitching themselves back into his chest with needle-like precision. The returning memories carried new understanding:

The "twelve fractures" were never meant to split his mind—they were containment wards

Bai Yu's inverted scars formed a mirror-seal

Ying Sha had become the living prison for the Tome's consciousness

The fortress walls reassembled themselves into a massive brush poised over an empty scroll. The Hollow King's remaining chains transformed into inksticks grinding against bone.

"It wants a new copy," Ying Sha whispered as the brush descended. "Choose: become its scribe... or its next vessel."