Path of the Forgotten.

The morning sky was pale with haze, as if the heavens themselves held their breath.

Lin Feng stood alone on the edge of the training plateau, overlooking the mist-covered forests beyond the sect. His robes were simple, fresh. His posture calm but his shadow stretched in the wrong direction.

He didn't notice...Not yet.

A soft breeze passed, stirring his hair. Birds sang distantly. Disciples moved like ants far below, too far to hear, too blind to see. Inside him, things were not still. His veins itched. His breath occasionally came sharp, then shallow from dissonance.

> "What did I awaken?"

"Why does the world feel quieter… when I stop breathing?"

He closed his eyes, trying to guide his qi through the simplest of inner techniques — something any cultivator could do but again, the flow scattered. Qi trembled as if frightened.

> "It's like the energy refuses to obey me."

And beneath his skin, something else was moving. Not qi. A second rhythm — older and hungrier. It didn't move with the world's energy but against it.

---

At the Outer Sect Archives – Later

Lin Feng sat in silence, his gaze sweeping across old cultivation scrolls. He knew what he was looking for couldn't be written down. If it had… it would have been destroyed.

> "You're not reading any of those," said a voice from the corridor. Lin Feng didn't flinch. He knew it.

Han Yu stepped through the doorway, hands behind his back, robe pristine white with a faint constellation embroidered on his shoulder.

> "You're looking for something that explains why qi avoids you. Why your cultivation path feels... foreign." Lin Feng looked up slowly.

> "You're not surprised." Han Yu smiled, but his eyes were heavy.

> "You think this is the first time?" The silence that followed wasn't cold. It was shared.

> "I knew someone like you once," Han Yu said, lowering his voice. "Their body rejected the heavens too. Not by curse, but by nature."

> "And what happened to them?"

> "They made the sky bleed."

> "...Did they survive?"

Han Yu smiled faintly.

> "They weren't meant to. But fate can't kill what it can't name."

---

Elsewhere – In the Hidden Moon Pavilion

Lan Xueyin's brows furrowed as she traced a finger across a faint diagram projected by moonstone light. Her attendants dared not speak. She had dismissed them an hour ago. But she still hadn't moved.

> "Why was that power buried?" she whispered. "Why now? Why in him?"

Her hand hovered over an ancient record — sealed, unauthorized. Stolen long ago. It described a creature. Or rather… the absence of one.

"Where even the Dao must halt."

> "No. Not yet. I can't be sure. Not until I push him further." She stood. She had already arranged the test.

He would come to her and if he didn't — she'd go to him.

---

Back on the Plateau – Sunset

Lin Feng sat cross-legged beneath the fading light. Just the quiet. As the sun dipped, he heard the faintest whisper from within himself. Not words, but instinct — the suggestion of something unshaped.

"Take. Devour. Erase."...He opened his eyes. A raven had landed nearby. Its eyes were silver and it didn't blink.

> "What do you want?" Lin Feng asked aloud.

The bird didn't answer. It just flew off… in the direction of the Inner Sect.

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