Blood ran from the corner of his mouth.
He knelt amid corpses.
Around him, the mountain wind moved through torn robes and fallen banners, carrying the heavy scent of blood across broken stone. His sect brothers lay where they had died. Some had fallen with swords still in hand. Some had not even managed that much.
Footsteps sounded before him.
Slow. Unhurried.
A man stopped a short distance away and looked down at him as if at something already dead.
"I know you have it," the man said. "Hand it over. Perhaps your death will be painless."
The kneeling man said nothing.
His hand pressed harder against the wound in his abdomen. Blood still seeped between his fingers. His breathing had long since lost all rhythm. Each breath scraped. Each one felt borrowed.
He looked once at the dead around him.
Then he made his choice.
With a shaking hand, he drew out a small object.
It was a cauldron, though no bigger than a man's palm. Dark, ancient, and plain enough that in another place it might have been mistaken for a child's trinket. Yet the moment it appeared, the other man's gaze sharpened.
The kneeling man held it out.
The other man did not move.
Instead, he gave a small shake of the head.
"If I come to take it," he said, "you'll try to self-destruct."
The kneeling man's lips curled. Blood stained his teeth.
The cauldron remained held out in his hand.
The other man's eyes grew colder.
"I promise," he said softly, "if you make me come to you, you will regret it."
Still smiling, the kneeling man held the cauldron out another inch.
The other man moved.
Spiritual pressure crashed downward.
At that same instant, the kneeling man ignited everything he had left.
He knew what came next. The tearing collapse of meridians. The shattering of the core. The final burst that would take flesh, bone, enemy, and treasure into ruin together.
He welcomed it.
But death did not come.
His eyes flew open.
He was still there.
The corpses still lay around him. The wind still blew. The other man was still reaching toward the cauldron.
Something was wrong.
He had self-destructed.
He knew he had.
Yet the world had not broken with him.
His face changed. For the first time, disbelief overtook pain.
Then he felt for his core.
Nothing.
No response. No presence. No living center in his dantian. It was simply gone, as if it had never existed.
A voice sounded near his ear.
"You just couldn't listen, could you?"
His whole body stiffened.
That voice—
The hand before him was almost on the cauldron.
Then the cauldron lit up.
Not brightly. Not grandly. Its surface merely released a dim, old glow, like embers buried under ash. The space around him folded. The mountain, the corpses, the enemy, the blood under his knees—everything lurched and twisted.
For one violent breath, he thought he had finally died.
When he opened his eyes again, he was looking up at a familiar wooden ceiling.
His limbs were tiny.
Weak.
His breathing was thin and high.
He stared blankly at his own hands. Soft. Small. Unscarred.
A child's hands.
No—
Not a child.
His.
He had returned to the body he had worn at two years old.
For a long time, he did not move.
Then his hand clenched.
The cauldron was still with him.
He could feel its weight.
His core was still gone.
His cultivation was gone.
Everything he had built was gone.
Only his memories remained.
Eight years passed.
Eight years of weakness. Eight years of rebuilding what could be rebuilt. Eight years of learning restraint in a body too small, under eyes that saw nothing, among people who knew nothing. Eight years of holding one thought in place while childhood tried to grow over it.
He learned patience because he had no choice.
He learned how to wait because failure had already killed him once.
And tonight, that waiting had brought him here.
Hidden among the trees beyond Cloud-Step Sect, the ten-year-old boy stood in silence and watched the forest path below.
The beast had already struck.
That should have been enough.
A five-year-old child, rammed to the ground by a forest beast at night, beyond the sect's safe paths—there was nothing strange in such a death. No one in Cloud-Step Sect would search too deeply. These things happened. Children wandered. Beasts killed. The forest swallowed carelessness every season.
It had been a clean method.
That was why he had used the beast.
But then he kept watching.
And what he saw made his expression turn still.
The child on the ground groaned and pushed himself up.
The beast charged again.
Then the impossible began.
He saw wounds close at a speed no normal body should possess. Saw torn flesh tighten and reform. Saw the child's posture change under the force of a hunger so violent it was visible even from where he stood. He saw the child pick up a stone.
Then, while the beast lunged for his throat, the child ran toward it.
The boy in the trees watched without blinking.
The smaller child cut aside at the last moment, seized the beast's mane, climbed onto its head, and drove the stone into one eye.
A scream tore through the forest.
Then came the second eye.
The beast threw him off, but by then it was already blind, crashing madly through the trees and the dark.
Below, Di Yusheng struggled to remain standing.
The watching boy let out a slow breath.
He had expected many things.
This had not been one of them.
Even as a child.
Even without cultivation.
He was dangerous.
The thought settled in him coldly, without surprise, only revision. One calculation replaced another. The beast had failed. Worse, it had shown him something. This was no helpless target waiting to be erased before his fate could take shape. Something in him had already begun to reveal itself.
Below, Di Yusheng swayed once, then bent forward hard, one hand against the ground.
Not fear.
Not pain.
Hunger.
The watching boy narrowed his eyes.
So that was part of it.
Interesting.
Then voices rose in the distance.
The boy shifted soundlessly deeper into the shadows and looked toward the path leading back to the sect.
Two figures were approaching quickly through the trees.
The first was an old man in long robes, his expression dark and controlled, his speed far beyond that of the average cultivator. Elder Han.
The second was younger, breathing harder, robes disordered from his run. The outer disciple from earlier—the one who had chased Di Yusheng and lost him.
The boy watched them arrive at the edge of the clearing.
He had seen enough.
The method had failed.
The target remained alive.
And now Elder Han had arrived.
There would be no second attempt tonight.
He withdrew into the dark without a sound.
No branches cracked beneath his feet. No leaves stirred where he passed. One step, then another, and the forest took him back without resistance.
His face remained calm.
A beast had failed.
That changed nothing essential.
It only meant the next move would require more care.