Leng Yao felt the connection before he understood it.
A pressure settled behind his sternum.
Not pain.
Weight.
Far across Shanghai, something answered.
Shen Mingzhi.
The thought came with certainty that did not belong to him.
Leng Yao opened his eyes.
The corridor outside his study was empty.
The golden message had vanished, but the link remained.
His inverted core turned once.
Dark energy moved through the fractures.
The connection tightened.
He immediately stopped circulating.
It loosened.
So that was the first rule.
Whatever happened to one of them could now affect the other.
Not directly.
Through growth.
Shen advanced, Heaven increased the pressure on Leng Yao.
Leng Yao advanced, Fortune compensated Shen.
A balance designed to keep them climbing against each other.
Convenient for Heaven.
Useless to him.
Leng Yao entered the study.
Feng Baoshu stood beside the desk.
He had been there for almost an hour.
Stacks of old photographs, personnel files and handwritten records covered the surface.
The Severance had not returned his memories.
He had spent the afternoon reconstructing them.
Feng held a photograph.
Leng Yao recognised it immediately.
He was eleven.
Feng stood behind him with one hand gripping the back of his collar.
Young Leng Yao had apparently tried to climb the outer wall of the old estate during a thunderstorm.
“You were small,” Feng said.
“I was eleven.”
“That is small.”
“You were already old.”
Feng glanced at him.
“I looked better.”
“You complained about your knees even then.”
Feng studied the picture again.
A faint line existed between them now.
Leng Yao could sense it without activating Claim.
Weak.
Natural.
He left it alone.
“Something happened,” Feng said.
“Yes.”
“The link?”
Leng Yao looked at him.
“You remember that?”
“No.
Ji explained it.”
Less satisfying.
Still useful.
“Shen Mingzhi and I have been bound together.”
“Can you remove it?”
“Not yet.”
Feng returned the photograph to the desk.
“Then avoid becoming stronger.”
Leng Yao looked at him.
“That is your advice?”
“If your improvement strengthens him.”
“It does.”
“Then stop.”
“That would also allow him to surpass me.”
Feng nodded.
“Yes.”
Leng Yao waited.
Feng looked up.
“What?”
“I expected more.”
“I am still learning your personality.”
“You were more helpful before.”
“Apparently I tolerated you.”
That sounded enough like him that Leng Yao almost smiled.
An alarm sounded outside.
Not the estate-wide Mandate alarm.
Security.
Three short tones.
Armed intrusion.
Feng moved first.
The old instinct had survived even if the memory had not.
His hand entered his coat.
Leng Yao was already at the door.
“Where?”
A guard answered through the communicator.
“Southern perimeter.
One vehicle breached the lower road.”
“How many?”
“Unknown.”
A second voice cut in.
“Vehicle stopped.”
Then:
“Sir, they are ours.”
Leng Yao slowed.
“Our people?”
“Houshan team from Dock Seven.”
That made no sense.
Dock Seven had been stripped from Houshan ownership that afternoon.
The team should have evacuated hours ago.
“Condition?”
Silence.
Then the guard answered.
“Bad.”
The vehicle had no windshield.
Blood covered the bonnet.
One tyre had been shredded down to the rim.
It stopped fifteen metres inside the southern gate.
The driver fell out when the door opened.
Leng Yao reached him before the medical team.
Houshan uniform.
Jiang Wei.
Forty-six.
Cultivation at the seventh Mortal gate.
The entire left side of his torso had been burned.
Not fire.
Something had eaten through spiritual reinforcement and flesh together.
Doctor Ren dropped beside him.
“Do not move him.”
Jiang Wei grabbed Leng Yao’s sleeve.
“Dock.”
“Who attacked?”
“Not government.”
His breathing broke.
“Men…
white masks.”
“How many?”
“Six.”
Six men had destroyed a twenty-two-person Houshan dock team.
Leng Yao crouched lower.
“What did they want?”
“The containers.”
“Which ones?”
Jiang swallowed blood.
“Number forty-seven.”
Feng arrived behind him.
His face changed at the number.
Leng Yao noticed.
“You know it?”
“I saw the manifest.”
“What is inside?”
Feng thought.
“Old Leng estate salvage.”
Leng Yao looked at him.
The container had been moved six years ago after the original estate was destroyed.
Most surviving property had been sorted.
Container Forty-Seven had remained sealed because its interior formation was damaged and unstable.
No one had considered it important.
Until now.
Jiang Wei tightened his grip.
“They knew.”
“Knew what?”
“Where it was.”
His hand slipped from Leng Yao’s sleeve.
Doctor Ren pushed Leng Yao aside.
“Enough.”
Jiang stopped breathing moments later.
No system message appeared.
No Mandate warning.
No golden verdict.
Just a dead man on stone.
Leng Yao stared at him.
This was better.
Not the death.
The clarity.
Someone had attacked his people for a physical objective.
No abstract claim.
No courtroom.
No puzzle about designation.
An enemy wanted something.
He could deal with that.
“Seal the estate,” he said.
Feng looked towards him.
“Attack expected?”
“No.”
“Then why?”
“We have a leak.”
Dock Seven had officially changed hands only hours earlier.
Only a limited number of people knew Container Forty-Seven remained there.
The attackers had known exactly where to go.
Bai Qingyu approached from the residence with Ji beside her.
Doctor Ren had clearly failed to keep either woman inside.
Bai stopped near the body.
Her expression changed.
She could smell the blood.
“What happened?”
“Dock Seven.”
Ji crouched beside the burn wound.
Silver light gathered around two fingers.
Leng Yao stopped her.
“No authority.”
She looked up.
“Why?”
“I want a normal answer first.”
Ji studied him, then nodded.
She touched the damaged edge with bare fingers.
The skin was cold.
“Not flame.”
“I know.”
“Corrosive cultivation.”
Feng looked at the wound.
“Poison?”
Ji shook her head.
“Something closer to decay.”
Bai turned her head towards the corpse.
“Was that how the others died?”
Leng Yao looked at the vehicle.
There was more blood inside.
“Yes.”
She became quiet.
Duan Qiao walked down the path from the guest wing, wooden staff resting over one shoulder.
He had refused a proper room and taken one nearest the training field.
“Decaying energy?”
Ji nodded.
Duan’s expression changed.
“You know it?” Leng Yao asked.
“Maybe.”
“Name.”
“Rot Scripture.”
Ji looked at him.
“That was destroyed.”
“No.”
Duan pointed at the corpse.
“Clearly.”
Leng Yao had never heard of it.
The dead transmigrator’s memories offered nothing either.
Good.
He was tired of knowing the future before the present happened.
“What is it?” he asked.
Duan crouched.
“Old demonic cultivation.”
“How old?”
“Before the modern sect registry.”
“What does it do?”
“Breaks spiritual structure.”
“Meridians?”
“Everything.”
Duan touched the road where a drop of Jiang Wei’s blood had fallen.
The stone around it had become brittle.
He pressed one finger down.
It crumbled.
“Physical reinforcement.
Formations.
Techniques.
Eventually flesh.”
Feng’s expression hardened.
“Who uses it?”
Duan stood.
“I knew one sect.”
“Knew?”
“They vanished thirty years ago.”
“Name.”
“Carrion Palace.”
The phrase sounded ridiculous.
The wound did not. New chapters come out on g.com first.
Ji’s face remained serious.
“I have heard the name.”
Bai turned towards her.
“Good reputation?”
“No.”
“That was obvious.”
Leng Yao looked at the damaged vehicle.
Six masked cultivators.
An extinct demonic sect.
A sealed container from his destroyed family estate.
The connection was too direct.
“What was salvaged in Forty-Seven?”
Feng shook his head.
“The old inventory lists were incomplete.”
“Who packed it?”
“I did.”
Everyone looked at him.
Feng’s face changed.
Not memory.
Frustration.
“I know that because my signature is on the manifest.”
Leng Yao felt the faint line between them shift.
“You remember nothing?”
“No.”
“Why leave it sealed?”
“According to the notes, you ordered it.”
Leng Yao frowned.
“I was sixteen.”
“Yes.”
That made it worse.
Six years ago.
The night the Leng estate fell.
He remembered pieces.
Fire.
Screaming.
His father’s death.
Feng dragging him through the underground passage.
After that, several days blurred together.
Poison.
Injuries.
Rage.
There were choices he had made while half-conscious.
Apparently sealing a container had been one of them.
Bai tilted her head.
“You do not remember either.”
“No.”
“That is inconvenient.”
“Yes.”
Duan smiled slightly.
“He is learning.”
Leng Yao ignored him.
“Prepare vehicles.”
Feng looked at the corpse.
“We are going back?”
“Yes.”
“Qin is still attacking our holdings.”
“Not relevant.”
“Shen Mingzhi—”
“Also not relevant.”
That felt good to say.
Ji watched him.
“The Mirror Opposition may make this relevant.”
“Then Heaven can try.”
“Your compatibility—”
“I am not going because of Shen.”
The words came sharper than intended.
Ji stopped.
Leng Yao looked at Jiang Wei’s body.
“I am going because twenty-two of my people were attacked.”
No Mandate role could redefine that.
At least not yet.
Dock Seven had gone dark.
The port authority had closed the surrounding area after reports of a cultivation incident.
Houshan vehicles stopped two streets away.
Leng Yao took twelve people.
Feng.
Ji.
Duan.
Nine Houshan combat cultivators.
Bai remained at the estate.
She had argued.
Doctor Ren had won.
Barely.
The dock smelled of salt, oil and burned metal.
Cargo cranes stood frozen against the night sky.
The first body lay near the entrance.
Then another.
Then three more.
All Houshan.
No attackers.
Leng Yao walked past them slowly.
He knew every name.
Not personally.
But enough.
People he had employed for years.
A man who had requested leave for his daughter’s wedding next month.
A woman who had broken two ribs protecting one of his warehouses during a sect raid.
A younger guard Feng had recommended for promotion.
No golden labels floated above them.
No system summarised their importance.
They were simply dead.
Leng Yao preferred that too.
Feng stopped beside the youngest.
His expression tightened.
“You know him?” Leng Yao asked.
“No.”
Yet the reaction had been instinctive.
Maybe some bonds survived without names.
They continued.
Container Forty-Seven sat near the centre of the dock.
Or what remained of it.
The steel doors had been dissolved.
Black residue covered the ground.
Inside—
Empty.
Almost.
A wooden chest remained near the rear.
Broken.
Feng walked towards it.
Leng Yao caught his arm.
“Wait.”
A thin wire crossed the floor.
Mechanical.
No spiritual signature.
Duan grinned.
“Old-fashioned.”
Leng Yao cut it with a thrown shard of metal.
Three crossbow bolts fired from the walls.
Ordinary steel.
Poisoned tips.
They struck empty space.
Ji looked at him.
“No system required.”
“No.”
They entered.
The wooden chest contained fragments of cloth.
Ash.
A single black wooden token.
Leng Yao picked it up.
One side carried the Leng family crest.
The other carried a symbol he had never seen.
A white circle broken by three vertical lines.
Duan’s face hardened.
“Carrion Palace.”
Leng Yao looked at him.
“Why is their symbol inside my family container?”
“No idea.”
Feng reached for the token.
The moment his fingers touched it, he froze.
Leng Yao caught his shoulder.
“Baoshu?”
The old man’s breathing changed.
Images moved behind his eyes.
Not Heaven.
Memory.
He dropped the token.
It struck the floor.
Feng stepped back.
“I remember this.”
Leng Yao waited.
No pressure.
No demand.
Feng looked at the broken chest.
“The night your family died.”
His voice had changed.
Lower.
“I came down here.”
“Here?”
“No.”
He pressed two fingers against his temple.
“The old estate basement.”
Leng Yao’s chest tightened.
Feng continued.
“Your father sent me.”
“For what?”
“To destroy something.”
“What?”
“I don’t know.”
The memory broke.
He shut his eyes.
Leng Yao did not push.
Feng breathed through it.
Then:
“There were three chests.”
Leng Yao looked at the broken one.
“This was one.”
“Yes.”
“What was inside?”
Feng’s face went pale.
“People.”
Silence.
Ji looked towards the container entrance.
Duan stopped smiling.
Leng Yao said nothing.
Feng stared at the empty chest.
“Not bodies.”
“Alive?”
“Yes.”
“How many?”
“Three.”
“Who?”
“I cannot remember.”
“Carrion Palace?”
“I don’t know.”
The dock lights turned on.
Every lamp at once.
White light flooded the container yard.
Houshan soldiers raised weapons.
A voice came from the crane above.
“You should have left it buried.”
Leng Yao looked up.
A man stood on the crane arm.
White mask.
Black coat.
Nothing theatrical about him.
No aura display.
No speech about destiny.
He jumped.
Forty metres.
He landed without bending his knees.
Concrete cracked.
Five more figures emerged between the containers.
White masks.
Six.
The same number Jiang Wei had reported.
Feng stepped forward.
“You killed my men.”
The masked man looked at him.
“Your men?”
Feng’s expression changed.
The Severance.
He no longer remembered being their commander.
But anger remained.
“Yes.”
Good.
The masked man looked at Leng Yao.
“Shadow Sovereign.”
“Name.”
“Not important.”
“Then I will choose one.”
The man tilted his head.
Duan chuckled.
Leng Yao continued.
“Which of you killed Jiang Wei?”
No answer.
Leng Yao looked at the others.
One man’s right sleeve had blood near the cuff.
Houshan uniform fabric caught on his belt.
Leng Yao moved.
No warning.
No system calculation.
His shadow crossed the dock.
The man barely raised his arms.
Leng Yao hit him once.
The masked cultivator flew through a container wall.
The others attacked.
Rot energy flooded the dock.
Concrete decayed beneath their feet.
Ji’s spear flashed silver.
She struck one attacker through the shoulder.
Her Judgement authority remained unused.
Physical technique only.
Duan laughed as two masked cultivators rushed him.
His wooden staff cracked against the first man’s skull.
The second released a black palm.
Duan blocked.
Half his staff rotted away.
“Expensive,” he said.
“It was a branch,” Ji shouted.
“I liked it.”
Feng drew two short blades.
His style was familiar to Leng Yao.
Old Leng family combat technique.
He did not remember learning it.
His body did.
A masked attacker thrust towards his throat.
Feng parried.
Cut the wrist.
Stepped inside.
Blade through the chest.
Clean.
No hesitation.
Leng Yao faced the leader.
The man removed one glove.
His hand was grey.
Not skin tone.
Decay had reached his own flesh.
“You use the Rot Scripture,” Leng Yao said.
“So did your family.”
That stopped him.
Only for half a second.
The man attacked.
Grey energy crossed the distance like smoke.
Leng Yao raised his arm.
The technique touched his sleeve.
Fabric vanished.
Then skin.
Pain burned across his forearm.
His inverted core pulled automatically.
Nothing came.
The Rot Scripture was not Mandate energy.
Good.
He had grown too accustomed to absorbing attacks.
The leader saw the surprise.
“You cannot eat this.”
He struck again.
Leng Yao moved instead of blocking.
The palm passed his face.
He caught the man’s elbow.
Shadow energy wrapped around the joint.
The attacker released decay through his entire arm.
Leng Yao’s shadow began breaking apart.
He released him.
The man kicked.
Leng Yao blocked with his shin.
Bone rattled.
Strong.
Stronger than expected.
Peak Mortal Ascension.
Perhaps beyond.
The leader pressed forward.
No speeches now.
Palm.
Elbow.
Knee.
Each strike carried decay.
Leng Yao gave ground.
A hand brushed his shoulder.
Clothing dissolved.
Skin split.
Dark blood ran down his chest.
The attacker smiled behind the mask.
“You became weak.”
Leng Yao wiped blood from his collarbone.
“That was six years ago.”
The man paused.
Wrong thing to say.
Leng Yao attacked.
Not with shadow.
Not with Mandate.
The old Leng family style.
Three short steps.
Left feint.
Low palm.
The leader blocked the obvious strike.
Leng Yao’s second hand entered beneath his guard.
Two fingers hit the junction below the ribs.
Cultivation circulation disrupted.
Not stopped.
Enough.
Leng Yao drove his forehead into the mask.
It cracked.
The man staggered.
Feng appeared behind him.
One blade cut across the hamstring.
The leader dropped.
Leng Yao’s knee hit his face.
The mask shattered.
A middle-aged man stared up at him.
Leng Yao knew him.
That was impossible.
He had seen the face in the dead transmigrator’s memories.
A minor character.
Barely twenty chapters.
Killed before Shen Mingzhi ever reached Shanghai.
Leng Yao spoke the name.
“Gu Chen.”
The man froze.
Ji heard it.
“You know him?”
“Yes.”
Gu Chen’s face twisted.
“You shouldn’t.”
Leng Yao crouched.
The novel had called Gu Chen an elder of a demonic sect destroyed by Shen Mingzhi during his early rise.
Nothing about Carrion Palace.
Nothing about the Leng family.
Nothing about surviving this long.
Another lie by omission.
“What was in the container?”
Gu Chen smiled through blood.
“You.”
Leng Yao’s expression changed.
Feng stepped closer.
“What?”
Gu Chen looked at him.
“You really forgot.”
He laughed.
Feng raised a blade.
Leng Yao stopped him.
“Explain.”
Gu Chen looked at Leng Yao.
“Your father did not save you from Carrion Palace.”
The dock fight continued around them.
Metal rang.
Someone screamed.
Gu Chen’s next words were quiet.
“He stole you from us.”
Leng Yao stared at him.
For the first time all night, the Mirror Opposition link reacted.
Far across Shanghai, Shen Mingzhi felt a sudden surge of Fortune.
A treasure appeared before him.
A breakthrough opportunity.
Heaven compensating for Leng Yao’s discovery.
Leng Yao felt it happen.
He did not care.
Not now.
He grabbed Gu Chen by the throat.
“What am I?”
Gu Chen smiled.
“Open the second chest.”
Leng Yao tightened his grip.
“Where?”
“You already own it.”
That old irritation returned.
Fake mystery.
Leng Yao slammed Gu Chen’s head against the ground.
“Location.”
Blood ran from the man’s mouth.
He laughed once.
Then answered properly.
“Beneath your ancestral graves.”
Better.
Leng Yao stood.
“Take him alive.”
Feng looked at Gu Chen.
“With pleasure.”
The remaining Carrion Palace cultivators saw their leader captured.
Two ran.
Duan killed one before he reached the fence.
The other escaped into the water.
Ji raised her spear.
Leng Yao stopped her.
“Let him.”
She looked at him.
“Why?”
“He will tell someone we have Gu Chen.”
“And?”
“They will move.”
Clear answer.
She nodded.
The fight ended three minutes later.
Six Houshan soldiers were wounded.
Two badly.
No additional deaths.
Leng Yao stood in the ruined dock with blood drying across his arm.
The system finally appeared.
Primary Antagonist compatibility: 77%.
He looked at it.
One percent increase.
Apparently beating demonic cultivators still counted as hostile growth.
He dismissed it.
A second message appeared.
Fortune compensation event completed.
Shen Mingzhi advancement detected.
Pressure entered Leng Yao’s core.
The Mirror Opposition tightened.
He ignored that too.
Feng approached.
“Transport ready.”
“Gu Chen?”
“Drugged.”
“Will it hold?”
“No.”
Leng Yao looked at him.
Feng corrected himself.
“It should hold long enough.”
“That is worse.”
“I am still relearning optimism.”
Leng Yao looked towards Container Forty-Seven.
Three living people had once been sealed inside.
His father had ordered Feng to destroy them.
Instead, at least one chest had survived.
And Gu Chen had just claimed that Leng Yao himself had come from Carrion Palace.
The dead transmigrator had known nothing about it.
Heaven had not warned him.
For once, this mystery belonged to his past rather than his fate.
That made it dangerous in a way he preferred.
“Baoshu.”
“Yes?”
“We go to the graves tonight.”
Feng looked at his wounds.
“You need treatment.”
“On the way.”
“That is not how treatment works.”
“It will tonight.”
Feng sighed.
Some habits really did survive anything.
Behind them, Ji looked towards the dark river.
“You are forgetting the hearing.”
Leng Yao walked towards the vehicles.
“No.”
“Five days.”
“I know.”
“And Qin?”
“Can wait.”
Duan smiled.
“That may be the first sensible thing you have said.”
Leng Yao looked back at the broken container.
For several days, Heaven had occupied every decision.
Shen Mingzhi.
Qin Zhaoming.
Mandate roles.
Authority.
Causality.
Enough.
Someone had murdered twenty-two of his people and stolen a secret buried by his father.
That enemy did not need Heaven to matter.
For tonight, Leng Yao would deal with something simpler.
His own family.