---
Rain fell like knives.
Each drop was a whisper, a memory, a buried wound.
Yun Mu sat alone in the stone meditation chamber beneath Serpentshade Hall. A single candle flickered in front of him, its flame dancing in rhythm with his breath.
But he wasn't meditating.
He was listening.
The storm outside wasn't natural. The clouds had formed too quickly. The winds moved in spirals.
Heaven had sent a hunter.
And it wasn't the kind that made noise.
---
Far above, inside the Outer Heaven Wing of the Sect Archives, a seal cracked open.
It was not recorded in any scroll.
Not written in any disciple's test.
Only seven elders knew of its existence.
One more… remembered it.
From the war that never ended.
From the name that should have stayed buried.
> "Unit: Black Leaf. Code name: Ash-crowned."
"Specialization: Silence through soul."
"Status: Missing."
"Target reacquired."
---
In Yun Mu's room, the air bent.
It didn't shift. It didn't tremble.
It bent—as if light itself refused to bear witness.
The candle snuffed out.
Yun Mu didn't move.
He felt the presence before it existed.
A breath against the back of his neck.
A memory, clawing its way out of the grave.
---
Then—
A whisper:
> "Do you still remember the girl you failed, Hollowspawn?"
Yun Mu turned instantly, whip-blade flashing.
Nothing.
But the blade struck something mid-air.
Flesh.
Then bone.
Then something... colder.
---
The assassin appeared.
No mask.
No robes.
Only skin blackened by forbidden qi tattoos, and a gaze too still to belong to anything living.
He bled silver.
Not blood.
Memory.
Each drop that hit the floor showed a different face from Yun Mu's childhood—his teacher, his brother, even the old blind dog that once slept in the ashes with him.
Yun Mu whispered:
"…you're one of the Soul-Sworn."
The assassin smiled.
"Wrong."
"I was the boy in Cell 4. The one they burned after you escaped."
Yun Mu flinched—only slightly.
He remembered now.
The fire. The broken cages. The screams as he ran from the slave pens in Ashgut Mine.
He hadn't saved anyone.
He hadn't even tried.
---
"You lived?" Yun Mu asked quietly.
"No," said the man. "But my hatred did."
Then he struck.
---
The chamber shattered.
Not just stone—sound, color, breath.
This was no ordinary killer. This was a Soul Flayer—a spirit-path assassin that struck through memory, through guilt.
Yun Mu was flung into a realm made of ash and screams.
Ashgut.
The mine.
The cages.
He saw his younger self running.
The assassin followed him in the vision, moving between memory fragments.
Each time Yun Mu tried to strike, his blade passed through echoes.
"You can't fight what you refuse to face."
The assassin drove his fingers into Yun Mu's chest—straight through the vision. Not his body. His spirit root.
Pain exploded.
Reality rippled.
---
But Yun Mu was not the same boy anymore.
The Hollow Path accepted pain.
It turned regret into blade, trauma into venom.
He clenched his fist and channeled everything he saw—every failure, every death, every lie—into the Fang of the Self-Devourer.
A forbidden Hollow technique.
He struck his own chest.
The spirit wound inverted.
And from it—a second Yun Mu emerged.
A Hollow Mirror Form.
Eyes pitch-black, aura wild and twisted.
Yun Mu and his Hollow fought in tandem.
Now the assassin bled for real.
One cut. Then two.
Then thirteen.
But he was still smiling.
> "You've become what they feared," he said.
"That's good. Because next time, they won't send me."
"They'll send Heaven itself."
He dropped a talisman.
Vanished.
Leaving only blood, memory, and the smell of burned ash.
---
After the fight, Yun Mu sat alone again, in silence.
He didn't tend to his wounds.
He let the Hollow Qi pulse through them.
He let the pain speak.
And he finally understood.
This was not about cultivation.
This was not about the Sect.
This was war.
Heaven had noticed him.
And Heaven wanted him dead not for what he had done—but for what he might become.
---
Far away, inside the heart of the Heavenly Judgment Faction, nine elders gathered again.
This time they burned the scroll.
And opened another.
> "Initiate the Black Compass Protocol."
"All divine fate-sight must focus on the Hollow."
"Do not let him reach Core Formation."
One voice whispered in the dark:
> "He already has."
---