---
In the heart of the Ironcloud Sect, beneath layers of talismans, jade barriers, and spell-forged rock, Yun Mu stood in the Whispering Garden—a place forbidden to all but those permitted by the Sect Master himself.
The name was ironic.
There was no garden. Only petrified lotus stalks twisted by time and spiritual backlash. Each one pulsed faintly with residual memories—emotions soaked into the stone from cultivators who died here long ago.
Yun Mu knelt by a dead lotus and laid his hand on it.
A scream echoed through his bones.
"We should not be here," Su Xiren said softly behind him.
He didn't look up.
"You followed anyway."
She didn't deny it.
Her footsteps were light. She sat opposite him, placing her palm on a different lotus stalk. Her eyes darkened slightly as it resonated with an old emotion: despair.
"This place," she said, "was once used to execute inner sect traitors. They'd meditate in front of these lotuses until their own regrets crystallized and consumed them."
Yun Mu looked at her.
"You don't come here just to learn history."
"No," she said. "I came to make you an offer."
---
She reached into her sleeve and pulled out a scroll wrapped in seven silk seals, each bearing the mark of a different sect.
She unrolled it carefully between them.
Inside was not writing—but a map of fate threads.
It looked like a web woven by a mad spider: some threads thin and bright, others thick and black, pulsating with corrupted qi.
One thread stood out.
His.
Or rather… what remained of it.
It was frayed at the ends, tangled with dozens of others, and coiling into something monstrous.
Yun Mu stared at it.
"This is… my soul thread?"
She nodded.
"Lotus Mirror Sect developed techniques to read fate threads at the cost of our own lifespans. I've paid with years to see yours. What I found... shouldn't exist."
Yun Mu said nothing.
She continued:
"Your thread isn't just broken—it's predatory. It absorbs others. Devours karma, destiny, and spiritual cause. That's why the Heaven-Splitting Sect can't predict you. That's why the Heavenly Judgment Faction fears you."
Yun Mu's jaw tightened.
"I don't care what they fear. I didn't choose this path."
Su Xiren leaned closer.
"But you walk it. That makes it yours."
A pause.
Then her voice softened.
"We believe... the Hollow Path isn't a technique. It's a sealed inheritance. A spiritual parasite left by something ancient. Something that didn't want to die."
He met her gaze.
"What do you want from me?"
"I want to find its source," she said. "Together."
---
Yun Mu looked down at the fate map again.
One memory surfaced.
A boy, barely ten, watching his village burn. Holding his little sister's corpse. Feeling nothing. Not because he was heartless.
Because he had already broken.
He looked back up at her.
"If we do this," he said, "you become a part of this thread. If it devours me, it devours you too."
She smiled faintly.
"My eyes have already shown me my end."
"And?"
"It's you."
---
Far above, in the citadel halls of the Heavenly Judgment Faction, Elder Xu studied the same fate map, mirrored through forbidden spirit mirrors.
He turned to a robed figure beside him.
"The girl from Lotus Mirror has made contact."
The figure's face was hidden, but his voice was familiar—smooth, sharp, and practiced.
"Good. Let her. The closer she gets, the more control we gain."
Elder Xu frowned.
"You believe you can use the Hollow Path?"
The hidden figure chuckled.
"Not use. Awaken. Once we understand it, we won't need Heaven's favor anymore. We'll become the arbiters of fate ourselves."
He waved a hand.
An image appeared.
Yun Mu, seated in the Whispering Garden.
Eyes cold.
Spirit sharp.
But not yet complete.
"Soon," the man whispered, "you'll learn what you really are."
---
That night, Su Xiren brought Yun Mu to an abandoned chamber beneath the oldest part of Ironcloud Peak. A hidden space she had uncovered with her fate-seeing technique.
Inside, they found it:
A massive altar, older than the sect itself.
Its surface was covered in spiraling runes—none in a known script. But Yun Mu understood them anyway.
They weren't written in words.
They were written in hunger.
Su Xiren stepped back.
"What does it say?"
Yun Mu touched the altar.
His eyes darkened.
His voice echoed.
> "All fate shall fall. All roots shall rot.
The heavens tremble before the First Maw.
I was the dragon that devoured gods.
And I am not yet dead."
---