The weight of the earth pressed down on Rin Xie's chest, suffocating him as though the very ground itself was complicit in his agony. His body ached with a pain too deep to remember, a pain that seemed to seep into his very bones, pulsing through his veins like a living thing. There was no sound, only the heavy, cloying silence of death—its oppressive presence closing in from all sides.
Then, like a crack in the dark, a single, faint breath—his own—ripped through the stillness, a gasp of life clawing against the grip of an eternal grave. He stirred, the coarse dirt scraping against his skin as he struggled to move, to breathe, to exist.
What had happened? His thoughts were disjointed, as if his mind were fragmented by the trauma of his own mortality. He tried to remember—but memory was a fog, a haze that refused to lift. All that remained was a dull echo of emotions: pain, betrayal, loss. An overwhelming sorrow that gnawed at the edges of his consciousness, clouding everything in its path.
He blinked, his eyes sluggish, fighting against the darkness that threatened to claim him once again. The sky above, a murky gray, flickered in and out of focus like a broken canvas. He turned his head, every muscle in his body screaming in protest, but there was no denying the scene that lay before him. A massacre.
The ruins of what had once been the Azure Echo Sect stretched out like a corpse laid bare to the heavens. Pillars shattered, the remnants of once-sturdy buildings now mere husks. Blood pooled across the ground, seeping into the dirt and mingling with the ashes of burnt corpses. Bodies—too many to count—lay scattered across the landscape, their twisted forms frozen in their final moments of life. Cultivators who had once walked the path of immortality now reduced to little more than refuse, forgotten by the world they had once sought to dominate.
He could feel their presence still—their lingering souls, caught between realms, trapped in the cycle of death they had failed to escape. The air itself tasted of rot, of decay, of something more sinister than death. But even in the midst of such devastation, a singular truth pulsed in his mind, cutting through the fog of his confusion:
I am alive.
He sat up, a grunt escaping him as his hands pressed against the blood-slick earth beneath him. His fingertips brushed against something cold, slick with the residue of death. A dagger, unlike any he had seen before. Its hilt was adorned with intricate runes, faintly glowing with an otherworldly light, and the blade—black as pitch—seemed to pulse with a life of its own.
The Death-Refinement Dagger.
The name came unbidden, a whisper of knowledge that cut through the haze clouding his thoughts. His hand closed around the dagger's hilt, the cold metal sending a shiver down his spine. It felt... familiar, as though it belonged to him. A weapon forged for a purpose. A weapon that could end lives and harvest the very essence of death.
A strange sensation washed over him then—an intense, almost irresistible urge to bring the blade closer. He held it up to his face, examining the dark sheen of the blade. The air around it seemed to grow heavier, as if the very atmosphere recoiled in fear. But Rin felt none of it. Instead, he felt an awakening within himself—something deep, buried beneath the layers of anguish and confusion. It thrummed through him like a second heartbeat, a force that demanded to be acknowledged.
He closed his eyes and breathed in deeply. The scent of death was overwhelming—sickly sweet, the iron tang of blood, the heavy stench of rot—but beneath it, there was something else. A faint pulse, subtle yet undeniable. The death aura of the surrounding corpses.
It called to him.
His eyes snapped open, and his grip on the dagger tightened. He raised it above the bodies, staring at the lifeless faces, the broken forms scattered across the battlefield. With a sudden, violent motion, he thrust the dagger downward into the earth.
And then, the world around him shifted.
A torrent of cold energy surged into him, flowing from the corpses, from the very soil beneath him. The dagger hummed, the dark energy radiating from its blade, suffusing his body with an alien power that both repulsed and exhilarated him. The pain within him subsided, replaced by a cold clarity, an overwhelming awareness of his surroundings. The corpses—dead, their life snuffed out—were no longer just lifeless husks. They were a resource. A conduit.
The Death Refinement Dao.
He had no name for it before, but now, with the dagger pulsing in his hand, he understood. This was the path he would walk. A path born of death itself, one that would carve through the very fabric of existence, ripping away the illusions of immortality that the heavens themselves held dear.
The energy surged through him, filling him with an unfamiliar, suffocating hunger. The dead, their bodies mutilated beyond recognition, their souls trapped between realms, began to feed him, to nourish him. The Death Refinement Core, this cursed power within him, grew stronger, deeper. He could feel the life force of the fallen cultivators flowing through him like a torrent. It wasn't just the energy of death—it was something more. It was suffering, despair, and regret, all twisted into an essence that could give him power beyond imagination.
His eyes flickered, a cold fire igniting within them. The memories of his betrayal, his death at the hands of those he had once trusted, surged back to him in a torrent. The faces of his sect members, those he had called brothers, haunted him. He could still see their eyes—their cold indifference as they betrayed him. The last moments of his life, the pain of being stabbed, buried alive among the corpses of his fallen comrades—it all flashed before him in vivid detail.
I will not die here.
The thought was as cold as the energy now thrumming through his veins. It was a vow. A promise.
I will live.
And more than that, he would make them pay. Those who had betrayed him, who had cast him into the grave—he would bring their suffering back tenfold. He would rise from the ashes of this massacre, reborn through the very death they had forced upon him.
His hand tightened around the dagger's hilt. The world around him seemed to tremble, as though the earth itself was awaiting his next move.
Rin Xie stood, his gaze sweeping across the field of death. There was no hope here, no salvation. Only death. And death would be his ally. His tool. His path.
He took a step forward, the ground beneath him crunching with the weight of his newfound purpose. There was only one goal left now. Only one thing mattered: survival. Vengeance.
And the mastery of death itself.
To be continued…