The winds carried ash and static across the jagged ridges of the Dead Meridian Valley as Lin Xuanyuan moved with practiced silence. His armor, still patched with battlefield soot and soul-blood, blended into the twilight haze. Jinhai stayed behind, scouting for drone signals while Lin advanced toward the remnants of a shattered soultech relay station.
His AI pulsed faint warnings.
> Proximity alert: Class 3 combatants inbound.
Identifier: Purifier Unit – Gamma Formation.
Threat Level: 7.4 – Avoid direct confrontation if possible.
Lin narrowed his eyes. The Purifiers. Elite enforcers of the inner sect, trained to annihilate anything deemed a threat to the sacred protocols—including Legacy Candidates like himself. Unlike the others, these weren't just cultivators—they were living weapons molded by doctrine, blind to mercy.
He ducked behind the broken shell of a rusted walker-tank, synching with its residual data feed. Signals flickered—ghost transmissions left behind by screaming operators and fried circuits.
And then he heard the hum.
Low and heavy, like a funeral dirge sung by machines. The sound of soulfire-charged halberds slicing through the air, synchronized footsteps pounding like drums of war. They emerged from the dust: five figures clad in obsidian-black armor veined with crimson light, masks emotionless, movements perfect.
Lin's breath caught.
At the center of their formation walked someone he hadn't seen in years.
"Tian Fei," he whispered.
The man's hair was shorter, his eyes colder, but Lin would never forget those features. Once his brother-in-training. They'd sparred in the rain, bled in the initiation halls together, whispered dreams of changing the sect.
Now, Tian Fei wore the crimson insignia of a Purifier Captain.
"Visual lock," Tian said. His voice was flat. "Target: Legacy Signature 'Ash-Variable-Xuan.' Confirmed. Mission directive: Terminate."
The others raised their weapons.
Lin didn't move.
"Fei," he said. "Don't do this. You know who I am."
"I do," Tian replied. "That's why I won't hesitate."
They charged.
Lin rolled aside as the first halberd cleaved into the tank hull behind him, showering sparks. He surged upward, palm glowing with disruption energy. His AI flared alive.
> Tactical Matrix: Engaged.
Predictive Countermeasures online.
He parried one blade, twisted under another, kicked a third Purifier in the knee-joint, and disabled his armor's balance core with a soul strike.
But he held back.
He didn't want to kill them.
"Fei!" Lin shouted, blocking another strike. "We trained together! I taught you the breath-step maneuver—you can't forget that!"
Tian's movements faltered—just for a heartbeat.
Then he came harder, faster.
"You abandoned the sect. You chose the Emperor's shadow."
"I chose freedom!"
Tian's halberd screamed downward—Lin caught the blade between his vambraces, gritting his teeth. Sparks flew. Their faces were inches apart.
"You were like a brother to me," Lin growled. "What happened to you?"
Tian's eyes flashed—but just beneath the mechanical calm, Lin saw it. A flicker of something human. Pain. Regret.
"The sect burned that out of me," he said quietly. "And you... you should've let it burn you too."
Lin threw him back, just as another Purifier rushed in.
> Neural strain rising. Emotional deviation detected.
AI suggestion: Execute escape protocol. Mission priority: Survival.
Lin shook his head. "Not yet."
He planted both hands into the ground, activating a delay glyph seeded with disruption code. The earth cracked—energy burst in a radial pulse. The Purifiers reeled, armor flickering.
Lin launched into a sprint. Not toward them—but away.
Tian shouted, "He's retreating!"
"Not retreating," Lin murmured. "Just making you think I am."
He ducked into a ruined corridor, rerouted his heat signature, and triggered a collapsing sequence on the old soulpower junction behind him. The tunnel roared, rock falling like thunder.
He emerged out the far side, panting.
He was bleeding—shoulder sliced, ribs bruised—but alive.
> Vital signs unstable.
Suggestion: Initiate emergency med-sequence.
Lin ignored it. He found cover beneath the broken wing of a crashed skysteel vessel and collapsed.
For a moment, he didn't think. He just felt.
The weight of it all settled on him: the friend who'd become a weapon, the ideals shattered by reality, the truth that even love and loyalty could be reprogrammed.
Jinhai found him minutes later, dragging a med-kit.
"You look like hell," he said quietly.
Lin smiled bitterly. "Feels worse."
He injected the painkiller. "Tian Fei's one of them now. A Purifier."
"Damn," Jinhai muttered. "That's bad."
"He could've killed me. But didn't."
"So?"
"So that means there's still something left in him. Something human."
Jinhai was silent. Then he asked, "Are you gonna kill him next time?"
Lin stared at the cracked sky. Thought of their childhood, of rain on the monastery roof.
"No," he said. "I'll save him. Or I'll die trying."
Jinhai sighed. "You're insane."
"Maybe. But if I start killing everyone who still has a spark left, I'm no better than the sect."
He closed his eyes.
> Legacy Protocol Update:
Inner conflict logged.
Sovereign Threshold Integrity: Stable.
Emotional divergence preserved. No recalibration required.
The AI said nothing more.
But somewhere deep within its code, a new subroutine quietly formed—something unnamed, something… human.
Jinhai worked in silence, applying synth-fiber bandages over Lin's wound. The cracked hull of the skysteel vessel groaned above them as the wind shifted. Outside, the valley was a graveyard—ash swirling between broken columns, once-great machines rusting under ghostlight.
"You shouldn't hesitate next time," Jinhai said quietly. "They won't."
Lin didn't respond immediately. He stared down at his gauntlet, where the soul-energy circuits were still sparking faintly. The last of the fight still trembled in his fingers.
"I've killed before," he said. "Bandits, beasts… even corrupted cultivators. But Purifiers… they were like us. Chosen. Conditioned. Molded. What if I'd become one of them?"
"You didn't," Jinhai said. "Because you made a choice. That's the difference."
Lin looked up, eyes sharp. "What if they never had that choice?"
Jinhai paused. "Then we take it back for them."
That answer settled like a blade between them—uncomfortable, heavy, but real. Lin finally nodded.
Suddenly, the AI pulsed with urgency.
> Proximity breach: 300 meters. Secondary Purifier unit detected. Designator: Theta Formation. Estimated ETA: 90 seconds.
Jinhai swore, slamming the med-kit closed. "They're sweeping in waves."
"Not just hunting," Lin murmured. "They're flushing."
He stood up, checking his gear. His body screamed in protest, but his mind was already moving—mapping escape routes, fallback options, patterns in the Purifier's deployment.
"We need to move," he said.
But before they could retreat deeper into the ruins, a figure emerged from the smoke.
Not in armor. Not a Purifier.
A girl—no more than sixteen, wearing cracked desert robes and carrying a data-slate shaped like a relic.
Her eyes widened as she recognized Lin. "You… you're the one. The Spark."
Lin tensed. "Who are you?"
"They call me Whisper," she said quickly, glancing behind her. "I used to scavenge the outer ruins. But then they started hunting anyone with a pulse signature like yours. I've seen what they do—Purifiers don't just kill Legacy Candidates. They erase them."
She held out the slate. "I… copied something. From their beacon transmissions."
Jinhai took it. His eyes flicked over the lines, jaw tightening.
"They're not just after you," he said grimly. "They're cataloging every known survivor of the Emberfall massacre. Cross-referencing memory imprints, genetic traits, even psychic resonance."
Lin's blood ran cold. "They're targeting bloodlines."
Whisper nodded. "The sect thinks if they cut the roots, the tree will never grow again."
He stepped forward, voice low but thunderous. "How many others know about this?"
"Dozens. Maybe more. Scattered through the valley. Hiding. Waiting for someone to stand up."
The implication hit hard. Tian Fei wasn't just hunting him—he was the blade of a system bent on extinguishing every ember of the old world.
Lin looked down at his cracked vambrace, then up at the dark horizon.
"Then we fight," he said. "Not just to survive. To be seen. To remind them that even a spark can start a wildfire."
Whisper's eyes lit up.
Jinhai frowned. "You sure you're ready for that?"
Lin turned to him, jaw set. "I can't run forever. I'll either build something new—or burn with what remains."
The AI chimed softly in the background:
> Psychological deviation confirmed. Legacy Protocol evolution: Ignition Factor initiated. Status: Unstable—but progressing.
Whisper led them to a hidden tunnel under the relay station—an old escape route carved during the last war. As they moved through the dark, Lin paused once, placing his palm against the cold stone.
"I'll come back for him," he whispered to the dark. "Tian Fei. I'll break his chains."
Jinhai heard it.
But said nothing.
Because somewhere in the distance, the machines were already stirring again—and the Purifiers would return.
But so would Lin Xuanyuan.
And this time, he wouldn't be hunted.
He would be the one they feared.