Chapter 24: The Whisper Beneath the Floorboards
The moonlight filtered through the cracked window, casting fractured silver beams across the dusty floor of the storage shed Lin Ma had been assigned to clean. His hands were raw, caked in dirt, but his eyes were sharper than ever. Ever since that eerie vision in the courtyard and the monk's cryptic warning, something inside him had shifted—unlocked.
Tonight, the silence was too loud.
His breathing slowed as he crouched, fingertips brushing the worn planks of the floor. Something was off. The energy here was dense—like air just before a storm. The kind of oppressive pressure he remembered from boardrooms where betrayal was imminent.
He pressed his ear to the ground. A faint... whisper?
At first, he thought it was the wind slipping through the gaps. But the cadence—mournful and repetitive—was unmistakably a voice.
"You shouldn't have come here..."
His chest tightened. He rose slowly, scanning the darkened room. The moonlight had shifted, now focused like a spotlight on a narrow gap near the base of the wall. Kneeling, he dug his fingers into the loose wood. It gave way with a soft crack, revealing a staircase spiraling into darkness.
A secret chamber?
His heartbeat pounded in his ears, echoing louder than his footsteps as he descended. The air grew colder. Each step felt like sinking deeper into the past—or into a secret not meant to be uncovered.
At the bottom was a stone chamber, lined with ancient runes that pulsed faintly with an ethereal glow. In the center lay a cracked pedestal, upon which rested a mirror—dusty, but humming with suppressed power.
The reflection didn't show him. Instead, it flickered through scenes—his mother working in the fields, the betrayal by his fiancée, the collapse of LinTech.
And then… something new.
A woman cloaked in white silk, standing beneath a willow tree, whispering into the wind. Her voice was the same one he'd heard through the floorboards.
"You must choose, Lin Ma. Let go—or be consumed."
He stepped closer, and the mirror flared. Pain split through his mind. Memories—no, visions—rushed into him.
In one, he was leading an army clad in celestial armor. In another, he was shackled, dragged through fire by robed cultists chanting in tongues.
Then—nothing.
He collapsed to the ground, drenched in sweat, gasping.
Moments—or minutes—passed before a familiar voice echoed behind him.
"So... you found it."
Lin Ma turned. Elder Liu stood at the base of the stairs, eyes no longer cloudy with age. They gleamed with knowledge. And regret.
"This temple was built on a burial ground," Liu said. "Not for the dead—but for secrets. That mirror? It doesn't show the future or the past. It shows the price of your choices."
"Why me?" Lin Ma whispered.
Liu didn't answer. Instead, he handed Lin Ma a scroll sealed in wax.
"Not all battles are won with fists or cultivation. Some are won with clarity. This scroll holds a cultivation method lost even to the sect leaders. But it's not power that makes it dangerous—it's what it reveals."
Lin Ma's hands trembled as he accepted it.
Upstairs, the wind howled through the temple grounds. A storm was coming.
As Lin Ma sealed the scroll in his robes and began climbing back up, he realized something fundamental had changed—not just within him, but around him.
The veil between the worlds—past and present, truth and illusion—was growing thin.
And someone... something... was watching from the other side.
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End of chapter