The temple stood like a dream clinging to the corpse of a god.
Its marble bones gleamed under the pale crimson light of a sun that should have died centuries ago, and its banners—once white with the purity of prayer—now flapped like torn skin, heavy with dried blood and forgotten hymns. Every pillar was etched with the names of saints who had vanished without graves. Their stories were sung no more. Their miracles, disbelieved. Even the divine had been discarded.
And yet they dared offer mercy here.
How quaint.
Shen Wuqing stepped through the temple gate with silence sharper than a scream. The stone beneath his feet cracked—not from force, but from recognition. The temple itself remembered something it had never seen: the scent of erasure.
Above him, a bell tolled.
Not by hand, but by fear.
Acolytes—draped in ceremonial silks dyed with phoenix marrow—rushed forward. They bore holy spears, their points inscribed with blessings centuries old. Words forged by sages who once bargained with the heavens. Words meant to wound that which defied divinity.
He walked past them.
The first twelve did not even realize they were dead until their spines burst through their mouths like blossoming lotuses of bone.
The next eleven died screaming, only for their tongues to be flayed and stitched over their eyes, leaving their corpses weeping speechless sorrow on the sanctified floor.
By the time the head priest emerged, cloaked in layers of enlightenment, the temple had already begun to weep.
"You are not welcome here," the priest said. His voice was low, almost kind.
"I was never born to be welcomed."
The priest raised a hand. The holy formation beneath the temple surged alive. Runes lit up in golden spirals, forming an array woven from the chants of a thousand monks buried beneath the altar. The dome shimmered. Space froze. Causality bent backward.
The air whispered: He cannot move.
For a breath, Shen Wuqing stood still.
Then his shadow moved first.
And the formation shattered.
The shadow peeled itself from his feet like old skin and struck the array—not with force, but with hunger. The runes cried out. They clung to their purpose, tried to recite their sacred duties, but the shadow devoured meaning itself. It did not fight the formation.
It unmade the reason it existed.
The priest gasped. Blood spilled from his ears. "You… what are you?"
Wuqing stepped closer. "You built a temple to mercy. But all I see are bones dressed in forgiveness."
The priest drew a divine seal from his robe—a sigil forged from celestial fire, said to be left behind by a Dao Sovereign of the First Era. With trembling fingers, he pressed it against his own heart.
"By this mark, I call forth the Wrath of Light."
He burned.
His flesh became flame. His body erupted into wings of sunfire. A spear made of condensed righteousness formed in his grasp, its core burning with martyrdom. He did not attack from hatred. He attacked from faith.
That made it worse.
Wuqing lifted his hand. The space between his fingers warped, as if time refused to flow there. The spear of righteousness flew. Wuqing caught it not with flesh, but with his eyes.
And it disintegrated.
Righteousness could not withstand perception without belief.
The priest collapsed, blind and choking on light. Shen Wuqing stood over him.
"Mercy," the priest whispered. "Please."
"Your god never answered mine."
He reached down and carved the priest's final prayer into the man's ribcage, letter by letter, with his fingernail. Not with hatred. With precision. Like a scribe inscribing a prophecy onto a scroll made of breath.
Each stroke bled.
Each plea became scripture.
And when it was done, the priest looked less like a man and more like a reliquary.
The temple pulsed.
A divine entity stirred.
It had no name, for the faithful dared not define it. It had no form, for to shape it would be to limit it. But it descended anyway, drawn by desecration so pure it became sacred again.
Shen Wuqing turned toward it—not in reverence, but with the indifference of one who had already devoured truth.
The divine force spoke in colorless light.
"You have defiled My house."
"You built it on borrowed bones."
"You have slain My chosen."
"They were already dead. They just didn't know who killed them."
"You mock My mercy."
"Mercy is the most exquisite lie."
The divine surged forward.
The walls melted. Time stuttered. Every worshipper still breathing burst into flames—not from divine wrath, but from the sheer incompatibility of their faith with the presence before them.
And still, Wuqing did not bow.
He opened his mouth.
And devoured the prayer.
Not a spell. Not a chant. But the concept of prayer.
It tasted like ash soaked in hope.
The divine shrieked.
The temple shook.
The statues of saints cracked open, revealing corpses sealed inside. They had never been symbols. They had been sacrifices. The history rewritten. The truth dressed in hymns.
Wuqing stepped forward.
The divine tried to flee.
But it had taken root here. And Wuqing, too, had become a soil for things that should not grow.
He pressed his palm to the altar.
Whispers bloomed.
Dozens. Hundreds. Thousands of voices—all the dead children, all the erased mothers, all the silenced fathers who had prayed to this temple in desperation—now spoke through him.
"Where was your mercy?"
The divine began to unravel.
Like thread pulled from a garment that never fit.
One strand at a time.
Its light faded.
Its presence collapsed inward.
And Shen Wuqing, standing amid what should have been salvation, reached out one last time—
And plucked its name.
Not to say it.
But to eat it.
The name burned his tongue. It shattered like glass inside his mouth. It fought to exist. But it had no temple left. No priest left. No believer left.
So it ended.
Just like that.
When the wind returned, the temple was a ruin. No stones stood. No banners fluttered. The bones of the faithful lay naked beneath a sky that refused to look down.
Shen Wuqing sat amidst the rubble, his robe dyed darker by the divine's blood—if it could be called that. His hands were still.
He picked up a broken relic.
A prayer wheel, used by orphans to beg for warmth in winter.
He spun it once.
It made no sound.
That, too, was fitting.
The silence was all that remained of mercy.
And it obeyed him now.