Morning came late.
A pale sun filtered through low clouds, casting long shadows across the village path. Shen Yi stood beside the blacksmith's hut, sleeves rolled, hands wrapped in leather as he shaped iron into simple tools for the farmers.
His strength startled even the smith.
The hammer barely bounced in his grip. The blade he sharpened gleamed with near-perfect balance.
He worked in silence.
Not because he wanted to.
Because his thoughts had grown too loud.
"I'm going to make you fall in love with me again."
"And then… I'll make sure you break."
Yan Xue's words from last night didn't fade with sleep. They sat in his chest like coals—quiet, burning slow.
He didn't blame her.
He hated that he didn't.
---
Su Yao passed the edge of the forge and slowed when she saw him.
He didn't look up.
Not at first.
"Working hard," she said gently.
He paused. Looked at her. "It helps me think."
Su Yao tilted her head. "And what are you thinking about?"
He hesitated.
"Whether I deserve to be here."
She crossed her arms. "You saved a boy from falling into the river yesterday. You repaired half the village's tools. You've protected everyone who asked you for help."
"I also… destroyed someone's entire family."
"You don't remember doing it."
"But I did."
The silence between them tightened.
Su Yao finally sighed. "The path forward won't be clean. But it still exists."
He turned away. "Then why does it feel like I'm dragging something I can't see?"
---
Near the village pond, Yan Xue practiced her forms.
Each step carved frost from the air, each swing of her blade leaving a faint shimmer in its wake.
She moved like someone dancing on broken glass — precise, ruthless, beautiful.
A group of children stopped nearby, quiet in awe.
None dared speak to her.
She didn't notice them.
Her thoughts were elsewhere — on the burning circles beneath her skin, the pulses that came when Shen Yi was too close.
Her clan called it "Echo Blood" — an ancestral trait born from generation after generation of war, tragedy, and spiritual discipline. It allowed a direct line of sensing across hatred, vengeance… and sometimes, love.
She hated it now.
She hated that she could feel him before she saw him.
That her blood still burned for the one who burned her life down.
"Fall in love with me again."
She had spoken those words to hurt him.
But part of her hated how real they sounded in her own mouth.
---
Hours later, Yan Xue passed the market road and froze.
Shen Yi was there, standing beside an old herb vendor, helping her lift crates into place. His sleeves were dusty, his hands nicked from earlier work, but his movements were gentle.
The old woman thanked him with a smile.
He bowed politely and turned away.
Then he saw Yan Xue watching.
Their eyes met—just for a second.
He didn't flinch.
He didn't look away.
She didn't either.
But her grip on her sleeve tightened.
Why does he look at me like that?
Like he sees someone worth mourning.
She turned before he could speak.
---
That night, Shen Yi sat outside the village wall, staring at the stars.
He'd tried meditation again.
But ever since he'd awakened, it didn't feel right. The flow of qi through his body wasn't smooth like Su Yao described hers. It surged violently, like a river under ice—slow at first glance, but monstrous underneath.
Once, when he let it expand too far, his breath had caught and his vision had gone red for a moment.
He didn't tell anyone.
Not even Su Yao.
Whatever had happened to him in those five missing years… it had changed his cultivation path.
Or maybe built a new one.
One not meant to exist.
---
In the far south, beneath the ruins of an old war monastery, two men stood before a half-buried tablet carved with demon script.
The older one, wrapped in white bandages, whispered, "The Immortal Demon Body stirs again."
His companion, a youth with pale hair and silver pupils, touched the stone with reverence.
"So the inheritor survived."
"He did more than that," the elder said. "He forgot."
The youth's smile twisted. "Then we can shape him."
"No," the elder warned. "He is not ours. He is the storm. Let the wind carry him where it will… and clean the world in fire."
---
Back in the village, Su Yao couldn't sleep.
She lit a spirit candle at her bedside and opened the scroll she had hidden since the Azure Phoenix Sect messenger left.
"Do not confront alone."
The words burned hotter than the flame.
She folded the paper, placed it in a small pouch, and stared at the ceiling.
"I don't know which of them I should fear more."
----
The snow had melted completely from the plum grove.
Where once it lay like shrouds of memory, now only damp soil and early buds remained. Life had returned—but it felt too early. Unnatural, even.
Shen Yi stood among the trees, his eyes trailing along the lowest branches where white blossoms had begun to bloom.
They reminded him of her.
Not Yan Xue as she was now, sword-sharp and ice-eyed.
But the girl in the fragment of memory that haunted his dreams—
laughing barefoot under a plum tree, her hands stained with flower dye.
Was that real?
He didn't know.
He wanted to ask her.
But she didn't come.
Not that morning.
Not the next.
---
Yan Xue had withdrawn into the upper woods, where even the wind dared not linger. Her spiritual aura burned brighter every hour, condensing over her like a storm waiting to break.
She was close to a breakthrough.
The fifth stage—where blood became power and power became purpose—beckoned like a blade wrapped in silk.
She wasn't afraid of crossing it.
She was afraid of what she might do afterward.
What if I can no longer control what I feel?
What if love twists harder than hate ever could?
What if I can't hurt him… because I still want him?
---
Below, in the village, Su Yao studied the faces of the locals as she gathered information.
Too many eyes had begun to linger.
Old men at the well muttered of dark dreams.
Children whispered about red shadows.
Even the animals grew uneasy when Shen Yi passed.
It wasn't fear, exactly.
It was something deeper.
Like nature remembered him even if he didn't remember himself.
And that—more than anything—unsettled her.
She found him in the plum grove, staring at the trees like they'd just whispered his name.
"You shouldn't be alone so much," she said.
He smiled faintly. "I'm always alone. Even in a crowd."
Su Yao sat on a nearby stone. "You don't have to be."
He looked at her.
She didn't blink.
Then he asked something he hadn't dared voice to anyone yet.
"Do you think I should've died?"
Su Yao didn't answer immediately.
Instead, she asked: "Do you want to?"
He shook his head slowly. "No. That's the part I can't understand. I hate who I was… but I still want to live."
"That's good," she said.
"Is it?"
"Yes," she said firmly. "Because only the living can make things right."
"But what if I never can?"
"Then you keep trying."
---
That night, the sky cracked open.
Not with thunder. Not with rain.
But with a flare of spiritual light—a pillar of blue fire bursting upward from the woods above the village, laced with streaks of crimson.
Su Yao felt it first. "That's her."
Shen Yi felt it too.
Not as pressure.
As pain.
His chest tightened. His eyes burned. And his feet moved before his thoughts did, sprinting through the trees toward the source.
---
In the heart of the woods, Yan Xue stood at the center of a broken ritual circle, surrounded by scorched trees and glowing runes.
Her body shook.
Not from weakness—
From power.
The Blood Refinement Realm wasn't just a cultivation milestone. It was a test. A purging. The heart was rewritten. Ancestral bloodlines awakened. And for her…
…it meant remembering everything with perfect clarity.
She saw his face again—not the boy with quiet eyes in the village, but the demon on the night of her ruin. His blade, his laughter, his cruel grace.
She saw it all.
And her qi erupted in a scream of color.
---
Shen Yi arrived breathless.
The air crackled around her. Her hair floated in an unseen current, her eyes glowing faintly with a violent silver hue.
But she didn't collapse.
She didn't cry.
She walked toward him—calm, cold, transformed.
"You came," she said quietly.
"I felt you," he said.
She touched his chest, where the pain had settled. Her fingers felt warm.
"You're still bound to me," she murmured.
"…Yes."
"I could kill you now."
He nodded. "Yes."
"Why don't I?"
"I don't know."
She tilted her head. "I do."
He looked at her.
And her voice dropped to a whisper.
"Because some broken part of me still responds to you. And I intend to crush it, piece by piece."
Then she turned away, stepping into the night, leaving only the silence behind.
---
From a distant mountaintop, far across the southern skies, a watcher in white robes opened his fan and smiled.
"So the threads have begun to pull."
Behind him, a pale-haired youth stirred. "Do we move now?"
"No," the watcher said. "Let the wound reopen first."
---
End of Chapter 6