The storm came without warning.
Wind tore through the mountain paths like a beast unleashed, howling with voices that didn't sound like wind — they sounded like memories. Angry ones.
Mo Lianyin stood atop the cliff known as the Widow's Spine, robes soaked, hair clinging to his skin. Below him, the valley burned. Smoke danced with rain. Fire hissed against the storm, refusing to die quietly.
He had set it ablaze himself.
Not out of cruelty.
But out of mercy.
---
The village of Luoshan was once a haven for wandering cultivators — orphans, exiles, broken souls who still believed in goodness. It had taken him a year to find it. Two days to earn their trust.
And now, five hours to bury it.
Because the Venerable Crimson Fang Sect had arrived.
Not to protect.
But to cleanse.
"Demonic energy," they claimed.
"Corruption," they whispered.
But Mo Lianyin knew what they were really after: the Forbidden Arts buried beneath the shrine. Ancient, deadly, coveted. And Luoshan… had been in the way.
So he beat them to it.
He burned it first — before their greed could touch it.
---
A sob broke through the storm.
He turned.
A child. No older than ten. Holding the charred remains of a wooden flute.
"Why?" the child asked, eyes wide, voice hollow.
Mo Lianyin didn't answer right away. He knelt, met the boy's eyes.
"I spared them," he said softly.
"But you killed them…"
"I saved them from being used. Their bodies. Their spirits. Crimson Fang doesn't bury the dead. They bind them."
The boy didn't understand.
But he didn't run either.
Mo Lianyin pressed a small jade talisman into his palm.
"Run south. To the Temple of Dust. Show them this. Say my name."
The child clutched it like the last thread of heaven.
"Are you a bad man?" he asked.
Mo Lianyin smiled — not kindly, not coldly.
"Ask the gods. If they still answer."
---
By nightfall, he was gone.
But Crimson Fang had found the ashes.
And they were furious.
---
Within their fortress, Elder Suyin slammed a scroll against the wall. "He's mocking us!" she roared. "A rogue cultivator, using ice spells and shadow stepping? That's not Mo Lianyin! He died at Jade Spring's gates!"
"No," said Sect Leader Xu Lan calmly. "He survived. And worse… he awakened."
The room fell silent.
Because that word — awakened — wasn't used lightly.
It meant Mo Lianyin had unlocked one of the Seven Forbidden Arts. Techniques lost to time. Sealed by divine will. Said to unravel balance itself.
"Which one?" someone asked, breathless.
Xu Lan stared into the flames.
"The First Art: Soul Mirror."
---
Back in the mountains, Mo Lianyin found shelter in the ruins of an old pagoda. The rain had stopped, but the sky still wept.
He unrolled an ancient scroll, fingers careful, reverent.
On it were seven circles. Six remained faint. One now glowed — the center — its ink shimmering silver.
The First Art.
He hadn't meant to awaken it. Not really. But when he saw the villagers being slaughtered, something in him snapped. And the energy answered.
It had been waiting.
Waiting for grief to become rage.
For pain to become clarity.
He stared at the glowing circle.
"I didn't want this," he whispered.
But the scroll didn't care what he wanted.
It never did.
---
Footsteps approached.
Not hostile.
Familiar.
He didn't turn.
"I thought I told you to stop following me."
A woman stepped into the ruined shrine — long silver hair, robes dipped in red.
"I thought you knew better than to give orders to people who don't serve you," she replied, tossing a pouch to the ground. "Herbs. For your wound."
Mo Lianyin sighed.
"Thank you, Lingye."
She sat beside him without asking.
"You burned a village," she said.
"I buried a trap."
"You killed men."
"I spared worse fates."
She looked at him for a long time.
"You're changing."
He closed the scroll.
"No," he said. "I'm becoming."
---
Silence stretched between them. Then Lingye asked the question no one else dared:
"How many of the Forbidden Arts are you going to unlock?"
Mo Lianyin didn't answer right away.
But when he did, it wasn't with hesitation. It was with a voice that carried both sorrow and certainty.
"All seven."
---
Far away, at the edge of the continent, in a realm no map acknowledged — a pair of golden eyes opened in the void.
Their owner smiled.
"Finally," he murmured. "The Moon's Shadow awakens."
And the sky trembled.