Part A – Whispers in the Dark
The Slaughter City never truly slept.
Even in the hour when both moons hung pale and high, when shadows draped the alleys and the revelry had dulled into murmurs, the city still breathed. Dice clattered behind half-closed doors. A blade scraped against a whetstone in some distant courtyard. Somewhere, someone screamed — a short, sharp sound, cut off mid-breath. The city lived in violence, its lullabies sung in blood and steel.
But inside the chamber granted to Gu Kuangren after the banquet, there was silence.
The room was small, square, stone-walled, and bare save for a torch fixed into one side, its flame guttering with each draft that whispered beneath the iron-banded door. Kuangren sat cross-legged on the cold floor, back straight, long black hair spilling down over his broad shoulders like a dark curtain. Across his knees lay the Seven Kill Sword, its steel reflecting the torch's tremor of light, a predator's gleam in the gloom.
His crimson eyes were half-shut. His breathing was slow. But within his chest, his heart thundered like a caged beast.
He felt it.
Something restless. Something wrong.
No — not wrong. Not foreign. But other.
The sword across his knees had always been his truth. His weapon, his extension, the sharpness that defined him. Since the day it had awakened, it had been constant. Reliable. A reminder that he was born for battle, for cutting down obstacles, for tearing paths open where none existed.
But tonight, as he let his breathing still and his mind sharpen, another presence stirred.
Not the thin, clear whisper of steel. Not the edge he had always known.
This was heavier. Thicker. A resonance that thrummed deep in his marrow, vibrating through his bones. Like a second heartbeat, out of rhythm with the first, yet powerful enough to shake his body from within.
Kuangren gripped the hilt of the Seven Kill Sword tighter, grounding himself in the familiar weight of its steel. His crimson eyes opened a fraction, gleaming in the dim light.
"What is this?" he whispered to the empty room.
Across the hall, Zhu Zhuqing sat in stillness. She had not left him since the banquet — not because of loyalty, not because of trust, but because instinct told her to stay.
She perched near the window slit, knees drawn up, tail curled tight. Her feline eyes had been half-closed, ears relaxed. But the moment Kuangren's aura shifted, she felt it.
Her eyes opened, pupils narrowing to slits in the torchlight.
His presence was… doubling.
The sharpness she had felt all night — a storm's edge, blade-like, relentless — was still there. But beneath it, around it, through it, something else pressed outward. Heavier. Broader. Oppressive.
She leaned forward slightly, tail twitching once, claws pressing into her palms.
Something's happening to him.
Inside Kuangren's chest, visions unfurled.
Not memories. Not dreams. Something older.
He stood — not in the room, not in the Slaughter City, but on a battlefield of endless corpses. Crimson rivers carved valleys between mountains of flesh. The sky was black, not with clouds, but with ash and screams.
And at the center of it all, where he stood, a shadow loomed.
Not a sword. Not a weapon.
A body.
A figure vast and terrible, forged of sinew and steel, faceless but overwhelming, its presence blotting out the carnage around it.
Kuangren staggered inside himself, staring at the phantom that towered over him.
It did not carry a weapon.
It was the weapon.
And then it leaned closer, faceless head tilting down toward him, as if appraising. As if asking a question.
His breath caught. Sweat slid down the side of his temple. His fingers ached where they gripped the hilt of his sword.
Who are you? he thought. Why now?
The Seven Kill Sword on his knees began to vibrate faintly, as though reacting — not in welcome, but in agitation. It knew. It sensed the second voice rising beside it.
The torch on the wall flared violently, flame bending toward him as if dragged by an unseen wind.
Zhu Zhuqing stiffened, her claws half-extended. The hairs on her arms rose. Her breath caught in her throat.
"Your aura," she whispered, though no one had asked. "It's… not one anymore."
Kuangren's crimson eyes snapped open.
The air around him thickened, pressing against the walls. His chest heaved once, his tall frame trembling, and then —
It burst out of him.
A ripple, invisible yet undeniable, tore through the chamber. The torch guttered nearly out, then flared bright again, shadows stretching impossibly long across the walls.
Behind him, towering, shifting, a phantom took shape.
It was no sword.
It was no blade.
It was a form. A full-bodied manifestation, like a giant forged of flesh and armor, faceless yet terrifying. Its shoulders scraped against the corners of the chamber though it was not truly there. Its presence dwarfed the Seven Kill Sword, dwarfed Kuangren himself, filling the chamber with suffocating weight.
Zhu Zhuqing's breath hitched. Her tail froze. Her claws dug deep enough into her palms to draw blood.
This is not a second technique, she thought, heart pounding. This is a second martial soul.
Kuangren rose to his feet slowly, every movement deliberate, as though the weight of the phantom pressed on his body as much as the air.
His hair lifted slightly in the storm of his aura. His crimson eyes burned brighter, fierce and unyielding, as if reflecting the monstrous figure behind him.
He turned his head slightly, addressing the phantom that loomed unseen to all but them.
"…So," he murmured, voice low, dangerous, reverent. "You've been sleeping inside me all this time."
The phantom did not speak. It only pressed against him, radiating a presence that was both familiar and alien.
For the first time, Gu Kuangren felt a thrill not of triumph, not of battle — but of danger.
His power was not alone.
Zhu Zhuqing could hardly breathe. The pressure rolling off him was suffocating, pressing into her chest like a mountain. Yet her eyes did not waver. She forced herself to look, to see.
And what she saw… terrified her.
Not just because of the power. Not just because of the awakening.
But because in Kuangren's eyes, blazing crimson beneath the storm, she saw it again.
Enjoyment.
He wasn't resisting this. He was reveling in it.
The phantom flickered, then began to fade. Kuangren exhaled slowly, long and controlled, dragging it back down, forcing it silent. The oppressive weight lessened, the torch's flame steadied, and the chamber's air loosened in her lungs.
But the truth could not be undone.
Two martial souls.
One hidden no longer.
The silence stretched.
Kuangren lowered the Seven Kill Sword, letting it rest against the floor with a faint metallic scrape. His gaze cut across the chamber, locking on her.
"You saw nothing," he said quietly, voice calm but threaded with warning.
Her amber eyes gleamed, steady. Her tail flicked once, sharply. "I saw everything."
For a moment, they were still. Predator and predator, locked across the small chamber, the weight of a secret binding them.
Then her lips curved the faintest fraction — not amusement, not mockery, but acknowledgment.
"Your secret is safe," she said softly. "For now."
Kuangren's eyes narrowed, but he did not press.
The phantom pulsed once in his blood, silent, waiting.
And the torch burned low.