The morning wind carried the faint scent of ash and lotus.
Yang Yin Long stood at the edge of the ruined clearing, the soft hum of fading spiritual energy whispering through the forest. The events of the night replayed in his mind like a fever dream—unreal, terrifying, yet indelibly real.
He drew in a slow breath, but his hands still trembled.
"A… Nascent Soul True Lord," he muttered. "A True Lord."
Even saying it aloud made his throat dry.
The pressure of her presence, the suffocating aura of a being who could crush him between two fingers—it lingered in his bones like cold iron.
He had survived it.
He had touched a power mortals couldn't even comprehend—and lived.
A small, humorless smile ghosted across his lips.
"Lucky… or just stubborn?"
He could still remember her eyes—sharp, distant, unyielding even in chaos. If he had hesitated for a moment, if he had defied even a single command, she would have ended him without thought. That certainty made his skin prickle with goosebumps.
"A single step out of line, and I'd have been dust," he whispered. "So this is what it means to stand before the heavens."
When he finally steadied his breathing, the question hit him: how was he supposed to leave?
The forest had grown quiet again, but it was the quiet of beasts watching from the shadows. He was deep inside the core region of the Demon Beast Forest—too far for a mid-level cultivator to cross on foot.
He turned slowly, scanning the shattered ground.
That's when he saw it: a faint glimmer embedded in the soil.
A talisman, marked with the sigil of the Monarch Spirit Sect.
As his fingers brushed it, a soft feminine voice—Su Tian Feng's voice—echoed in his mind:
"This talisman will take you beyond the forest's borders, near Monarch Fall City. Use it when you are ready. It will shatter after one use."
Relief poured through him like water over fire. He bowed his head instinctively, though she was long gone.
"She… thought ahead even for that," he murmured.
The jade talisman pulsed faintly, waiting. For a moment, he almost crushed it. The exhaustion in his limbs begged him to.
But then—something stirred.
A sound—no, a feeling—brushed the edge of his consciousness.
Soft at first. Then clearer.
A call.
It came from behind him.
He turned.
There, in the far distance, half-shrouded in fog, yawned a dark chasm that split the earth like a wound: the Monarch Fall Abyss.
Even from where he stood, he could sense the oppressive weight rolling from it—the scent of death and divinity mingled. The very air around it shimmered with distorted space.
Legends said it was born during the battle of two Monarchs, beings whose names had been lost to time. They had fallen together—each slaying the other in their final blows—and their divine remains had burned through the world, carving the Abyss that still bled spiritual energy centuries later.
Scholars of the sect called it the tomb of gods.
Ordinary cultivators called it suicide.
Even Core Formation experts dared not approach it. The residual Monarch Will there rejected all life. Any who stepped too close were said to be torn apart by invisible force.
Yet as Yang Yin Long stood there, the call deepened, pulling not on his mind, but on his blood.
"Why… am I not afraid?" he whispered.
He looked at the talisman in his palm. Its surface shimmered, a promise of safety.
Then he looked toward the abyss.
The pull was unmistakable.
It wasn't coercion—it was recognition.
"This feeling… I've only felt it once," he muttered. "When I found the Qi-Nurturing Technique."
He hesitated a long while, torn between instinct and reason.
Finally, he sighed and tucked the talisman safely away.
"Heaven rewards patience," he said. "But sometimes… it tests courage."
And he walked toward the abyss.
The closer he came, the heavier the air grew. Every step made his heart pound harder.
The edges of the chasm were blackened stone, slick with residue that shimmered faintly like molten glass.
He waited for rejection—for his body to seize, for invisible force to push him away.
Nothing happened.
"So the stories were true for others," he breathed, "but not for me."
Something ancient within the pit seemed to acknowledge him.
He set his hand on the handle of an umbrella-shaped artifact he'd crafted years ago—a floating stabilizer made of light alloys and wind inscriptions. It flared to life as he activated it, creating a protective barrier that slowed descent.
Then, taking one last breath of clean air, he stepped over the edge.
Darkness swallowed him whole.
The fall was slow, guided by the artifact's pulse, but the world below flickered with visions—ghostly shapes of long-dead Monarchs locked in eternal battle, phantom swords piercing the air, fragments of laws themselves carved into stone.
It was beautiful.
And terrifying.
The corpses of long-dead beasts and cultivators littered the walls of the abyss, many still exuding faint, oppressive auras. Even in death, their might dwarfed his own.
Yang Yin Long's knuckles whitened around the artifact's handle.
"Even their echoes could kill me," he murmured.
After what felt like hours, his boots finally touched solid ground. The bottom of the abyss glowed faintly, illuminated by a single source of light.
A vine.
---
It rose from a crack in the ground, pulsing with quiet vitality.
Three fruits hung from its twisted stem, each one glowing faintly with divine energy.
The first shone a deep, blood-red hue. It radiated the aura of slaughter and steel, sharp and heavy as a mountain.
The second pulsed silver-blue, carrying the echo of thunder and a distant wolf's howl.
The third glimmered like a blade drawn from its sheath—pure, cold, and radiant, humming faintly with sword intent.
Yang Yin Long stared, breath caught in his throat.
"A vine… alive after all these centuries?"
The fruits' qi signatures were immense—each one rivaling treasures fit for Core cultivators. Yet none of them repelled him.
He took a cautious step forward.
The red fruit's aura whispered of mountains drenched in blood, of swords rising from rivers of corpses.
The blue fruit carried the call of a wolf amidst thunder, a beast that devoured lightning itself.
And the final one—the sword fruit—was perfection in form, its qi sharp enough to split thought from flesh.
His heart pounded. Every instinct screamed that he should not touch them.
But the call from the vine grew stronger, clearer, almost… familiar.
It wasn't the hunger of a beast.
It was recognition.
"Why do you call to me?" he whispered. "What am I to you?"
The vine trembled, a faint ripple of energy passing through its stem.
The light dimmed—then flared again, soft and inviting.
Yang Yin Long's breath hitched.
"You're… alive."
The realization struck like lightning. The vine wasn't merely a plant. It was a spiritual entity—one of heaven and earth's oldest creations.
And somehow, for reasons beyond his understanding, it had chosen him.
---
He stared at the three fruits for a long time, awe mixing with fear.
"Mountain… Wolf… Sword…" he murmured.
The air around him began to stir again, faint motes of golden dust rising from the ground as if waiting for him to choose.
But Yang Yin Long did not move yet.
Patience had always been his greatest strength.
He sat cross-legged before the vine, closed his eyes, and let the rhythm of the abyss flow through him.
If fate wanted him to reach for heaven, he would first learn to listen to the earth.
Minutes passed in stillness.
The abyss was utterly silent save for the slow rhythm of Yang Yin Long's breathing and the soft hum of spiritual energy gathering around him. The vine's faint light reflected in his eyes—red, blue, silver—a trinity of temptation suspended in eternal calm.
Then the calm broke.
The vine trembled. Once. Twice. Then again, harder. Its stem pulsed with sudden urgency, veins of luminous qi racing up its length like lightning trapped in bark.
Yang Yin Long's eyes opened. His senses sharpened instantly. The vine's energy wasn't chaotic—it was alive, excited, almost impatient.
"What are you doing?" he muttered, half in awe, half in alarm.
The ground beneath him quivered as if echoing a heartbeat. The fruits began to glow brighter. The faint red shimmer of the first turned deep violet, the color of blood mixed with dawn. The silver-blue wolf fruit flared with an indigo storm-light, lightning crackling faintly across its skin. The sword fruit answered in kind, glowing indigo-white, a blade of brilliance in the gloom.
The air itself thickened with qi, pressing against his lungs. He could feel the abyss responding, faint echoes of long-dead Monarchs stirring in their slumber.
"It's changing… the resonance is shifting," he realized. "If I wait any longer—"
A sharp pulse of intuition hit him.
He didn't know why, but he knew—the vine was reaching its limit. The energy building within it wasn't stable. If he hesitated, the fruits might vanish, dissolve, or worse—explode into pure essence.
Patience had carried him this far. But there were moments, even in cultivation, when hesitation was death.
He rose to his feet.
"Forgive me," he said softly to the vine, "but if fate offers a gift, I can't refuse it."
The vine's light flickered, as though answering him.
He extended a trembling hand toward the first fruit—the Mountain Fruit, the one that radiated purple brilliance like a bleeding sunset. The closer he came, the stronger its aura grew: a towering pressure of slaughter and endurance, of blade and mountain fused into one.
His fingers brushed the surface.
It was warm. Alive.
And in that instant, it recognized him.
The vine's pulse matched his heartbeat.
Behind it, the other fruits shone brighter—wolf-light flashing indigo, sword-light humming pure white—their energy merging into an unseen triad that filled the entire abyss with divine resonance. Even the lingering Monarch aura receded slightly, as though the world itself watched in silence.
Yang Yin Long's breath came steady, deliberate. He knew he was walking the edge of disaster, but destiny never waited for the cautious.
He tightened his grip—and plucked the first fruit.
---
End of Chapter 6.