To call it a valley was a cruelty, a soft word for a hard truth. It was a graveyard. The Fleshlands unfurled before Lin Chen like a scroll of pain—a vast, cracked slab of earth stained the color of a fresh wound, littered with bones so immense they cast shadows like the ribs of a dead world. The sky was a swollen bruise, its purple-black clouds veined with lightning the colour of spilt blood. The air itself was a thick soup of rust and old iron, the metallic taste of forgotten wars clinging to the tongue.
And the weapons… they were a forest of sorrow.
They stood vigil, these iron trees: swords that had felled giants, spears that had drunk the light from stars, axes notched by scales harder than diamond. Each one was a monument, and each monument was defaced by the same profane sigil—a sealed gate, etched deep, pulsing with a light that devoured hope.
They did not scream with sound, but with soul. A symphony of final moments—the last gasp, the shattered oath, the final, defiant curse—echoed in the space between heartbeats. This was the Valley of Screaming Steel, and its song was an anthem of endings.
Lin Chen walked into its heart.
Barefoot on the cutting sand.
Unarmed in a forest of blades.
Unafraid in the face of eternity.
With every step, the Heavenly Curse Mark on his chest seared a colder brand, a chain of divine ice. And in answer, the ember behind his heart beat a hotter, brighter, hungrier rhythm.
---
THE FIRST SCREAM
It began not with an attack, but an appeal.
A greatsword, a sliver of fallen night nine feet long, was plunged to the hilt in the cranium of a petrified dragon. Its blade was black iron, etched with runes that smoldered with a dull, patient crimson. The hilt was wrapped in the desiccated sinew of its last wielder.
It sang a single, piercing note—the death cry of a woman, sharp and clear across the millennia.
Lin Chen halted. The world narrowed to the blade.
It trembled, a shiver of anticipation. Then, with a sound like a kingdom tearing in two, it wrenched itself free from the dragon's skull. Ancient, crystallized blood rained down like black diamonds. The greatsword hung in the air, spinning once, a dancer offering its hand. It presented its hilt to the boy.
He reached out. His fingers, still small and calloused, closed around the grip.
Silence.
The keening wail ceased. The valley held its breath.
Then—BOOM.
A conflagration of blue-white fire, the very essence of the ember in his chest, roared down the length of the blade. The runes blazed like newborn stars. The dragon skull, unable to bear the presence of a purer flame, cracked and crumbled into a pyramid of fine, grey ash.
And Lin Chen saw.
A woman, tall as legend, her skin a map of scars, her eyes holding the fury of stormclouds. She stood upon a mountain of the slain, this very sword in her hand, and spat at the golden, sealed sky. Her name was Huo Lian, the Ashen Valkyrie. She had died here, ten thousand years ago, her life a sacrifice to crack open a path to the heavens.
Her final thought imprinted on his soul, a whisper from the ashes:
"If the flame returns… let it burn brighter than mine."
The sword—Valkyrie's Requiem—had chosen its new master.
The metal flowed like liquid shadow, folding and compressing until it was a sleek, black-iron bracer encasing his right forearm. The sealed gate sigil upon it fractured, a single, hairline crack of defiance.
Lin Chen flexed his fingers. The bracer pulsed with a comforting warmth.
A slow, sharp grin cut across his features.
---
THE IRONBONE MONASTERY ARRIVES
They came with the false dawn, a thunder of hooves and the jangle of chains. Twenty monks of the Ironbone Monastery, astride their Thunder Rhinos. Abbot Tie Shan led them, a moving mountain of grim resolve. But it was Elder Huo Gang, his arms grotesquely reforged with Crimson Rhino Marrow, whose eyes burned with a naked, avaricious fire.
They had followed the silence, a louder signal than any scream.
They saw the pyramid of ash that was a dragon's skull.
They saw the boy,standing taller than he had any right to.
They saw the bracer,a artifact of myth, fused to his flesh.
Tie Shan dismounted, the earth groaning under his weight. "Boy," he intoned, his voice like grinding millstones. "That weapon is a relic of the fallen. It is not for the hands of a Dustborn."
Lin Chen tilted his head, a predator's gesture. "It did not find my hands wanting."
Elder Huo Gang barked a laugh. "The Valley consumes the unworthy! You are but a temporary vessel. By sunset, your soul will be another note in its symphony of screams."
Lin Chen's gaze swept the surrounding weapons. He could feel their attention, a collective, focused pressure.
He raised his hand.
And the valley awoke.
---
THE TRIAL OF TEN THOUSAND BLADES
This was not a battle; it was a coronation by combat, a rite of passage written in steel.
One hundred weapons rose into the air. A congress of ghosts. Each a named legend, each a contained apocalypse. They formed a perfect, rotating circle around him, a kaleidoscope of imminent death.
The monks recoiled. Even Abbot Tie Shan's stony composure cracked, his face leaching of colour. This was the Trial of the Valley—a myth spoken of in hushed tones. None had survived it in five millennia. The failed became part of the chorus.
The weapons spoke, their voices a layered, seismic chant:
"HEIR OF THE FIRST FLAME.
PROVE YOUR BLOOD.
PROVE YOUR WILL.
PROVE YOUR FIRE.
OR BECOME ONE WITH THE CHORUS."
Lin Chen cracked his neck, the sound unnaturally loud in the silence.
"Let's dance."
First Blood: A chain whip, sleek and deadly, tipped with a fang that had slain a serpent-dragon. It had been wielded by Bai Wuya, the Serpent Saint. It lashed out, a silver blur seeking to entangle and eviscerate.
Lin Chen did not move. His hand snapped up and caught the dragon-tooth tip. It bit deep into his palm, and golden blood welled forth.
The chain froze. Then, it did not break—it submitted. The metal liquefied, flowing up his arm in a silvery river to form a second bracer on his left forearm—Serpent's Embrace. The serpent sigil twisted, embracing the cracked gate.
The valley's approval was a roar of shifting steel.
Second Blood: A halberd descended, its blade a carved phoenix wing, spinning a hurricane of fire. This was the weapon of Feng Huang, the Phoenix Tyrant.
Lin Chen met it with Valkyrie's Requiem. The bracer became a sword of midnight in his grasp.
Steel met enchanted steel.
CLANG!
The impact was a physical force, carving a ten-foot crater into the earth. The Tyrant' soul within the halberd raged, a inferno of pride and power.
Lin Chen's ember answered with contempt. His sword blazed with the blue-white fire of origins.
The halberd shattered.
Shards of the legendary weapon flew, each one striking the earth and blooming into a perfect, flaming lotus. The monks could only stare, their doctrine of rigid cultivation crumbling before this raw, primordial display.
---
THE MONASTERY'S BETRAYAL
Elder Huo Gang saw an opening, a chance to seize glory from the jaws of revelation. While Lin Chen's back was turned, he moved.
A dagger, carved from the heart-horn of a Crimson Rhino, appeared in his hand—a weapon designed to pierce the strongest Tempering Realm defense.
He lunged, a viper's strike aimed directly for Lin Chen's heart.
The dagger struck home.
And stopped.
An inch from his chest, arrested by an invisible wall. The Heavenly Curse Mark flared, a vortex of black light. The legendary dagger glowed red, then white, then dissolved into a stream of molten slag.
Huo Gang screamed as the liquid metal splashed across his face, boiling his eyes and setting his beard ablaze.
Lin Chen turned. His golden eyes held no anger, only a chilling, absolute finality.
"You wanted my heart?" he asked, his voice quiet yet carrying across the valley.
He tore his ragged robe open. The ember was visible now, a miniature sun caged behind his ribs, pulsing with the rhythm of creation.
"Take it."
His hand shot out, closing around Huo Gang's throat. He lifted the elder one-handed, the mighty Marrow-Forged Arms cracking under the sheer, uncompromising pressure.
The bracers on Lin Chen's arms flared. Valkyrie's Requiem and Serpent's Embrace fused, becoming a gauntlet of living, black flame.
He punched.
Huo Gang's chest did not break; it vaporized. His heart—a crystallized lump of cultivated power—was flung into the air.
Lin Chen caught it, and with a casual squeeze, turned it to dust.
The elder's body followed, disintegrating into a shower of fine ash.
The Valley of Screaming Steel roared its primal approval.
---
THE FINAL WEAPON
Only one remained.
A spear. Utterly simple, carved from a single, ancient bone—the femur of a titan. Its tip was a yellowed fang. It held no scream, no raging memory. It held only a profound, absolute silence.
Lin Chen felt its weight in his soul. This was the first. The origin. The Bone Fang of Wu Tian—the primordial ancestor who first grasped Qi and tempered his own bones in the heart of a dragon. The founder of the path Lin Chen was now destined to break.
It floated forward, and then, it bowed.
The fang-tip pressed against Lin Chen's open palm—not an attack, but an oath. A seal. His golden blood flowed, and the bone drank it in.
The fang dissolved, leaving not a weapon, but a mark: a tattoo on his palm of a tiny, brilliant flame, its base wrapped around the shape of a sealed gate.
The valley stilled. The collective scream faded into a sigh of release.
One by one, the kneeling weapons sank back into the thirsty sand, their vigil ended, their purpose fulfilled.
The trial was over.
---
Abbot Tie Shan approached, his chains dragging through the sand like surrendering serpents. He did not look at Lin Chen, but at the tattoo on his palm. And then, the mountain of a man knelt.
"First Flame's Heir," he whispered, his voice stripped of all its former power. "The monastery… is yours to command."
The other monks followed, a wave of gray robes bending the knee to the boy they had called heretic and slave.
Lin Chen looked at them. He looked at the silent, peaceful valley. He looked up at the Veil, that golden, impassable barrier in the sky, and he smiled. It was not a kind smile.
"Not yet."
He turned his back on them and began to walk away.
"Where will you go?" Tie Shan called out, desperation clawing at his voice.
Lin Chen did not stop, his voice floating back, clear and certain.
"To burn the heavens."
---
He had taken five steps when the sand behind him erupted.
A hand—skeletal, flesh long gone, bound in iron chains—clawed its way into the air. Then another. Then a skull, still clad in the tattered robes of the Ironbone Monastery, its eye sockets glowing with a cold, black fire.
It spoke with a voice that was both Tie Shan's and something infinitely older, a rasp of grinding stone and dead stars:
"YOU CANNOT LEAVE.
THE VALLEY HAS CHOSEN ITS WARDEN.
THE FIRST FLAME MUST REMAIN BURIED, LEST IT BECOME A BEACON.
OR HEAVEN… WILL AWAKEN."
The corpse rose. Behind it, thousands more—the Guardians of the Valley, the souls of every monk who had failed the trial, bound for eternity to protect its secret.
They advanced, a legion of the dead.
Lin Chen stopped. He turned, his gauntlet igniting once more with the fire that had birthed worlds.
"Then let's see," he said, the ember in his chest blazing in his eyes, "whose fire burns hotter."
---