He began to crawl.
One hand forward with fingers digging into the mud, pulling the other hand. His knees were scraping against rocks, leaving flesh behind but it was Forward, again and again.
The ravine floor was like a maze of debris, fallen stones, dead branches, the bones of animals that had suffered his fate. He dragged himself over and through, ignoring the way his wounds felt.
And there above was a shadow in the cliff's face. A cave mouth, maybe ten meters ahead.
SHELTER.
He crawled.
The distance might as well have been ten thousand, each meter was a war. His body needed rest, surrender, any sweet release of unconsciousness but he denied it and kept moving through sheer spite.
You Want Me Dead? Watch Me Live.
When he finally crossed the threshold of the cave mouth, night had fallen properly. The ravine behind him was in pure darkness filled with the sounds of Things waking up... Hunting sounds.
Longwei collapsed onto a stone that was at least dry.
Rest, his body begged. Just for a moment, Just...
But as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of the cave, he saw something that made his breath stop.
This wasn't a natural formation.
The walls in cave were too smooth, carved in patterns that seemed to shift when he looked directly at them — spirals and interlocking forms that suggested meaning without revealing it.
And at the far end perhaps like twenty meters deeper was a faint glow.
Blue-white and brightening, pulsing like a heartbeat.
Longwei's body didn't want to move, every nerve was screaming to rest but that light...
That light felt like POSSIBILITY, like it was drawing him closer.
And he started crawling toward it.
The cave floor was smooth beneath him, thank god. The walls seemed to watch as he dragged his broken body forward, their patterns casting dancing shadows in the growing light.
The glow came from a pedestal like thing, it was a white flawless jade, rising from the cave floor like it had grown there and resting on its top...
A BOOK.
No, not a book... A Scripture.
Even with his core shattered, Longwei could feel the power radiating from it. Like the heat of stars being born, the energy he felt wasn't quite Qi as he understood it, it was something else, something Primordial.
The cover was blackish and unmarked except for a single symbol embroidered in silver: Two serpents intertwined, one dark and one light but each consuming the other's tail.
He knew that symbol.
Every cultivator did.
It was the mark of the PRIMORDIAL UNION, the Yin-Yang spiral in its oldest form. The sign of Dual Cultivation, the forbidden art, the heretical path, the practice that every orthodox sect condemned as evil, corrupting and depraved.
Longwei stared at the scripture.
The righteous sects taught that dual cultivation was parasitic, that practitioners drained their partners and left them hollow and empty, achieving power through spiritual vampirism. The stories spoke of beautiful predators who seduced innocents and consumed their cultivation, rising through stolen strength.
He'd believed those stories. Everyone did.
But here, in this hidden cave bleeding out on ancient stone... did it matter what he'd believed?
His cultivation was gone, his reputation was gone and his sect had thrown him away. The woman he'd loved had betrayed him and his mother had died.. died for him and he couldn't even be able to make her sacrifice worthwhile.
He had nothing left.
What was one more fall?
Longwei reached for the scripture.
The moment his fingers touched the black silk, the world... Stopped.
Not physically. The cave remained, his body remained, broken and bleeding. But something else opened, a door in his perception that he hadn't known existed and suddenly he was aware of energy patterns he'd never sensed before. The flow of Yin and Yang through everything, the dance of opposites that underlaid all cultivation.
His shattered core pulsed again.
Not with Qi, there was no Qi left, But it moved with something else, a seed.
He opened the book.
The first page contained a single passage, written in characters that seemed to glow with inner fire:
"You Who Have Fallen, attend.
You who have lost everything, attend.
You who have been broken by the righteous and cast out by the pure, attend."
"THE PRIMORDIAL SCRIPTURE: The truth that was buried, the path that was forbidden not because it was evil but because it was too powerful to be allowed.
The orthodox sects teach that strength comes from isolation. From denial
and from the severing of earthly bonds. They lie.
True power is born from union, from vulnerability and fom the joining of Yin and Yang in perfect harmony.
To walk this path, you must bare yourself in body, soul and truth. For there is no cultivation without surrender, no power without trust, no ascension without union.
This is the price.
This is the promise.
Read on, broken one if you would be made whole."
Longwei read the words once, twice then three times.
No cultivation without surrender, no power without trust, no ascension without union.
Everything he'd been taught said that cultivation was a solitary path, that attachment was weakness, that desire was distraction. He'd lived with that philosophy, poured himself into training, neglected relationships and treated his engagement as a political convenience rather than a partnership.
And where had it gotten him?
Broken, alone and dying in a cave.
Maybe... maybe the orthodox path wasn't the only truth and maybe it wasn't even the right one.
With a shaky bloody fingers, Longwei turned to the next page.
And Began To Read again.
But outside the cave, night deepened over the Ravine of Broken Oaths. Spirit beasts prowled the darkness, drawn by the scent of blood but something kept them from approaching the cave's mouth. Something powerful.
In the distant Celestial Sword Pavilion, Zhou Chen reported a tragic training accident. Elder Xuan nodded solemnly and ordered the records updated. In the inner sect quarters, Jiang Yating received the news with revised tearful eyes, later allowing her true lover to comfort her.
But no one mourned Shen Longwei because no one cared, and no one expected to hear his name again.
In the cave, a broken man turned another page, then another. The scripture's glow reflecting in his eyes, eyes that had been dulled with despair now held something else.
A SPARK.
A HUNGER.
And it only grew stronger.