The first sensation was not pain, but insult.
For a consciousness that had once resided in the Violet Celestial Plane—where matter obeyed the whim of will and light was woven like silk—to awaken beneath freezing rain, caked in filth, with gravity dragging at his bones like anchors of lead, was a cosmic affront.
Xie Luan opened his eyes.
The sky above him was a shroud of low, suffocating, leaden clouds, typical of the Mortal Dust Plane. Here, the heavens did not breathe; they choked. The ambient Qi was so scarce and so polluted with dust and resentment that, to his refined senses, breathing felt like inhaling ground glass through a filthy cloth.
He tried to draw air into his lungs. The act was interrupted by a brutal impact to his side.
"Move, trash!"
A boot—heavy with clay mud and manure—slammed into his ribs. The sound it produced was a wet, unpleasant, final crunch. Xie Luan had no time to brace himself; his body, a sack of weak, malnourished flesh, rolled down the slick slope of rain-soaked earth.
The world spun in a blur of browns and greys. His shoulder smashed against a jagged rock, his knee was flayed against exposed roots jutting out like the ribs of the land itself, and at last his fall ended at the bottom of a natural ravine. Stagnant water rose to his waist—icy, oily, and black.
Then the stench struck him.
It was not merely rain or ozone. It was the perfume of stagnating death: the rusted iron of old blood, the sickly sweetness of rotting flesh, and the biting ammonia of human waste.
He was in the Ravine of Refuse—the unofficial dumping ground of the Frostblade Sect. Failed alchemical experiments ended here. Diseased spirit beasts. And occasionally, outer disciples no one would bother to claim.
Xie Luan coughed, spitting foul water. The pain in his right side was sharp—a spear of fire pulsing in rhythm with each erratic heartbeat.
Pathetic.
His inner voice was cold and crystalline, utterly detached from the feverish tremor of his physical body.
Three fractured ribs. A lacerated spleen. Moderate internal bleeding. The meridians of this vessel are narrow, rigid, and calcified by years of malnutrition and inferior cultivation techniques. This is not a body; it is a cage of rotting flesh on the verge of collapse.
He lifted his gaze with effort. About ten meters above him, at the edge of the ravine, two figures were silhouetted against the dying light of dusk.
They wore the coarse grey robes that marked servants and low-ranking disciples—the sect's cannon fodder. One was massive, a poorly sculpted mass of muscle and fat: Wang, known as "The Bear." The other was thin, hunched, and twitchy: Li, "The Rat."
"Do you think he's dead?" Li asked. His voice was warped by wind and rain as he rubbed his hands together, peering into the darkness below with palpable superstition.
Wang spat a thick glob into the pit. "If he isn't, he will be soon. I broke his ribs and tossed him off a cliff. And it's cold. Hypothermia will do the dirty work before midnight."
"But… he moved," Li insisted, pointing downward with a trembling finger. "I saw him move when he fell."
"Death spasms, idiot," Wang growled, tightening the rope belt from which a bottle of cheap rice wine hung. "Elder Mo was clear. He got tired of waiting for the 'pretty boy' to accept his offer nicely. He said: If he won't walk into my bed, let him end up in the mud. We've done our part. Let's go. I'm hungry, and this place reeks of ghosts."
Wang turned away, his heavy boots splashing loudly through the muck. Li hesitated a moment longer, scanning the darkness with fearful eyes, but the terror of being left alone in that cursed place overcame his curiosity. He ran after his companion like a beaten dog.
Silence returned to the ravine, broken only by the ceaseless patter of rain against bones and refuse.
Xie Luan remained motionless in the icy water, controlling his breathing until it was shallow and silent. He waited. His patience was not human; it was the patience of mountains and glaciers. Only when he was certain no one would return did he allow himself to move.
He dragged his body out of the pool and leaned against the damp earthen wall. He raised his hands before his face. They were pale, with long, elegant fingers and well-shaped nails, though smeared with black mud. Hands of a musician. Of a scholar. Of a fallen aristocrat.
Hands useless for war, he assessed with disdain. But perfect for weaving the threads of fate.
He closed his eyes and looked inward.
In the Violet Celestial Plane, the soul was a radiant sun that consumed reality. Here, trapped within this dense realm, his soul was little more than a smothered ember. Yet at the heart of that ember floated his true inheritance—intact, and starving.
The Crimson Theater Sutra.
It was not an orthodox cultivation method that begged scraps of energy from heaven and earth. That was for brutes. This Sutra cultivated Concepts. It transformed extreme emotions—those logical faults in the structure of the universe—into tangible, malleable power.
Fear. Despair. Ecstasy. Rage.
Nuclear fuels, wasted by mortals, hurled into the void with every scream and every tear.
Xie Luan attempted to summon a thread.
A red line, thin as spider silk, appeared hovering above his index finger. It flickered, unstable, then vanished.
"Insufficient," he murmured. His voice sounded strange in his own ears—hoarse and weak, like torn paper. "I don't have enough energy to slit a throat. I need fuel."
He turned his head, scanning the dump. There were beast bones, shattered vials, and discarded robes. But a few meters to his left, half-buried beneath a pile of rotting leaves, there was something else.
A grey bundle stirred.
A low, almost inaudible moan escaped it.
Xie Luan narrowed his eyes. He was not the only refuse of the day.
He forced himself to move. Every centimeter he crawled was calculated torture; he felt his broken ribs scrape against the pleura, threatening to puncture a lung. Yet his face showed no pain. His expression remained one of absolute indifference, as if the suffering body were merely a borrowed tool that no longer functioned properly.
He reached the bundle.
It was a young servant, no more than sixteen. His robe was soaked in thick, dark blood. His chest had been crudely opened—likely by the claw of a Spirit Beast, or a failed dissection experiment by some sadistic inner disciple. The boy was still breathing, but his breaths were wet, short, and agonizing.
Xie Luan knelt beside him in the mud.
The boy opened his eyes. They were glassy and unfocused, staring at the grey sky without seeing it. When he sensed Xie Luan's presence, his pupils contracted. With effort, he focused on the pale, beautiful face above him—like an angel of death.
"H… help…"The word died in a cough of foaming blood.
Xie Luan observed him. There was no compassion in his gaze—only a clinical assessment of available resources.
"Your left lung has collapsed. Your pericardium is torn," Xie Luan said softly, his tone calm, almost soothing in its stability amid chaos. "Your liver is exposed to infection. Mortal medicine cannot save you, and no one will waste a high-grade spirit pill on a disposable servant."
The boy began to cry. Clean tears carved paths through the grime on his face.
"I… don't want… to die…"
He tried to lift a hand toward Xie Luan—seeking warmth, humanity, a merciful lie. His bloodstained fingers brushed Xie Luan's robe.
"I know," Xie Luan did not pull away. Instead, he took the boy's cold, trembling hand in his own. His fingers, long and icy, stroked the dying boy's wrist. "The instinct to survive is a strong chain. But look around you. We are in the trash. No one is coming. The gods of this plane are deaf, and its cultivators are blind. You are utterly alone."
Terror bloomed in the boy's eyes.
The certainty of his imminent end struck him harder than the wound in his chest. He began to hyperventilate. His residual Qi—weak and chaotic—started vibrating at a specific, exquisite frequency.
Fear.Pure existential panic.The dissonance of a soul refusing to go out quietly.
Xie Luan smiled faintly.
It was not a cruel smile, but the smile of an artist discovering the perfect pigment for his masterpiece.
"That's it," he whispered, leaning closer, invading the dying boy's space. "Don't waste that feeling. It's the most valuable thing you've produced in your miserable life."
Xie Luan gently placed his right index finger on the boy's forehead, between his brows.
"Your death is biological waste," Xie Luan said, his black eyes locked onto the boy's, hypnotic. "But your fear… your fear will repair my vessel. It is a fair exchange. I take your terror, and in return, I give you silence."
There were no flashes of colored light.
Only something invisible.
A metaphysical suction.
The boy opened his mouth to scream, but the sound died in his throat. His eyes flew wide as he felt the cold of death accelerate—not naturally, but violently torn from him. Fear—that electric, vibrant energy—flowed from his mind, across his skin, and into Xie Luan's finger like water rushing down a drain.
Xie Luan's body reacted instantly.
A warm, crimson current surged through his arm in his spiritual vision. The red thread in his soul expanded, pulsing with hunger.
He guided the energy to his side.
A nauseating sound of bones shifting filled the air. The fractured ribs forced themselves back into alignment beneath his skin. The torn tissue of his spleen knitted itself at an unnatural speed, consuming fear as fuel.
The pain was blinding for a single moment—white, absolute—then it vanished, leaving only a dull throb and an intense itch.
The boy stopped trembling.
The terror drained from his face, leaving behind an empty mask. His chest no longer rose or fell. He was dead—but Xie Luan had stolen the last minutes of his agony, accelerating his passage into nothingness.
"Thank you," Xie Luan murmured, releasing the hand that was already cooling.
He stood. He swayed slightly.
The healing had consumed nearly everything he had harvested. He was no stronger than before—but at least he was no longer dying. His body remained fragile, his muscles nonexistent, his skin pale as rice paper.
But it functioned.
He looked up at the wall of mud and stone.
Thirty meters of vertical ascent in the rain.
For an established cultivator, it would be a leap. For Xie Luan, in this ruined body, it was an odyssey.
He dug his fingers into the mud.
"One step at a time," he growled, beginning the climb.
Each pull sent protests through his weakened muscles. He slipped twice, flaying his knees, but he did not stop. His mind calculated every grip, every root, compensating for physical frailty with mathematical precision. His will was an engine dragging a broken vehicle uphill.
It took him an hour to reach the top.
When he finally rolled onto the wet grass at the edge, he was gasping, coated head to toe in filth.
He lay there for a moment, staring at the sky, letting the rain wash the grime from his face. From here, he could see the Frostblade Sect complex.
It was unimpressive by his standards.
A few illuminated pagodas atop the mountain—the Inner Sect—surrounded by rings of humbler buildings. And at the outskirts, where he stood, the rotting wooden barracks of the Outer Sect.
A nest of rats dreaming of becoming dragons.
Lights flickered in the distance. He heard the far-off sound of bells and hollow chanting.
Xie Luan rose slowly. Water streamed from his long, straight black hair as it clung to his face. Despite the filth and rags, there was an innate dignity in his posture. He stood tall, ignoring the cold that seeped into his bones.
He sifted through the memories of the body's former owner.
Wang and Li were symptoms, not the disease—low-level thugs, blunt tools.
The disease was Elder Mo Zha.
A mediocre cultivator stalled at the Foundation Stage, abusing his authority to prey on vulnerable disciples. Mo Zha wanted this body. Wanted to use it as a Human Cauldron to drain its Yin vitality and break his stagnation.
Xie Luan stared at his pale hands under the timid moonlight peeking through the clouds.
In his past life, he had erased solar empires with a whisper. Manipulated the fate of lesser gods.
Now, he had to deal with a lustful bureaucrat and two drunken bullies in a pit of mud.
The irony curved his lips into a smile that never reached his eyes.
"Very well," he said to the night. "If the universe demands I begin in the mire, I will build my throne from mud and bones."
He began walking toward the barracks.
He did not hide in the shadows. He walked down the center of the path, head held high, like a ghost returning to claim its grave.
He had a visit to make.
Wang and Li were probably celebrating his death. It would be rude not to join the party.
He raised his right hand.
At the tip of his index finger, nearly invisible beneath the rain, a tiny remnant of red energy shimmered. All that remained from the dead boy's harvest.
A single thread.
Enough for one life—if applied in the right place.
Xie Luan closed his fist, extinguishing the crimson glow. His eyes—black and bottomless as an abyss—locked onto Cabin 404.
"Knock, knock," he whispered