The world collapsed inward.Yunlei wasn’t falling, yet he wasn’t standing either. He hovered in a void where color bled into nothing, where time fractured into a million shards. The Gate had swallowed him whole—mind, body, and Qi—and now he floated inside what could only be described as the Maw of Time.The air shimmered like boiling mercury. Whispers curled around him, each voice an echo of someone he’d been before—child, disciple, exile, emperor’s son, killer, healer. His lives tangled together like threads in a loom. Something unseen was weaving.“What are you?” a voice boomed—ancient, genderless, and infinite.Yunlei opened his mouth to answer, but no sound came out.Images flared around him. Moments torn from memory: his mother’s smile, his father's dying words, Lady Xue’s quiet scolding, Meilin’s sharp wit, Yongli’s loyalty, the Sect’s betrayal. Each one formed a ring of light around him. Then, just as quickly, they shattered like porcelain.“What are you?” the voice asked again

Yunlei stepped into silence—an absolute void that neither welcomed nor repelled, but simply was. The blinding white Qi receded, replaced by a boundless field of darkness littered with floating embers, each one pulsing faintly like a dying star. It wasn’t cold, but there was a solemn weight to the air, the kind that only ancient truths could carry.In the center of this dark plane floated a solitary flame—brilliant gold threaded with violet and silver. Unlike any fire he had seen, this one breathed, shrinking and expanding as if alive. It wasn’t large—no bigger than his palm—but Yunlei felt its pull like a gravitational force. This was the Origin Spark, the source of the Kirin Flame, the divine essence from which all martial fires in the world had descended.As Yunlei took a step closer, the embers surrounding him began to flicker. Some surged brighter, responding to his presence. Others extinguished instantly, their light lost to the void.Then came the voice—not external, but inside

As the sun dipped behind the imperial walls, painting the sky in streaks of blood-red and gold, a strange silence settled over the palace. Word of Yunlei’s appearance had already swept through the capital like a wildfire. Courtiers whispered behind lacquered doors. Sects sent urgent messenger falcons into the night. Every clan, every spy, every sleeping threat suddenly awoke.But one figure moved through the shadows with purpose.A woman in crimson robes, her face veiled and her presence light as air, stood on the palace roof. Her eyes, amber and unblinking, fixed on the open courtyard below—where Yunlei knelt before the ancient flame altar, surrounded by nothing but wind and firelight.The woman was known only by one name in the underworld: Yue Qian, the Flame Widow.An assassin of unmatched skill, trained by the Phoenix Temple, her name had vanished from records years ago after completing a mission thought impossible—the quiet extermination of the Cloud Spear Sect’s entire elder cou

The moment Yunlei stepped out of the Blood Pagoda, something shifted in the air above the palace. The moon, once half-shrouded in clouds, now gleamed like polished jade, casting silver light on the palace roofs. But what drew his attention wasn’t the sky—it was the silence.A silence too deep.Yue Qian emerged behind him, clutching the ancient scroll they had just claimed. “Where are the guards?” she whispered.“They’re watching,” Yunlei said quietly. “But they’re not from the palace.”As if summoned, a ripple passed through the courtyard ahead—then another. Shadows detached from the pillars, peeling away like oil from water, each forming a tall, robed figure with blank, porcelain masks. Their movements were eerily fluid, soundless.“The Masked Ones,” Yue Qian breathed.Yunlei nodded grimly. “They served the Obsidian Council. Or what’s left of it.”One of the masked figures stepped forward. The mask bore a crimson line down the center, like a blood tear. “Heir of Kirin,” came a voice

The sands of the Southern Reaches stretched endlessly before them, waves of golden heat undulating under a pitiless sun. The journey from the Cradle of Ashes to the edge of the desert had taken three days, and by the time Yunlei and Yue Qian reached the dunes, their supplies were almost gone. But they pressed forward, guided by a map the Monk of the Withered Tree had inscribed in ash on Yue Qian’s scroll.At twilight, the horizon shimmered—and then shifted. A jagged silhouette rose from the dunes like the bones of a dead titan: broken pillars, stone domes half-swallowed by sand, and a single intact archway carved with glyphs older than the empire.“The Temple of Falling Stars,” Yue Qian whispered, awe tinged with dread. “No one’s stepped inside in centuries.”Yunlei’s eyes narrowed. “It hasn’t been abandoned. Look.”Near the entrance, fresh footprints danced across the sand. Not one pair, but many—some human, others clawed. A sigil etched into the stone above the arch glowed faintly w