All Chapters of The Risen Ghost: Master of the Chaotic Origin : Chapter 61
- Chapter 70
74 chapters
Chapter 61 (Before the judges) Shuyin’s POV
The door clicked shut, severing the connection. The lingering heat of Chen’s grip on my wrist evaporated, replaced instantly by the biting chill of the Sanctum’s air. I stared at the door for a long time, my pulse a frantic drum against the silence.I wanted to call him back. I wanted to tell him that the "ice" he saw was the only thing keeping me from shattering into a thousand jagged pieces. But the Heir of the Tao Clan does not shatter. She endures.I closed my eyes, trying to find the center of my meditation, but my mind didn't settle. It fell.And I landed in the memory I had been trying to retrieve. While my body was almost lifeless, my soul wandered off to a place where there was no floor beneath me, no sky above. I was a speck of dust in an infinite, ink-black ocean. This was the space between heartbeats, the realm where the Altar of Truth sends the soul to be weighed.I wasn't alone.In the distance, towering over the horizon of my consciousness, were the Thrones. They wer
Chapter 62 (The price of second place) Hanzhou’s POV
The silver-etched wards on my chamber walls hummed with a low, rhythmic vibration, a sound meant to soothe. To me, it sounded like a funeral dirge.I stood before the tall, obsidian-framed mirror, staring not at my reflection, but at the hairline fractures in the glass—scars from a momentary lapse in my control years ago. My hands were steady as I poured a cup of emperor smile wine , but I didn't drink. The scent of fermented spiritual herbs, usually a comfort, now felt like ash in my throat.I have spent forty years refining my breath, my blade, and my mind. I have bled more than any disciple in the history of the Tao. I have memorized the movement of the stars to perfect my formations. And yet, I am always the shadow cast by a taller mountain.Talent decided the throne, I thought, my grip tightening on the jade cup. Effort only decided who knelt beneath it.Tao Jianfeng was the "Ancient Pine," steady and unyielding. I was the root—doing the dark work, the heavy lifting, the necessa
Chapter 63 (Incoming storm) Chen’s POV
Everyone was moving and so was I. Shuyin had something buried in her and I could feel it. Wei had sensed something in Hanzhou’s spite and Yan Hu wasn’t left out, he kept leaving the room figuring as one of the guards. I sat cross-legged on the floor of our gilded cell chamber, the silver-etched wards of the room pulsing with a rhythmic, pale blue light. I extended my hand, watching the way the dim light caught the calluses on my palms. These were not the hands of the prince who had walked the processionways of the Great Yan Empire. Those hands had beer soft, pampered, destined to hold jade scepters and silk fans. These hands—scarred by the jagged rocks of the God-Grave Valley and stained by the iron-scent of a dozen battlefields—belonged to a ghost.I closed my eyes, and the darkness behind my lids immediately bloomed with the color of dust. It always comes back to the hum of the Primordial Marrow. I could still feel the phantom vibration in my spine where Wei Jue’s ritualistic d
Chapter 64 (Final straw to destruction) Hanzhou’s POV
I was nestling in my chambers waiting for the Emperor to act, so my plan could go smoothly, but instead of response, I heard the emergency bell of the clan ringing loudly. That could only mean one thing— an attack or the Patriarch had a message to deliver; one that couldn’t wait till sunrise.The Ancestral Hall of the Tao Clan was a place of suffocating history. Huge pillars of black obsidian rose toward a vaulted ceiling where the constellations of the founding patriarchs glowed in eternal, stagnant starlight. Usually, it was my playground for manipulation, but that night, it was too cold. I was the last to enter. I had spent twenty minutes before my mirror, practicing the exact tilt of my head, the precise furrow of my brow—the look of a grieving, concerned uncle. My robes were immaculate, my hands steady.But as I stepped over the threshold, the rhythm of the room shifted. Silence didn't just fall; it crashed.Twelve elders sat in a semi-circle of jade high-backed chairs. At the
Chapter 65 (The Emperor’s Entourage) Hanzhou’s POV
The soul-binding restraints were a special kind of cruelty. They didn’t just lock my wrists; they felt like jagged glass needles threaded through my meridians, stitching my cultivation shut. I felt hollow, amputated. For years, the flow of qi had been the rhythm of my breath, but now, it silenced. But as I sat in the damp dark of the interrogation cell, I didn’t feel fear. I felt a cold, clinical sharpened edge.Jianfeng had almost broken me in the vault. He had looked at me with those eyes—the eyes of a man who thought he occupied the moral high ground simply because he was born by the head of the Tao clan. Wait for it, I told myself, staring at the rhythmic drip of water on the stone. The Emperor would not ignore a summons to a feast. Then, came the sound. BOM. BOM. BOM.The Great Conclave Horn. A sound so deep it didn't just hit the ears; it rattled the teeth in my skull. It was the sound of a final judgment.The cell door ground open. Four Shadow Guards—men I had trained, men
Chapter 66 (The throne descends) Shuyin’s POV
The entire Tao Clan stood assembled in the main courtyard.Thousands of white and silver robes filled the stone terraces in silent rows. Elders. Inner disciples. Outer disciples. Administrators. Even the servants had gathered along the edges like frightened shadows.Even the wind seemed to move more carefully.Beside me, my father stood as rigid as the obsidian pillars. I looked at the elders; these were men who had lived through decades of storms, yet their hands were buried deep in their silver sleeves to hide the slight tremor of their fingers.The Emperor does not visit anyone. He sat at the center of the world and pulled strings. For him to travel from the imperial capital to a mountain clan meant only one thing…. the strings had snapped.His presence signified disaster. "His Imperial Majesty..." The herald’s voice was high, thin, and brittle, like glass about to shatter. “….the Eternal Pivot, arrives.”Every person in the courtyard moved at once. Thousands of knees struck stone
Chapter 67 (The price was gone) Shuyin’s POV
“Take me to your inner chambers for guests.” The emperor’s voice rose again. “Very well, your majesty.” I responded calmly. My voice was too composed. But inside me was a war. I had to get Chen out of Tao by all means else, the Emperor saw it as an opportunity to burn us. The walk toward the inner guest chambers was not a procession; it was a march toward a scaffold.Wei Jue walked beside my father, his presence a suffocating shroud of pressure. Every step he took seemed to drain the color from the world. Behind them, the twelve elders followed like a string of ghost-white beads, their breath coming in shallow, ragged hitches.“Your inner chambers are quite deep within the mountain, Patriarch,” the Emperor remarked. His voice was pleasant, almost conversational, yet it carried the weight of a decree. “One wonders what kind of guests require such… fortress-like hospitality.”“Our guests are often scholars of the Way, Your Majesty,” my father replied. I could hear the microscopic tre
Chapter 68 (The silence after ‘Go’) Chen’s POV
The portal spat us out into silence.No explosions. No smoke. No tremor underfoot. Just… stillness.One moment, the air was thick with the scent of Mountain air and the frantic heat of Shuyin’s voice; the next, it was stale, cold, and heavy with the weight of a thousand tons of overhead rock.I didn't move. I stood with my hand still half-extended, the phantom warmth of Shuyin’s fingers lingering on my palm. The space where the portal had flickered was now just empty, humid air.“Please don’t die, Lady Shuyin.”The words I’d whispered felt like lead in my throat. It was the same feeling—the same hollow, gnawing ache that had followed me since the day Master Mo stayed behind in the pagoda. It was the curse of the survivor: the silence that follows the "Go!"After I heard his “go”, I never saw him again. I looked at my hands. They were steady, but my Qi was a jagged mess.“This is how it starts,” I thought. You leave to save them, and by the time you earn the right to return, there i
Chapter 69 (Trio) Chen’s POV
The mountains stretched ahead like jagged teeth, the forest between them thick, heavy and silent, like it wasn’t a path made to we walked on. We were three days out from the Demon Subdued Cave, carving a path through the jagged spine of the mountains that led to the Imperial heartland. The further we moved, the more the atmosphere shifted. It wasn't just air and fine anymore— it was a pressurized system of residual Qi, hidden surveillance arrays, and the predatory intent of the Emperor’s hounds.Long Wei walked five paces ahead of us. He didn’t look like the shivering boy from the cave. His eyes were wide open, but the pupils were dark, swallowing the light as he tracked the invisible ley lines of the forest.Suddenly, he stiffened. He didn't turn around, but his voice drifted back to us, thin and sharp as a needle.“There are three ahead,” Wei whispered. “They don’t feel like the standard guards we saw at the Tao gates, they are stronger... but they feel hollow. Like echoes.”I felt
Chapter 70 (The prince who returned) Chen’s POV
As we slipped into the imperial capital, heads bowed under deep traveling cloaks, the sheer weight of the atmosphere hit me.The Imperial Capital didn't smell like incense and gold. It smelled like stagnant pond water and old copper. This was the heart of the Yan Empire—the "City of Eternal Radiance"—but the light felt filtered through a shroud.The cloaks did little to hide the unease that crept up my spine. The Imperial Capital should have been radiant—golden banners, glimmering tiles, the kind of light that made a man feel alive.Instead… It was gray. Muted. Heavy.A crowd pressed around us, excitement plastered on their faces, but the energy beneath their movements was off. Like a river whose flow had been forced into a rigid channel.Yan Hu walked beside me, his eyes scanning the city, jaw tight. “This… doesn’t feel right,” he murmured. “What is the celebration about, why does it feel dark?” I said nothing. I didn’t need to. Every instinct, every thread of Qi, told me the city