Reincarnated as the Dragon Who Needed a Harem

Chapter 9 — Buried Alive

POV: Aren

They did not execute him again.

That, more than anything, told Aren how frightened they were.

The punishment pit lay beneath the eastern wing of the Azure Pact, carved deep into bedrock where light did not reach, and formations rarely failed. It was not a cell. Cells implied return. The pit was where inconvenient things were placed until time finished what the sect did not wish to dirty its hands completing.

Aren felt the mouth of it before he saw it. A hollow absence in the air, like the world had learned to breathe around a wound.

They marched him there in silence.

No accusations. No pronouncements. Just the scrape of boots, the hum of suppression chains, the distant echo of disciples pretending not to watch. When they reached the edge, a single elder gestured downward.

“Seal it,” Elder Qian said.

The chains tightened once more. Then the ground vanished beneath Aren’s feet.

He fell.

Not far. The pit was not designed to kill quickly. He hit stone hard enough to drive the breath from his lungs, the impact jarring teeth and spine alike. Pain flared, bright and immediate, then settled into a dull throb that pulsed with his heartbeat.

Above him, the opening narrowed as formation plates slid into place. Light thinned, dimmed, and vanished entirely.

The last thing Aren heard before silence closed in was stone grinding against stone.

Then nothing.

No light.

No sound.

No sense of direction.

The suppression formations activated fully.

Aren felt them like a suffocating weight pressing inward from every side. Not painful. Comprehensive. Spiritual energy did not merely fail to circulate. It ceased to exist in the space around him.

No ambient qi.

No earth pulse.

No heaven thread.

Nothing.

Aren lay on his back, chest rising slowly as he forced himself to breathe evenly. Panic would waste oxygen. Fear would change nothing.

Minutes passed. Or hours. Time dissolved without markers.

Eventually, he pushed himself upright, hands brushing cold stone walls slick with condensation. The pit was narrow, barely wider than his outstretched arms, deep enough that even if light existed, it would never reach him.

A grave built for someone still breathing.

The Dragon Core inside his chest flickered faintly, like a candle starved of air. It no longer pulsed with awareness. It barely reacted at all.

Aren pressed a hand to his sternum, fingers trembling. “Stay,” he whispered, not knowing whether he spoke to the Core or himself.

There was no response.

The bond, too, was distant. Still there, a thin, fragile thread stretching somewhere beyond stone and formation, but muted. As if wrapped in layers of earth and silence. The woman lived. He could sense that much. But barely.

Hours blurred.

Hunger came quietly, an ache rather than a scream. Thirst followed, sharper. The pit offered nothing. No water seeped through the walls. No insects crawled. No life intruded.

They had sealed him perfectly.

Aren sat with his back against the wall, knees drawn up, breath shallow. Without cultivation, his body was simply a body again. Fragile. Finite.

Funny, he thought distantly. They had taken everything that made him valuable. And still feared him enough to bury him.

The Dragon Core dimmed further.

Aren felt it slipping, not into sleep, but into something colder. A near-death stillness. If it went fully dark, he suspected it would not return.

He closed his eyes.

Thoughts surfaced unbidden, drifting through the quiet like ghosts. Not anger. Not plans. Just memory.

The tribunal hall. The elders’ calm voices. Lian Yue’s withdrawal.

The familiarity of it all settled over him like a second darkness.

That was when he understood.

Betrayal had not hurt because it was unexpected.

It had hurt because it felt rehearsed.

He had lived this before.

Not the details. Not the faces. But the shape of it. The pattern.

Promise. Utility. Disposal.

Aren frowned, brow creasing. The thought did not come with images, only sensation. A distant echo of standing somewhere else, long ago, surrounded by different walls, listening to different voices pronounce judgment with the same measured indifference.

You are no longer worth the cost.

Aren’s breath hitched.

His hand curled into a fist against the stone. “That’s why,” he murmured.

Not why they betrayed him.

Why did it feel familiar?

The Dragon Core flickered weakly, as if responding to recognition rather than power. A thin warmth brushed Aren’s awareness, not enough to save him, but enough to confirm the thought mattered.

He was not mourning this life.

He was remembering another.

The pit remained silent.

Thirst sharpened. His tongue felt thick, his throat raw. Breathing grew harder, each inhale scraping. His limbs felt heavy, slow to respond.

The Core dimmed again.

Aren leaned his head back against the wall, eyes half-lidded. “So this is how it ends,” he said quietly. Not accusing. Just observing.

Buried.

Unclaimed.

Forgotten.

If death came, it would be quiet. No witnesses. No rituals. The sect would sleep more easily knowing the anomaly had been sealed away.

Aren exhaled.

Then felt it.

A faint vibration against his spine.

So subtle he almost dismissed it as imagination. He stilled, pressing his back flat against the stone. Held his breath.

There it was again.

A gentle tremor. Not from above. From the side.

Aren’s eyes opened fully.

The stone wall to his right shuddered once more, dust drifting down across his knuckles. The suppression formations did not react. They did not even seem to notice.

That was wrong.

The Dragon Core stirred, the faintest pulse answering the vibration. Awareness flickered, fragile but present.

Aren pushed himself upright, heart pounding now for the first time since the pit closed. He pressed his palm to the wall.

Cold stone.

Solid.

Then, with a soft sound like a breath released after holding too long, a thin line appeared.

A crack.

It ran vertically through the wall, hairline thin, barely visible in the darkness. But Aren could feel it, could sense the pressure behind it.

Something was pushing.

The vibration came again, stronger this time. The crack widened by the width of a fingernail.

Aren’s pulse thundered in his ears.

He did not know what was on the other side.

He only knew this pit had not been designed to fail.

The Dragon Core pulsed once, faint but deliberate, as if acknowledging an opening.

Aren pressed his hand harder against the cracking stone, breath unsteady.

Buried alive, he had waited for death.

Something else had answered instead.

And it was breaking through the wall.