The night Liu Shiye met Xue Ruo, sleep abandoned him.
The Liu compound had long since fallen silent. Wind pressed softly against the paper windows, making them tremble like uneasy breaths, and the distant clang of a night watch bell rolled across Corpse Mountain before fading into darkness. Yet his mind refused stillness.
Her words lingered.
Not what she had said—but what she had implied.
Liu Shiye sat at the low wooden table and lit a single oil lamp. The flame sputtered before steadying, casting long shadows that stretched across the room like silent witnesses. He exhaled slowly and opened the text Ahmose had given him.
The parchment smelled faintly of resin and unfamiliar spices, nothing like the ink-scrolls of the clan archives. Strange symbols crowded the margins beside translated script, annotations layered upon annotations as though generations of minds had wrestled with the same truths.
He read carefully.
Then reread.
Yet meaning slipped away each time he believed he grasped it.
World energy. Refinement cycles. Bodily harmonization.
Concepts both alien and deeply familiar.
Hours passed unnoticed. Oil burned low. His vision blurred.
Only when exhaustion finally dragged him into sleep did understanding arrive—not gently, but like a flood breaking through a weakened dam.
Memories returned.
Not dreams.
Memories.
He stood once more within the clan training grounds of years past, knees pressed into cold stone as elders watched in silence. He felt again the violent trembling of energy forced through immature meridians, the burning ache beneath his ribs as circulation collapsed for the third time. Heard the disappointed exhale no one intended him to notice.
What Ahmose's text described, his own past confirmed.
In this world, power was born of world energy—an unseen current flowing between heaven and earth. Cultivators did not create strength; they seized fragments of that current and refined it within themselves, tempering body and spirit through the Twelve Body Phases.
Each phase reshaped existence.
Flesh was hardened first, muscles learning to endure forces that would shatter ordinary men. Bone followed, reforged through agony until marrow itself carried vitality. Blood refinement came next, every heartbeat thick with circulating energy, every breath feeding an inner furnace.
He remembered the metallic taste that accompanied early breakthroughs.
He remembered failure more clearly.
Only after all twelve phases could a cultivator establish the Vital Platform—the unmoving foundation anchoring power against collapse. Without it, advancement was an illusion. With it, transcendence began.
Beyond that foundation lay the Second Realm.
The Rings of Men.
They rose from the Vital Platform like invisible halos stacked toward the heavens, each ring condensed from refined world energy. A single ring elevated a warrior beyond mortal soldiers. Three commanded respect among clans. Five reshaped battlefields.
Tales spoke of thirteen.
Each ring was proof made visible—status given form, authority carved into existence itself.
To possess rings was not merely to be strong.
It was to be undeniable.
In the Corpse Mountain region, however, such power was nearly mythical.
Corpse Mountain lay along the fractured frontier of the Ji Dynasty—a hegemon whose banners stretched farther than most maps dared record. From distant capitals, imperial governors spoke of order and civilization, yet along the borderlands their authority arrived only as iron and fire.
Whenever talent emerged in Corpse Mountain—whenever a clan produced a youth too promising, a warrior too capable—the pattern repeated.
The tall weed was cut first.
Liu Shiye remembered the last raid clearly. He had been ten.
Imperial riders descended without warning at dawn, armor lacquered black, their banners marked with the Ji character for dominion. They did not slaughter indiscriminately; that would have been wasteful. Instead, they tested.
Young cultivators were forced forward one by one, ordered to demonstrate their progress beneath cold, assessing eyes. Those who showed promise were taken "for imperial service." Those who resisted vanished before sunset.
One boy from the Zhao clan—barely older than Shiye—had shattered a training stone during testing. The elders celebrated for three breaths before realizing what it meant.
The boy's mother chased the departing riders until her feet bled through her shoes.
No one stopped her.
No one dared.
After that day, celebrations in Corpse Mountain grew quieter. Talent became something families concealed rather than displayed.
As if imperial pressure were not enough, the eastern coastal region preyed upon them as well. Ironically, many coastal cultivators received their foundational training in Corpse Mountain itself, learning survival techniques refined through generations of hardship. Yet once strengthened, they returned eastward and negotiated trade from positions of superiority, purchasing resources at insultingly low prices while selling necessities dearly.
They posed no threat to the Ji Dynasty.
So they fed upon those who could not resist.
Caught between empire and opportunists, Corpse Mountain endured through a fragile balance maintained by distant interests. Far to the west lay Anxi—ancient Persia—whose sprawling trade networks depended upon the rare medicinal fungi, beast remains, and mineral salts harvested from the mountain ranges.
Caravans arrived seasonally, bearing foreign coins and strange goods, but their true interest lay elsewhere.
Labor.
Corpse Mountain's people were prized as resilient workers, their harsh upbringing producing bodies capable of surviving conditions others could not. Contracts named them "free laborers," though few possessed the power to refuse.
So long as trade flowed uninterrupted, greater powers found stability preferable to conquest. The Ji Dynasty tolerated the region's autonomy. Coastal merchants upheld the arrangement. Anxi's caravans ensured profit continued.
Corpse Mountain existed not as a nation, nor even a province.
It was a resource that happened to contain people.
And those born within it learned early that survival depended less on strength alone than on remaining useful to someone stronger.
Within this harsh reality, Liu Shiye stood at a humiliating impasse.
He had reached the cusp of the Third Body Phase at thirteen—an age considered promising within Corpse Mountain. Elders praised his early progress, and servants spoke his name with expectation. For a brief period, the future seemed settled.
Then advancement stopped.
The Third Body Phase demanded stabilization of the Fetal State—the birth of inner vitality capable of nourishing all future cultivation. It was said to feel like nurturing a second heartbeat within one's core.
Liu Shiye felt nothing.
Again and again he sat within the clan's meditation hall, incense smoke thick enough to sting the eyes, guiding energy along prescribed meridians while elders observed in silence. Each attempt began the same: warmth gathering beneath his navel, circulation strengthening—
—and then collapse.
Energy scattered violently, leaving his limbs numb and his breathing ragged. Once, blood rose in his throat, copper sharp against his tongue. Another time he lost consciousness before the session ended, awakening to servants pretending not to stare.
Failure became routine.
At first the elders offered guidance.
Then patience.
Then distance.
Three years passed.
Training partners advanced ahead of him one by one, their breakthroughs announced by celebratory drums that echoed through the compound walls late into the night. Each sound struck like mockery. Younger disciples began bowing to others before him. Conversations quieted when he approached.
Expectation turned into something worse than disappointment.
Pity.
He remembered one afternoon clearly.
A junior servant had spilled tea while refilling his cup. The liquid spread across the table, soaking cultivation notes painstakingly copied over weeks. The boy froze, trembling apologies spilling over themselves.
Liu Shiye struck the table hard enough to crack the lacquered surface.
"Useless," he snapped, voice sharp with fury far beyond the mistake.
The servant knelt immediately, forehead pressed to the floor.
Only later did Shiye realize the room had fallen completely silent. Two elders stood at the doorway, watching—not angry, not surprised.
Only tired.
That gaze followed him long afterward.
Frustration hardened into arrogance. Where strength abandoned him, he enforced authority through birthright. Commands replaced conversation. Pride concealed insecurity so thoroughly that even he began to believe the mask.
Liu Mingfei bore the worst of it.
Bound to him through marriage arrangements meant to stabilize clan alliances, she treated him with careful respect that felt, to his increasingly fragile pride, indistinguishable from condescension. Every measured word sounded like restraint. Every silence felt like judgment.
Rather than confront his weakness, he resented her composure.
The clan itself became an audience before which he performed certainty he no longer possessed.
Meanwhile, Liu Feng advanced steadily.
Where Shiye's cultivation stalled, Liu Feng's flourished with quiet inevitability. By the time Shiye remained trapped at the Third Phase, Liu Feng had already constructed his cultivation diagram at the Sixth Body Phase—a feat that reshaped how elders spoke his name.
Yet Liu Feng did not challenge him.
He trained, pursued his fiancée with embarrassing sincerity, and seemed largely indifferent to succession politics. That indifference stung more deeply than rivalry ever could. It implied Shiye was no longer worth opposing.
The elders chose silence.
They watched.
They waited.
Strength would decide the future eventually—but until fate revealed its verdict, the heir remained the heir in name alone.
___________________________________________
When Liu Shiye awoke from his dream that night, the memories did not return as fragments. They returned as understanding in completeness. But no memory was as surreal than his death.
For Liu Shiye, he was dying all over again.
Winter pressed against the walls of the sickroom, cold seeping through wood and paper alike. The air smelled perpetually of medicine—too thick, too bitter, as though healing itself had overstayed its welcome. Lamps burned low, their smoke staining the ceiling in dark halos accumulated over weeks of confinement.
Weeks.
No.
Months.
That realization came first.
His illness had not begun suddenly. It had crept forward—fatigue mistaken for failed cultivation, weakness blamed on stagnation, internal pain attributed to damaged meridians.
He remembered physicians frowning without explanation.
Remembered tonics that never strengthened him. Remembered Liu Mingfei insisting he continue treatment even after the elders lost interest. At the time, he had believed she alone still cared whether he lived.
Now the memory felt different.
The door slid open.
Liu Mingfei entered carrying a porcelain bowl, steam curling faintly into the cold air. Snow clung to her sleeves, melting slowly as she stepped inside. She wore plain robes, unadorned by clan symbols, her expression composed with careful effort.
She paused when she saw him awake.
For an instant—so brief he had once missed it—resentment crossed her face.
"You should drink," she said softly.
Her voice was gentle, familiar. The same tone she had used every evening during his decline.
She helped him sit upright. Her movements were practiced, efficient. She knew exactly how much strength he possessed, exactly when his breathing would falter.
Because she had watched it fade. She had measured it.
Liu Shiye accepted the bowl, but before drinking, his gaze lingered on her hands.
Steady.
Too steady. A faint unease stirred within him.
"How long," he rasped, "have I been like this?"
She hesitated only slightly. "Several months."
Months.
Memory shifted.
The first dizziness after a meal she prepared herself. The gradual numbness in his limbs. Cultivation energy disperses without reason.
The physicians' confusion. The way symptoms worsened only after drinking certain tonics.
Understanding began assembling itself piece by piece. He looked at the medicine again. The scent was familiar. Always familiar.
"…You never missed a dose," he murmured.
Her fingers tightened almost imperceptibly.
Silence answered him.
And in that silence, truth settled into place.
Not sudden.
Not shocking.
Inevitable.
"You started it," he said quietly.
Not a question.
Her composure cracked.
She lowered her gaze.
"Yes."
The word emerged fragile but unmistakable.
The room felt strangely calm.
No anger rose within him—only a cold clarity sharper than any rage.
"When?" he asked.
She swallowed.
"After the second year," she said. "When the elders began discussing contingencies. When it became clear your condition would not change."
Each word was deliberate, chosen long ago.
"I told myself it would be gradual. That no one would suspect poison. That you would simply… fade."
Her voice trembled faintly.
"I believed it would spare you humiliation. Even when you neglected to give me the same courtesy."
He almost laughed, but lacked the strength.
So many moments rearranged themselves instantly.
Her attentiveness.
Her patience.
Her constant presence.
Not devotion.
Maintenance.
She had guided his decline carefully, ensuring suspicion never formed.
"You decided," he whispered.
"Yes."
No denial.
No justification offered first.
Only acceptance.
Tears gathered in her eyes, though she did not look away.
"I waited for certainty," she said quietly. "I thought if you recovered, heaven wanted you to survive, I would stop. But each month proved the same."
Her breath shook once.
"And after a while… stopping would have meant confessing."
The honesty struck deeper than cruelty would have.
She had crossed a line too early to return.
"I told myself it protected the clan," she continued. "That a slow illness was kinder than public removal. That you would never know."
Her voice softened.
"But I underestimated you."
Liu Shiye felt warmth spreading through his chest as he drank, almost without realizing when he began. The liquid tasted no different from before—bitter, medicinal, familiar.
Completion.
This was simply the final dose.
"I came tonight," she said, "because the physicians said the end was near. I did not want you to die alone."
He studied her face.
Regret lived there. Resentment, hope.
But not reversal.
She mourned the necessity, not the choice.
And strangely, he understood.
All his life he had failed to seize control of his fate.
She had not.
The poison reached his heart quickly now. Sensation faded from his fingers, breath thinning into shallow fragments.
"I wondered," she whispered, voice breaking at last, "whether you would hate me if you knew."
He considered the question.
Weakness had invited replacement.
Indecision had allowed another to decide.
In the end, she had merely acted according to the world's law.
"…No," he said faintly.
Not forgiveness.
Recognition.
Her shoulders trembled once before she bowed deeply.
"I am sorry," she said. "That you weren't as strong as your father."
She turned and left.