Location: Secret Chamber, Shaw Family Compound — Midnight
The ritual chamber was cold.
Beneath the Shaw family's grand temple lay a forbidden place—hidden from the family elders and guarded by silent, masked cultivators loyal only to Patriarch Smith Shaw. Here, under flickering talismanic light, two infants were placed on opposite jade altars.
One was crying.
One lay still.
The prodigy—the rightful heir—squirmed in pain, unaware of the cruel fate awaiting him. His mother, unconscious under the influence of a sleeping incense, was miles away, believing her child to be safe and healthy.
Patriarch Smith Shaw stood over the altars, his eyes shadowed with guilt, but his resolve firm. Beside him stood the family's secret spiritualist—a withered man known as Elder Mo, a master of forbidden alchemy and marrow transference.
Elder Mo bowed low. "Once this ritual begins, there will be no turning back. The bone will be removed, and the child without it… may never cultivate again. Perhaps even die."
Smith's fists clenched. "Do it."
Golden runes lit up beneath the altars as Elder Mo chanted in a forgotten tongue. A pale light surged from the prodigy's chest, rising like smoke, coalescing into a faintly glowing object: the Supreme Bone, forged by the heavens, alive with spiritual rhythm.
As it was extracted, the baby's cry turned into a scream—painful, unnatural. His skin dimmed. The shimmering patterns on his body faded. His aura vanished.
And then... silence.
The boy went limp.
On the opposite altar, the weak infant twitched, then began to glow faintly. As the Supreme Bone fused into him, his meridians lit up. His breath stabilized. His spirit core awakened.
To Smith Shaw, it was a success. The weak now had a future. The strong was no longer needed.
And yet… in the silence that followed, something shifted in the air. The wind outside howled. The protective talismans on the chamber walls flickered violently.
Elder Mo froze. "This… This is wrong. The heavens… are angry."
But it was too late.
Smith turned away, muttering, "Send the other child away. Say he died during birth. Dispose of the body quietly."
And with that, the prodigy—stripped of his bone, his identity, his family—was carried out under the cover of darkness, wrapped in a torn cloth, and tossed into the edge of a wild forest.
Abandoned. Broken. Forgotten.
He was not supposed to survive.
But fate… had other plans.