# Chapter 1
The rain had fallen for three days and three nights.
Jiang Buyu leaned against the corner of the derelict temple. Beneath him lay moldy straw; above him, a leaking hole in the roof. Rainwater trickled down his neck, soaking through his tattered, mud-stained clothes until their original color was beyond recognition. He hadn't eaten in two days. Sour bile churned in his stomach, and his hands and feet were as cold as a corpse's.
He couldn't remember who he was.
This thought gnawed at him even more than the hunger. Every time he tried to recall the past, his mind was shrouded in thick fog. Somewhere in that haze lingered the faint image of a woman's face—indistinct features, a hint of a smile at the corner of her lips, as if she were calling out to him.
*"Wait for me."*
These two words surfaced in his mind unbidden. He didn't know who had said them, or to whom they were spoken—only that they seemed carved into his very bones.
The temple door was kicked open.
Three men in straw rain capes barged in. The leader was a bald brute with a face full of coarse flesh, wielding a notched cleaver. They shook off the rain, cursing loudly as they started a fire, completely unaware that there was still a living soul in the corner.
Until the flames rose.
"Well, well." The bald man narrowed his eyes and pointed his cleaver toward Jiang Buyu. "There's a live one over here."
The other two turned to look, as if staring at a pile of rotting mud.
Jiang Buyu didn't move. It wasn't that he didn't want to—he simply didn't have the strength. But beyond that, he had an instinct that staying still was the right move until he understood who these people were. The instinct felt like second nature, bypassing his mind entirely.
"Boss, it's just a beggar," a lanky man said, walking over and nudging Jiang Buyu's leg with the tip of his foot as if kicking a dead dog. "Skin and bones. Barely enough meat for a single bite."
"Bad luck." The bald man spat and stretched his hands toward the fire. "Can't even find shelter without running into something that smells like death."
Jiang Buyu raised his head.
The firelight fell on his face—gaunt, with prominent cheekbones and sunken eyes. He looked exactly like a beggar on the verge of death. But his eyes were dark. Too dark. Not the eyes of a man who hadn't eaten in two days.
The bald man noticed those eyes. He froze for a moment, then scowled. "What are you looking at? Want me to gouge those eyes out?"
Jiang Buyu said nothing. It wasn't that he was mute—it was more that he hadn't spoken to anyone in so long that his voice had rusted over.
The lanky man kicked him again, this time in the shoulder. Jiang Buyu's whole body lurched sideways, and the back of his skull smacked against a pillar with a dull thud.
"I asked you a question! Are you deaf?"
"Enough." The bald man's tone suddenly changed. "Stop touching him."
The lanky man froze. "Boss?"
The bald man stared at Jiang Buyu's face for two full seconds. Slowly, he lowered his cleaver, and a strange, almost forced smile crept across his features.
"My friend," the bald man said, crouching down, his voice suddenly courteous. "My name is Hu San. On the rivers and lakes, they call me 'Dragon-Severing Jiang.' I make a living around these parts. Might I ask your esteemed name?"
The other two exchanged bewildered glances. Since when did the boss show such respect to a beggar?
Jiang Buyu looked at the bald man, his gaze utterly vacant. "I don't know."
"You don't know?"
"I don't know who I am."
The bald man's mouth twitched. He stood up, took two steps back, as if confirming something. Then he turned abruptly and said in a low voice to his men, "We're leaving."
"Leaving?" The lanky man was alarmed. "Boss, it's pouring out there! At least this temple gives some shelter—"
"Are you fucking deaf?" The bald man slapped the back of the lanky man's head, his voice trembling. "Do you know who he is?"
"Who?"
The bald man didn't answer. He just looked again at the figure in the corner—drenched to the bone, skeletal, withered—and swallowed hard. "*Buyu,*" he whispered. "*Lord Buyu.*"
The air went still.
The rain suddenly sounded deafening.
The lanky man's confusion turned to horror. His hands began to shake. The third man stumbled back three steps, knocking over a wooden rack with a clatter.
*Buyu.*
The two words that had once struck terror into the heart of the martial world.
The top assassin of Wangchuan Tower. "Buyu"—the Silent One. Legend said he never spoke before killing. When his sword left its sheath, blood was spilled. No one ever survived an encounter with him. Three years ago, he had vanished without a trace. Some said he was dead. Others said he had gone mad. Still others whispered that Wangchuan Tower had disposed of him themselves.
But no one expected to find him here, in this derelict temple.
Even less did anyone expect the legendary "Silent One" to have been reduced to *this*.
"No... no way," the lanky man stammered. "Lord Buyu couldn't possibly be this... this..."
He couldn't bring himself to say the word: *useless.*
The bald man stared at Jiang Buyu for three seconds. Then, slowly, a smile spread across his face. Not a respectful smile. A greedy, excited, cruel smile.
"Brothers," the bald man said, lifting his cleaver again, his voice turning savage. "Word on the rivers and lakes is that when Buyu fled Wangchuan Tower, he condensed all his lifelong martial power into a single Sword Seal, sealed within his body. Whoever claims that Seal—"
He licked his lips.
"—will inherit all of his cultivation and rise directly to the ranks of a first-class master."
Their eyes lit up.
Jiang Buyu remained slumped against the wall. He watched these three men, and for the first time, something flickered in his eyes—not fear, but confusion. *Sword Seal? Martial power?* He understood none of these words. And yet, something inside him was stirring—like a beast that had slept for too long, jolted awake by some distant alarm.
"Don't blame us for being heartless," the bald man said, advancing step by step, cleaver in hand. "You're already a wreck. Hoarding that Sword Seal is a waste. You might as well give it to us. Consider it a—"
He never finished the sentence.
Because Jiang Buyu moved.
He didn't flee. He didn't attack. He simply stood up.
The movement was agonizingly slow, as if every bone in his body protested. His knees cracked. He braced his hands against the wall for leverage. It took him three full seconds to straighten.
But even that simple act—rising to his feet—made the bald man stop in his tracks.
Because those eyes had changed.
In those black pupils, something was burning. Not killing intent. Not rage. Something deeper, colder, more ancient—the look of a cornered beast with nowhere left to run.
"*Leave,*" Jiang Buyu said. One word.
His voice was so hoarse it was barely audible. But that single syllable fell like a blade dropped into still water.
The bald man hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he gritted his teeth. "Playing tricks! Get him!"
All three lunged at once.
Jiang Buyu didn't dodge. He barely had the strength to lift his arms. But his body remembered things—things that didn't require a mind or memory, things carved into his very marrow.
When the first cleaver swung down, his body shifted three inches to the left. The blade scraped past his shoulder, slicing off a strip of ragged cloth.
When the second thrust came from the side, his right elbow dropped instinctively, smashing into the wielder's wrist. The crack of bone echoed like a dry twig snapping.
The lanky man screamed and let go of his blade. Before it even hit the ground, Jiang Buyu's left hand had closed around its hilt.
And then he swung.
It wasn't swordsmanship. It wasn't a technique. It was simply a single, straightforward swing. But that swing carried a strange, eerie rhythm—as if it had borrowed power from the void itself. A sharp cry tore through the air, and the blade faintly glowed with an ethereal light. The glow vanished in an instant, like a flash of lightning that flared and died.
The bald man flew backward, crashing through the temple door and landing in the rain-soaked earth. A deep gash across his chest gushed blood.
One of his companions clutched a shattered wrist, howling. The third had collapsed outright, his trousers already soaked through.
Jiang Buyu stood there, blade in hand.
His entire body trembled—not from fear, but from the strain of wielding power far beyond his limits. His bones groaned. His muscles tore. Every meridian in his body felt like it had been scorched by fire. Something inside him shattered, and something else began to reform.
And then he heard a voice.
Not from outside. From within—from the depths of his bones, from the thing called the Sword Seal. It was a sigh. Old. Weary. Heavy with endless sorrow.
*"You've finally reached this point... Buyu."*
Jiang Buyu's pupils contracted sharply.
His vision blurred. His body tilted backward. But in the last second before consciousness left him, he saw an image—
A woman in white, standing beneath a sky full of snow, turning her head to smile at him.
She said: *"I'll wait for you."*
Jiang Buyu collapsed onto the muddy floor of the derelict temple. The blade slipped from his hand and clattered against the ground.
The rain kept falling, pouring through the hole in the roof and splashing against his face, mingling with the blood at the corner of his mouth and streaming down his cheeks.
Outside, the bald man writhed in the mud, dragging himself forward, leaving a trail of blood. He glanced back at the fallen figure in the temple—and his eyes burned with a mixture of terror and greed.
The traitor of Wangchuan Tower. Buyu. He was here.
How much was this information worth?
He smiled. It was uglier than weeping.
Far off on a mountain path, a company of riders pressed forward through the rain. At their head was a young woman in a blue robe, a long sword at her waist, her features cool and refined. Suddenly, she reined in her horse and gazed toward the direction of the temple.
"Tower Lord?" a disciple behind her asked. "What is it?"
"That direction..." The woman frowned slightly. "There's sword energy."
"Sword energy? Out here in these desolate mountains? How could that be?"
The woman didn't answer. She turned her horse around and galloped toward the temple.