Black Flame, Silver Moon

Xiao Ning sat cross-legged in the dim cave, shadows flickering across his face as the last of the silver fire faded from his veins.

The Codex's voice—once a constant, insistent presence—had gone utterly silent, drowned by the paradox meridians that now coursed through his body.

For the first time in what felt like ages, his thoughts were truly his own.

Oddly enough, he felt lighter. Freed. As if some invisible burden had been peeled from his bones.

But freedom had its price.

His cultivation had been reduced to ash.

"Hmph." He rubbed his aching temples, a crooked smile tugging at his lips. "Starting over... again. Isn't that just the story of my life?"

Yet even as he muttered, there was no bitterness in his voice. Strangely enough, he felt at peace. Before, he'd been shackled to Li Feng's half-baked foundation—crude shortcuts layered over instability, a sandcastle of cultivation always one wave from collapse.

Now, he was clean. Blank.

A slate wiped bare.

"Clean slate, huh?" he chuckled, leaning his head back against the rough stone wall. "Maybe I should stop whining. Who else gets a second chance like this?"

While his techniques and cultivation base had been purged, his physical body remained surprisingly intact.

Fourth-stage bone marrow, enriched blood essence, tempered flesh—these were valuable assets, rare even among elite sect cultivators. More importantly, two peculiar traces of energy lingered deep within his being.

The first was the residue of the Nine Serpents of Heavenly Blight. Though the curse had been burned out, its essence still clung to his heart meridian—a faint thread of divine poison, raw destruction essence etched into his bones.

"This thing..." Xiao Ning narrowed his eyes, pressing a hand over his chest. "Still here, huh? Stubborn bastard. Might as well put you to work."

The second remnant was stranger still: the Ghost Moon Brand, erased from his palm yet leaving behind a faint silver crescent. Beneath the mark, dormant but undeniable, rested an essence of pure Yin—cold, refined, and untarnished by any corruption residues.

"Cold enough to freeze fire," he murmured, tracing the mark. "Pure Yin... sharp and clean. Not bad. Not bad at all."

Unlike his previously damaged spirit roots, this Yin essence was pure and untainted—an ideal foundation for cultivating techniques rooted in balance, extremes, or inverse resonance between Yin and Yang.

Xiao Ning sat quietly for a while, sifting through the countless techniques and scriptures he'd encountered in his past life.

Most were unsuitable. Too reliant on spirit roots.

Too rigid.

"Too many damn choices..." he groaned, pinching the bridge of his nose. "If only I had one method that didn't care what I'd lost."

Then, like dust shaking loose from an ancient shelf, a single memory surfaced.

The Annihilation Bone Scripture.

He'd discovered it years ago in a collapsed ruin near the Bone Ash Wastes—etched in faint script across crumbling stone tablets, guarded by nothing but time. It had intrigued him then, but the risks were too high, and his cultivation also was too high back then. So, he memorized what he could and walked away.

Now, things were different.

"The Annihilation Bone Scripture..." he thought. "Turning the bones into conduits of destruction... bypassing meridians, ignoring spirit roots entirely... Heh. It was made for someone like me."

This technique didn't follow the rules of orthodox cultivation. Instead of drawing qi into dantian and meridians, it transformed the bones themselves into the source of power—fueling the body directly with destructive essence.

Xiao Ning's gaze sharpened.

"I've still got bone marrow, blood essence, and a body stronger than most nascent soul cultivatiors. Add the Heavenly Blight's residue and the Ghost Moon's Yin essence? That's more than enough to begin."

He sat upright, exhaling slowly. The first step was to focus on the heartbone—a conceptual point within the cultivator's chest said to anchor will, emotion, and the body's vital energy. In traditional anatomy, it didn't exist. But cultivators knew better.

He closed his eyes, diving inward.

The remnants of the Nine Serpents destruction essence stirred, faint threads of black venom twitching through his veins. He guided them, slowly, toward his chest—toward the heartbone. Resistance came immediately. Pain flared like a hot iron pressed into flesh.

"Come on... you little bastards..." he muttered through gritted teeth. "Don't play dead now."

Minutes dragged by as the energies converged. Then, a spark.

A black vortex formed at the center of his chest, swirling with destructive essence. Agony lanced through him. Sweat poured down his face, his back is arching slightly under the pressure.

"Aaagh!" He gasped, but didn't stop. The process had begun.

The heartbone began to change—its texture hardening, growing denser. As the destructive essence settled in, it reshaped the bone into something new: not just tougher, but fundamentally altered. A skeletal core of annihilation and destruction essence.

All at once, the cave dimmed.

Not from lack of light—but because the very concept of radiance seemed to recoil from Xiao Ning's body. The air around him warped subtly, light bending inward as if drawn to a black sun forming in his chest.

Veins near his heart glowed faintly—not with qi, but with threads of obsidian light. They pulsed in time with his heartbeat, each beat a silent detonation, sending shockwaves of heatless pressure outward.

Panting, Xiao Ning wiped his brow. "Not bad... for a first step."

Next, he turned his attention to the silver crescent on his palm.

The Yin essence beneath it still pulsed faintly, cold as starlight in a winter sky. He reached out with his awareness, feeling its stillness, its weightless depth. It was unlike the Blight's chaos—measured, calm, but no less potent.

"Yin and destruction... If you don't devour each other, you just might make something interesting."

He focused again.

Two forces. One from the heart, wild and burning with ruin. The other from the hand, silent and absolute in its cold.

Now, the real cultivation could begin.