Chapter 4: Whispers in the Stone

The Tomb of Ten Thousand Swords was not a tomb.

It was a wound—a jagged fissure splitting the face of a cliff, its edges slick with rainwater and clotted moss. Li Chen knelt at its threshold, fingertips brushing the characters carved into the rock: "Here sleep the unworthy. Enter with their shame."

Yun Mei tossed a pebble into the darkness. It clattered for three breaths before silence swallowed it. "Charming epitaph. Did your ancestors employ poets or sadists?"

"Both," Li Chen muttered.

The jade slip's coordinates had led them through mist-choked valleys where shadows clung like cobwebs. Twice, they'd passed stone steles marked with the Azure Dynasty's crest, their surfaces defaced by sword strikes. Third time, Yun Mei incinerated the stele. "Graverobbers hate fire," she'd said.

Now, standing before the tomb, Li Chen felt the weight of Ming Yue intensify, as though the Blade resisted the trial ahead. Or feared it.

Yun Mei unspooled a thread of glowing qi, casting harsh light into the fissure. "After you, heir apparent."

The tunnel walls glittered with embedded swords—rusty dao, curved sabers, spears snapped mid-shaft—each sheathed in stone as though the mountain itself had impaled them.

"Ten thousand swords for ten thousand fools who sought the Bell," Yun Mei read from a plaque, her voice echoing. "Your forebears weren't big on mercy."

Li Chen traced the hilt of a dagger, its crossguard shaped like twin dragons. "They believed battle was the only ode worth singing."

A cold laugh drifted from deeper within the tomb.

Both froze.

"Wei clan specter?" Yun Mei hissed, igniting a vial of corpse-repelling powder.

The laugh came again—a girl's giggle, tinged with metallic harmonics.

Li Chen's hand found Ming Yue. "Not a ghost. Worse."

The sword let him see: in the lightless depths, three figures knelt, their forms sculpted from shadow and blade fragments. Guardians.

Swordghosts.

Yun Mei unsheathed her needles. "Define 'worse.'"

The first guardian struck—a blur of patina-green steel. Li Chen parried, but the Swordghost's arm melted, reforging into a spear that scraped his ribs. He kicked, his heel meeting cold stone.

"They reshape!" he shouted.

"Hence worse!" Yun Mei backflipped as the second guardian's limbs elongated into whips. Her needles found its eyes, but the wounds sealed instantly. "Got anything ancestral up your sleeve?"

Ming Yue shuddered. Blood wakes stone.

"Yun Mei! Cut me!"

She didn't hesitate. A needle scored his palm. Blood dripped onto the tomb floor.

The Swordghosts froze.

With a grinding groan, the embedded swords tore free of the walls, swirling into a cyclone of steel around Li Chen.

"Oh, splendid," Yun Mei deadlined. "I've always wanted to die as mincemeat."

But the blades didn't strike. They bowed, points buried in the earth.

Ahead, a path cleared—a bridge of levitating swords spanning a chasm. At its end glowed a pavilion housing a brass bell encased in chains.

Sword-Severing Bell.

Yun Mei whistled. "Remind me to bleed you more often."

Jiang Feng's Gambit

Back at the sect, Jiang Feng spat blood into a brass basin. The paralysis toxin lingered, but rage burned hotter.

He unclenched his fist, revealing a shard of Xue Huoling's shattered shadow sword. The fragment squirmed, whispering: "You are wasted here, child of gilded halls."

"You're dead," Jiang Feng hissed.

"Merely… redistributed." The shard burrowed into his palm. "Serve the Heavenly Sword. Claim the Blade. Your birthright. Your vengeance*."*

Memories surfaced—not his own. His father, kneeling before Lord Xue's throne, begging for their clan's life. A single nod. A blade falling.

Jiang Feng screamed.

When the pain ebbed, the shard was gone. But the whispers remained.

He rose, eyes bloodshot. In the armory, he strapped on his family's heirloom sword, its golden sheen now streaked with veins of black.

The moon hid behind clouds as he slipped into the night.

The Sword-Severing Bell's chains slithered like serpents as Li Chen approached. The Bell itself was etched with names—every wielder who'd ever sealed a Blade, their lineages extinguished in crimson ink.

Yun Mei frowned. "This thing reeks of regret."

Ming Yue burned in protest as Li Chen gripped the chains. The Bell's voice slithered into his mind:

"Renounce your Blade, Azure heir. Let silence claim its song."

Li Chen's fist tightened. "I need the Bell to protect them."

"Protect?" The Bell laughed with a thousand voices. "You feed them to the storm. Cut now, or cut later—the Blades always demand shearing."

The chains snapped.

Yun Mei caught the Bell as it shrunk to palm-size. "Charming artifact. It'll fit nicely in my collection of cursed—"

The tomb trembled.

Above them, the sword bridge collapsed, blades disintegrating to dust. From the abyss rose a figure armored in fractured mirrors, their surface reflecting Li Chen's face—older, harder, eyes devoid of mortal warmth.

Keeper of the Severed.

"Thieving hands," the Keeper intoned, "earn severed joints."

Yun Mei lobbed an explosive talisman. It fizzled midair.

"Alternative plan?" she asked.

Li Chen raised Ming Yue. The Blade's light guttered.

The Bell whispered: "Break me. Break the Blade. Break yourself*."*

The Keeper's spear flashed—

—and shattered against Jiang Feng's golden sword.

"Move!" he roared, parrying a second strike. His blade's corruption spread up his arm.

Li Chen gaped. "Why—"

"Not for you!" Jiang Feng spat. "Now grab that trinket and run!"

The tomb collapsed around them as they fled. Jiang Feng lagged, his breaths ragged, sword arm necrotic to the shoulder.

At the exit, Yun Mei jerked him aside as a boulder crashed. "You're unraveling, princeling."

He shoved her. "I need no peasant's pity!"

Mountainside debris pinned his leg. He screamed.

Li Chen hauled him free, ignoring the curses. They staggered into daylight as the fissure sealed with finality.

Jiang Feng collapsed, convulsing. Yun Mei forced a pill down his throat. "Apex-grade necrosis," she muttered. "He'll lose the arm."

Li Chen knelt. "Why save us?"

Jiang Feng's laughter bubbled blood. "He… promised me vengeance. Against Lord Xue. Against all of them." His corrupted sword dissolved, its remnants slithering into the earth. "But you… you're still not… worthy."

Darkness took him.

Yun Mei met Li Chen's gaze. "He meant the sword spirit. It's bonded to him."

In his palm, the Sword-Severing Bell throbbed, its chains coiling like a spider sensing prey.

That night, as Yun Mei amputated Jiang Feng's arm by firelight, Li Chen studied the Bell.

A leash for Blades. A shackle for me.

He almost missed the tomb's simplicity—honest steel, honest death.

Ming Yue's spirit stirred: "The Bell lies. To Silence a Blade is to kill its soul. You would murder me, master?"

"Not yet," Li Chen whispered.

But in the shadows, the Bell echoed: "Soon."