Chapter 5: A Debt Written in Blood

The silence in the cave was not empty—it breathed.

It echoed with the weight of a thousand forgotten names, drifting through the dim chamber where ancient spirit stones lined the walls like dull stars. Xu Ming knelt before a faded mural, the light from his palm dancing against the cracked surface.

It depicted a man standing alone against the heavens, sword raised—not in glory, but in defiance.

The mural was older than the dynasty that buried him. Older, perhaps, than memory itself.

"Why… did you kneel here too?" he whispered.

He wasn't asking the painting. He was asking the soul that had once worn this same body. The previous Xu Ming. The coward, the cripple, the disgrace. The boy who had been mocked, beaten, exiled—and left to rot in this forgotten tomb.

But as the silence stretched, Xu Ming rose—not with anger, but with something colder. A clarity that carved his thoughts into steel.

The inheritance here was not a gift. It was a test.

And so he stood.

A gate pulsed at the far side of the chamber. Carved of obsidian, veined with crimson, its surface rippled like water though it was stone. The inscription above it had been scratched out violently, as if the heavens themselves had tried to erase its name.

Without hesitation, Xu Ming stepped through.

—

The world beyond the gate was not made of matter, but of soul.

He floated in a sea of twilight. Below, memories churned like storms—visions not his own.

A dragon dying beneath ten thousand spears.

A little girl laughing as she fed a tiger from her hand.

A man sitting alone on a battlefield, weeping over a broken blade.

Xu Ming felt them all. Not with his mind, but with something deeper. The core of his spirit trembled—and then… expanded.

The sea began to crack.

The world screamed as something vast stirred beneath him.

"WHO DARES WAKE ME?"

The voice was not sound. It was pressure. Meaning. Power.

Xu Ming's knees buckled. His vision blurred. But he did not fall. Instead, he spoke, not with arrogance, but with certainty:

"I am Xu Ming."

"I died once."

"I will not die again."

The sea shattered.

And from the darkness… eyes opened. Ancient, endless, and burning like twin stars.

A beast rose, taller than mountains, cloaked in shadow and flame. Its antlers curved like crescents; its eyes held storms. The Qilin of the Void.

It stared at him.

And then, it bowed.

Just slightly.

Enough to break the sky.

—

Xu Ming awoke gasping. He was back in the cave.

But something had changed.

The dragon mark on his chest pulsed. His meridians blazed with unfamiliar force. And floating beside him—hovering silently in the air—was a lotus of blood-red flame.

[You have inherited: Crimson Lotus – Soul Tier.]

He smiled.

Finally… the climb began.

[end of chapter 5]