Interlude:- The Man Who Burned Heaven's Lies (Yan Zhou's Past)

Before they called him the Crimson Tyrant, before his name became a curse etched in ash and whispered to frighten children, Yan Zhuo was a boy who remembered too much.

He was born in the scholar district of Tianjin, far from the glittering peaks of elite sects, in a modest courtyard where books outnumbered blades and silence was sacred. His father, Yan Mu, was a spiritual historian—a man of dusty sleeves, ink-stained fingers, and soft-spoken ideals. His mother, Si Wanyu, had once walked among the elite of the Azure Blossom Sect, a cultivator whose blade drew lotus petals with every strike. But she had sealed away her cultivation, locking decades of power within herself to raise a family in peace.

She once said, "Power blooms where peace fails. Let our home be proof it need not bloom."

Yan Zhuo had been quiet even in the womb. And when he was born, the midwife said his eyes looked like they had seen war.

At three, he traced formations in the dirt with candle soot. At five, he debated visiting scholars about historical discrepancies. He didn't just remember facts—he remembered pain, his own and others'. A spilled teacup, a failed promise, a forgotten grave in a story—he felt them all as if they had happened to him.

It was a blessing. It was a curse. And it was his truth.

During his seventh winter, the Azure Blossom Sect was attacked by the rogue Black Flint Sect—mercenaries fueled by spirit-inked greed and cursed Qi. They struck during a snowfall, when talismans froze and alarms failed. Yan Zhuo's mother picked up the blade she'd sealed away, and for one final hour, she was once more a legend.

She fought like a comet—burning bright, beautiful, and brief. She died at the threshold of a forgotten library, shielding a scroll no one else even remembered existed—a prophecy too dangerous to be spoken, too true to be denied.

When they found her body, Yan Zhuo was beside her, cradling the scroll. He hadn't cried.

He never would again.

Years passed. Tianjin no longer felt like home, but exile. At thirteen, he entered the Sevenfold Pagoda Sect—not the richest, not the strongest, but the one whose libraries bore his father's ink. He consumed knowledge like air and rose through ranks faster than anyone dared.

Too fast.

The elders watched him like he was a fire waiting for oxygen. He was called "prodigy" in public and "danger" in private. At seventeen, he uncovered a senior cultivator enslaving disciples through soul-shackles. He exposed him. The man was punished—exiled from the Sect.

But Yan Zhuo paid the price.

Disruptive, they called him. Too sharp. Too idealistic. Too unwilling to obey.

He learned to speak with care, always a half-step from heresy.

He learned to smile when he was praised, and to sleep with one eye open when he wasn't.

By the time he reached Nascent Soul, Yan Zhuo had become more legend than disciple. Some revered him. Others wanted him gone.

Then came the turning point.

The Xuanjin Sect, famed for its harmony, was said to be a haven of peace and art. It was a lie. Behind its jade halls, children were being sold—trafficked to demonic cultivators in the north in exchange for cursed relics and forbidden techniques.

Yan Zhuo didn't go to the elders.

He didn't petition the Celestial Courts.

He burned the Sect to the ground.

Every elder. Every seal. Every last talisman.

He saved who he could—a hundred children, half-starved, spirit-scarred, barely breathing. But the flames took others—disciples too far gone, libraries full of secrets, lives tangled in complicity.

In a single night, a thousand died, and a hundred lived.

But when the smoke cleared, the world saw only the ash. Only the blood. Only the boy who had burned a holy place.

No one dared speak the truth. The sects whose elders had consorted with Xuanjin scrubbed their names from the records and offered a convenient scapegoat.

Yan Zhuo was declared traitor.

Tyrant.

Heretic.

He offered no defense.

No explanation.

He said only one thing, loud enough that the stars might carry it:

"If justice cannot bloom from the soil of your heavens, then I shall water it with fire."

Then he vanished.

Some say he traveled east, sealing rifts in the Desolate Wastes, sacrificing his soul to hold back what lay beyond. Others claim he entered the Sea of Glass, where memory itself shatters, and walked into legend.

The world wanted him dead.

But worse than death, they chose silence.

They rewrote him.

They buried his deeds beneath ink and verdict.

Erased the names of the children he saved.

Told tales of a madman with crimson eyes and fire-drunk wrath. Replaced justice with myth. Turned pain into politics.

And so history turned.

But memory?

Memory lived on. In stolen records. In forgotten songs. In broken jade slips passed through generations of those who remembered the fire not as destruction—but as cleansing.

And now, centuries later, the wind stirs again.

The name is whispered not with hatred, but with hunger.

With hope.

Yan Zhuo.

The man who remembered what others chose to forget.

The man who burned heaven's lies.

And now, he wakes.