The walls bled.
Thick, sludgy blood oozed from the black stone like pus from a rotted wound. It ran along the jagged floor and coiled around Li Shen's bare feet, burning where it touched. He didn't flinch.
Not anymore.
After the Mirror. After devouring his own reflection. After watching Yue Ling die again and again by his own hands… this pain was familiar.
The priestess didn't speak this time.
She only raised her hand and traced a symbol in the air — one that wasn't a word but a scream bound in ink. The chamber around them groaned. Then the floor split open beneath him like the mouth of an ancient god.
Li Shen fell into it without a sound.
---
When he landed, there was no impact.
There was no ground.
Only a void. A field of whispering ash and crimson fog that moved like breath from a dying beast. The air was thick with rot and something worse — recognition.
He was not alone.
They watched him.
Not monsters. Not beasts.
His memories.
They stepped from the mist one by one, wearing faces he thought long buried. His mother. His brother. His first master, whose heart had been torn out during the sect's fall. Yue Ling. Again. Always her.
And among them, a child.
A small boy, barefoot, wide-eyed, soaked in blood.
Himself.
A memory so old it should've been forgotten.
The child raised his hand and pointed at him. "You let it happen."
Li Shen's lips twitched. "I didn't have a choice."
"You begged," the boy said. "You cried. You screamed. And you ran."
A sword of light appeared in the boy's hand. Without hesitation, he charged.
---
Li Shen blocked the strike with his forearm. Bone cracked. The boy — younger Li Shen, the helpless one — moved like a phantom, slashing without rhythm, shrieking with every blow.
He wasn't attacking to kill.
He was attacking to make him remember.
Every cut screamed. Each strike was a moment he had buried — Yue Ling's broken body, the dead disciples, the failure on Heiyin Peak, the cleaver of the Abyss Warden splitting his shoulder.
Each memory was a blade, cutting him again.
He screamed back.
And then he fought back.
He lunged forward and drove his fist into the boy's face — not to kill, but to shatter. The child exploded into mist and light.
Another memory took his place.
This one worse.
The ghost of Yue Ling, her eyes hollow, her mouth sewn shut with gold thread, rose from the fog. Her hand held a broken jade talisman — his.
"You promised me," she said through bleeding stitches.
He dropped to his knees.
"I know," he whispered. "And I failed."
The ghost did not embrace him. Did not offer comfort.
She screamed — and her body split into dozens of insectile horrors, each one wearing her face, crawling up his legs and into his mouth.
---
Darkness.
Suffocating, cloying, absolute.
Li Shen gasped awake in another chamber — this one lined with mirrors. But unlike the Mirror of the Drowned God, these did not show reflections.
They showed possibilities.
Versions of him that had turned away from the path. Happy, broken, righteous, cowardly.
One lived in a small village with Yue Ling and a child.
Another wore robes of a righteous sect and smiled like he had never seen death.
Another was a mindless warlord with eyes of fire.
But one stood apart from the rest.
A Li Shen without soul. Without face. A hollow man surrounded by mountains of corpses.
He walked forward.
"You're not me," Li Shen said.
"No," the hollow one said. "I'm what you must become."
They fought.
And this time, it wasn't martial.
The world cracked with each blow — symbols of ancient cultivation scarring the air. The hollow Li Shen moved with perfect form, weaponless, each gesture inscribed with killing intent forged from a thousand forgotten arts.
Li Shen bled from his eyes, his ears, his skin. The hollow one didn't speak — didn't need to. Every blow was a challenge.
Can you kill everything you love to become strong enough?
Li Shen screamed and burned away his hesitation.
He allowed his pain to become fuel. His guilt became flame. The horror he had endured forged into a weapon.
He struck with everything he was.
---
The hollow version exploded in a burst of violet light.
From the ashes, Li Shen stood.
Naked. Wounded. Drenched in madness.
But whole.
---
He awoke lying on black stone, breathing raggedly, staring up at the pale white eyes of the priestess.
"You survived the Cradle," she said quietly.
Li Shen didn't speak. He only laughed once — dry, hoarse, like something had broken loose inside him.
Then a warmth spread through his chest.
Not gentle.
Violent.
His soul burned — evolved.
The pain came sharp and fast, like something was tearing his nerves open from within and sewing them back together with threads made of iron will and void-touched ink.
It passed in moments. But when it was gone, something had changed.
---
Later That Night – Alone in the Reaper Crypt
Li Shen sat cross-legged before the altar.
His wounds had sealed. His breathing was steady. But his eyes… had become strange.
Deeper.
Older.
He felt them before they came.
The powers.
They weren't spells. Not even skills.
They were echoes. Imprints of suffering shaped into weaponry.
He raised his hand. Black fire danced across his palm — colder than death, sharper than steel.
He clenched his fist and the flame sank into his bones.
Not to be used.
But to become part of him.
> He could now absorb pain and convert it into spiritual power.
> He could see fear in others — and make it real.
> He could level up by enduring horror.
He didn't smile.
This wasn't victory.
It was survival.
And survival in the Pale Reaper Clan was the first sin on the path to real power.