When I first felt qi, it wasn't during meditation. Wasn't some enlightenment bullshit under a waterfall.
It was from a rich prick's blood.
A rather dainty young master with too much silk, too little soul.
He waved meat around my face as if I was a pet.
Told me to bark.
His boys laughed like pigs.
"Dance, mutt."
I smiled.
Then I ripped his fucking throat out.
He squealed like a butchered sow. Gurgled. Grabbed at his neck like he could hold the life in.
I saw it in his eyes—that panic. That realization.
These "cultivators"? They ain't gods.
They're meat.
And meat bleeds.
This world told me to wait.
Wait for my roots to wake.
Wait for the sect to come knocking.
Wait for some nice old fuck to say into my eyes, "You are special, child."
I fucking waited.
With an empty stomach and fractured ribs, I waited.
Until waiting was worse than death.
Until I understood—
We were not born to be chosen.
We were born to take.
To rip power out of the world's clenched fists.
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This world don't hate evil.
It fears independence.
Fears those who bow to nothing.
Not Heaven. Not Karma. Not even that sanctified dogshit known as the Dao.
You want to know when I knew?
Not during meditation. Not while studying sacred scrolls in a jade temple.
It was the first time I'd ever killed a man.
Golden Branch Sect outer disciple.
He wore shiny robes and dead fish eyes. The type that could see right through people.
My friend Yulan? Dumb bastard. Hungry. Stole a dried lotus root.
This highborn piece of shit—he broke every bone in Yulan's body.
Kicked his teeth in. Laughed as Yulan pissed himself, crying for his momma.
Then just walked away. Didn't even look back.
So I smiled. I bowed. Played the dumb mutt.
"Of course, Young Master. I will guide you through the crags. It is safer, yes."
When we arrived at the cliffs—the steep, quiet ones where even echoes shut the fuck up—I pushed.
No hesitation.
Only release.
His spine cracked like a rotten branch.
He screamed halfway down. Then silence.
I remained there.
Breathing.
And then—
I screamed.
Not because of guilt. Fuck no.
I screamed because I enjoyed it.
For that silence had been the world's first in which they did not loathe me.
It feared me.
I buried what was left of him in thornbrush. Took his pendant. Crushed his spiritual pouch on the rocks.
And in that fucked-up moment, it hit me—
I didn't need a title.
Did not require ancestry or Heaven's favor.
Didn't require a sect or a shifu. I could take it all.
Piece by bloody piece.
I did not rise; I fucking crawled.
I looted soul-rites from graves so shallow they barely covered the shame.
Drank incense runoff like it was holy nectar.
Crushed burnt scrolls between my teeth 'til the ashes mixed with blood and maybe, maybe, I'd choke on some ancient truth left behind by a better man.
But fuck better men.
The first technique I ever learned wasn't told by some wise sage or passed down through generations.
Nah.
I stole that shit.
Scraped it together from blood-stained prison walls, the drooling curses of madmen, and the half-coherent death-rattles of a starving monk who pissed himself under a collapsed bridge.
They called it blasphemy.
I called it my fucking birthright.
I didn't become a cultivator to fly on swords or smile at the fucking moon.
I cultivated 'cause I refused to kneel.
Refused to kiss the feet o me a blight, a beast, a fucking wound in the skin of the world.
I'll wear it all like armor.
Because the truth is simple.
I wanted to be a man.
But you bastards only ever let me be a monster.
So I became the worst fucking one you've ever seen.
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I finally forged it.
The Thrice-Cursed Heart.
With shit the heavens themselves wouldn't dare touch.
With the kind of blasphemy that makes ghosts weep and gods vomit blood.
The first fragment?
Stolen from a Saint.
That self-righteous bastard lit his own fucking bones on fire just to curse me as he died. His last breath wasn't a prayer. It was hate—And I ripped that holy ember straight from his fucking ashes.
The second?
Torn out of a Spirit Beast's chest. Nine hundred fucking years it slept—Buried under a slaughterfield, bloated on prophecy and spilled guts.
People worshipped that thing.
Called it divine. I cracked open its ribs and took what I needed.
Left its temple in ruins and its worshippers twitching in their own entrails.
The third?
Yeah. That was mine.
My own goddamn heart—still beating—torn out with my own cursed hands.
Under the Black Moon.
No stars. No witnesses.
I used regret. I used betrayal. Nine layers of sin carved into my fucking marrow. Each one a curse that never healed. This heart ain't some treasure.
It's not an inheritance.
It's a wound with teeth. Whole, yes—but only because pain glued it together.
You try to claim it without knowing what it costs? You won't die. You'll be unmade. Your name will decay first, curling off the tongues of your lovers and friends. Then your soul will start to scream—And no one will fucking remember why.
But if—if—the Heart takes you…
If it lets you bind it—
You're no longer man. You're no longer beast. You're not cultivator. Not even demonic.
You're absence.
You're the fucking hole that swallows legends. You're a vessel of the forgotten. The child of the rootless void.
The world won't love you.
It won't mourn you.
But fuck, it'll learn to fear you.
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They turned on me.
Every. Single. One.
My disciples. My generals. The ones who drank my blood and called it loyalty.
Even her—The one who swore she'd die at my side, our ashes tangled like lovers, singing madness into eternity.
They said, "You've become something we can't follow."
What they meant was, "You've become something we can't fucking chain."
So I killed them.
Not in fury. In clarity.
I looked them in the eyes and saw what I'd always known; their loyalty came with a fucking leash.
And I?
I was done being walked.
One got away.
My first student.
My shadow.
He knew me too fucking well.
He stole the one scripture that ever scared me.
Ran like a dog. Left me bleeding out in the snow, hunted by cowards who pissed themselves at the thought of facing me alone.
He was smart.
Smarter than me.
That's why he lived.
I hope the world devoured him—slow and merciless.
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You wanna know what I regret?
It ain't the blood.
It ain't the betrayal.
It ain't the fucking price I paid to forge the Heart that beats in place of my soul.
It's that there's still a piece of me—Some soft, pathetic, fucked-up little child—
That still fucking prays.
That still whispers, "Why me?"
Why was I born beneath silence, while the sons of murderers were sung into jade cradles? Why did I beg for millet while golden bastards choked on pearls? Why did the heavens ignore me—
While it gifted cowards entire empires?
That's what I regret.
Not the monster I became. But the child who thought the world would ever be fair.
Fuck him. But gods help me—Sometimes, I still hear him crying.
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This world doesn't reward patience.
It murders it.
You either bend over, open wide, and call yourself a disciple…
Or you bite back.
You scar the world.
You become the wound it can't ignore. The pain it can't numb.
I chose the latter.
I became a fucking wound that'll never scab over.
A name carved in the dark.
One they refuse to say, but can't forget.
So if you're reading this?
I hope you're a coward.
I hope you turn the fuck around.
I hope you forget this place. Forget me.
Go live your comfy, meaningless little life.
Eat rice. Fuck someone who doesn't hate you. Die old and irrelevant.
But if you're not that lucky—
If you're the kind of dumb bastard who sees a bleeding fruit and bites—
Then take it.
Take my fucking hate.
Take my obsession, my madness, my will that wouldn't die even when I fucking did.
Bury your name alongside mine in soil so black the gods won't even look at it.
Don't fucking pray.
Don't kneel.
You want this path.
Then bleed for it.
And when it hurts so bad you forget your own fucking face, say this out loud.
"I was not chosen. I am not righteous. But I will be remembered."
"We were not meant to exist."
"But we do."
And that alone—
That unholy fucking truth—
Is a curse worth more than any golden fate.
And if one day you surpass me?
Good.
Let the sects piss themselves.
Let the sages tremble.
Let the whole damn cultivation world see what blooms from soil they wouldn't dare plant in.
So if you get it—if you really fucking get it—
Then welcome.
Your path will be blood.
You'll lose more than you can name.
But you will never kneel again.
Let the heavens avert their gaze.
Let karma shriek and rend itself.
Let the earth remember you when no one else will.
Become nameless.
And fucking bloom.
"To be remembered… even by hatred."
"To be free, even if the world curses me."
"To exist—not as dust, but as fucking fire."
—Xie Wuming
Unburied. Unnamed. Undying. Unfuckingforgiven.
....
Little Rat's POV -
The cave was chilly. It was not a chill that bit at my flesh, something to be shaken off with the next gasp. No. It was the cold of a dead world—of things left to decay and become dust. And in the stifling silence, I was compelled to gaze at the wall, at the words now burned into my mind.
"I did not rise; I fucking crawled."
They felt like a slap. Like a punch to the gut. A thing I never wanted to hear, but now it was all I could hear. The words rattled around inside my skull, taunting me, mocking me for thinking I was ever different.
That I had a chance at something more. But the truth….the truth cut even deeper than that. I did not stand. I crawled. Those words—those weren't a stranger's. They were mine. They had to be. They slid out of a place so far inside me I didn't even know it existed, a place where hunger and desperation never stopped chewing at me, a place where I knew only pain.
I pushed my fingers against the stone, and the chill seeped into my flesh. I swear that I felt the lingering touch of that ghostly hand, the one that wrote this, as if it stretched out from the wall and engulfed mine, dragging me along into the night with it.
The words on this wall—they weren't some general confession from some long-dead cultivator. They were an invitation. A demand. The same loneliness, the same fire that burned so damn hot it left nothing but ashes behind.
I'd never been chosen. Not ever. Not by anyone. Not by the world. Not by fate. The temples? The sects? The powerful, the ones who wrapped themselves in robes of righteousness? They all turned their backs; their empty words and vows drifted away like smoke. They left me to decay. They left me to crawl through a world that spat in in my face every chance it got. It was the same every time.
A whisper at midnight, asking, Why me? I had whispered that too. I believed I was alone, but as I read these words now, I knew I wasn't. And that hurt. Hurt more than anything. But there was something more here. Something deeper, deeper down, between the lines, in the spaces between each word.