The world had gone quiet again.
It was not the comforting kind of silence. Not the sleep-heavy hush of a calm night.
It was the kind that trembled with tension—like the pause before a scream.
Shen Mo sat cross-legged beneath the cracked window. His eyes were closed, but he wasn't meditating. Not in the traditional sense. He had long since passed that state. Now, he was reaching backward.
> Into memory.
Into death.
Into the ashes of the man he had once been.
---
The Memory of the Sword
> "You remember me, don't you?"
The voice wasn't real. It wasn't a sound—it was a shape in the dark, a weight that shifted the air inside his soul.
Yes.
He remembered.
The sword.
Heavenpiercer.
Forged not from steel, but from starlight and blood oath. Folded in the heart of the Abyssal Forge beneath the Sky Tomb. Tempered with the breath of the void beast Chi'Yan, bound to his soul with seven locks.
He had created it in his past life when he transcended the Sixfold Heaven Crossing Trial, the moment when most fail, when most break.
It had no form at first. Because it required no form. It existed only because he willed it to exist.
> The Void-Edge Sword: a weapon that did not cut flesh, but reality.
He now stood within his Inner World, still embryonic, still fractured. But there was space. Space enough to begin.
He raised his hand.
The Qi inside him surged—a slow, spiraling thread of silver drawn from all five meridians. Not enough to summon the blade. But enough to remember its shape.
A ripple ran through the cracked void of his soul-sea.
And there, suspended mid-air, a phantom blade appeared.
It was not full. Not solid. It shimmered with broken outlines—its edges frayed, its core empty. But it was enough.
> "I remember," he whispered.
> "You were never my sword.
You were my answer."
---
The Inquisition Arrives
They did not come on horses.
They came on steps. Heavy ones. In synchronized rhythm.
Six figures.
Each wore gray robes lined with spiritual-threaded runes, faces half-concealed by the hanging veils of the Inquisition Order. Their aura was not explosive, not thunderous—it was precise. Measured.
Like scalpels.
At their head walked Investigator Shen Jinhai, known among rogue sects as the "Dead Signature." Once he marked a soul as an aberration, they never remained in the realm of the living.
He stepped through the alley without looking at the bodies huddled in doorways or the children watching with silent eyes.
He stopped at the slum door.
He didn't knock.
He touched it—and the wood evaporated.
Inside, Shen Mo stood.
Thin. Shirtless. Barefoot. Silent.
"Shen Mo," Jinhai said. "By decree of the Grand Path Registry, and under order of the Inquisition, you are accused of soul theft, cultivation without registration, and forging a spiritual signature from an unassigned body."
Wuxin didn't move.
> "Your Qi signature does not match the spirit veins of this body. Your soul has traces of spiritual armor belonging to another lifetime."
Still, he was silent.
"Do you deny it?"
> "I deny nothing," Shen Mo finally said, voice steady. "Because nothing was ever given to me."
There was a pause.
Then, laughter.
One of the younger Inquisitors scoffed.
"So you admit it? You're not Shen Mo. You're some ghost who took his skin."
> Shen Mo's eyes darkened.
"I am Shen Mo… because no one else wanted to be."
The youngest inquisition member reached for his talisman.
That was enough.
---
The Twig
Shen Mo didn't have time.
He couldn't manifest the phantom blade yet. He wasn't whole.
But outside the broken doorway, a breeze swept in—and with it, a single twig, carried from the gnarled tree out front.
It landed near his feet.
He bent, calmly, and picked it up.
The Inquisitors didn't laugh.
Because the moment he touched it, the air changed.
> Jian Wuxin, in his past life, had a passive—"Form Without Form."
A Sword Dao that allowed mastery over any object shaped like a sword.
Stick, straw, bone, rod—it did not matter.
In his hands, they were all blades.
The only drawback?
> Once he let it go, his Qi would burn it to dust.
He stepped forward.
The twig hummed.
Qi surged—thin, precise, dangerously refined. The very air seemed to fold in half as Shen Mo brought the twig upward in a single arcing slash.
> The young inquisitor's talisman split in two.
Then his robe.
Then his skin.
He collapsed backward, unconscious before pain even registered.
Shen Jinhai didn't speak.
The four remaining Inquisitors formed a square formation, each drawing out spirit banners, inscribed with Binding Arrays designed to lock space and soul.
They activated.
The room twisted.
Shen Mo moved like a whisper of ash.
He dodged left, raised the twig again—and struck twice, each time not toward flesh, but toward Qi.
He cut a banner in mid-air, severing the formation flow. The spell cracked like glass.
But not before the third inquisitor landed a palm against Shen Mo's side.
> BANG!
Blood sprayed from Shen Mo's mouth. His ribs shattered. His body folded—but his eyes burned brighter.
He twisted mid-fall, using the momentum to stab upward—not the man's body, but the space beside his neck, where his cultivation thread anchored.
The Qi shattered.
The man screamed and fell to his knees.
The twig turned to dust.
---
Aftermath
Shen Mo stood, swaying.
His breathing was shallow. His skin pale. The fifth meridian was overtaxed—he could feel it cracking under the pressure of his own technique.
> Jinhai stepped forward.
The two locked eyes.
Then—
> "Enough," the Investigator said.
Everyone froze.
Shen Mo blinked. His muscles ready for death.
But Jinhai did not attack.
Instead, he stared—deep into his eyes. As if trying to read something.
"…That sword skill," Jinhai murmured. "Void-Edge. Only one man ever used that path and lived."
A silence followed.
Shen Mo said nothing.
Jinhai looked at the broken building. The marks on the floor. The faint whisper of a half-born Dao signature.
Then turned.
> "Mark him 'Uncatalogued.' Notify the Grand Path Registry that the soul in Shen Mo's body is to be observed, not eliminated."
One inquisitor objected. "But sir—"
> "I said observe."
Then he turned back to Shen Mo.
His eyes narrowed.
> "You are no longer a boy."
"But you are not yet the sword."
> "Find the edge. Or it will cut you from the inside."
Then, without another word, the Inquisition left.
---
Alone, Again
The blood on the floor dried quickly.
Shen Mo sat again in the moonlight.
He picked up another twig.
It cracked in his hand—unable to even contain his Qi now.
> He smiled faintly.
> "You lived once in fire," he whispered to the memory of his blade.
"You will live again in silence."