---
The heavens do not mourn.
They only look down.
Unblinking. Unchanging. Unforgiving.
Beneath that cold, eternal sky… she died.
---
I remember her hand slipping from mine — warm one moment, frozen the next.
Not even the stars dared to blink as she fell.
She smiled, as if trying to tell me, "It's okay."
But it wasn't.
It never will be.
---
Her name was Lian'er.
The girl who once laughed under the moonlight.
The one who called me "Yuan-ge" when I still believed names meant something.
Now, even the wind that carried her laughter feels like a lie.
---
"To protect is not to win. To protect… is to exist in defiance of fate."
I failed.
Not because I wasn't strong.
But because reality itself refused me.
---
They call me a genius.
They sing songs of the boy who walked through the Abyss River alone.
Of the teen who outpaced Elders twice his age.
Of the man who stood atop forbidden peaks and walked away alive.
But what they don't see…
...is the seal.
A curse not written by man or beast.
A cosmic limitation, carved into my very essence.
No matter how hard I train, how much I bleed, how many realms I master—
—there's a limit I cannot break.
Not because I lack strength.
But because this world fears what I could become.
Because my talent breaks reality itself.
---
They say I was born with the Reality-Breaker Physique —
A body that could dissolve the Laws of Heaven just by existing.
But I never asked for it.
And so, the Heavens bound me in silence.
---
Tonight, I stand in the place where she died — Shadow Burial Valley.
A cliff of jagged rocks and the scent of rusted blood.
The ground below me whispers of death.
I sit cross-legged, still as the mountains around me.
"Xuan Yuan… can you still feel her smile?"
"Yes. Every time I close my eyes."
---
From within my dantian, I feel it—
The pulse.
Like a heart that isn't mine.
The sealed core of my true power.
It beats not with warmth… but with wrath.
---
"Why didn't I break it back then?"
"Because I was still human."
---
I was young. I believed in rules.
That if I trained hard enough, respected the elders, obeyed the laws—
The Heavens would reward me.
But the Heavens are liars.
They take the purest things from us…
...and leave us hollow.
---
My eyes open.
The night sky hangs heavy above, like a tombstone carved for stars.
A wind stirs.
Footsteps.
Three of them.
I don't move.
A soft laugh breaks the silence. Sweet. Mocking.
"Well, well. The frozen prodigy returns to the place of his shame."
The speaker steps into view. Long white robes. Silver eyes like daggers.
Mu Shen. Heavenly Sword Sect.
Her killer.
Or, at least, the one who watched and did nothing.
---
"Still crying over a flower that wilted, Xuan Yuan?"
He chuckles again.
I rise, slowly. My blade stays sheathed. My face—calm.
"I cry for no one."
He smirks.
"Then why return to this grave?"
I look past him.
To the stone I carved with my own hands.
No name. Just a lotus drawn by my finger, burned into the stone by pure qi.
"Because the next time someone dies in front of me…"
I step forward.
The ground cracks.
"...the Heavens will have to ask me first."
---
Mu Shen laughs louder.
"Still talking big, frozen genius. Still sealed, aren't you? Reality scared of your little tantrum?"
He draws his sword.
"Then let's see how strong the corpse of a coward really is."
---
I don't answer.
I close my eyes instead.
And I let myself remember her—
The way her voice trembled when she first confessed.
The warmth of her lips on my hand.
The last smile she gave me, even as the sword pierced her chest.
---
"I loved you, Yuan-ge…"
---
I open my eyes again.
The seal inside me — it pulses once.
A chain snaps in the depths of my dantian.
Just one link.
Enough.
---
Mu Shen lunges.
I vanish.
And for the first time in years…
...I let myself move without holding back.
---
His blade slashes where I once stood.
But my palm rests gently against the back of his neck before he even realizes I'm gone.
"Tell your sect…" I whisper, breath like ice.
"I am done mourning."
---
[END OF CHAPTER ONE]