The next body was half-swallowed by the earth.
Its robes were scorched, fused to the ribcage like melted wax. A severed arm lay nearby, clutching an empty sheath. The weapon had likely been spirit-bound and shattered during death—the Mirror did not like things that clung too tightly to the world.
Gu Yan crouched silently beside it.
The Hollow was not a battlefield, but it was full of the dead. Not just corpses—remnants. Cultivators who had been cast out, wandered too far, or gambled their final breath trying to steal an inheritance meant for someone else. They hadn't died for righteousness or revenge or even greed.
They'd died alone. Forgotten.
Just like him.
He ran his fingers across the dirt near the corpse, feeling for the pulse beneath the soil—not physical, but spiritual resonance. Faint. Wrong. The kind of echo that only existed in places Heaven no longer watched.
The thread rose slowly, like a reluctant ghost.
Thread Fragment Detected
Name: Ambition Without Anchor
Type: Emotional Core
Compatibility: 67%
Status: Unstable, Incomplete
Risk Level: Moderate–High
Warning: Fragment will resist integration. Mental destabilization possible.
Gu Yan's eyes narrowed.
He hesitated.
The Mirror pulsed again, as if curious. Not urging. Not warning. It never judged.
That made it more dangerous than any artifact he'd ever read about.
What was this man's name?
The thread offered no answer.
Gu Yan stared at it for a long time. Finally, he said:
"You tried to take something that wasn't yours, didn't you?"
The thread quivered faintly, responding like a flicker of breath. Guilt? Memory? Or just phantom instinct?
"Or maybe," he added softly, "you just didn't want to be erased."
He understood that.
In this world, existence was a competition, and those without fate were left behind. The sects called it karma. Destiny. Natural order. But Gu Yan had seen the faces of the elders when they branded him—not mercy, not discipline, but disgust.
"You weren't one of the chosen," he murmured to the thread. "Just like me."
The thread floated closer.
He didn't flinch.
[Absorb? Y/N]
"Yes."
The second time hurt differently.
It wasn't fire or lightning. It was hunger. A gnawing, bottomless ache, like being emptied of things he hadn't known he was made of.
The ambition clawed at his thoughts, tried to take root in his mind—images of grandeur, of standing atop mountains that had never existed. Visions of glory so impossible they made him laugh bitterly.
He didn't want power.
He wanted proof.
That he mattered. That the world had to make room for someone like him.
The thread twisted as it fused, rejecting him halfway, then snapping suddenly into place—a brutal graft, not a clean fit. His knees buckled. He bit down hard enough to draw blood from his tongue.
He didn't scream.
This time, the pain came with something else.
A memory.
A temple on fire.
A voice yelling from somewhere within: "It was supposed to be me—!"
Then silence.
And the smell of ash.
Gu Yan collapsed beside the second corpse, breathing raggedly. Sweat chilled on his back despite the Hollow's heat. His vision blurred.
That man… had reached for something too bright. It killed him.
And now, a piece of him lived in Gu Yan's chest. Unstable. Dangerous.
He pressed a hand to the earth to steady himself. The Hollow shifted around him—subtly. Stones cracked. A line of ancient script flickered across the Mirror's surface before vanishing.
It wasn't language.
It was intent.
Those who take what was never meant to be taken... must give something in return.
He looked at the corpse.
The bones were crumbling now. Just dust and rust. The thread was gone—consumed. The world wouldn't remember the man's name. Gu Yan hadn't learned it.
But he'd carry the consequence.
By the time he stood again, night had fully claimed the Hollow.
Not that it was much darker than before—but now, the silence felt more alert. The air was thicker. A warning in the lungs.
Something was watching him.
He turned his head slowly.
Nothing.
But the thread fragments in his body pulsed faintly—as if sensing proximity. Not to danger.
To opportunity.
He was not alone in the Hollow.
And not all things here were dead.
Far above, the cliff edge where the sect had cast him down was still visible in the blood-colored sky. From this angle, it looked small. Distant. Unimportant.
It would take months—maybe years—to climb back into their world.
He wasn't in a rush.
"Let them train with spirit treasures," he muttered. "Let them polish their golden cores and recite their Dao."
He took a slow breath.
"I'll become the kind of thing they forgot to fear."
He limped further into the Hollow, one hand pressed to the pain in his side. The Mirror followed—not in body, but in presence. It didn't speak. It didn't guide. But the moment he stepped too close to a dying place, it pulsed.
He was a scavenger now.
But not of weapons.
Of regret.
Of failed dreams.
And each one made him more dangerous—not because he was stronger than them, but because he was the only one willing to build his soul out of what should have been left behind.
Gu Yan, the threadless exile.
Gu Yan, the corpse-walker.
Gu Yan, the answer that fate refused to write.