The wind changed.
Not in speed. Not in direction.
In intention.
It no longer passed by Shen Wuqing as mere air. It circled him now—hesitating, testing, curious. The forest had stopped trying to ignore him.
It was beginning to understand it couldn't.
He walked without urgency, deeper into the hollow woods. Trees leaned away from him with wooden groans, as though bowing under some unseen weight. The mist no longer touched his skin—it parted. Not in reverence. In fear.
Then, far ahead, a sound.
Laughter.
Young.
Crude.
Alive.
He slowed.
Voices followed. Five of them, sharp with arrogance, cloaked in the tone of those who had never known suffering deep enough to kill ego. They cracked twigs on purpose, not by accident.
Cultivators.
Children, by sound. Late Qi Condensation at best. No deeper than the skin of the world.
"Found something, Senior Brother?"
"Yeah," said a second voice. "Looks like an outer realm wanderer."
They were behind him now.
Wuqing did not turn.
"Heh," another voice chuckled. "Perfect. Let's see if he brought anything useful."
"He's dressed weird," one of them muttered.
"Who cares? If he's not from Skyfire, he's prey."
Wuqing stood still.
The word Skyfire echoed inside him like an insect tapping a coffin.
He had heard of them.
Once.
In a monastery now rotted to bone and moss.
Children of the Skyfire Sect—a rising group in the lower realms. Righteous in name, lawless in deed. Known for purity, feared for politics. They trained fast and died slow.
They thought their flame could cleanse the heavens.
They had never met silence.
"You deaf?" one of them barked. "We're talking to you."
Wuqing turned.
Five cultivators stood before him. Four men, one girl. All wore crimson-trimmed robes, the mark of Skyfire's outer ranks. Their blades were half-drawn—not from fear, but from habit.
Wuqing's gaze passed through them.
Not a single one had eyes that had seen death closely.
Not yet.
"I said—"
"You speak too much," Wuqing interrupted, voice flat.
The group paused.
The speaker sneered. "Tch. Arrogant."
Another, the youngest, stepped forward. "Let's humble him."
He struck first.
A sword slash, infused with spiritual flame. Red aura trailed behind the blade like the tail of a comet. It cut the air toward Wuqing's neck.
It never reached.
The flame vanished mid-arc.
So did the sound.
The boy's expression twisted. His mouth opened—to yell, to curse—but no voice came.
He fell.
No wound. No blood.
Just… silence.
Complete and suffocating.
The others panicked.
"What—"
Their words turned to air.
No sound left their lips.
One dropped his sword. It didn't clatter. It simply touched the ground, without echo.
They looked at each other, mouths moving, but none could hear themselves. Or the others.
And then came the fear.
Wuqing stepped forward once.
The mist moved with him.
The second cultivator tried to form a hand seal. His flame fizzled. His qi receded. He gasped—but even his breath was muted.
He collapsed, eyes wide, throat moving in a scream no one could hear.
The girl stepped back.
Her hands trembled.
Wuqing's gaze met hers.
Something in it broke her.
She knelt.
Not in submission.
But because her legs forgot how to stand.
He passed her without pause.
The last boy turned to run.
Too late.
The path ahead of him disappeared.
Reality itself refused him escape.
And then…
He forgot.
Forgot why he was running.
Forgot where he was.
Forgot who he was.
He fell to his knees, weeping without sound, remembering nothing—except fear.
Behind them, Wuqing kept walking.
The mist swallowed his shadow.
---
He reached a river.
It should not have existed.
No streams fed it. No rain filled it. Yet the water flowed, silver and soundless, cutting through the forest like a vein through the skin of a corpse.
He knelt at its edge.
His reflection didn't ripple.
It looked back, unblinking.
Not him.
But the version of him that existed in the memory of others.
It was fading.
Good.
He dipped his fingers in the river.
The water was neither cold nor warm. It carried no texture. Only weight.
On his skin, a sting.
He lifted his hand.
Blood.
Thin trails of it running down his palm, though no wound had been made.
The river had tried to remember him.
And failed.
A small cost.
He stood.
And continued.
---
The forest shifted again.
Trees bent inward, forming a spiral.
He walked the spiral.
At the center stood a monolith.
Black.
Silent.
Uncarved.
He touched it.
And the monolith screamed.
Not with sound.
With memory.
Thousands of voices erupted in his mind—all speaking his name.
All wrong.
All false.
All forgotten.
He endured it.
Let them cry.
Let them twist his name.
Let them rot in the mud of broken tongues.
He didn't need their remembrance.
He needed only silence.
And silence came.
The monolith cracked.
Then crumbled.
And with it, another seal in his soul shattered.
Not loudly.
Quietly.
Beautifully.
A single syllable etched itself in his mind.
Shihun.
The next realm.
The path would no longer tolerate him.
Good.
He would devour the path too.
---
The mist grew colder.
Not in temperature, but in memory.
He was nearing something old.
Something sacred.
He passed through a gate of fallen branches.
Beyond it, a shrine.
Small.
Broken.
Forgotten.
But not empty.
Inside knelt a statue.
Not of a god.
Of a man.
Mouth open.
Screaming.
But no sound came from the carving.
Its stone lips were forever parted in the silence of agony.
Wuqing stepped closer.
And felt it.
The moment he did, the air thickened.
He was not being watched.
He was being remembered.
By something that shouldn't remember.
Something older than names.
A trace of prayer still clung to the shrine.
It recoiled from him.
He stepped closer.
And the shrine began to rot.
Not physically.
The prayer itself began to die.
The statue cracked.
Its eyes melted into the stone.
The air lost pressure.
And a whisper—thin, dry, voiceless—asked:
"Why do you come?"
Wuqing answered:
"I did not come."
"I was called."
The shrine's foundation trembled.
The prayer tried to flee.
Too late.
Wuqing reached out.
Touched the stone hand.
And silence spread.
Not into the shrine.
From it.
As if the shrine had always been a wound, hiding behind worship.
And now, it bled truth.
The statue fell.
Not shattered.
Disintegrated.
Into fine dust.
Into forgotten reverence.
Into nothing.
---
Night fell.
But the sky held no stars.
Only absence.
Wuqing sat beneath another tree.
This one did not cry.
It didn't need to.
It had already died centuries ago, but its body refused to fall.
He rested against it.
And the world did not dare breathe.
Somewhere far away, five cultivators lay in silence—still alive, but not whole.
They would wake.
But they would not remember him.
Only the fear.
Only the quiet.
Only the void.
And so his legend would spread.
Not through songs.
Not through tales.
But through silence.
A name unspoken.
A face unrecalled.
Only a feeling.
That something was missing.
Something that had passed through.
And took something with it.