Deep beneath the Wilting Dao Tree's hollow root, the old forge coughed awake for the first time in lifetimes. Not with a roar — but with a hush. A low, ember-hum that slipped between cracked runes and marrow cracks alike.
Li Tianyin's tiny body lay curled where root met stone. His skin shivered against the cold breath of the underground, yet his blood steamed — thin rivulets leaking through a fissure in his bone like red threads weaving into the stone below.
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On Earth, when he was sixteen, he once slipped on an oily floor in the forge yard. Split his shin open on rusted iron.
The marrow showed itself — white, slick, a glimpse of death behind living bone.
He'd watched the blood pool under the hammering machines.
Watched how the iron filings clung to it like hungry insects.
He never forgot that whisper: Iron drinks marrow.
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Here, the same truth pulsed alive.
The cracked anvil spirit below him flickered to life — a forge ghost trapped in rune and slag.
It tasted his blood. Not clean immortal blood — flawed, leaking, mortal-strong. The ghost quivered. Runes around it brightened from dull ash to spark.
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A faint warmth coiled up from the stone.
A hush that wasn't cold — it felt like the belly of a forge just before the flame takes hold.
The bark flake in his tiny fist hissed like resin catching fire.
His marrow felt it — the crack widened, screaming in a voice too old for a child's throat.
His lungs seized. But the forge ghost shushed him, curling a warmth around the flaw instead of sealing it shut.
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Somewhere in the dark, old spirit iron cracked open. A single fleck of slag, black as regret, split and revealed an ember no bigger than a grain of rice.
It drifted.
It landed in the fresh blood pooling near Tianyin's ribs.
The ember didn't burn him.
It nested — a seed in the flaw, a flaw in the seed.
The Primordial Dao Embryo flickered once more — tiny, thin as a candle's first breath.
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Above ground, the Wilting Dao Tree trembled in the night wind.
A dry root cracked, splitting the dirt.
Somewhere far in the abandoned sect halls, a rusted forge hammer fell from its rack, striking cold stone with a lonely ring.
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Below, the boy's eyes opened for the first time. Black, then flickering silver where the forge ghost's ember nested behind the pupils.
His tiny hand closed around the bark flake.
It turned to ash.
The ash sank into his palm — veins threading with iron scent.
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A heartbeat.
A hiss.
A flaw that refused to seal.
And a spark that refused to die.
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End of Chapter 3
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