It was nearing midday, the hour when the Tidewatch Inn of Zhenhai River reached the height of its bustle.
Though named "Tidewatch," the inn stood three streets away from the true coastal Tide Pavilion. The title was nothing more than a clever trick of business. Yet with the once-a-decade Tide-Viewing Festival approaching, even such a modest inn had become a crucible of humanity—crowded beyond measure, every table contested, every bench worth silver.
Lu Chenyuan wove his way through the sea of patrons, a pot of scalding baodao liquor steady in his hand. He set it upon a window-side table without spilling a drop.
Ten days he had labored here as a menial, and already the rhythm of chaos no longer wearied him. Ten years upon the road with his master had hardened him to any work—dock, caravan, or tavern.
Yet now, he labored not for silver alone. He sought whispers.For what use was brute toil at the wharf, trading sweat for copper, when this inn gathered travelers of every stripe—wandering swordsmen, merchants, scholars, priests, and beggars alike? Here, stories and rumors flowed as freely as wine.
The curse gnawed at his flesh still. The turbid current—what the courts called the "Nine Nether Yin," but what cultivators knew as the Impure Flow. It was the bane that drove men to corruption and Dao-dissolution. And it clung to him like a shadow that no cleansing rite could dispel.
Because of it, Lu Chenyuan was sensitive—painfully so—to the taint of the turbid. He could smell it in the breath of the righteous, taste it in the aura of the demonic.
And here, with the festival drawing thousands of cultivators to Zhenhai River, no place was better to observe. To watch closely, to listen, to compare their corruption to the hunger that stirred in his own body.
What was the difference?What triggered it?What soothed it?
No book held these answers. His master offered none. He could only carve them out with his own eyes, his own ears, his own body as witness.
Thus it was, that his gaze caught upon a corner table.
Four strangers sat there, garbed in travel-worn martial attire, each with weapons at their waists. Their postures bore the ease of cultivation. Yet they made no trouble—merely gambling with dice against a local silk merchant, Zhang by name, a man of genial repute.
Today, Zhang sweated rivers. The mountain of Kaiyuan silver treasures before him—currency of the Da Zhou Celestial Court—melted away hand by hand, flowing into the purses of the outsiders.
One of the strangers revealed his dice with a grin:"Heh, Zhang Boss, see? Sky tile against nine—Qingniao eats nine! A fine omen, a clean place indeed."
Lu Chenyuan's sharp eye saw what no commoner could. Each time the sharp-faced gambler shook the dice, his fingertip brushed the rim of the cup with unnatural speed.
At first glance, a mere steadying gesture. But to Chenyuan, the truth was laid bare. A thread of turbid qi seeped from the man's fingertip into the dice cup, foul and reeking of rot.
This was not the lingering aftertaste of a righteous cultivator's strained Dao—those felt like stagnant pools of dead water.
This taint was alive.
It writhed, as if woven from unseen worms, hungry and malevolent, obeying its host like a parasite.Not orthodox Dao arts.This was the work of Turbid Cultists.
Judging by its strength, these men were no weaklings—they stood at least upon the Second Heaven of Dao-Questioning, the Realm of Firm Resolve.
At that instant, Chenyuan's palm flared with agony. His right hand burned, ravenous. Beneath the skin, the red eyes—those hateful, sleeping orbs—quivered, trembling at the scent of kin.
They yearned to burst forth.
Chenyuan's gaze sharpened. Perhaps… an opportunity.
Yet before he could act, Zhang groaned aloud—he had lost again. Trembling, he spilled his last few silver ingots upon the table. Then, after a heartbeat of torment, he drew from his silk pouch a small handful of lustrous white shells, etched with tidal sigils.
Festival Shell-Coins.
Rare, minted only once a decade by the Four Seas Trade Guild, good only in Zhenhai, but each worth a tael of official silver.
"Good sirs… this is the last of my capital. If I lose again… how can I face my wife and children?"
The sharp-faced gambler chuckled, hand reaching greedily."No need to fret, Zhang Boss. Fortune turns like the tide—perhaps your luck begins now!"
His fingers closed around the dice once more. Wrist flicked, cup raised—
And just then, Lu Chenyuan staggered past, tray of braised beef in hand.
He stumbled—deliberately—struck by the leg of a stool. With a yelp, the platter flew, meat and sauce raining across the gambling table.
Startled, the gambler lifted his hand to shield himself—dice stilled mid-shake.
And in that same breath, Chenyuan's other hand brushed the cup, a single fingertip tapping it with perfect precision.
Clatter!The dice spilled free: one, one, and two. Four—small.
"Forgive me, sirs, forgive me!" Chenyuan babbled in panic, bowing, scrambling to clean the mess.
Zhang's despair turned to stunned joy. "Small! Four small—I wagered small! I win!"
The strangers' faces darkened like stormclouds.
The sharp-faced one seized Chenyuan's collar, eyes flaring with both rage and an inhuman chill."Brat. Did you do that on purpose?!"
Ice seeped into Chenyuan's veins through that grip—rotten, suffocating qi, foul and stagnant. Compared to it, the presence in his own palm was an ocean against a sewer.
And at that contact—his cursed eyes awoke.
Beneath his skin, they opened, scarlet, ravenous. They shrieked with mad delight at this foreign turbid qi, a cry only he could hear.
The gambler's qi faltered, recoiling as if in dread.
Chenyuan trembled, feigning terror, pleading:"Mercy, sirs! I meant no harm—this beef, I'll pay, I swear it!"
The inn buzzed, eyes turning upon them. No rogue dares bare his fangs beneath so many gazes. Even rats of the gutter fear the light.
And so Zhang seized his winnings and fled. The four strangers, robbed of excuse, could only curse and toss a few coppers in disgust before vanishing.
Only then did Lu Chenyuan breathe again. Not from fear of them… but of what might have happened if his own monster had fully awoken.
Later, as he cleared the table, he let his ears drift. His hearing far surpassed mortal ken, and the strangers' hushed talk slipped into his grasp.
They spoke again of the Sky-Severer.
Ten years wandering the realm, he had heard the tales a hundred ways. Some said the Sky-Severer was a devil from the Nine Nether, jealous of Heaven's splendor, who cut the Celestial Road. Others claimed he was Heaven's own envoy, punishing mortals for greed. Still others dismissed him as myth.
But today's whispers were different.
"Brother, the qi of the Nine Provinces wanes each year," one sighed. "Were it not for Grandmaster Ying, even we would founder upon the path."
"Silence!" another hissed. "Our Patriarch's name is not to be spoken lightly!"
Chenyuan's eyes flicked to their garb. Dark-blue uniforms. Silver-stitched mountains at their sleeves. Sword tassels adorned with star-shaped jade.
Recognition struck.
The Four Stellar Pillars, eternal constellations of the Nine Provinces. Among them, the northern peak—Wanren Mountain, domain of Ying Wuque, the Swordmaster of the North, famed as the Sword-Sovereign of the Stars.
So these were his disciples.
They dared speak of the forbidden three-thousand-year-old calamity. For with such a master at their back, their tongues carried weight.
One, voice low with excitement, murmured:"I read it in a remnant tome. It said… three thousand years ago, a peerless immortal, one foot already upon the Celestial Threshold, turned his blade. With a single sword, he cut Heaven's path itself."
"What?!" The other gasped. "One sword… severing mortal from immortal? That is no man—that is godhood itself!"
"But why—why wield such power for ruin? Why curse all generations hence? What was his name, that such a sinner might be cursed forever?"
"Hush… the record named him only—the Sin Immortal."
Lu Chenyuan froze, rag in hand. His heart thundered.
Sin Immortal. One sword to sever the sky.
No tale he had heard before had dared frame it thus. Always devils, or gods. Never one man, one sword.
And in his mind, unbidden, the dream surged again—The sky split by a wound eternal.Eyes filled with betrayal.And above them all… himself, faceless, remote, upon the fracture of Heaven.
A nightmare. Yet now—perhaps not a dream at all.
Before his thoughts could settle, commotion rose at the inn's door. A fellow servant dragged in a ragged beggar girl, no more than seven or eight, filthy and trembling, clutching a steaming meat bun to her chest.
"Thief!" the servant cursed. "Dares steal from the Tidewatch Inn!"
The child shook with terror but clung fiercely to the bun.
"Beat her! Let her learn!"
The hand rose—
"Enough."
The lazy voice of Innkeeper Qian Dahai cut across the hall.
He approached, calm mask on his face, though Chenyuan's sharp senses caught the flicker of unease in his breath as his eyes darted once toward the half-man-tall celadon vase beside the counter.
Coldly, Qian chided the girl. Yet in the end, with a sigh, he pressed two fresh buns into her arms, sending her scurrying away with tears and gratitude.
The hall chuckled, tension dissolving. But Lu Chenyuan's gaze lingered—not on the child, but on the vase.
For in that instant, his ears caught a sound no one else heard.
A whisper, thin as silken threads fraying, then shifting—like muffled shrieks behind stone walls. Then, faintly, disturbingly, the laughter of a little girl. Innocent, bright—until it strangled into sobbing wails.
The sound ceased the moment Qian's fingertip pressed against a lotus petal upon the vase's neck. His breath eased. His mask returned.
The others saw nothing.But Chenyuan… felt a chill crawl his spine.
The vase was no mere ornament.
And the Tidewatch Inn, no mere inn.