The jade coffin did not merely open; it exhaled. As the lid slid aside, the world seemed to hold its collective breath, the very laws of physics bowing in submission to the entity within. Shen Xuanji rose from the depths of the icy tomb, his body a masterpiece of celestial porcelain, unweathered by the billions of years that had turned galaxies to dust.
Heavy iron chains, forged from Star-Core Essence to suppress even the gods, bound his limbs. He did not struggle. He merely twitched a finger.
Clang!
The chains shattered into divine sparks, unable to withstand the mere intent of his awakening. Even before he stood fully, the atmosphere froze. The rolling waves of pressure emanating from him caused the space itself to gutter and warp like a dying candle flame.
Xiao Yang and the old man were pinned to the earth, their lungs seizing. They did not dare to breathe; they did not even dare to think. To exist in the presence of this child was to stand at the edge of a black hole.
Shen Wuji looked upon his son. The boy appeared no older than fourteen or fifteen, yet his face held no traces of youthful innocence. It was the countenance of a man who had watched the rise and fall of primordial eras from behind the veil of sleep. His golden-purple eyes were twin abysses, vast enough to swallow the myriad planes, burning with a gaze that held the power of ultimate judgment. His long, golden-black hair spilled across his shoulders like a river of silk and shadow.
Xuanji's gaze swept the ruins, silent and calculating. When his eyes finally fell upon his father, his expression didn't waver. He saw the spear—the Eternal Spear of the Shen—piercing his father's chest and anchoring him to the very coffin Xuanji had just vacated.
He raised a hand, an instinctive gesture of a son reaching for a parent, but the implacable pressure of the world's karma forced it back down.
"Xuanji... my son..." Shen Wuji's voice trembled. Gone was the booming authority that had terrified the mortals. It was now a jagged, broken sound, saturated with a billion years of guilt. "Forgive me... it was my weakness. Had I been stronger, our Eternal Shrine would not have been reduced to ash."
Xuanji tilted his head, his face a mask of terrifying calm. "Forgive you... for what, Father?"
Shen Wuji looked into the dark, weeping sky and let out a sigh of profound agony. He gripped the shaft of the spear that transfixed his soul, his knuckles white and skeletal.
"For this day... I devoured everything," Wuji confessed, and the blood on the ground quivered in response. The runes engraved into the black stone flared with a sickly, malevolent light. "In that final war, when the Heavens turned their blades upon us, the elders and I made a choice. We sealed you here, hoping this fragment of our world would one day drift toward a living plane."
His voice grew colder, more hollow. "We knew we could not survive. The elders offered their cultivation to me, letting me devour their very souls so I could protect your sleep. But the void is vast. We found no home. My injuries from those Forbidden Laws began to rot my spirit. I was at my limit."
"And so," Wuji's voice dropped to a whisper, "I did the unthinkable. To keep my obsession alive—to ensure I lasted until you woke—I reached into your coffin. I devoured your divine body's essence. I stole your Dao. I drank your cultivation to fuel my own lingering ghost. I am a parasite, Xuanji. A father who ate his son to preserve a memory."
Xuanji did not flinch. He looked like a man being shown the blueprint of a ruin he already knew by heart. There was no rage, no screaming betrayal. Instead, there was a haunting, clinical evaluation in his eyes. He saw the bones of his destiny.
"Does it even matter now?" Xuanji asked, his voice a chilling melody of indifference. "You devoured the clan's legacy and my future, and yet you are but a kneeling monument to your own sins. Was I worth the price of becoming a monster?"
Shen Wuji's fingers left bloody trails on the spear's shaft. He was a broken god. "I stole everything... your godhood, your time, your light. I turned myself into this kneeling corpse just to see you open your eyes one last time."
The world stopped breathing. The blood-mist, that ancient imprint of the clan's dark history, stuttered in its heaving.
Xuanji stepped out of the coffin. His feet hit the black stone with the weight of a falling star. He walked toward his father and knelt, his voice shifting to the warmest tone he could muster—which was still as cold as a winter moon.
"Why did you keep me alive, Father? Was it so I could be the blade of your revenge? Am I just a weapon you forged from the scraps of our bloodline?"
"It is the responsibility of the Patriarch to save the bloodline," Wuji replied, his eyes burning with a hideous, desperate pride. "And it is the responsibility of the bloodline to avenge the Patriarch. Why wouldn't a husband seek the blood of those who slaughtered his wife? Why wouldn't a father demand the souls of those who broke his children? I have faith in you, Xuanji. Not because you are my son, but because you are a Shen. And a Shen never forgets a debt."
Wuji smiled—a jagged, terrifying curve of the lips. "That is the price of our name. Even a father must strip his son bare if it means the clan lives one moment longer in the dark. Hate me. Curse my soul to the deepest hell. But wake up... for in the vastness of the Chaos Universe, only you are left."
Fragments of memory stirred in Xuanji's mind. A woman laughing in a garden of jade lotuses; a sister's hand holding his own; a sky that was once blue before it turned to fire. These were ghosts now, distorted reflections in a frosted sleep.
"I will inherit the curse, then," Xuanji said. His voice was small, but it carried the weight of an incantation. "How could I hate you? You did not eat me to death; you devoured my past so that I could rise from the dust to consume the future. This was not absolution. It was a forging."
He stood tall, his small frame radiating a majesty that made the walls of the manor bristle. "Though my cultivation is lost and my flesh is but a child's husk... I am Shen Xuanji. Your sacrifice will not be in vain. The skies that ruined us, the Dao that deceived us—I shall ash their heavens until there is nothing left but silence."
Shen Wuji lifted his eyes, and for a fleeting second, his sorrow transformed into a hideous, blinding pride. He reached into his tattered robes and produced a token—a sliver of Primordial Void-Stone etched with the sigil of two clans.
"This is the inheritance of our blood, and that of your mother's line," Wuji whispered.
Xuanji took the token. His bloodline vibrated in recognition. The demands of a billion years were contained within that stone: survival, domination, memory.
Suddenly, the spear consumed the last of Wuji's essence. It was as if his spirit were smashed by a celestial hammer. The remnants of his soul shattered into fragments of light, swallowed by the black metal of the spear like dying stars.
Xuanji's hand remained clasped on the spear even after the light died away. He felt the heavy, conscious sadness of his father's life pass into his palm. He leaned forward and pressed his forehead against the spot where his father's head had been—a secret, silent gesture of parting.
He closed his eyes, and a single, silent tear escaped, breaking like fragile glass upon the floor. He knelt in the empty space where the Patriarch of the Shen had waited for an eternity.
"I, Shen Xuanji, Scion of the Eternal Mandate, swear by the blood in my veins and the ruins of this grave... I will hunt those who erased us. I will pull down the stars to light your pyre."
He stood up, his gaze turning to the two terrified mortals. His aura shifted, becoming something sharper, more predatory.
"Henceforth," he whispered to the wind, "the boy Xuanji is dead. Call me Shen Xuan."
Shen Xuan has truly awakened. Would you like me to describe his first act of power, or perhaps how he deals with the two witnesses, Xiao Yang and the old man?