Sunset painted the eastern gate of Graveclan Vale in blood-red hues. A small crowd had gathered to witness Kai's punishment, their faces lit by dying light and quiet excitement. Some looked curious. Others looked pleased.
Elder Vex stood at the front, his tall frame outlined against the sky. His presence alone was enough to silence the murmurs.
"Bring the prisoner forward."
The guards shoved Kamikaze toward the gate. He did not stumble. He did not resist. He walked.
That, more than anything, unsettled them.
They had expected fear. Pleading. Rage. Instead, he moved with a strange calm, his eyes fixed not on the people, but on the forest beyond the gate. Dark. Endless. Waiting.
"Three days," Elder Vex announced. "Return alive, and perhaps you will have earned a place among us after all."
Kamikaze finally looked at him.
For a brief moment, something cold passed through the Elder's chest. Those were not the eyes of a desperate boy. They were deep. Measured. Old.
"I will return," Kamikaze said.
His voice was quiet, but it carried.
Vex laughed. "Bold words from one who has never even formed a proper cultivation base."
Kamikaze did not answer. He turned and walked through the gate.
The doors slammed shut behind him.
The Deadwood Forest stretched endlessly ahead. Ancient trees rose like blackened pillars, their bark the color of burned bone. Their leaves whispered even without wind, brushing together like distant voices. Pale mist clung to the ground, thick with resentment energy that stung the lungs and crawled across the skin.
Kamikaze walked until the gate was far behind him and the silence became real.
Only then did he stop.
He closed his eyes and let his awareness spread.
"This body is weak," he murmured. "But not empty."
He pressed his palm to a nearby tree. Cold corruption pulsed beneath the bark, slow and poisonous. The Deadwood Forest did not kill quickly. It eroded. It hollowed. Three days here was a death sentence for most.
Kamikaze lowered himself into a cross-legged position, his back against the tree. From Kai's memories, he knew the forest was filled with warped beasts and broken cultivators who had lost their minds to isolation. Survival would not come from strength alone.
It would come from control.
He guided what little energy existed in his body.
It barely obeyed.
His meridians were narrow, clogged, fragile. Each attempt at circulation sent a dull ache through his chest. But beneath the weakness, he felt something else. A resonance. A familiar echo.
"The Heavenly Rebirth Lake did more than carry my soul," he whispered. "It remembered me."
Time passed slowly.
The forest grew louder as night deepened. Branches cracked somewhere far away. Something howled. Something else answered. None came close.
Kamikaze worked patiently, pushing energy through blocked pathways, clearing what he could. Sweat soaked his clothes. His breath grew uneven. But he did not stop.
By midnight, a crude circulation path formed.
It was nothing compared to what he once possessed. But it existed.
More importantly, the body responded.
Compatible.
The realization settled into him like a promise.
"The Black Heaven Scripture," he murmured. "It can be rebuilt."
A soft snap broke the silence.
Kamikaze opened his eyes.
Two red lights hovered between the trees.
"Come," he said quietly.
The creature stepped forward.
A deadwood wolf. Its fur was patchy and stiff with dried blood. Its ribs jutted beneath stretched skin. Black vapor leaked from its mouth with every breath. Its eyes burned with hunger that had long passed into madness.
It circled him, claws pressing into damp earth.
Kamikaze remained seated.
When it lunged, he moved.
His body was weak, but his timing was not.
His hand shot forward. Fingers hardened. He struck the throat.
There was a wet crack.
The wolf collapsed before it ever reached him.
Kamikaze stood and walked to it as it twitched in the dirt.
"Your essence will serve me," he said.
He placed his palm against its skull.
The resentment energy rushed into him like fire.
It burned.
His veins felt like they were tearing. His meridians screamed. Blood filled his mouth.
He did not pull away.
He refined the energy slowly, brutally, forcing it to submit.
By dawn, the wolf was a dried husk.
Kamikaze rose unsteadily to his feet.
Power, thin but real, flowed through his limbs.
"Fleshforged Realm, first stage," he murmured. "A beginning."
The mist around him thinned, retreating as if wary.
Kamikaze looked up through the branches at the pale morning sky.
"Two more days," he said. "Enough time."
He turned and walked deeper into the Deadwood Forest.
Where the shadows were thicker.
And the prey was stronger.