Dawn came with a pale, gray light that did nothing to warm the world.
Lin Feng watched from a thicket of bone-white birch trees at the cemetery's edge. His funeral robes were stained with mud and torn from his climb. He was cold, a deep chill that had nothing to do with the morning dew. It was the cold of the grave that had settled in his bones.
He saw Old Man Luo first. The groundskeeper shuffled along the main path, a rake over his shoulder, humming a tuneless dirge. He stopped at the row of fresh plots. He paused at the disturbed earth of Lin Feng's grave.
The rake clattered to the path.
Old Man Luo took a stumbling step back. He leaned forward, squinting, as if his old eyes were deceiving him. He saw the hole in the coffin lid, the pile of fresh soil beside the mound.
His face went the color of ash. He turned and ran, his old legs finding a speed they hadn't known in decades, his cries splitting the morning quiet.
"Guards! GUARDS! The grave! Young Master Feng's grave!"
Chaos was a tool. Lin Feng moved as the first shouts echoed from the clan walls. He became a shadow, slipping from the birch thicket and into the oldest, most overgrown section of the cemetery. The Dishonored Warriors' Section.
No stone markers stood straight here. Slabs of rock lay tilted, names worn away by rain and time. Weeds choked the ground. Here, the clan buried its failures. The cowards, the deserters, the ones who brought shame. They were buried facing west, away from the ancestral tombs—a final insult.
[Quest Updated: 'The Silent Return.']
[Sub-Objective: Secure Assets. The dishonored dead have no one to mourn them. They are yours.]
A new sense prickled at the edge of his mind. A faint, cold tugging.
[Skill Acquired: Death Sense (Passive).]
[You can feel the residual energy of the dead. Stronger emotions in death leave stronger impressions.]
He closed his eyes. The world shifted. The morning birdsong faded. The rustle of leaves stilled. In their place, he felt… echoes. Flickers of cold, dull light beneath the soil. Shame. Regret. Anger. One light, very close, felt fresher. Sharper. It carried the sudden, bright shock of accidental pain.
He followed it.
The grave was a simple mound, the soil still loose. No marker. This was the guard who had died three days ago—crushed by a falling training dummy. A stupid death. A dishonorable one.
Lin Feng knelt. He placed his hands on the soil.
"System. Raise a skeleton."
[Command Acknowledged. Activating: Raise Skeleton (Basic).]
A thread of the Death Qi inside him, the energy he'd absorbed in the coffin, flowed down his arms and into the earth. He felt it seek the bones below. It connected.
And then it sputtered. Faded.
[Failure. Insufficient Death Qi. Required: 15 units. Current: 9 units.]
A wave of frustration, hot and human, washed over him. He slammed a fist into the dirt. He had the tool. He had the target. But he lacked the fuel.
The System's tutorial prompt flickered, patient and cold.
[Death Qi is ambient energy. It collects where life has ended, especially violently. Seek a Convergence Point.]
He stood, reopening his Death Sense. He cast his perception wider, ignoring the faint, old lights. He searched for a knot of cold, a tangle of endings.
There. To the north, near the crumbling back wall of the cemetery. The air above it, even in the physical world, seemed grayer. No grass grew there. It was a bare patch of hard, stained earth.
He walked over. The moment he stepped onto the patch, a wave of sensation hit him.
Not images. Not sounds. Impressions.
The clash of steel.
A roar of betrayal.
Seven points of searing pain, blooming in quick succession.
The hot spill of life onto the dirt.
A pact of mutual destruction, centuries old.
An ancient dueling ground. A feud settled not with justice, but with total annihilation.
[Death Qi Convergence Point Located. Density: High.]
This was the place.
He sat cross-legged in the center of the bare earth. The chill seeped through his robes. He breathed in, and the tutorial guidance took over. He didn't pull the energy. He made himself a void. A vacant grave.
The Death Qi responded.
It flowed into him from the earth, from the air. It was not like the spiritual Qi the clan cultivated—vital, bright, expanding. This was a slow, cold river. It filled his dried-up meridians, and where it met the blockages—the innate seals that had made Lin Feng "trash"—it did not gently clear them.
It corroded.
A sharp, burning pain lit up his channels. He gritted his teeth, a low hiss escaping him. It felt like molten lead was being poured through his veins. His body shuddered. Sweat, cold as the dew, broke out on his forehead.
This was the price. The world called this energy demonic because it broke things. It broke life. And now, it was breaking the seals that had broken him.
He endured. Minute by agonizing minute. The gray light brightened.
[Death Qi +0.5… +0.5… +1…]
[Meridian Blockage in Left Arm Pathway: Cleared 10%... 45%... 100%.]
A feeling of terrifying, icy freedom rushed down his left arm. His fingers tingled.
The process repeated. Channel by channel. A symphony of pain.
Finally, as the sun crested the wall, a chime rang in his mind.
[Breakthrough Achieved.]
[Cultivation Stage: Qi Condensation (Death-Aspected), Stage 1.]
[Total Death Qi: 22/30 Units.]
Lin Feng opened his eyes. The world was sharper. Colder. He could see the faint, gray mist of Death Qi clinging to the old graves. He flexed his hand. Power, real and tangible, hummed under his skin. It was a dark power, but it was his.
He stood. The pain was gone, replaced by a hollow, resonant strength.
He returned to the fresh dishonored grave. He placed his hands on the soil again. This time, he directed the full, cold river of his new energy.
"Raise."
Twenty units of Death Qi drained from his core and plunged into the earth.
The soil stirred. A hand, skeletal and stained with dirt, thrust upward. Then another. The bones pulled the rest of the form from the grave. Dirt clattered from a bare ribcage, a skull, leg bones.
It stood before him. A skeleton. Its eye sockets were empty pits. In one bony hand, it still clutched the rusted remains of its standard-issue clan sword.
It stood, waiting. A faint blue thread of light connected its spine to Lin Feng's core. He could feel it. An extension of his will.
[Success: Skeleton Soldier Raised.]
[Skeleton Soldier #1 Status: Basic. Combat Power: Qi Condensation Stage 1 (Equivalent).]
[Analyzing Residual Martial Memory…]
[Technique Detected: 'Rust-Sword Basic Form' – Foundation-level swordsmanship for clan guards.]
[Technique Added to Personal Library.]
Knowledge, simple and blunt, flowed into Lin Feng's mind. Stances. Cuts. Parries. The muscle memory of a thousand drills performed by a now-dead guard.
"Can you speak?" Lin Feng asked, his voice a dry rasp.
The skeleton's jaw clicked. No sound came. It shook its skull slowly.
A companion of bone and silence. Fitting.
A shout echoed from the main path. "Search the dishonored section! Check everywhere!"
The guards. They were getting closer, more organized.
Lin Feng looked at his skeleton. "Hide. In an empty grave. Do not move until I call."
The skeleton nodded. It turned and with unsettling grace, slid into an open, collapsed grave nearby, pulling loose soil over itself until nothing was visible.
Lin Feng melted back into the thicker weeds near the wall. He crouched, slowing his breath, watching as four clan guards, led by a stern-faced captain, marched into the section.
"A body thief," the captain muttered, kicking at a tilting headstone. "Disgusting. Probably some demonic cultivator from the marshes, looking for materials. Check the ground for disturbances!"
They fanned out. One guard walked right past the grave where Lin Feng's skeleton hid. His boot scuffed the fresh soil.
He paused. Looked down.
Lin Feng's hand tightened around a cold stone. His mind raced through the Rust-Sword Form. A downward chop. A lunge. Could he and his skeleton take four guards? Now, when he was just discovered?
The guard shrugged, moved on. "Nothing here, Captain!"
The search moved away, toward the northern woods.
Lin Feng remained in the weeds for a long time after they left. The sun rose higher. He had power now. A sliver of it. He had a soldier.
And he had a new, more immediate problem. The clan was on alert. The cemetery was no longer a safe haven. He was a ghost with a body, a secret with a price on its head, and his only ally was a pile of bones with a rusted sword.
He looked toward the clan compound. Somewhere there, Lin Tao was breathing easy, thinking his problem was buried.
Soon, Lin Feng thought, the Death Qi in his core cycling slowly, coldly. Soon, cousin. I will knock on your door. And I won't be alone.