The ruins smoldered in silence. Only the flicker of dying flames and the scent of scorched earth remained as proof of the battle that had shaken the ancient ground. Wang Lin stood motionless, the final echo of his clash with the Temple's masked enforcer still vibrating in his bones.
Lian Hua limped to his side, a gash running along her ribs. She held it tight, crimson staining her robe. "That technique… that wasn't just stolen. It was ancient, sovereign-level."
Wang Lin didn't answer at first. His mind was reeling. The Heaven's Thief Palm had emerged from instinct, not intention. As if… something inside him remembered it. As if his body acted on a truth older than memory.
"I didn't learn it," Wang Lin said slowly. "I… became it."
Jin Tao whistled low from where he crouched beside a fallen Temple hound's blade. "Then let's hope you become a god before they send real monsters."
He tossed the cursed blade away—it hissed and crumbled to dust. "These weapons are soul-bound. Even dead, they still hunger."
Wang Lin turned toward the remnants of the stairway where they had first found the statue. The pulse of the ancient seal had faded… but not disappeared.
That voice—the one that had spoken from the shadows beneath the earth—lingered in his thoughts.
> "You carry the mark of what was once stolen from the heavens…"
A mark.
Not a gift. Not a curse.
A legacy.
Lian Hua leaned heavily against the cracked wall beside him. "We can't stay here. The Temple doesn't forgive failure. Next time, they'll come in force."
Jin Tao scratched his chin. "I know a place. An old cultivation sanctum in the Eastern Rift, swallowed up centuries ago. Forgotten by most. It's dangerous, but off the Temple's map."
Wang Lin nodded, eyes burning with unspoken resolve. "Then we head east."
As they gathered their few belongings, Wang Lin paused at the base of a fallen statue, brushing away the dust to reveal an inscription. The characters were barely legible, but he recognized them.
> "Let the heavens fear the thief who walks unseen."
He clenched his fists.
"Let them come," he whispered.
Then the wind shifted.
High above, beyond mortal sight, a figure cloaked in void-black robes stood atop a broken tower, observing. His face was obscured by a veil of shifting mist, but in his palm burned the same sigil that pulsed within Wang Lin.
Another carrier of the Abduction Path.
But where Wang Lin burned with defiance—
This one burned with hunger.