A day passed.
In the twisting dark of the tomb, where walls whispered old names and dust clung like memory, Huang and Jiang Fei emerged into the upper layers.
They had climbed slowly — through collapsed passages and uneven stairwells, evading traps only Fei's fading instincts could still sense. No sign of the others remained. The cousins, their guards, the slaves — all gone. Vanished like smoke from a sealed lantern. Perhaps they had fled. Perhaps the tomb had taken them.
Fei moved with difficulty. His wounds had closed, but not mended. His soul, fractured by the talisman's treachery, hung together by meditation and sheer will. And his cultivation core — once bright with potential — now dimmed like a lantern with a cracked glass. He smiled, still, at Huang's side. But every step came with a price.
They found the chamber near dawn, or what passed for it in the deep earth — a place untouched by prior feet.
Here, the stone was smooth. Old. Silent. The doors were tall and narrow, marked not with warnings but a strange reverence: images of ascended cultivators, hands clasped not in combat, but in sorrow.
"This place…" Fei said, voice thin, "isn't part of the mapped tomb. No one's charted this far."
Huang glanced back. "We can turn around."
Fei looked at him with quiet eyes. "We're past the point of turning, Huang."
So they entered.
It began subtly — the pressure. A spiritual heaviness that bore down like dusk on a lake. Then the chill. Not physical cold, but the kind that wrapped around the bones of the soul.
The first spirit came as a whisper: a young man in tattered robes, floating just above the ground, mouth moving in a silent scream.
Then others.
Cultivators from a dozen sects and clans. Some recent — others skeletal and hollow. All dead. All lost chasing the treasures of this place. Their resentment seeped into the air like poison, and their eyes — dim but burning — locked on the living.
Huang reached for Fei's arm, but Fei had already stepped forward.
"Stay behind me," he said.
"But—"
"I said stay."
Fei's sword sprang to life — not with power, but with posture. His stance was shaky. His footwork precise but exhausted. Still, he fought. Each swing carved through mist and rage. Each step forward pushed back the press of the spirits. He shielded Huang with the last shreds of what he had.
But it was not enough.
A spirit — ancient, crowned with black qi, robes melted into flesh — shrieked with the fury of centuries. It struck Fei's soul directly. He dropped, gasping, blade rattling from his hand.
Huang caught him. Blood spilled anew from Fei's lips.
"Fei!"
"I told you…" he coughed, "I'm… already gone."
"No—don't—"
But Fei lifted his hand. Pressed something — a scroll, wrapped tight in bloodied silk — into Huang's palm.
"Promise me," he whispered. "Don't… die as someone's shadow. Take what's yours."
And then his breath stopped. His body slumped. And his soul began to rise — faint, flickering, as if even the dead resisted letting him go.
But then the wall behind them… shifted.
The spirits stopped. Silent. As if they, too, recognized the change.
The chamber trembled, and a circle of ancient script blazed across the floor. The air swirled. A thousand whispered names swept through the hall. The wall split open.
And behind it: the sanctum.
No door.
Only light. Beckoning. Pulling.
Jiang Fei's soul, still flickering, was caught by the glow.
And Huang — eyes wide, face streaked with tears and ash — was pulled with it, scroll clutched tight, as the tomb sealed shut once more behind them.
No voice welcomed them.
No sound followed.
Only silence.
And a single inscription above the entrance, now revealed in full:
"The Master Seeks Not Heirs. He Seeks Purpose."
The instant the sanctum absorbed Huang and the soul of Jiang Fei, the tomb changed.
The air thickened — not with dust or death, but with purpose.
The stones groaned as ancient formations activated. Pathways that once wound through the tomb snapped shut like jaws. Doorways sealed behind sudden walls of solid jade. Even cracks vanished, knitting shut beneath a webwork of glowing script.
All outside chambers — the rooms where the cousins still loitered, the cavern where the chained slaves knelt — were thrust outward by invisible force, pushed to the outermost ring of the tomb's structure.
Then came silence.
No probe, no divine sense, no soul projection could penetrate past that inner sanctum. Even Jiang Ren, with his family-bestowed spiritual compass, found his cultivation swallowed as if dipped into a void.
A shiver ran through them.
"What… is this?" Jiang Wei whispered.
Jiang Ren stared toward the now-sealed hall. "An Immortal's Will. This is no tomb. It's a test."
They weren't wrong.
A breath later, a quiet cracking echoed in the chamber.
Jiang Fei's soul token, which had rested in a silver box among the cousins' supplies, shattered.
The glow fled it. The runes cracked. The essence that once bound his soul to the mortal realm was severed.
Fei was… gone.
Dead, as far as the world would ever know.
The elders from the Jiang Family, stationed at the outer edges of the burial grounds, received the message through enchanted flares and alarm talismans. Within the hour, armored cultivators and imperial-certified Sword Witnesses arrived to begin the tribunal.
By then, Jiang Ren had already prepared the Recording Crystal.
He wept before the elders. He spoke of duty, of trust. Of a cousin slain by the very slaves he showed mercy to. He offered the crystal like a grieving brother offers the ashes of the fallen.
The footage was clear.
Fei calling out. Talisman light. Screams.
Then silence.
Even the Spirit-Scent Council — neutral cultivator adjudicators — found no inconsistencies. The fabricated memory had been built with care, infused with soul fragments and pulse echoes that mimicked real events.
Luo Sen and Mu Xiaoyi were dragged forward.
Chained. Starved. Bruised.
Sen shouted. Screamed. Spoke names, begged for trial-by-blade. He demanded his right to fight for innocence.
Mu Xiaoyi simply looked up once — her face bruised, expression unreadable.
"I never thought I would see stars only once," she whispered.
The sentence was handed down immediately.
Conspirators in the death of Jiang Fei, direct heir of the Jiang line and imperial-accepted sword talent, are to be executed by Spirit Chain Severance — a method that not only kills but scatters the soul, leaving nothing to reincarnate.
No one objected.
No one dared.
Jiang Ren stood nearby as the blades fell. His eyes glinted, but he did not smile. A politician in mourning must remain composed.
He turned to Jiang Wei after. "Now all we need is time. No one will ever know."
What he didn't see was that a faint ripple passed through the sky above the tomb.
A spirit signature — foreign, unknowable — flickered across the heavens for a fraction of a breath, just once.
The seal had not only cut them off from the sanctum.
It had also sealed something in.
And deep below, in a chamber of stars and silence, Huang opened his eyes — surrounded by endless sword diagrams, constellations mapped to stances, and the fading soul of a friend whose death had marked the beginning of an age.