["If everyone avoids a place, that just means I'll have first pick." – Wu Feng]
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The Broken Root Sect rarely received letters from the outside.
What few messages arrived were addressed to elders, brought in via spirit falcons or sect envoys. Scrolls wrapped in jade, sealed in formation wax.
This one was different.
It arrived folded in raw parchment. No name on the outside. The seal bore an unfamiliar sigil: two crumbling mountains split by a river of ink.
And the name on the address tag?
Elder Jianxu.
The problem?
Elder Jianxu had been dead for ten years.
No one even mentioned him anymore.
Wu wasn't trying to steal. Not this time.
He was simply walking past the archives hall when he noticed the letter on a lesser steward's desk—untouched, ignored.
The steward had gone to fetch tea.
Wu's eyes caught the name.
He stepped forward.
No protective array. No spiritual trap. Just a dead man's name and an ignored delivery.
"If a letter survives ten years to reach a corpse," he whispered, "it probably doesn't want to be read by the living."
So he read it.
The Letter (Translated):
"Jianxu—If this finds you, then the old map has not faded. I did as we agreed.The ruins at Ashveil Crater remain unclaimed.The outer rings are dead—but the central well... it stirs.If your student still lives, he may be the only one who can enter.If not—let it die buried."
Signed:Elder Qiu of Red Talisman Hall
Wu reread the final line.
"If your student still lives…"
And laughed.
"He doesn't. But someone with less shame is available."
[+5 PP – Legacy Theft by Opportunity]
[About Ashveil Crater]
A wasteland far beyond Broken Root's influence—once home to the Iron Vein Sect, destroyed during a failed rebellion nearly a century ago.
Rumors said the land was cursed.
That strange spiritual echoes still lingered.
That those who entered came back… wrong. If they came back at all.
No sect dared claim it. No clan mined it. No rogue cultivator lasted long.
Which made it perfect.
Wu Feng made the calculation
No official patrols = no law
No sect dominance = no reputation consequences
No disciples = no witnesses
And if there was an artifact?
Even a weak one?
"I get stronger. They get more paranoid. Everyone wins."
[Quest Triggered: Legacy in Ashes]Objective: Reach Ashveil Crater. Investigate the central well. Return alive with any legacy found.Rewards: High-tier scroll unlock, new cultivation path node, 100–300 PP depending on style.
He left the sect quietly.
No fanfare.
No ceremony.
Just a clean robe, a map tucked into his sleeve, and the Silent Wind Movement Art suppressing his presence.
The road out of Broken Root led past wild hills, merchant routes, then into old borderlands.
After three days, Wu reached the Ashveil perimeter: blackened rock, wilted trees, no birdsong, and a pressure in the air that felt like a whisper that didn't stop.
He stopped on a ridge and stared down into the crater.
It was deep. Still. Wrong.
And waiting.
Wu descended the slope carefully, each step aligned with shadow and natural folds.
No monsters.
No qi beasts.
No guards.
But the silence wasn't peace—it was the kind of silence that remembered screaming.
He reached a ruined stone arch, half-swallowed by ash and vines.
A plaque overhead read:
IRON VEIN SECT – MAY OUR ROOTS NEVER ROT
The irony made him grin.
"They rotted," he said, and stepped inside.
[+5 PP – Disrespect to a Dead Sect (In Their Own Ruins)]
Inside the Ruins the sect's outer ring was a field of collapsed meditation halls and broken array plates.
Faint echoes of defensive formations sparked occasionally, then faded.
He found three skeletons half-merged into stone. One wore robes bearing a barely legible symbol:
Red Talisman Hall.
"Qiu never left."
Inside a collapsed archive, he found the remains of a jade vault. The main chamber had been blasted inward, not out.
Meaning?
"Something inside detonated. Not someone breaking in… someone trying to leave."
He followed the cracked ground inward.
Toward the central well.
At the heart of the ruins lay a perfect circle, untouched by the blast. Stone smooth as ice. No dust.
Wu knelt beside it.
It wasn't a well in the physical sense.
It was a spiritual sinkhole.
He could feel it—not a portal, not a gate, but a compression.
An energy that bent perception, like standing too close to a spiritual truth without understanding it.
He touched it with one finger.
The well rippled.
Then unfolded.
The world inverted.
Wu stood alone in a black void.
Before him, a voice boomed:
"Are you the student of Jianxu?"
"No."
"Then why are you here?"
Wu smiled.
"Because the world thought I wouldn't be."
Silence.
Then laughter.
The kind of laughter that sounded like old stone cracking.
"Very well. Then learn what he never did."
A scroll appeared in the air before him.
He reached out.
New Technique Acquired
Scroll of Inverse Pulse: Fragment IDescription: Converts received spiritual force into kinetic displacement.The stronger the enemy's attack, the greater the directional repulsion.Usable with movement arts, including Silent Wind.
Warning:Technique was deemed unteachable due to "encouraging disrespectful combat behavior and dangerous counterculture insights."
Wu: "Oh, I'm going to love this."
[+60 PP – Forbidden Legacy Claimed (Unwitnessed)][+20 PP – Insight Gained While Breaking Sect Taboo Site]
System Update
Petty Points: 510New Technique Tree Unlocked:
Inverse Combat Path – Redirect, Counter, DisorientPetty Shop Additions:
Counterblast Tokens
Mirrorstep Formation Scripts
Echo Recording Seal (Replay humiliations for added PP)
As He Left the Crater the world felt different.
He hadn't just found a technique.
He had claimed something deliberately buried by a system that hated unpredictability.
"This world," Wu whispered, "hides the good stuff under the corpses of people who thought too hard."
"Good thing I think harder."
He turned toward the open plains beyond the sect lands.
The world was wider now.
More dangerous.
And finally, ready for him.