The snow never melted atop Mount Jueyan. Not even during the Fire Moon, when twin suns scorched the eastern skies and rivers turned to steam across the southern kingdoms. The peak remained untouched, a white spear piercing the heavens. Some said it was cursed. That a tyrant, in his final breath, had frozen the mountain's heart for ten thousand years.
Yue Lian didn't believe in curses.
She believed in bones, in relics, and in the silent truths etched by time. She believed in what could not be bought, rewritten, or silenced. And as she stood before the jagged mouth of a collapsed cavern halfway up Jueyan's spine, her breath fogging the frigid air, she knew—this place had waited for her.
It called in fragments. Not in words, but in visions. In dreams scattered across jade slips, in muttered lines from old monks who died with warnings still on their tongues. In the pull of her very blood, like something long-forgotten had awoken inside her and would not let her rest.
The name echoed across her spirit sea for months, each time louder.
Yan Zhuo.
The Crimson Tyrant. The Flame Butcher. The Devil of Yue.
History remembered him with fire and fury. The tales dripped with blood—entire cities reduced to ash, scholars executed for dissent, temples sealed beneath molten stone. But legends were painted in the colors of victors, and Yue Lian had learned not to trust the brush.
She had chased this truth across ruins and sect archives, down forbidden libraries and across broken battlefields. All paths had led her here. To this tomb. This mountain. This moment.
A low growl rumbled beside her. Shuang, her spirit beast, shifted uneasily. The qilin's glass-blue eyes glowed like frost moons, his breath misting in curling ribbons. He was part companion, part guardian, and part mystery—gifted to her by her late master under only one condition: "Follow the echoes. Never the noise."
The cavern before them pulsed with a faint red glow, barely visible beneath the crust of permafrost. As she stepped closer, the wards flickered—ancient seal scripts, nearly invisible to the naked eye, arranged in overlapping spirals across the stone. They glowed like dying fireflies.
"This is it," she whispered.
She removed a silver talisman from within her robes—flat, etched with three concentric rings, and cold to the touch. Her master, once a famed appraiser for the fallen Gu Clan, had passed it to her before his death. "When truth becomes unbearable," he had said, "this will open what should never have been buried."
Yue Lian pressed the talisman into the heart of the seal ring. The symbols pulsed in answer. For a heartbeat, the entire mountain seemed to hold its breath.
Then the earth groaned.
Snow fell in roaring sheets. The cliff face cracked open with a sound like the sky splitting. A narrow path revealed itself, yawning wide into the mountain's dark heart.
"If I die," Yue Lian whispered, more to herself than anyone else, "let it be for the truth."
She stepped inside.
The corridor was narrow—unnaturally so. It forced her to walk with her shoulders slightly hunched, her boots brushing bone-dry dust that hadn't shifted in centuries. No echoes followed her footfalls. Only silence. A silence so deep it felt sacred.
Light from her spirit lamp played across the walls. But instead of murals of conquest or vaults of treasure, she found…
Scriptures.
Row after row, etched directly into the stone. Not of fire or war—but cultivation techniques. Defensive. Restorative. Meditative. The writings spoke of balance, harmony, and clarity of will.
It didn't match.
This was no tyrant's hall. It was something else entirely.
She stepped deeper. Then stopped.
Jade slips lined the floor. Hundreds. Each one carefully placed, unmarred by dust or decay. When she knelt to inspect them, she saw names—some common, others clearly ancient sect lineages, some entirely unknown. Civilians, maybe. Or disciples. Or victims.
She reached out, touched one.
The slip pulsed.
Crimson light bled from the script. It rose into the air, trembling, and from it poured a voice.
A man's voice. Deep. Weary. Quietly resigned.
"I don't expect forgiveness. I only hoped… that one day, someone would listen. If you have found this place—then perhaps my death was not in vain."
Yue Lian's breath caught.
It wasn't the roar of a tyrant. It wasn't fury or wrath.
It was grief.
She fell to her knees.
Shuang crept closer, nuzzling her gently, his fur icy against her skin.
"I… I don't understand," she whispered. "You weren't supposed to sound like this."
Another slip rose.
And another.
The tomb was awakening.
With each voice came a story. Not of cruelty, but of sacrifice. Of a man making impossible choices, buried beneath blood-stained propaganda.
One slip showed her a village engulfed in fire. Cultivators in crimson robes, screaming as they fought beasts made of shadow. And among them—Yan Zhuo. Dragging children from collapsing homes, shielding them with his own body, shouting orders not to kill—but to protect.
He wasn't inciting the destruction.
He was stopping it.
The visions came too fast. They cracked something in her. Not just in her mind—but in her soul.
This tomb wasn't a prison.
It was a confession.
Outside, the blizzard howled louder, as though the heavens themselves wept.
Inside, Yue Lian stood, surrounded by the weight of memory.
The legends had lied. The world had chosen silence. But she would not.
She pressed a slip to her heart. "I hear you."
And somewhere deeper within the tomb, behind one final seal, something stirred in reply.
A whisper. A flicker.
A name.
Yan Zhuo.
And in that moment, Yue Lian knew—her journey was only beginning.