The sealed chamber was as silent as death.
Li Fan stood just beyond the final ring of warding runes, staring at the ancient corpse slouched on the throne of black stone. Its body was withered to skin and bone, yet bound by thick, pulsing chains of runic light. Its remaining eye glowed faintly, not with power—but with awareness.
This thing had once lived.
Once fed.
Like him.
"You're awake," Li Fan murmured. "Or… half-awake."
The chamber's air was thick with spiritual residue. It clung to his lungs like ash. His body itched beneath the skin as it reacted—instinctively adapting to the corruption that had once bloomed here.
The corpse didn't move.
But it watched him.
And for the first time in years, Li Fan felt something alien stir in his blood.
Recognition.
---
He stepped forward.
The chains hissed, reacting to his presence. The sigils on the floor trembled, but did not repel him.
Why?
Why am I not being cast out?
And then, a voice.
Not with sound. Not with qi. But with memory.
A thought that wasn't his own echoed through his mind, whispered like wind through dead leaves.
"How far will you go?"
Li Fan froze.
The voice was not human. It carried no ego. No malice. No warmth.
Only experience.
He closed his eyes—and saw images. Flashing. Vivid. Stained in blood.
A creature—not man, not beast—consuming armies on an empty battlefield. Ripping knowledge from the minds of sages. Devouring divine beasts until its body could no longer hold its shape.
It grew.
And grew.
And then began to split.
Fragment by fragment, its stolen forms collapsed into madness. It no longer knew what it was. Could no longer control the voices it had consumed.
Eventually, it was sealed.
Not by righteous cultivators, but by itself.
Because there was nothing left worth preserving.
---
Li Fan gasped. Staggered back.
"You… sealed yourself?"
The corpse did not move. But the remaining eye dimmed slightly.
"I lost the name I devoured first."
"That was the beginning of the end."
Li Fan clenched his jaw. He had never doubted the path before. Every kill had made him more. More alive. More powerful. More capable.
But this thing—it had reached farther than he ever imagined.
And it had become nothing.
---
The seals flickered. Just a bit. A single strand of runic chain pulsed—and weakened.
A test.
He could take this thing's remains. Devour them.
It was not completely dead.
It was not completely sane.
But its essence still brimmed with fragments of a thousand cultivations. Power beyond anything Li Fan had ever tasted.
"If I feed on you…"
"I might never be myself again."
He stood still for a long time.
His fingers twitched.
His hunger howled.
But then he stepped back—just one foot.
"Not yet."
The room pulsed again, but this time... warmly. A fragment of the corpse's glow reached out to him.
And something entered him. Not power. Not essence.
A warning. A shard of structure. A locked memory.
The sense of how to stabilize a devouring form once it had evolved past its humanoid stage.
"A gift," Li Fan said softly. "Or a trap."
The corpse didn't answer.
Its eye dimmed. For good this time.
---
Li Fan emerged from the crypt a day later, slower than usual.
He'd spent years feeding, growing, adapting. Always convinced that more was better. That change was the path to survival.
But now...
"Even change can rot," he whispered.
He needed anchors. Not just power.
Something to remember who he was.
He looked at his hands—smooth, almost human again. His reflection in the dark water was clearer than it had been in months.
He wasn't just absorbing power anymore.
He was learning to shape it.
To keep the voices quiet.
To evolve without erasing himself.
---
Meanwhile...
Across the land, the aftermath of the Blue Wind Ranking Tournament still echoed.
Yun Che was being summoned to Heavenly Sword Villa. Rumors of the demonic strength he'd displayed reached even the hidden sects. Invitations were being drafted. Alliances shifting.
And Li Fan, in the shadows of a distant forest, listened to the wind.
"The Sword Conference is coming."
"Yun Che will stand before the peak of Blue Wind's sword sects."
"And that's where the first true monster will appear…"
He smiled faintly, fangs barely showing behind human lips.
"Maybe I'll eat him."