"Some die, their soul scattered and body crushed.Some die... yet their heart still kneels somewhere, waiting for the day they return to walk forward once more."
The third night after the ancestral rite – Within the Blood Pool of the Grand TombLâm Mạc awoke to the sound of blood dripping.The cold seeped into his very bones, yet the coldest thing… was the stillness enveloping everything around him. He lay atop a crimson stone altar, one used solely to destroy the souls of those who defied the heavens.But he wasn't dead. Nor was he still alive as before.
"You have returned..."A voice whispered inside his consciousness.The figure from the ashes—still obscured, face hidden—stood once more, but this time, a pair of ash-gold eyes burned like two endless abysses.
"The first death... was a trial.The second... is the rite.""Now... look back."
Inside Lâm Mạc's mind, fragmented memories surfaced—disjointed, like a broken film reel.There was an eye that once gazed at him in the rain the night he was crippled.A small hand that held his when he was cast out by his sect.A white-robed figure who passed him by when he was near death atop Mount Vô Độ.All of it—gone in an instant.
Above the blood pool, all the elders of the Lâm Clan had gathered. The clan had summoned the Soul-Destruction Rite—a final ritual meant to erase the lingering soul of a crippled bearer of tainted blood.
"The heretical bloodline must not exist beneath this sky!" shouted an elder.Clan leader Lâm Kình spoke coldly:"The blood of Thái Sơ once cast the Eastern Wastes into ashes. Today, it shall be wiped out beneath this altar."
They didn't know…The moment Lâm Mạc came into contact with the blood pool, the ashes in his blood began to react.
A gray gate slowly creaked open inside his sea of consciousness. No thunder, no divine radiance—only layers of ancient incantations emerged, floating like rotting stardust in the void.
"You wish to live… then do not learn to cultivate.To live, you must first destroy all within your blood… even your humanity."
His hands trembled.But then, within that layer of ash—a faint, ghostly melody echoed.A woman's voice?Unclear. Yet the tone stirred the only warmth he had known in ten cursed years. A distant, painful warmth.
"Do I… still have something left?" Lâm Mạc whispered.
Suddenly, the entire blood pool boiled.The blood turned from deep red to jade-gray, then into ashes rising into the sky.
The elders panicked."That... that's Thái Sơ reverse ascension!""Impossible! How can a crippled one—!"But it was too late.
At the center of the pool, Lâm Mạc rose. His hair drifted softly. His body still frail—but his ash-gray eyes were like the abyss of a forgotten god. No longer carrying life, only a silent, burning will.
A voice echoed from within his blood:"Consciousness detected... Host has entered the initial stage of Thái Sơ Sinh Đạo.""Pathway protocol: Binding Initiation... commencing.""First stage: Dream Annihilation."
"It's not that I want to live…But those who've died within me—Have not yet allowed me to die.""If this path is one long sealed...Then let me be the first to tear the curse apart."