The sun had risen.
Golden light poured across the Nameless Grave, casting long shadows over cracked stone, withered grass, and graves forgotten by time. The storm had left the sky washed clean, revealing a cerulean dome unmarred by clouds. Birds cried distantly. The air smelled like rain and resurrection.
From a fissure in the ground, a figure emerged.
Li Tianming.
His robes were torn, face streaked with ash and blood, but his eyes gleamed with terrifying clarity. His Fate Furnace pulsed visibly in his chest—no longer a silent, passive construct but a living, breathing engine of inverted law.
The mark 逆 on his palm had darkened to a deep violet, glowing faintly with each heartbeat.
He stepped forward and exhaled.
The world felt different.
Not just brighter, but thinner. He could feel threads—destiny lines—trailing through the air like silk. Every life nearby tugged at these threads, creating ripples in the flow of fate.
Birds flying overhead. Insects in the grass. Distant footsteps...
He turned his head.
Three figures crept toward the grave, clad in dark green cloaks. Grave scavengers. Cultivators who fed on remnants and desecrated ancient sites for lost treasures and bone relics. One of them, tall and broad-shouldered, carried a bone scythe slung across his back.
Li Tianming narrowed his eyes.
The tall one paused. "Halt," he said, raising a hand. "You there—who are you? This site is claimed by the Thirteen Ashes Sect."
Tianming didn't answer.
The second man, lean with rat-like features, stepped forward, a smirk on his face. "Maybe he's another dumb grave-hopper. Looks like he just crawled out of the dirt."
The third was silent. Her eyes, sharp and green, never left Tianming's chest where his Fate Furnace pulsed.
"You're not from the Thirteen Ashes," she said softly. "But that's not what matters. That furnace—"
She stepped forward, greed flashing in her gaze.
"—It's unstable. Untested. Raw. We'll take it."
The scythe-wielder's eyes darkened. "Kill him. Take the core. Strip the corpse."
They moved fast—true cultivators, each at the third step of the Mortal Vein Realm.
Tianming didn't flinch.
He simply raised his palm.
The glyph ignited.
Instantly, the Threadstealer Gu slithered from his sleeve—still a misty, coiling form, but now tinted with purple-black lightning. It leapt forward, and time seemed to slow.
He saw their fate threads.
The scythe-wielder: born under an omen star, destined to slay a sect heir in seven years.
The rat-faced man: slated to die choking on poison after betrayal by a woman.
The green-eyed girl: fated to cripple herself in her next tribulation.
Tianming reached out.
And tugged.
Their threads warped. Not snapped—but twisted.
The tall one stumbled mid-charge. His muscles seized. His fate thread recoiled. The blade meant for Tianming veered wildly, embedding itself in stone.
The rat-like man screamed and clutched his throat, choking on air that had turned thick as tar. His own karma had leapt forward, forced to ripen.
The girl froze.
She realized what he had done. And she ran.
But Tianming moved.
Not fast—inevitable. His footsteps felt like falling dominos. He appeared before her and touched her shoulder lightly.
"Tell your sect," he whispered, "the Nameless Grave is mine now."
Then he reversed her fate of flight. She collapsed in place, unconscious—her escape turned to stillness.
He turned back to the others. Both were dead.
He exhaled.
For the first time, Li Tianming felt the chill of what he had become.
He was no longer bound by strength alone. No longer a pawn climbing ladders.
He bent ladders now.
And as he looked toward the distant peaks—where sects and empires ruled behind mountains and walls—he knew this was only the beginning.
Later That Day — Within the Cloudveil Sect
A robed elder knelt before a vast mirror. The surface rippled, displaying images from the Nameless Grave: the bodies, the broken threads, and the glyph of inversion glowing on the boy's hand.
The mirror pulsed.
A voice echoed through the chamber, layered with countless others—a Heaven Oracle.
"He walks the Forbidden Law. The Inverse Path has awakened once more."
The elder's hands trembled. "Shall we alert the Heaven Hounds?"
The voice boomed:
"The Hounds are already moving."
Elsewhere — In the Underworld
The chained figure in the abyss stirred.
"Good," it rasped.
"Let the boy run. Let the hounds hunt. That is how monsters are born."