The battle was over.
Li Tianming walked deeper into the Jadebone Forest, leaving behind the scarred battlefield and the broken Heaven's Hounds. The wind carried the scent of ozone and ash, and somewhere in the branches above, spirit crows screeched and scattered.
He had triggered the First Rite of Inversion — and survived.
But the strain on his body was severe.
His fate threads, once docile, now writhed like rivers in flood. The energy coursing through him had reversed natural meridian flow, and his Fate Furnace was adapting… or cracking.
He found a secluded clearing, surrounded by withered white trees twisted like mourners.
Tianming sat and focused inward.
Balance. Control. Understand what you've become.
Inside his spiritual sea, he saw the Threadstealer Gu wrapped around the glyph on his palm, whispering in a language of fate and secrets. He followed its energy to the base of his Fate Furnace.
There, something new had begun to grow — not a spiritual root, but a Fate Root, shaped by inversion.
A seed of possibility. Dangerous. Unstable. But limitless.
Suddenly, a breeze passed him — sharp, cold, and humming with ancient energy.
Then came the voice.
"You used the First Rite. No wonder the air tastes like rebellion."
Tianming's eyes snapped open.
A young woman stood at the edge of the clearing. She wore a black and white robe, with a cloak of ash-feathers and a veil across her eyes. Around her neck was a talisman shaped like a reverse yin-yang, the black at the top, white at the bottom.
He felt no cultivation pressure from her.
But that only made her more dangerous.
"Who are you?" Tianming asked.
She bowed slightly.
"I am Ye Qingsi, last disciple of the Mirror Moon Sect. And if you are truly walking the Inverse Path, you must come with me."
He frowned. "I don't follow strangers into woods."
She laughed softly. "You already did."
She turned, and with a flick of her fingers, a fold in space opened beside her. Not a portal — but a scar, sewn from rejected destiny. Within it was a stairway of broken mirrors, each reflecting futures that never happened.
Tianming felt his body pulled forward by instinct.
The glyph on his palm burned again — not in pain, but in resonance.
This was a place meant for the Inverse.
He followed.
They walked for what felt like hours.
Through mirrored paths, along staircases made of fossilized karma, through doors that opened only when his glyph pulsed.
Eventually, they stepped into a hidden valley — dark, misty, filled with withered lotuses and statues of faceless saints.
At its center stood an ancient temple.
Its roof was split by time. Its walls bore carvings of the same glyph on his palm. The 逆, repeated again and again — but in dozens of styles. Fierce. Silent. Joyful. Vengeful.
This was not a place of doctrine.
It was a place of recorded defiance.
Ye Qingsi knelt before the entrance.
"This was once the heart of the Mirror Moon Sect. A sanctuary for those cast out by Heaven's Will — cultivators with flawed roots, broken fates, unorthodox paths."
Tianming stepped forward.
"Why show me this?"
She looked up. Her veil shifted slightly, revealing violet eyes — blind, yet seeing everything.
"Because we've been waiting for someone who could awaken the rites. Someone who could… finish what Yi Cangxue began."
Tianming was silent.
But the glyph pulsed once. Then again.
A call and response.
Inside the temple, he found a hall of stone coffins — and one throne, still untouched by time.
Behind it was a mural of the Unwritten Sovereign.
Yi Cangxue — depicted with arms outstretched, holding no weapon, no scripture, no treasure.
Only nothingness.
Below the mural, a line carved in the wall:
"To follow Heaven is to tread a path already walked.
To defy Heaven is to become the path."
Tianming sat before the throne and closed his eyes.
And in the darkness of his soul realm, Yi Cangxue's voice echoed:
"Second Rite... is near."
Meanwhile — In the Upper Realms
The Heaven's Oracle stared into the divine mirror. The scene of Tianming's battle replayed endlessly — but blurred at the edges. Heaven's script refused to lock onto him.
A robed figure entered the chamber.
"Should we escalate to the Judges?"
The Oracle's lips trembled.
"No. Not yet. He is still incomplete.
But if the Second Rite awakens…
Then even the Judges may die."