The bounty spread faster than wildfire.
It was whispered in brothels and inked onto blood scrolls in black market auctions. By dawn, every rogue cultivator, fallen sect, and power-hungry wanderer in the Eastern Territories knew the name:
> Shen Liun. The Ashen Flame Reborn.
Wanted—alive or dead.
Reward: A spirit treasury's worth of pills, weapons, and Qi stones.
Bonus: Immediate entry into one of the Nine Great Sects.
By midday, swords had been drawn in a dozen provinces.
---
Far from the whispers, Shen Liun crouched low beside a rushing stream deep in the pine-covered hills of the Emberfall Range. The water shimmered faintly under moonlight, but his eyes weren't on the river.
They were on the treeline.
Ning'er stood a few feet away, bow drawn, her spiritual senses sharpened to the edge.
"They're close," she said.
"How many?"
"Too many."
Aoshen's voice flared in Liun's mind.
> "At least four spirit cultivators. Two are from the Iron Vein Hall, based on their Qi signatures. The others are hunters—professional trackers. They've laced poison traps around the base of the slope."
"So they're serious."
> "You've become valuable," Aoshen said darkly. "Too valuable to be ignored. You carry a name that should have died. And now the world wants to bury it again."
Liun stood.
His breath was steady. No panic. No fear.
Just resolve.
"Let them come," he said.
---
The ambush came swiftly.
The first attacker leapt from the trees—robes darkened by blood seals, blades wreathed in venomous Qi. A cultivator of the Bone Thistle Sect, long thought extinct.
Ning'er's arrow pierced his lung before he even landed.
Another came from behind, cloaked in wind. He struck at Liun with a curved blade designed to slice through spiritual barriers.
Liun parried it with Dawnmourne, flame spiraling up the black-gold steel. The impact sent the man flying back into a tree, splintering it on contact.
But more followed.
Four. Six. Nine now.
They surrounded the two of them like wolves.
"You're famous, boy," growled one of the men—a scarred warrior with three Qi cores bound to chains around his wrist. "Half the continent's after your flame. But we'll be the ones to carve it from your corpse."
Liun didn't answer.
His eyes scanned each of them—reading their movements, their weaknesses.
Then he spoke.
"You've all chased something you don't understand."
He stepped forward.
The Ashen Flame surged behind his eyes, and the forest trembled.
> "You think I'm prey. But I'm the fire you walk into."
He moved.
Faster than any of them expected.
The first strike cleaved through a man's weapon, shattering the Qi inside it. The second strike carved a flaming arc that forced three attackers to leap back. His movements were fluid—no wasted effort, no hesitation.
Every blow burned.
Ning'er fought beside him, her formation techniques weaving traps into the very soil. Each step the enemies took was one closer to being crippled, blinded, or frozen in place.
One attacker tried to leap above them—only to be shot clean through the throat before he touched the ground.
The tide of enemies faltered.
Liun raised his blade, now glowing white-hot.
> "You were warned," Aoshen said, echoing through the trees. "The Ashen Flame is not kind. It does not forgive."
With a final surge of flame, Liun released a burst of controlled destruction—a ring of searing heat that expanded in all directions, melting weapons and searing flesh.
The remaining attackers scattered in fear.
Liun let them go.
The forest returned to silence, broken only by the hiss of evaporating blood on stone.
---
Later, by the fire, Ning'er treated his arm—cut from a lucky slash. The wound was shallow, but it still ached.
"We won," she said.
Liun nodded. "That was just the first wave."
She looked up at him. "You don't regret showing your strength?"
"No," he said. "If I hide, they'll come for me anyway. But if I stand… they'll think twice."
Aoshen murmured,
> "You're forcing the world to see you. But now… the world will begin to respond in kind."
Liun gazed into the fire.
His thoughts drifted—not to battle, or death, but to his family.
Would his father have fought like this?
Would his mother have been proud to see him wield the sword of their ancestor?
Would they still recognize him?
The boy who once begged for scraps of attention in a broken sect?
That boy was gone.
What remained was something else.
Not yet a god.
But no longer a ghost.
---
Far away, in the ancient Shadow Sect, a man dressed in robes darker than midnight knelt before a statue of chains.
He dipped his hand into a basin of blood and carved a sigil into his own chest.
"He rises," the man whispered. "The Ashen Flame walks again."
Behind him, hundreds of eyes opened in the darkness.
And they began to chant.
> "Let the cursed one rise. Let the heavens burn. Let war begin."
---