They said it was an honor.
A once-in-a-generation chance to ascend.
To step into the Sacred Formation and become something…
greater.
They lied.
---
I wasn't chosen for greatness.
I was chosen to be erased.
---
"His soul can't stabilize," Elder Jun muttered.
I lay trembling on the cold altar stone, blood dripping down
my lips, eyes wide, throat crushed by silence.
Above me stood the five Elders of the Crimson Vein Sect—men
and women I had served, bled for, obeyed without question.
None of them looked surprised I was dying.
---
"The array rejected him. He's a failed vessel," said
Elder Doran. "What a shame. He had potential."
Liar.
He never meant for me to succeed. None of them did.
---
I tried to speak. To scream. My tongue wouldn't move.
My vision blurred, then split. The air shimmered with
strange glyphs. Something inside the altar pulsed. Wrong. Broken.
"Initiate soul-cleansing," Elder Mei said calmly.
"Before he contaminates the formation."
"We'll tell the outer disciples he was unworthy.
Another failed attempt."
---
Unworthy?
I trained harder than any of them.
Passed every trial.
Defended this sect with my life.
And now?
They wouldn't even speak my name.
---
Then I heard it.
[ERASURE PROTOCOL INITIATED…]
[SOUL SIGNATURE: CAEL VIRON // ACCESS: DENIED]
[REASON: SYSTEM CONFLICT DETECTED]
[INITIATING DELETION…]
I couldn't breathe. I couldn't move.
My name... it was being stripped from the world.
---
Then—something snapped.
The light from the array stuttered.
Glyphs glitched.
Lines of script twisted like veins beneath the altar.
The Elders froze.
[ERROR. ERROR. ERROR.]
[UNDEFINED ENTITY DETECTED.]
[SOUL STATUS: NULL]
---
And suddenly—
I was alone.
No altar.
No blood.
No sky.
Just blackness… and code.
---
"You were not supposed to survive."
The voice was cold. Mechanical. Ancient.
"You were sacrificed. Deleted. Forgotten. Yet your mind
resisted."
"You are a glitch in the Dao. An echo with no name."
---
[NAME: NULL]
[CLASS: INVALID]
[LEVELING SCRIPT: CORRUPTED]
[ROOT ACCESS GRANTED]
My body felt weightless. My soul—fractured.
But I was still here.
They wanted me gone.
Wanted me burned from memory, buried beneath honor and lies.
But they made one mistake.
They didn't finish the job.
---
[REBUILDING SCRIPT CORE...]
[FORBIDDEN PATHS AVAILABLE.]
Do you wish to remember?
Do you wish to destroy?
---
I opened my eyes beneath the ruined altar.
Moonlight filtered through the cracks.
The sacred array was gone. So were the Elders.
They'd already forgotten me.
But I remembered them.
---
You tried to erase me.
Now I'll erase everything you believe in.
---
I rose on shaky limbs, naked beneath the stars, skin marked
with glowing veins of shifting glyphs. Not ink. Not blood. Code.
My breath steamed in the night air, but I wasn't cold.
Not anymore.
Something inside me burned — not fire, but… recursion.
Repetition. A loop gone wrong.
The sect called it the Sacred Formation.
But I could see it now —
A prison. A lie. A machine dressed in myth.
---
[GLITCHED PATH UNLOCKED]
[WARNING: NON-STANDARD SCRIPT DETECTED]
[YOU WALK A FORBIDDEN ROAD]
---
A scream echoed through the night — not mine.
Somewhere, far above the mountain, a disciple sensed the
formation had broken.
They would come back.
To finish the ritual.
To bury what they failed to delete.
Let them.
---
I took one slow step forward. The stone beneath my feet
fractured. Not from weight — from rejection.
The world didn't want me anymore.
But I wasn't asking.
---
"They took my name," I whispered. "So I'll take
everything else."
---
No cultivation manuals.
No sect techniques.
No godly bloodlines.
Just a glitch in the Dao.
And a script that wanted to be rewritten.
---
Let the heavens call me broken.
Let the sect call me cursed.
I call myself reborn.
And if fate can be coded…
Then I'll become the bug that crashes the entire system.
But first…
I had to know what they did to me.
My hand trembled as I raised it. The glyphs on my skin
shifted—language and numbers I'd never studied flickering across my veins like
living scripture.
I didn't recognize them.
But I understood them.
Not with memory. Not with logic.
With something else.
Something… rewritten.
---
[SYSTEM ROOT MENU ACCESSED]
[ADMINISTRATIVE COMMAND LAYER: OVERRIDDEN]
[KNOWN PATHS: NONE]
[AVAILABLE PATHS: UNDEFINED]
Would you like to define your own cultivation method?
---
I laughed. It came out cracked and empty.
> "They denied me a path… now they want me to build
one?"
The Sect spent centuries worshipping manuals that bound
souls into fixed routes — "Lightning Body", "Silent Sword", "Heaven's Breath" —
relics passed from generation to generation like law.
But me?
I was a ghost in the system. A threat the world couldn't
place.
If they feared me before… they'd pray they killed me
properly when they see what I become.
---
I clenched my fist.
The air snapped. The stone around my feet cracked in a
perfect square — as if the very geometry of reality recoiled from my intent.
[COMMAND: ACCEPTED]
[PRIMAL LOGIC SCRIPT—BINDING TO CORE]
[TRAIT UNLOCKED: OBSERVE // SIMULATE // DESTROY]
[REWARD: FIRST UNDEFINED TECHNIQUE - "NULL STARE"]
You may now rewrite basic cultivation logic. Use at your own
risk.
---
Rewriting logic?
I didn't even know what that meant.
But I'd learn.
And when I did…
I'd teach it to the ones who tried to erase me.
---
The wind shifted.
Footsteps.
I ducked into the shadows of the cracked altar just as two
figures stepped onto the platform above.
Outer disciples. Scouting. Whispering.
"The array failed?"
"No… I think it succeeded. I think it erased him."
They looked right past me. One stepped over the very stone
where I stood.
"There's nothing left of him."
"Good. That trash always thought he was better than the
rest."
---
I reached out.
Not with hatred. Not with rage.
With calculation.
[INITIATE: NULL STARE]
[TARGET RECOGNIZED]
[LOGIC THREAD: "HE CANNOT BE HERE" // FORCED ACCEPTANCE]
The disciple blinked.
Shivered.
Then stepped forward — eyes blank — and walked away,
convinced I never existed.
I released the power and collapsed behind the altar,
gasping.
That wasn't an illusion. That was logic.
I had changed the way his mind processed the world —
convinced it to rewrite the rules.
The system tried to erase me.
Now I could do the same.
---
And this was only the beginning.
---
Tomorrow, I would return to the sect in secret.
I would walk its halls as a ghost.
Map its secrets. Study its flaws.
And when I am ready—
I will show them what happens
when the system crashes from the inside.