The moment Yue Lian stepped back into the sunlight, it felt... wrong.
The cold air of Mount Jueyan, once numbing, now bit into her skin like needles. The sky was the same shade of pale gray, and yet her eyes strained against the light, as though some unseen veil had lifted within her.
She clutched the jade slip tightly, wrapping it in cloth and storing it within her inner robes. The memory still echoed through her sea of consciousness: a firestorm, terrified villagers, and a red figure defying death to save them.
Yan Zhuo.
She looked at Shuang, whose crystalline fur rippled with alertness. The qilin had seen the memory, too. Spirit beasts of its caliber could link with their masters' minds. It growled low, not in warning—but in mourning.
Yue Lian tightened her robes and turned her gaze down the slope. She needed to return to the Southern Archive Sect. As an independent scholar under their temporary protection, she still had access to forbidden records, but she knew the Sect Elders wouldn't take kindly to what she had discovered.
Still, some truths could not be buried. And if they tried to stop her, she'd find a way to publish the scroll herself. The world had to know what Yan Zhuo truly was.
Elsewhere, far from Mount Jueyan, deep within the Cloudfire Palace Sect, Elder Mo Zhi sneered as he ran a clawed finger across an ancient black scroll.
"So," he murmured, "the Tomb has been disturbed."
The room trembled with suppressed Qi. Several figures knelt before him, robed in dark silver, their faces hidden by bone masks.
"The girl—Yue Lian—has uncovered something dangerous," Mo Zhi said. "Our sect owes its existence to the death of the Crimson Tyrant. If that myth is rewritten—"
"He'll become a martyr," one of the masked cultivators finished.
Mo Zhi's gaze darkened. "And martyrs inspire revolutions. Send the Black Writ. Retrieve the jade slips before they spread. And if Yue Lian resists... silence her."
Back in the Southern Archive Sect, Yue Lian found herself before her old mentor, Elder Guan—a tired, gentle-eyed scholar who once translated the Blood Oaths of the Northwind Cult.
He examined the jade slip with trembling fingers. The moment Yan Zhuo's voice played in the room, Guan paled.
"This... this isn't a forgery," he whispered. "It's authentic. This memory seal is from the Pre-Collapse era. No modern sect can fabricate this depth of Qi resonance."
Yue Lian nodded. "So, the Tyrant was no tyrant."
Elder Guan's expression turned grim. "You must be careful, child. What you hold can burn the world or awaken it. The sects will not allow this truth to rise. They killed him once. They'll kill you too."
Yue Lian stepped back. "Then I'll carry the truth in secret. I'll uncover more slips, more evidence. When the truth rises, it will not be because I shouted—it will be because the world demanded to know."
Far below the mountains, in a cavern so ancient even Qi dared not stir, something pulsed.
A red crystal. A shard of soul. It throbbed once.
Then again.
The tomb had been opened.
And Yan Zhuo's will stirred, faint but awakening.