Ren Kairo stared at the jade scroll as if it were ticking.
Because it might as well have been.
Yi Feixue held it with both hands, reverent, trembling. The scroll's runes pulsed like a heartbeat—each throb sending faint shivers through the cavern air.
[Codex Warning: Forbidden Archive Detected.]
[Origin: Fragmented Truth of the First Cycle.]
[Reading may trigger Bloodline Resonance or Mutation.]
Of course it would.
Kairo had barely survived the last "resonance." He still couldn't walk in a straight line without drifting slightly to the left.
"Open it slowly," he said, voice low. "And don't read anything aloud."
Feixue nodded, biting her lip as she unsealed the scroll.
The runes melted like candle wax.
Inside—no ink. No writing. Just layers of light and echo, weaving together like threads.
A memory scroll.
Not one built to be read—but to be experienced.
The moment Feixue activated it, the entire chamber darkened. Time warped. Cold air crawled over their skin like ghost fingers.
And the memory began.
[You have entered a Codex-Echoed Archive.]
A projection formed.
A vast battlefield of shattered sky and burning mountains.
Tens of thousands of cultivators fought in silence—throats cut by invisible laws. Not a sound, not a scream, only blood spraying through the air like rain. Above them hovered nine Thrones.
Not metaphorical, not symbolic.
Actual Thrones.
Massive, celestial constructs carved from law, concept, and will. They pulsed with raw authority. Each bore a title in a tongue the Codex struggled to translate.
[First Flame.]
[Shattered Bone.]
[True Silence.]
[Mirror of Ends.]
[Dream of the Devoured.]
[Ashen Root.]
[Storm Unwoven.]
[Gluttonous Seed.]
[Voidheart.]
Kairo's breath caught. There. The final throne.
It didn't shine like the others.
It didn't radiate light, or might, or any divine presence.
It simply was a hole in the cosmos, shaped like a throne and seated within it...
A silhouette.
Indistinct. Genderless. Faceless.
The First Void Sovereign.
His voice echoed—not into the ears, but directly into the soul.
"The Heavens Lie." "Bloodlines are chains." "Cultivation is a maze built by the cowardly." "Break your lineage. Or be broken by it."
Kairo blinked and the memory was gone.
Back in the cavern, the scroll turned to dust.
Feixue collapsed to her knees, panting.
Kairo said nothing for a moment. His mind was racing, threads of suppressed memories unraveling behind his eyes.
Bloodlines are chains.
No. Not just that.
The Void Sovereign's words weren't a warning.
They were instructions.
[New Feature Unlocked: Bloodline Rewrite]
[Current Bloodline: Ninefold Ash Phoenix – Sealed Tier.]
[ Codex Suggestion: Begin Rewriting process to purge false bloodline anchors and reclaim ancestral purity.]
Warning: Process will be painful. Rewriting may alter personality, memories, or emotional depth.
"Of course," Kairo muttered. "What else would a cultivation method built from lies do but infect the soul directly?"
He looked at his hands. Pale. Calloused. Scarred from lifetimes and stained by the blood of a Phoenix Clan that should have been extinct after the Third Cycle but somehow survived into the current one by faking its own heaven-grade lineages.
No wonder his flames had always felt... off. Like a song played out of key.
"Kairo?" Feixue whispered. Her voice was weak. "What did we just see?"
"Proof," he said. "That our entire cultivation system is built on hijacked bloodlines and dead-end techniques recycled from previous cycles. Proof that some Thrones... are not meant to be claimed."
She looked up at him. "And the Void Throne?"
He met her gaze, calm and cold.
"That one's real. Too real."
She swallowed and then, to his surprise, she smiled.
Good. She wasn't broken. Just bent in all the right ways.
"I want to help," she said softly. "Not just as your anchor. I want to rewrite it, too. My bloodline. My mind. All of it."
Kairo raised a brow.
"You really are cracked," he said. "I like that."
That night, while she rested, Kairo sat in meditation.
The Codex pulsed within his spiritual sea. He could feel the Phoenix Bloodline curled like a serpent around his dantian—proud, ancient, infected.
"Begin rewrite."
[Commencing Bloodline Rewrite.]
Suppressing False Flame Markers...
Breaking Ash Phoenix Seals...
Extracting Original Soul Thread...
Kairo gritted his teeth as his veins burned from the inside.
Not metaphorical fire. Real. Primordial. Searing through his organs, melting every fake restriction that had ever been engraved into his blood.
He convulsed.
Bled from the eyes.
His back arched as his spirit trembled under a storm of ancestral backlash.
[Warning: Soul Thread Rejection Detected. Initiating Override.]
He screamed but the scream wasn't heard because the scream came from somewhere else.
Not his mouth.
His past self.
A flash of lightning lit his spiritual sea—and in that moment, he saw himself.
Twelve years older.
Falling.
Dying.
Void Throne burning behind him.
"Become me," the older Kairo whispered. "Then break me."
Kairo woke up coughing blood again.
A familiar tradition, by now. But this time, something was different.
His flame was silent, Still and Waiting.
He opened his palm. A wisp of black flame curled upward—silent, ghostlike, devouring light instead of emitting it.
[Bloodline Rewrite Complete.]
[New Bloodline: Voidflame Ember – Rootless Tier.]
Abilities:
Devours other flame types.
Immune to Heavenly Chains.
[ Will trigger hostility from all bloodline-based sects. Use with care.]
Kairo stared at the flame.
A smile curved his lips.
"Finally," he said. "A power that wasn't given. But stolen back."
Behind him, Feixue stirred.
"What did you do?" she asked, voice dry and hoarse.
Kairo didn't look back.
"I stopped pretending I'm part of this world," he said. And for the first time since his regression, he felt it—The Codex wasn't pulsing in warning anymore.
It was waiting.
For the next Throne.