"Wei Wuxian is dead."
The words hung in the air like a heavy mist, spreading across the cultivation world faster than wildfire. The siege of the Burial Mounds had barely concluded, yet before the dawn of the next day, the news had already taken flight on swift wings.
In teahouses and taverns, in grand halls and humble abodes, cultivators from renowned clans and solitary practitioners alike buzzed with fervent discussions about the joint operation that had brought down the infamous Yiling Patriarch.
"Excellent! Justice has been served at last!" exclaimed a grizzled cultivator, his fist pounding the table. "Which heroic soul had the honor of ending that scourge?"
A younger man, eyes gleaming with excitement, leaned in. "Who else but his own sworn brother, Sect Leader Jiang Cheng of Yunmeng Jiang? The four great clans led the charge - Yunmeng Jiang, Lanling Jin, Gusu Lan, and Qinghe Nie. They stormed the Burial Mounds and razed that nest of evil to the ground."
"Good riddance," spat an elderly woman, her face etched with lines of bitterness. "The Jiang Sect raised him like a son, and how did he repay them? With betrayal and death. If that's not the very definition of an ingrate, I don't know what is."
The tavern erupted in a chorus of agreement, but a dissenting voice cut through the clamor. "That's not what I heard," a hooded figure mumbled from a dark corner. "They say he was torn apart by his own fierce corpses, devoured by the very forces he sought to control."
A moment of stunned silence followed, broken by a burst of raucous laughter. "Poetic justice!" someone shouted. "Hoist by his own petard!"
As the night wore on, the discussions grew more heated, fueled by wine and long-held grudges. Tales of Wei Wuxian's misdeeds grew more outrageous with each retelling, his crimes multiplying like rabbits in spring.
"Five thousand cultivators in one night, they say."
"No, it was ten thousand!"
"He was a menace, a blight upon our world."
Yet, as dawn approached and the wine ran dry, a sobering thought settled over the gathering. One brave soul dared to voice what many were thinking:
"The Stygian Tiger Seal... did they destroy it?"
The name of that dreaded artifact silenced the room, a chill running through even the most inebriated cultivators.
"They say he shattered it before his death," someone finally offered. "Perhaps his last good deed."
"Or his final curse," another countered darkly.
As the first light of morning crept through the windows, the patrons began to disperse, their jubilation tempered by an undercurrent of unease. Wei Wuxian was dead, yes, but his spirit had not been captured. Some whispered that it had been devoured along with his flesh, while others feared he had escaped, biding his time for a terrible revenge.
In the years that followed, the cultivation world remained vigilant. Stone beasts were placed atop the Burial Mounds, and soul-summoning rituals were performed with increasing desperation. Yet as one year bled into the next, and a decade passed without incident, the fear began to fade.
Thirteen years after that fateful siege, life had largely returned to normal. The name of Wei Wuxian was spoken less often, relegated to cautionary tales and whispered ghost stories.
But in the hearts of those who remembered, a tiny seed of doubt remained. For legends, no matter how terrible, are not so easily forgotten. And in a world of cultivators and demons, even death is not always the end.