"A man who has nothing fears nothing. A man who fears nothing cannot be stopped."
The night was a silent witness.
Xian Ren moved through the darkness, his breath even, his steps quiet. The Forsaken Blade hung at his side, a companion colder than the wind that bit at his skin. Behind him, the sect's walls loomed—a prison he had lived in, a graveyard he had created.
He did not run.
There was no need.
Fear was for those who wished to live. Xian Ren had already died once. What remained was merely a shadow with a blade, carving his way through a world that had long since cast him aside.
The forest swallowed him whole.
The night stretched endlessly.
He walked.
Through thorn-ridden paths, through trees that whispered secrets older than the sect itself. The weight of exhaustion tugged at his limbs, but he did not stop. He couldn't. Not yet.
Somewhere in the distance, a wolf howled. A lonely sound, one he understood all too well.
His fingers tightened around his blade.
There was a time when he had feared the beasts of the wild. When hunger and cold had seemed as terrifying as the wrath of men.
Now, they were nothing more than obstacles.
The true beasts walked on two legs.
Dawn came, a slow crawl of gold over the treetops.
Xian Ren's steps finally faltered.
A river lay before him, its surface a mirror of the sky. He knelt at the edge, staring at his reflection.
For the first time in years, he truly looked at himself.
A boy barely past childhood, his face sharp with hunger, his hair matted with sweat and blood. His eyes—those same eyes that had once held fear, pain, longing—were empty.
Hollow.
A dead man walking.
Yet, his hands were steady. His pulse unbroken.
The thought should have disturbed him.
It didn't.
Instead, a quiet voice whispered in the back of his mind.
"What now?"
He had no home. No name worth speaking. No purpose beyond survival.
But survival was not enough.
He had killed. He had walked away.
But to what?
The world was vast, filled with cultivators who sat on their thrones of power, dictating who lived and who died.
Men who thought themselves gods.
Men who had murdered his mother.
Xian Ren had no dreams of justice. No foolish notions of heroism.
But he had a blade.
And he would carve a path through heaven itself if he had to.
The wind stirred. The river whispered.
And somewhere, far beyond the horizon, fate trembled.
Xian Ren rose, his gaze fixed ahead.
The world would know his name.
Even if he had to carve it into their bones.