Chương 7: I Lied (1/2)

The body of the squad leader scraped against the rough stone floor, leaving behind a thick, uneven trail of viscous mud and disturbed ash that glistened faintly in the dim light. He dragged the unconscious man with one hand, his calloused fingers locked tight around the coarse collar of the heavy straw cloak, while his boots crunched methodically over brittle bone shards and weathered stone fragments embedded in the treacherous ground.

Each step sent faint echoes reverberating through the suffocating darkness of the abyss, the sound swallowed almost immediately by the oppressive weight of the freezing fog. He navigated the uneven terrain with mechanical precision until he stepped through the shattered archway of his makeshift hideout, the jagged stone edges looming like broken teeth on either side.

The half-buried Daoist pagoda was a relic of a forgotten era, its grandeur long since devoured by time and the relentless accumulation of corpses above. Carved directly into the cavern wall with painstaking craftsmanship now lost to history, its roof had long since collapsed beneath the shifting, crushing weight of the piled dead. Fragments of painted ceiling tiles lay scattered across the floor, their faded crimson and gold motifs barely visible beneath layers of grave-dust and mineral deposits.

The remaining structure formed a perfectly defensible choke point—a fact he'd assessed within seconds of discovering it. Only one entrance allowed access, a narrow threshold flanked by two decapitated stone statues whose weathered hands were still clasped in eternal mock prayer. Their severed necks bore the rough marks of deliberate vandalism, chisel strikes visible even under the accumulated grime.

The statues' robes had been carved with intricate sutra inscriptions, now worn smooth by centuries of dripping water and the passage of forgotten hands.

Water dripped steadily from the fractured ceiling into a rusted iron basin below, each hollow plink swallowed immediately by the thick, suffocating silence that pressed against the ears like a physical weight. The basin itself was ancient, its sides pitted with corrosion and streaked with mineral stains in shades of rust-orange and sickly green.

He dumped the squad leader onto the cold stone floor near the back wall without ceremony. The man's body hit with a dull, meaty thud that rattled the straw cloak draped across his shoulders, sending a small cloud of dust and dried blood particles into the stale air. The leader's head lolled to one side, a thin line of saliva trailing from the corner of his slack mouth to pool on the stone beneath his cheek.

I need intel. But before I wake him...

His eyes caught the dull glint of tarnished metal leaning against an ancient prayer altar—a large, cracked bronze mirror, its surface mottled with verdigris and age. The altar itself was a low stone platform carved with barely-visible lotus patterns, likely left behind by whatever sect or hermit cultivator had originally built this tomb as a meditation chamber before the grave-fields consumed it.

A mirror.

He paused, wiping his thumb slowly across his jaw, feeling the grit of dried mud flake away beneath the pressure of his calloused skin. Tiny particles of grave-dust and pulverized bone fell away, revealing the deathly pale flesh beneath.

Come to think of it, I don't even know whose face I'm wearing.

But before that, he glanced back over his shoulder to ensure the leader was still unconscious. He watched the man's chest rise and fall in shallow, steady breaths, listened for any change in the rhythm. Seeing no movement beyond that autonomic function, he stepped toward the altar with measured footfalls, each boot-step deliberate and nearly silent despite the debris scattered across the floor.

He wiped away a thick layer of grey dust with his thumb, the accumulated filth of centuries coming away in powdery clumps that drifted down to coat his already-filthy hand. The bronze beneath was dull and pockmarked, but still functional—still reflective enough for his purpose.

For the first time since waking up in a mass grave, he truly looked at himself.

The reflection staring back was a grim, terrifying patchwork of violence and scavenged gear that would make even hardened scavengers take an instinctive step backward.

The original owner of this body had been a young, formal Sect disciple—likely no older than twenty, with the fine bone structure and unblemished features that spoke of carefully regulated Qi cultivation and medicinal pill supplements from childhood.

But any youthful innocence had been completely eradicated, burned away as thoroughly as flesh beneath a cauterizing iron. The face was deathly pale, bloodlessly drained from surviving massive hemorrhage, the skin holding that waxy, corpse-like quality of someone who'd lost far too much blood far too quickly. Dried mud clung to his cheekbones and forehead in irregular patches, mixed with pulverized bone ash that gave his skin a ghostly, chalk-white pallor.

Flecks of rat blood—dark, nearly black—were spattered across his left temple and jaw like grotesque freckles.

His hair, once meticulously bound in an elegant topknot secured with a pristine jade pin—the mark of a proper disciple—now hung completely loose, falling in wild, untamed strands past his shoulders. The black locks were matted and tangled with the gritty residue of the abyss: grave-soil, bone dust, dried blood, and the oily film that seemed to coat everything in the lower depths.

A few strands hung limply across his face, framing features that had been handsome once, before death and resurrection had carved away everything soft.

He reached up with both hands and methodically stripped off the top half of his ruined, permanently blood-stained white silk robes. The fabric, once worth more than a commoner's yearly wage, was now stiff with dried gore and shredded beyond repair. It peeled away from his skin with a faint, unpleasant sound—the wet-dry adhesion of old blood binding cloth to flesh.

Because his [Physique], [Might], and [Agility] were all perfectly balanced at 12, the young body now resembled a coiled steel spring wrapped in pale skin. It was a lean, hyper-efficient tactical build—minimal body fat, every muscle fiber visible beneath the surface in sharp definition. The exact physical frame of a high-altitude special forces reconnaissance operative: built for endurance, speed, and lethal efficiency rather than raw bulk.

Impressive.

Yet his appreciation faded as his eyes tracked downward, cataloging the damage with clinical detachment.

Right in the center of his chest was a massive, jagged crater of violently healed tissue where his Spiritual Root had been meticulously extracted by someone who knew exactly what they were doing. The skin there was puckered and uneven, drawn tight around the edges like melted wax, as if something vital had been torn out by force and then cauterized in haste to prevent him from bleeding out before they finished harvesting.

The scar tissue was thick and rope-like, radiating outward from the central wound in irregular patterns that spoke of multiple surgical incisions layered over one another.

Gnarly, thick cords of scar tissue also wrapped tightly around his spine and left elbow—raised, discolored ridges that stood out starkly against his pale skin. These were different. Cruder. The biological cost of the System forcing his shattered bones back together without the gentle guidance of healing Qi or spiritual medicine. The vertebrae had been snapped, the elbow joint pulverized, and both had been reconstructed through brute-force cellular regeneration that prioritized function over aesthetics.

Brutal, but functional.

Finally, he lifted his gaze and met his own eyes in the cracked bronze mirror.

Cultivators in this world were used to seeing supreme arrogance burning in a man's gaze—the confident fire of those who believed themselves chosen by Heaven. Or deep, primal fear—the wide-eyed terror of mortals facing powers beyond comprehension. Or righteous enlightenment—the serene, otherworldly calm of those who had touched the Dao.

This reflection held none of that.

The eyes were utterly dead. Flat. Colorless in their emptiness despite their physical darkness. They held the terrifying, thousand-yard stare of a veteran who had seen too many artillery strikes light up the night sky, who had scrubbed blood off his hands so many times the smell never quite left, who had buried too many friends in shallow graves far from home. The gaze of someone who had looked into the abyss so long that the abyss had simply moved in and made itself comfortable.

For a brief moment, he was silent. The dripping water continued its metronomic rhythm. The bound leader's breathing remained shallow and steady behind him.

The boy who owned this body is gone... Thank you for the vessel. I will put it to good use.

He closed his eyes in a brief, solemn nod—a gesture of military respect offered to a fallen comrade whose name he would never know, whose life he would never fully understand. Then he opened them again, the moment of acknowledgment complete.

The sentimentality was over.

Now, I need a functional identity for the surface.

He looked back at the unconscious leader, still sprawled motionless against the stone wall like discarded refuse. The man's scarred face was slack in unconsciousness, mouth half-open, a thin string of drool connecting his lip to the ground. The tale has been taken without authorization; if you see it on Amazon, report the incident.

Using the original host's name was tactical suicide. As the shattered, fragmented memories had revealed—coming to him in jagged flashes of terror and pain—the boy belonged to the Cloud-Mirror Sect, a mid-tier vassal organization sworn to the Celestial Remnants orthodoxy.

They weren't a noble academy training righteous immortals. They were a slaughterhouse—a spiritual root farm that systematically recruited war orphans and destitute children, fattened them up on basic cultivation resources and cheap medicinal pills until their Spiritual Roots matured, then harvested those roots like crops to sell to Alchemists and desperate rogue cultivators willing to pay premium prices for pre-refined spiritual foundations.

To them, this body was just discarded cattle. Defective livestock that had failed quality inspection and been dumped into the mass graves with the other extraction failures. If the Sect caught even a whisper of wind that their 'product' had somehow crawled out of the burial pit alive, they would dispatch inner disciples or hired blade-hands to silence the loose end before it could expose their operation or seek revenge.

Furthermore, if he walked up to a military checkpoint or city gate claiming to be a Sect Disciple, the guards would immediately check his cultivation base and spiritual signature. Since he was utterly Daoless—his Spiritual Root gone, his meridians collapsed, his dantian a barren void—his aura would register as a complete blank. An impossibility. A disciple with no Qi was either a liar, a demon in stolen skin, or an abomination.

He would be arrested on suspicion of impersonation or demonic possession, dragged to the nearest Enforcement Hall, and dissected by a Formation Master before nightfall to determine what he truly was.

Taking the name and identity of a scavenger would also be a massive tactical error, he calculated with cold precision. Scavengers had histories. They had debts owed to loan sharks and black market suppliers. They had rivals who remembered slights and territory disputes. They had active bounties posted by merchant guilds they'd cheated or noble clans whose tomb-goods they'd stolen. They had recognizable faces, known mannerisms, documented crew affiliations.

I need something entirely invisible. A ghost identity with no history, no ties, no one looking for it.

He turned his back on the tarnished mirror and walked with measured steps over to the rusted iron basin catching the steady ceiling drips. The water inside was freezing cold and tainted—laced with dissolved minerals and the faint sulfurous taint of the abyss—but it was liquid and it would serve his purpose. He scooped up a generous amount with a cracked, dented helmet he'd scavenged earlier, feeling the icy water slosh against the corroded metal.

Then he walked back to the unconscious leader with deliberate, unhurried footfalls, his boots scraping quietly against the stone in a rhythm that echoed faintly off the pagoda's walls.

Without hesitation, without warning, he dumped the freezing water directly over the man's face in a single, controlled pour.

The violent shock caused the leader's eyes to snap open instantly, pupils contracting in panicked confusion. He gasped violently, choking and spluttering as the icy, sulfur-laced abyssal water flooded his nose and throat, burning the sensitive membranes and triggering his gag reflex. He frantically tried to wipe his face, his body jerking instinctively—only to realize with dawning horror that his arms wouldn't move.

His wrists were bound tight behind his back, the rotting rope biting into his skin, and every attempt to pull them forward only made the loop around his throat constrict with practiced efficiency.

"What the fuck—!" The curse exploded from his lips in a wet, choking rasp.

The leader thrashed wildly against the cold stone floor, his body bucking and twisting like a hooked fish. His boots scrabbled for purchase on the debris-strewn ground, sending small cascades of bone fragments and pebbles skittering away.

His eyes darted frantically around the unfamiliar space—taking in the ruined pagoda's cracked ceiling, the decapitated statues, the single entrance—and then his gaze locked onto the terrifying, dead-eyed young man calmly cleaning a chipped steel sword with a blood-soaked rag just a few feet away.

The young man sat with perfect stillness, his posture relaxed but ready, one boot planted flat and the other bent at the knee. He dragged the rag along the blade in slow, methodical strokes, completely unhurried. Completely in control.

The leader's brain finally caught up to reality, pieces clicking into place with the cold clarity of absolute terror.

His squad was dead. Old Chen's neck had been severed. The third man had been killed with surgical precision. He was bound like a pig for slaughter in an unknown location.

And the thing wearing a disciple's face was watching him with eyes that held no mercy, no anger, no emotion at all.

Through the icy, sulfur-laced blur of his vision, the bound leader's eyes finally focused properly on the tattered, permanently blood-stained white silk robes the young man was wearing. The fabric was ruined beyond repair, but the cut and weave were unmistakable to anyone who'd spent time in cultivation territory.

Then… recognition flashed across his scarred face like lightning, quickly replaced by a loud sneer that didn't quite hide the mounting terror beneath. His lips curled back from yellowed teeth in a expression of forced bravado.

"You—I know those colors!" the leader spat, his voice cracking slightly as he masked his fear with righteous anger.

"That's the silk of the Cloud-Mirror Sect! You're a vassal of the Celestial Remnants!" He sucked in a wheezing breath, chest heaving.

"You hypocrite rat... Your kind preaches about the old ways, the pure Heavens, restoring balance and righteousness—but you skulk in the dark like demons and murder scavengers for pocket change?!"

The leader's chest heaved as he tried desperately to leverage his perceived moral superiority, to regain some fragment of control through verbal dominance.

"Do you have any idea who you've crossed? Release me now!" His voice rose to a shout that echoed off the stone walls.

"My crew is contracted directly by the Silk & Ash Chamber of Commerce! We're officially-tokened retainers! You kill me, you're dead! They track our soul-jades! Every eight hours, they check our signatures! Let me go right now, and maybe—maybe—I'll let you beg for a quick death instead of what they'll do to you!"

He slowly lowered the bloody rag he was using to clean his chipped sword, the motion deliberate and controlled. He let the steel rest casually across his knees, the flat of the blade catching the faint light from the entrance. He didn't look angry at the insult to 'his' sect. He didn't bristle or defend his supposed honor. He simply frowned slightly, his expression remaining flat and utterly unreadable—the blank mask of a professional assessing a situation.

The leader's desperate words triggered a sudden avalanche of the original host's memories, rising up unbidden from the fractured consciousness buried deep in his mind.

The Cloud-Mirror Sect. A Vassal Sect of the Celestial Remnants orthodoxy.

According to the dead boy's fragmented recollections—colored by equal parts indoctrination and growing horror as the truth revealed itself—they were orthodox cultivators who publicly claimed they were working tirelessly to restore the "Old Heavens." They wore pure white silk robes without a single thread of impurity. They chanted ancient Daoist sutras in perfectly memorized cadences.

They appeared before common mortals as pristine heroes, dispensing minor blessings and protection in exchange for worship and tribute.

All of it theater. All of it lies wrapped around a core of systematic brutality.

He gazed down at the bound leader with those dead, flat eyes, watching him curse and posture and threaten. He didn't engage with the theatrics. He didn't rise to the bait. He coldly dismantled them with the precision of a man disassembling a weapon.

"You aren't with the Chamber," he said, his voice eerily calm, entirely devoid of inflection, anger, or any human warmth whatsoever. The words came out measured and factual, each syllable clipped and final.

"The Silk & Ash Chamber of Commerce runs shadow-markets across three provinces. They operate with ruthless efficiency and ironclad operational security. They don't send officially-tokened retainers—valuable assets with tracked soul-jades—to root through a lethal mass grave for cheap, tarnished jade rings worth maybe thirty copper taels at a fence."

He stood slowly, uncoiling from his seated position with the fluid grace of a predator. He stepped closer, his movements unhurried and deliberate, and the tip of his chipped sword dragged lightly against the stone floor with a faint, grating scrape that set teeth on edge. The sound echoed softly in the hollow silence of the ruined pagoda, a metallic whisper that promised violence.

"You're a rogue scavenger crew with no organizational backer. You have no soul-jade registered with any merchant house or enforcement guild. Nobody tracks your route. Nobody logs your entry into the grave-fields. And nobody—" he stopped directly in front of the bound man, close enough that the leader had to crane his neck back to meet those terrible, empty eyes "—nobody is coming for you."