The next morning came without color.
Gray light soaked the stones of Qingwu Sect. Rain clung to everything — not falling, not stopping — just suspended. Like breath before a duel.
Kaifeng didn't attend morning drills.
He didn't need to.
He was already being watched.
From rooftops. From windows. From behind politely bowed heads.
The name carved on the iron stake had reached the elders.
Shén Lüyun.
And that meant one thing:
The Northern Pavilion — the incident they had erased — was no longer buried.
Elder Han stood in the highest hall, a place where even the cold didn't speak.
Before him, five scrolls lay open. Each one had been sealed after the fire seven years ago. Unread. Unwanted.
One contained a report.
"Body unrecovered. Estimated death due to collapse.
Student's name struck from record on unanimous vote."
And beneath that:
Lián Kaifeng survived. Injuries minor. Request for expulsion denied.
Han didn't sigh. He didn't move.
He only whispered.
"If only we had let him go then…"
Far below, Kaifeng entered a part of Qingwu few dared visit:
The Shrine Without Echoes.
A ruin within the sect — its stone half-collapsed, its roof broken like a wound. It had once been a meditation chamber for senior cultivators.
Now it was abandoned.
But Kaifeng knew it still breathed.
He stepped over cracked tiles and sat cross-legged in the center. The same way Lüyun had — seven winters ago.
She used to meditate here. Not because it was quiet.
But because it was dangerous.
"This place reflects your thoughts back at you," she once said,
"So you have to think carefully."
Kaifeng closed his eyes.
And thought.
Outside the ruin, Wei Qingzhao stood under the eaves.
He hadn't followed Kaifeng. Not directly. But he had noticed his absence. His pattern.
And something in him couldn't look away anymore.
He didn't speak. He didn't interrupt. He simply stood in the rain, arms folded, watching the doorway of a place he wasn't supposed to remember.
He was still standing there when someone else arrived.
A girl. Younger. Robes gray. Eyes clever.
She bowed politely.
"Senior Wei. You're watching him too?"
Wei said nothing.
She continued anyway.
"I asked the archivist about Shén Lüyun. They said she never existed. But the old sect roster…"
"She did," Wei interrupted.
"Why lie?"
Wei didn't answer immediately.
Then:
"Because her death wasn't simple. And because the truth wasn't clean."
He looked at the broken shrine.
"Nothing in this sect is."
Inside, Kaifeng stirred.
His breathing changed.
He stood — not slowly, but with purpose.
And from the far wall of the ruin, beneath fallen stone and mold-black tiles, he drew a blade that had not been drawn in seven years.
Not steel.
Not sacred.
Just iron.
Old. Rusted. Slightly curved at the edge.
It was Lüyun's.
He held it not like a weapon.
But like a memory.
Back at the outer courtyard, Elder Han received a message written in unfamiliar brushwork.
It was unsigned.
But it read:
"If the boy draws her blade, the seals will break."
Han's fingers froze over the paper.
"He's not hiding anymore," he murmured.
"The silence is breaking itself."