The Scorched Valley behind him still bled, and Rin Xie carried its wounds like offerings. Every step he took was soaked in old sorrow, his blood mixing with ash and memory. But the Death Core within him pulsed in rhythm, not with hunger, but with yearning—a subtle pull toward something unseen. It was not the call of vengeance or power.
It was the scent of a flower blooming in death.
Beneath the valley's surface, hidden beneath fractured stone and bone-bleached ruin, a passage revealed itself to him—not by sight, but by sensation. A whisper through the marrow. He knelt, pressing his hand against the ash-laden ground. The heat warped around him. Bones cracked, shifting as though recognizing one who bore their burdens.
The earth opened.
Not violently, but with slow, aching grief, as if even the land remembered pain. A circular stairwell spiraled downward, carved from obsidian and fossilized marrow. Lanterns of glassy skulls flickered with pale blue flame, though no hand had lit them for centuries.
He descended into the underground death garden.
This was no tomb. It was something else. Something sacred—and profane. Roots of bone stretched like veins through the walls, pulsing faintly. Flowers bloomed where sunlight had never touched, crafted not of petals but of despair: wilted hearts strung open like lilies, ribs curled into rose shapes, and vertebrae spiraled like lotus stems.
And at the center—
One flower.
Unlike the others, it was whole. Unblemished. Perfect.
A single lotus, sculpted entirely from ivory bone and threads of coagulated blood. Its petals were polished smooth, delicate, and crimson-hued veins ran through each curve, as if it had once pulsed with life. A warm fog hung around it—neither Qi nor miasma, but the perfume of silent farewells.
The Bloom of Silent Farewell.
One of the Ten Forbidden Blossoms—flowers not born of nature, but of mortal despair so deep it anchored itself into the cycle of reincarnation and grew roots in oblivion. It was said each of these blossoms was the end of someone's Dao. A death so profound, so all-consuming, that the heavens dared not erase it.
This one, Rin knew without being told, had bloomed from a woman who chose to die rather than forget her child in the River of Rebirth. Her memory had resisted reincarnation, and the world had punished her by rooting her grief in eternal bloom.
Rin stepped forward, his body still broken from the Scorched Valley. He dropped to his knees.
The lotus shimmered in the dark. As he reached out, his hand trembled—not from fear, but reverence. A forbidden bloom was not meant to be touched. But Rin had never followed rules carved by those who feared death.
He plucked it.
The stem broke with a sound like a sob.
And Rin ate it.
Petal by petal. Each dissolved like snowfall on his tongue. Cold. Sweet. Drenched in agony.
The final petal melted, and the death garden fell silent.
Then—
Pain.
But not the sharp agony of wounds. No, this was deeper. A blooming pain—expansive, aching, exquisite. It burst from within his soul like a thousand emotions made flesh. His Death Core twisted violently, shuddering as if awakening to something greater than death.
He was no longer just refining death.
He was becoming it.
And not just any death—but a death that bloomed.
The Death Blooming Dao. A divergent path—not traditional, not linear. Cultivation born from suffering, but expressed as beauty. A philosophy that death could be graceful, meaningful. That pain, when embraced fully, could flower into something eternal.
Images flashed in his mind—memories not his own, and yet wholly his:
A battlefield drowned in lilies, grown from the corpses of betrayed lovers.
A mountain of skeletal trees, whose branches whispered the names of forgotten ancestors.
A girl carving a flower into her heart to preserve her sister's name in the next life.
These were not illusions. They were truths embedded in the bloom.
Rin collapsed as the final vision came—blinding in its clarity.
He stood atop the heavens.
Sky shattered beneath his feet. Divinity lay broken like rusted glass. Planets dead. Realms silent. He had ascended, but there was no one left. Not a single soul. Not a god. Not a friend. Not even an enemy.
He stood alone.
Not triumphant.
Not revered.
Just… present. Unseen. Unneeded.
The vision passed.
Rin opened his eyes slowly. His body no longer bled. The wounds of the Scorched Valley had sealed—not with flesh, but with bone-laced petals that grew along his arms, his ribs, his throat. Bloom-scars.
They pulsed gently, not with Qi—but with remembrance.
He stared at his hand. Fingers were no longer just instruments of violence—they were tools of expression. He could kill, yes. But now, he could also mourn. And in mourning, he had found creation.
The Death Blooming Dao whispered truths to him:
"Death is not the end. It is the soil. The gardener chooses what flowers from it."
Other paths unfurled in his mind, drawn close by resonance:
The Sorrow Path: cultivation through emotional agony, weeping so deeply one's tears crystalize into essence.
The Decay Path: rot and ruin as nourishment; using entropy to weaken heaven's laws.
The Memory Path: wielding recollection as weapon and shield; drawing strength from remembrance alone.
Each was a Divergent Death Path.
Each required sacrifice not of life—but of meaning.
The Forbidden Blossoms were born of these paths. And Rin had consumed one.
He sat for a long while in the death garden, unmoving, as bone-flowers trembled in the gloom.
Then he asked himself—softly, aloud:
"What kind of death… do I want to become?"
It was not a question of power.
It was one of identity.
Did he want to be a wrathful extinction? A mournful dirge? A graceful bloom? Could he be all three?
He did not yet know the answer.
But as he stood and turned from the garden, bones parting to let him pass, he understood this much:
He could no longer follow a path set by others. No sect, no scripture, no elder would ever guide his cultivation. The heavens would not allow a death that questioned them to ascend peacefully.
So he would not ask for peace.
He would bloom in the dark. Alone, if needed.
The first petal had opened.
And the heavens, though still far above, had already begun to tremble.
To be continued…