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Luo Binghe was not accustomed to stillness. Since being pushed into the Endless Abyss as a mere disciple, silence had meant death; later, after the realms merged, it had meant betrayal. He never lowered his guard, never stopped calculating, and even in his dreams his qi moved in defensive patterns, ready to slaughter.
When he crossed the dimensional rift and the portal closed behind him, trapping him, his body's first reaction was that of a cornered predator. Xin Mo was dead in his hand, the blade cold and cracked, useless for tearing through space. That did not surprise him; he had come to this Hidden Realm to restore his sword to its former glory.
Luo Binghe had kept trying to enter that dimension with the gentle Shizun, even after that weeping impostor had cast him far away. His routine was simple: he slept with his wives, tried to open the portal, carried out a senseless slaughter, tried to open the portal, slept with other wives, and tried to open the portal again. Just like that for a few months. And it would have stayed that way if his sword, Xin Mo, hadn't stopped responding to him one day. No matter how much he made love to his retinue of wives or how much blood ran across its blade, the sword remained numb.
The council of scholars, pathetic and sometimes useful snakes, had promised him the "Cursed Forge." A legendary Hidden Realm rumored to be a spectacle of magma hells and nightmarish guardians where he could reforge Xin Mo and continue his desperate search for that universe where Shizun looked at him with warmth.
But in front of him, there were no hells. Only an iridescent green valley, bathed in an eternal, golden light. A still lake, with crystal (and extinct) ferns exhaling pure qi, and in the center, a vast stone platform levitating over the waters.
Luo Binghe clenched his jaw. A paradise. The deadliest traps were usually wrapped in silk. He had seen similar places in the Abyss that were nothing more than mere bait to devour him.
He made his way forward. The entire raid mission with his troop of soldiers had become obsolete the moment he set foot in this dimension, and the entrance closed behind him.
It only took a few steps into the ethereal vegetation for his instinct to warn him, a second before the heat reached him. In front of him, a feline beast, forged of scorching blue and red fire, dropped from the branches of a tree. Its claws tore through the air, aiming for his throat. With the fluidity that only years of slaughter grant, he dodged the lunge, letting the flames merely graze his dark robes. His steps were fast, silent, playing with the beast just long enough to gain momentum, leap over the still surface of the lake, and land noiselessly on the forge's platform.
In front of him stretched a high flight of stairs with beautiful marble pillars on the sides. He heard the crackle of flames behind him, along with a hoarse growl, and hid behind them. The beast in front of him seemed to have lost his trail.
Luo Binghe tightened his grip on Xin Mo's dead hilt, calculating the exact angle to decapitate the creature as soon as it poked its fiery head out. But before he could channel his demonic qi, a voice broke the stillness of the forge. It was the casual and slightly whiny tone of a human. A soft and terrifyingly familiar voice.
"Suān'ér! What have I told you about running around the crystal ferns?" the voice sighed, accompanied by the sound of metal clashing against metal. "You're going to burn them, and then we won't have anything to drink tea with. What has you so worked up, hm? Another one of those three-eyed scaly birds?"
Luo Binghe peeked slightly around the edge of the marble pillar. There, coming out from behind the huge central anvil, a figure appeared. For a blind instant, the ghost of Qing Jing struck his chest. That height. That build. That profile.
But no. His eyes caught the details that shattered the illusion. This man was not wearing immaculate green silks, but a coarse work robe, rolled up in an indecorous manner and stained with soot. His hair was a rebellious mess tied with a simple, rough hair stick. And on his nose rested a pair of glasses. There was no arrogance in his posture. Instead, he gave off an informality unbefitting of everything this Hidden Realm had shown.
He came out of his hiding place, letting his steps resonate against the stone, drawing himself up to his full imposing height and letting his murderous aura seep into the air. The feline beast growled instantly.
The man gave a clumsy start, stumbling backward and crashing into a table full of tools. He adjusted the glasses on his nose, smudging his cheek with charcoal in the process, and looked at him.
Luo Binghe waited for the terror. He waited for the usual reverential disgust, the screams for mercy. Do it, he thought, his heart wrapped in thorns of resentment. Look at me like a monster. Flee. Attack. His fingers curled, ready to cripple that man's limbs at the slightest sign of hostility and force him to repair his sword.
But his dark eyes stopped on the demon's forehead, fixing on his Zuiyin, the red mark of his lineage. And suddenly, the tension left the cultivator's shoulders. A spark of pure, dazzling, and almost childish joy illuminated his face.
"A person!" he exclaimed. His voice vibrated with overwhelming emotion. "Good heavens, you're a real person! And a Heavenly Demon! I've been in here for millennia without seeing one of your kind!"
Luo Binghe frowned, disdain curving his lips. What kind of idiot was this? A Heavenly Demon burst into his domain, and he was acting like an immature brat. It was pathetic. A stupid, clumsy man, completely devoid of dignity or survival instinct. He felt the urge to crush him right there just to teach him his place.
Instead of stepping back at his deathly silence, the man took another step forward. His beast, Suān'ér, let out a warning snort from behind, but he simply waved a hand at her without taking his eyes off the intruder.
"Easy, Suān'ér, manners," he murmured, before directing that infuriating smile at him again. "You have to excuse her; the last living beings that crossed through here tried to eat my coal reserves, or me. But you! Look at you! The scriptures said that the energy of Heavenly Demons was dense, but this is... fascinating! How did you get here? Are the dimensional rifts still active? Ah, wait..."
The cultivator grimaced, pointing at Luo Binghe's boots.
"You're staining the marble. It took me centuries to polish it."
Binghe clenched his jaw, incredulous. Was he worried about the floor? He channeled his murderous qi and let his aura expand, heavy and suffocating. It was a pressure that would have forced any mediocre cultivator master to spit blood and fall to their knees. He wanted to see how that stupid smile would be wiped away. He wanted to force him to show his true nature.
The man blinked. He adjusted the glasses on his nose, crossed his arms, and frowned.
"Hey, big guy, could you control your energy a little?" he complained, waving a hand in front of his face as if the murderous miasma were bothersome dust. "You're going to destabilize my forge's arrays if you keep that up, and I just did maintenance on them a week ago. Or was it a year ago?"
Luo Binghe's mind short-circuited. Did he not feel the threat? Or was he simply so ignorant that he confused a lethal pressure with a- a mere draft of air? His grip on the hidden hilt of his sword tightened until his knuckles cracked. His gaze scanned every inch of the man's languid posture, looking for the deception. This being had the face of the man he hated the most, but acted like a two-bit scholar. It was absurd.
"I didn't come to this realm to answer the interrogation of a pathetic hermit," Binghe hissed, his voice laced with venom, hoping that he would finally react with hostility and draw a weapon.
Instead, the cultivator's dark eyes lit up even more.
"Oh, of course! You're a Heavenly Demon; you guys don't make courtesy calls," he snapped his fingers, nodding to himself. "If you found the entrance to this valley, it's because you're looking for something. How can I help you?" he asked, closing the distance between them with hurried steps, offering his vulnerable neck with the confidence of an idiot. "My forge is always open, even though I haven't received any commissions in a few centuries."
Luo Binghe looked at him coldly. He raised his hand, showing him the cracked and dead blade. It was ridiculous to think that this scruffy artisan could do anything for the weapon that had devoured worlds, but his options had run out.
"It stopped responding," the demon said, his voice a harsh growl. "I want to see if you can..."
He couldn't finish the sentence.
The man stifled a scandalized gasp. Without an ounce of respect for his power, without the slightest regard, he reached out his hands and snatched the sword from him.
Binghe's instincts screamed. Normally, no living being took anything from him without losing their arms in the process, but the absolute naturalness of his movement left him momentarily paralyzed.
"Nameless!" the artisan shrieked, cradling Xin Mo against his chest as if it were a wounded child. "By the gods, what have they done to you?!"
This man had Xin Mo hugged against his chest and was whispering to the blade. A deeply moving and maternal scene. If it weren't for the fact that the cultivator was a man and what he was cradling was the most powerful cursed sword that would ever exist.
"That is Xin Mo," Binghe growled, offended by the ridiculous title. "This lord's favored sword."
"It's my sword!" the man snapped at him, glaring at him through his glasses. He caressed it with a heartbreaking delicacy. "I forged it thousands of years ago, and it disappeared. And look at it now..."
Silence fell over the forge, heavy and absolute. Luo Binghe's mind stopped, unable to process his words.
Him? This scrawny cultivator had forged Xin Mo?
The ancient scriptures of the Demonic Realm claimed that the world-cleaving sword had been born from the densest miasma of the Endless Abyss, forged from the bones of dark gods dead for eons. Even though he had found those tales to be an exaggeration, he could not deny that Xin Mo was the weapon of the apocalypse and the instrument of his revenge. And its creator was this man? The architect of his empire, the mastermind behind the calamity that turned him into the Emperor, was this ridiculous hermit.
Binghe clenched his teeth and took a step forward. He would disembowel him for his audacity. He would rip the sword from those unworthy hands. If it weren't for Xin Mo's latency, completely dead and numb, it would have already burst his meridians at the first touch, he was sure of it. That idiot was only still alive because the weapon was in absolute lethargy.
Before the emperor could raise his hand, the cultivator turned the blade. His fingers traced the cracks with a familiarity so natural and precise that Binghe's rage caught in his throat. There was something in the way he held it... a weight, a habit, as if he truly knew every millimeter and every flaw of the metal.
He stopped. A cynical curiosity halted his murderous instinct. Fine, he thought. Play the blacksmith, idiot. Let's see what you do when you see what's inside.
"Alright, let's see how you are," he murmured.
The cultivator placed his hand while performing a simple diagnostic seal over Xin Mo.
Luo Binghe crossed his arms and braced himself for the imminent rejection. He waited for the man's mind to collapse upon examining it, upon feeling the resentment of the blood of the thousands of corpses that lost their lives to the sharp blade. God, he hoped he would drown in the overwhelming corrupt energy the sword had accumulated through his massacres and his dual cultivation, and that he would recoil in terror and call him a monster. All cultivators did so upon feeling that energy; it is natural when you encounter this little piece of the Endless Abyss made into a weapon. They would pale, vomit, or draw their own weapons trembling. They would call it a cursed weapon that had to be sealed or purified for the greater good.
But this languid cultivator only looked at it with sadness.
"Oh, the little one is drowned," he murmured, running his fingertips over the cracks. "Such a disastrous job... Who the hell taught you how to take care of her?"
Binghe clenched his fists. "You dare question me?" He took a step forward to position himself right in front of him, but the man didn't pay him the slightest attention. "I have proven its power more than enough. I am the only one capable of wielding it! It has drunk enough blood and yin energy to subjugate the gods."
"That is exactly the problem, brute," the man replied, turning his back on him to walk toward the center of the forge. "She is not hungry. She is saturated and bloated beyond her capacity. I will have you know that Nameless is a lady and must be cared for as such."
Luo Binghe followed him, intrigue winning over his fury.
"You have fed Nameless too much yin," he explained, like a master speaking to a particularly dense student. "Blood, death, fluids. Nameless is a weapon of yang essence, she needs yin to compensate, but the channels of her blade are obstructed. Uh... look at it this way, it is like a river that has frozen over for the winter. She can no longer devour, because every new dose of yin simply stagnates and numbs her more and more."
The cultivator turned toward the enormous furnace. The feline beast roared, and the primeval fire illuminated the artisan's face. "Suān'ér, lend me your fire."
In the center of the room, there was a small incandescent flame that, at the beast's signal, rose to the ceiling. From all the pillars surrounding the place, a flame burst from their highest points, completely changing the energy of the place from a gloomy cave to the mouth of hell in the blink of an eye.
The cultivator rested Xin Mo on the edge of the platform that held the fire and approached one of the various spaces that, now illuminated, he noticed was a large storage closet reaching up to the ceiling. He returned to the center with a small pouch in his hand and began to trace lines on the stone floor using a silver powder that gleamed with an icy light. Its iridescent light blue glow stood out against the red of the fire.
Binghe watched how the lines connected. His brow furrowed, paranoia and confusion fighting within him. He knew that pattern.
"That is a Yuéhuá," he said, his hoarse voice resonating in the vastness of the forge. "A lunar accumulation sigil. You are surrounding the sword with an environment of absolute yin energy. You just said that the sword is frozen and drowned by an excess of yin, and your solution is to submerge it in more?"
Are you an imbecile? he thought.
He waited for him to hesitate. To realize his mistake or to look at him with fear for having discovered his supposed deception. But the cultivator did not even look up from his tracing.
"I am not submerging her. God, it shows that you know nothing about swords, what do they teach cultivators this millennium?" he replied, with that casual and exasperated tone, as if he were an apprentice and not a sovereign capable of flaying him alive. "If you have a pond about to overflow from the pressure, you don't throw dirt in it to force it dry. And you certainly don't throw fire at it, because the thermal shock would shatter the foundations. If I inject yang from the furnace right now, Xin Mo will shatter into pieces."
He blew the excess powder off one of the runes and straightened up, wiping his hands on his robe.
"This Yuéhuá will connect with Nameless's meridians," he explained, finally looking at him through his glasses. "A larger pond, in a sense. I am giving her a cold and controlled environment, a void. That way, the stagnant energy she has in her channels will have space to... overflow, I suppose, and move outward, instead of remaining stagnant from the inside."
Binghe narrowed his eyes, still reluctant to accept a solution so contrary to what he knew.
"And why not simply purify it?" he asked, his voice harsh. "If you want it to breathe again, why not force pure energy into it to burn the yin and eradicate the obstruction?"
The cultivator stopped dead in his tracks. He looked at him over his shoulder as if he had just suggested he murder his firstborn.
"Purifying her would be... like cauterizing her meridians," he said, and his tone lost all its previous clumsiness, turning cold, sharp. Binghe managed to glimpse traces of his master in that voice. "An ordinary sword cuts. A spiritual sword cultivates. And Nameless... devours. That is her path. Her nature. Why would I try to destroy what she is? There is no such thing as a good sword or a bad sword, be it demonic or spiritual. A sword is a sword, and they all deserve to be cared for accordingly. As simple as that."
Luo Binghe was left speechless. His eyes locked onto him, his mind processing the magnitude of what he had just said. Showing anything other than annoyance since entering this dimension was rare for him, but now surprise dominated him. Something in that phrase resonated deeply in his chest, and his stomach tightened.
For the first time, he considered whether this man in front of him might perhaps be a legendary sword cultivator, with his name lost to time. He vaguely knew that swords were "conscious" in a certain way. But the man in front of him spoke as if swords were... alive.
All the cultivators he had met in his life saw demonic energy as a sin, a disease that had to be cured, balanced, or eradicated. Even he himself did, if he was honest. Always trying to control his own energy through slaughter or sex, deep down ashamed of what his heritage demanded of him.
But to this man, there was no morality in yin and yang. There was no "evil" in the sword. The cultivator did not distinguish between a righteous or demonic heritage.
A deep, dark, and hypnotic fascination began to pulse in his veins. He watched him adjust the final seal, captivated by the absolute devotion in his movements. He placed the cracked blade in the center of the circle. The air around them dropped sharply in temperature.
A strong and violent wind began to blow from the seal on the floor. Like the blizzard of a snowstorm. It felt like being in Mobei-jun's territory. As if all the light had been absorbed by the Yuéhuá, the room darkened again, this time only the fire in the center remaining tall and proud, while the dust lines began to illuminate with an intense and ethereal light blue.
"That's it, Nameless." The cultivator, who had been pushed back a few meters by the intense wind, approached and placed his hands on the sword, closing his eyes.
Luo Binghe noticed how his breathing combined with the pulse of the fire, his fingers tracing back and forth along the perimeter of Xin Mo. The wind began to die down little by little, turning into a gentle breeze until it faded into the air.
It seemed that Xin Mo took advantage of those moments to return from its lethargy. Perhaps for a sword so greedy and hungry, that numbness had been the closest thing to being satiated that it could be; so, when it felt the cultivator making its excess yin flow, it lashed out with force.
A burst of dark purple miasma erupted from the blade, so dense and violent that the ground trembled beneath the Emperor's boots. Tendrils of pure demonic energy, sharp as whips, shot upward, wrapping like vipers around the cultivator's wrists and arms.
Luo Binghe's body reacted before he could think. Demonic qi burst in his palms, and he leaped forward. It's going to devour him! Xin Mo, abruptly awakened from its lethargy, would recognize nothing, only its own hunger to compensate for the void. It would burst his meridians in the blink of an eye, draining him until leaving only an empty shell.
He reached out his hand to pull him by the collar of his robe and drag him away from the array. But then, he heard a melodious sound, like wind chimes resonating. It felt louder than the screech Xin Mo was producing.
The cultivator was laughing.
It was a small laugh, perhaps breathless from the effort of resisting the demonic pressure, but unmistakably loaded with awe and relief. Binghe stopped dead in his tracks, his hand inches from his shoulder.
"That's it," the man panted. The tendrils of miasma dug into his skin, seeking to drain him, but he did not step back. "That's how I like it, there you are, Nameless."
His hands were trembling, but that did not stop him from, with a quick and practiced movement of his free wrist, drawing a small work knife from his belt. Without hesitating for a single second, he made a clean cut across the palm of his hand.
He let the blood fall directly onto the guard where the sword's resentment swirled thickest. A provocation.
"Come on," he whispered to the sword, his voice dropping in pitch, caressing the monstrosity in front of him. "I made you. I know what you are and I know how hungry you are. Do you remember this?"
The blood touched the dark metal. The deafening buzz of the sword seemed to stop for an infinitesimal second, like a predator sniffing the air before pouncing.
"Show me your teeth, girl," the cultivator demanded.
The miasma began to accumulate around his open palm, pulsing with a furious, alive, and terrifying rhythm. The cracks along the blade shone with a demonic glare. It almost looked like a predator about to snap its prey's neck.
And that damn madman did something that made him look more like a cultivator from the beast peak than from the sword peak. With his healthy hand, he grabbed the black miasma and squeezed. The scene before his eyes looked like that of a tamer, and Xin Mo had no choice but to yield. But a tamer, no matter how skilled, is still flesh and blood in front of a beast forged in pure darkness. The soles of the cultivator's boots scraped against the stone, pushed backward by the colossal pressure of centuries of accumulated slaughter. Xin Mo shrieked, a sharp, metallic sound that threatened to tear space itself.
"You! Uh... demon?" the man shouted over the howl of the storm, his glasses slipping down the bridge of his nose. "Don't just stand there staring at me! It's your sword, take responsibility!"
Binghe blinked, jolted by the insolence of his command, but instinct was faster than pride. He took a leap, stepping into the freezing circle of the Yuéhuá.
"What do I do?!" he roared, the wind cutting his face.
"I need you to circulate the yang!" he demanded, gripping the hilt with both hands, the veins in his neck bulging from the effort. "The yin is stuck! I will guide the yin towards the seal to empty her; your demonic yang energy will help you inject the fire's yang into its core to, ugh, push from the inside! Circulate her meridians!"
He didn't hesitate. He reached out his hands and placed them over his. The cultivator's fingers were freezing from the contact with the concentrated yin, and Binghe's burned with the fire of his heritage. The instant their qi clashed inside Xin Mo's steel, the entire world seemed to disappear.
It was a violent spectacle, but also so... intimate. In the same way that his energy flowed through Xin Mo's meridians, he could also feel the presence of the man beside him, his core. Could this be considered dual cultivation among the three of them? The demonic yang energy and the forge's fire charged like a battering ram against the sword's obstruction, while the cultivator's subtle and precise force took that excess of frozen yin and pulled it, draining it toward the glowing floor of the lunar seal. Their meridians connected through the blade, pushing, pulling, breathing at the same rhythm to force the sword's heart to beat once again.
The room was plunged into a vortex of ethereal purple and blue light. The pressure threatened to pulverize them, but the cultivator did not step back a single millimeter. He looked at the sword through the chaos, with a feral smile appearing on his lips.
"What is your name?!" he shouted, his voice vibrating with the resonance of their combined energies.
Luo Binghe could feel how the energy of his sword's core reacted back to the man's voice. If he had to describe it, it would be like a cat stretching in the sun, only to roar with all its might at the presence of a tiger.
Xin Mo. Heart Demon.
Upon pronouncing its true name, heard for the first time by its creator, the sword burst forth in all its splendor. A pulse of pure, dark, and majestic energy swept across the platform. Xin Mo let out one last shriek, and the miasma dissipated all at once. The snowstorm vanished into thin air, leaving behind a heavy silence, broken only by their ragged breathing and the crackle of the eternal flame.
Luo Binghe withdrew his hands, panting, and let his arms fall to his sides. He looked down. The man was sitting on the stone floor, his legs stretched out and sprawled, his hair completely tousled. In his lap rested Xin Mo.
The sword was unrecognizable. The cracks had closed, and the metal radiated a deep, healthy purple glow. The murderous miasma that had taken him years to subdue through blood had transformed into a deep, constant vibration, akin to a purr. Xin Mo's sharp, lethal tip rested dangerously close to the cultivator's jugular, settled against his neck like a wild tiger choosing to sleep on its tamer with its jaws open. A single false move and it could decapitate him, but the sword simply allowed itself to be caressed, docile, lethal, and compliant.
"Xin Mo..." the man murmured, running his bloodstained fingers along the blade with an exhausted smile. "What a pretentious name. But it suits you."
"Is it repaired?" Binghe asked, his voice unusually soft.
He shook his head, adjusting his glasses with the back of his hand.
"We removed the obstruction, which was the urgent part," he explained. "But her meridians were left incredibly fragile. Think of it as if you had forced a huge stone through a small bamboo straw. We managed to expel the stone, yes, but the straw was left stretched, thin, and on the verge of breaking. If you try to channel qi right now, she will shatter into pieces. We have to give her time to rebuild herself."
Binghe's brow furrowed slightly. "How long?"
"Eh, not long, a few months. Maybe a year," he shrugged. "Her channels have to heal little by little, so I'm afraid you won't be able to leave here so soon. I hope there isn't a wife or children waiting for you."
Luo Binghe stood motionless, processing his words. He looked at this scruffy, clumsy, and shameless man who right now was holding the calamity of the three realms as if it were a domestic cat.
"I am in no rush," he replied.
The cultivator blinked but then smiled, a small and genuine smile. Human.
"Ah, good. In that case, I suppose we'll be roommates for a while," he said, offering his hand to help him up. "How rude of me. I am Shen Yuan."
He took his hand. His skin was still cold, stained with soot, and his grip firm and calloused.
Shen Yuan.
As they stood up, obsession coiled in Luo Binghe's lungs, sweet and suffocating. Oh, yes. He was truly going to stay there for a good while.
"This lord is called Luo Binghe."
I found you, Shizun.