There was no ritual hall. No candles. No formation array humming with power.
Lu Tian sat alone in the corpse-cleaning chamber of Bone-Wash Hall, blood drying under his fingernails, the air still reeking of vinegar and burnt bone.
The scroll lay open in his lap, covered in cramped black script that pulsed faintly with Abyss Qi. He'd read it five times. Every time, it felt colder.
There were no diagrams. No Qi channels. No breathing techniques.
Just instructions.
"To Spiral is to bind your Root to a Concept.
To bind a Concept, you must name it.
And to name it, you must survive it without hiding."
Lu Tian closed his eyes.
Inside his chest, just below the sternum, the First Root pulsed: a cold seed, formed from pain and memory. Still shallow. Still fragile.
He breathed in.
Reached for it.
And whispered the memory that formed it.
"My mother's silence."
The Root responded.
A sharp pull. A twisting. His vision blurred. The room dissolved.
He fell inward.
Back into that apartment. Cheap, quiet. His mother's hands red from bleach. Her eyes hollow. Her back turned to him, forever turned.
But this time he wasn't just remembering. He was there.
And she turned around.
Her mouth moved.
She spoke.
He couldn't hear the words. Only see her lips move.
Because in his original memory, she never said anything.
This was the test.
He had to name what that silence meant.
Not what he wanted it to mean.
What it truly was.
His throat closed. He didn't want to do it.
But the Abyss demanded honesty.
He forced the word out.
"Shame."
The entire scene shattered.
His body convulsed. Blood ran from his nose and ears.
Pain rippled through his soul like burning thread.
The Root pulsed once, then cracked open.
A spiral of black light unfurled around it, three glowing rings, each fragmented, rotating slowly.
[Spiral Initialized: Concept Bound – "Shame Begets Strength"]
Each ring represented a path. A trajectory.
And each would need to be fed.
Abyss Spiral Paths were not static. They changed based on the cultivator's concept.
For Lu Tian, his spiral paths were:
[Ring One: Bearing]
• Scar-skills that turn emotional weight into defense or suppression.
[Ring Two: Reversal]
• Scar-skills that punish those who trigger emotional resonance in him.
[Ring Three: Mutation]
• Skills that evolve when memories degrade completely.
The Spiral framework now existed inside him. A cultivation method custom-built by his own broken foundation.
But it wasn't complete. Not stable. He needed to anchor it.
To do that, he had to feed it a scar.
Not just a memory.
A living one.
Something that still bled.
He knew exactly where to find it.
Lu Tian stood, gathered what few scraps he had, and walked out of Bone-Wash Hall.
He made his way to the outer sect medical pits. Not to be treated, but to see the names on the recovery lists.
Mo Yao was alive.
Transferred to the Iron Vine Quarry after failing a Sect loyalty check.
That was a death sentence.
The Quarry wasn't a place to work. It was a place to vanish.
Lu Tian didn't hesitate.
He bribed a messenger disciple with half the Soul-Cleansing Elixir and a forged work token, and the next morning he stood among the rust-colored cliffs of the Iron Vine Quarry.
Spirit vines twisted through stone here like veins through meat. The workers wore collars that injected paralysis Qi on command. Overseers carried spiked whips that doubled as soul-slicing chains.
Mo Yao was there, barely standing. Thin, bleeding from the mouth, wrists bruised from manacles.
He didn't look surprised when Lu Tian approached.
"Let me guess. You're here to say goodbye."
Lu Tian said nothing. Then handed him a wrapped cloth.
Inside is half a spirit ration and the remaining drop of Soul-Cleansing Elixir.
Mo Yao stared at it.
"What's this?"
"A trade."
"For what?"
Lu Tian looked him in the eye.
"I need a living scar."
Mo Yao grinned. Then coughed up blood.
"You really are worse than I thought. Good. Sit down."
And there, under a broken canopy of dying vine, Mo Yao told him the truth.
About the beast he had been forced to kill.
About the Sect elder who tortured him in secret to extract rare marrow.
About the day he broke and begged to forget, but the memory refused to leave.
Lu Tian listened.
Burned every word into his mind.
Then carved it into his Root.
It wasn't his pain. But it became his burden.
He bore it.
The Spiral accepted it.
One of the rings solidified.
[Bearing Path, First Scar-Skill Awakened: Weight of Another's Sin]
• Activate to absorb the mental damage from another's memory or trauma
• Grants temporary clarity and resistance
• Residual emotion must be purged after use, or risk spiritual collapse
He almost collapsed right there.
Mo Yao caught him.
Said nothing.
Just stared at the spiral mark glowing faintly on Lu Tian's chest.
"That's what they're all afraid of, you know," he muttered. "That one day someone like you would come along. Someone willing to bleed for a future that isn't allowed to exist."
Lu Tian stood up.
Wiped the blood from his eyes.
And smiled.
"I'm not here to build a future."
"I'm here to outlive everyone who tried to bury me."
Three days passed.
Lu Tian returned to Bone-Wash Hall, but he was no longer treated like meat. The guards still sneered, but they didn't shove him. The workers whispered but kept their distance. The whispers weren't about the acid pits or corpse vats anymore.
They were about the one who bled black when cut, and whose presence made the Qi in the air grow cold.
He was becoming something people feared before they understood.
And that meant danger.
Late one night, long after the last bone was dissolved and the work chains were unhooked, Lu Tian found a note under his ration tray. Simple black script, written with a cultivator's steady hand.
"Report to the Veiled Courtyard. No delay. -Left Hand Division"
Lu Tian read it twice. Then he burned it.
The Left Hand Division was the Sect's internal intelligence faction. Spies. Enforcers. Blackmailers. Rumor-weavers. They didn't police crimes, they redirected them.
In the novel, they were the reason no one ever truly rose from the bottom. The moment you got noticed, they came to see if you could be bent.
Or broken.
Lu Tian left his tools behind and walked to the Veiled Courtyard, a half-dead garden surrounded by fog-wrapped walls. The air was thick with spiritual concealment, illusion Qi so dense it made the stone paths shimmer like water.
A man sat at the center, beside a dry koi pond.
He wore gray robes without insignia. His face was average. Perfectly forgettable. The only strange feature was a silver thread stitched into the corner of his eye, like a teardrop that never fell.
"Lu Tian," the man said without looking up. "Or should I say, Zhou Bin?"
Lu Tian stayed silent.
The man smiled. "No matter. Identities are like robes here. We only care if they're clean. Yours... isn't."
Lu Tian stepped forward, slow. "What do you want?"
The man finally looked up. His eyes were pale gray, the same color as the fog.
"I am Shi Lin, minor operative of the Left Hand Division. We monitor those who cultivate through irregular means. And you-" he gestured vaguely at Lu Tian's chest, "-are irregular."
Lu Tian didn't move.
Shi Lin chuckled softly.
"Relax. I'm not here to kill you. If we wanted that, you'd already be in a soul jar."
"Then why summon me?"
"To offer a path. You're rising. Faster than expected. We don't like surprises. But we like tools."
Lu Tian understood. This wasn't a threat. It was a collar.
"You want me to report."
"No," Shi Lin said. "We want you to listen."
He leaned closer.
"There's a war coming. Not swords and blood. A sect war. Quiet. Internal. The Elders are splitting. The Abyss cultivators, the Pill branch, the Spirit Beast division, none of them agree on succession."
Lu Tian narrowed his eyes.
"Succession?"
Shi Lin nodded.
"Grandmaster Tu Fen is dying. He's just not telling anyone yet. And when he does, every worm in the pit will think itself a dragon."
He stood and stretched.
"We want eyes in places no one looks. You're invisible right now. Poor. Dirty. Unimportant. That's useful."
"And what do I get?" Lu Tian asked.
Shi Lin grinned.
"Information. Protection. And maybe... a way to climb faster than even your little Spiral expects."
That last word hit like a blade.
Lu Tian didn't flinch.
"I'm guessing that wasn't a guess."
"No," Shi Lin said. "We know you're Abyss Path. We know you've formed your first Spiral. But here's the thing."
He stepped close. Too close.
"We don't care if you're a monster. We just want to know who you're going to eat first."
Silence.
Then Lu Tian smiled. Thin. Hollow.
"I'll consider your offer."
"Good," Shi Lin said, stepping back. "We'll be watching either way."
He vanished.
No sound. No Qi fluctuation. Just gone.
Lu Tian stood in the garden alone for a long time.
He had expected enemies.
He hadn't expected recruiters.
He looked up at the cracked moons overhead and whispered the words again.
"Shame begets strength."
If they wanted him to be invisible, that was fine.
He would become the shadow no one could touch.
And when the Sect cracked...
He'd already have a knife inside its spine.