The scroll opened like a whisper. Not paper, but woven from soul-thread—each line of scripture breathing with forbidden intent. As Jin read, the sky above the Dead Heavens Sect turned black again. Not storm-dark, but ash-dark, like the world itself exhaled ruin.
Three words burned at the top:
"Ash-Writ Oath."
Below them, the scripture spoke:
"The dead may rise again, but only those who swear upon the ashes of their world may walk without chains."
Jin's eyes narrowed. He had seen countless scriptures in his life—many had tried to imitate the style of divine will, to echo the voice of heaven. This wasn't mimicry.
This was truth.
The Ash-Writ Oath was a pact.
A ritual.
A system.
A cultivation path that demanded the destruction of the old world to birth a new one.
Jin rolled the scroll closed, his jaw tight.
He turned to the courtyard. Elders still knelt in terror. Disciples whispered his name like a curse, or a prayer. They had seen the throne submit. That alone would make him a myth.
But myths were not enough.
He needed soldiers.
He needed survivors.
He raised the scroll in one hand.
"This," he said, voice like a god's whisper over a battlefield, "is the new path of the Dead Heavens Sect."
The earth trembled. Somewhere below, bones shifted in their graves.
"No more false heavens. No more poison disguised as cultivation. No more chains. Only ash. Only truth."
Silence.
Then, slowly, a girl stepped forward. No older than sixteen, thin as reedgrass, trembling. Her robes were torn, her cultivation crippled, her dantian poisoned from years of forced suppression by stronger inner sect members.
She knelt.
"I… I swear. On ash. On blood. On everything you burned to return."
Jin stared at her. His gaze pierced through her soul.
And then—he nodded.
With a wave of his hand, the scroll's edge split into fire. A single ash brand floated forward, like a feather made of coal, and pressed against the girl's forehead.
It didn't burn.
It rewrote.
The corrupted qi inside her hissed, convulsed, and then turned pure.
New pathways opened. Her shattered meridians bound themselves in bone-light. Her crippled dantian screamed once—and then pulsed.
Alive.
Reformed.
Ash-born.
The girl collapsed, gasping, tears streaming.
Jin turned to the rest.
"Step forward if you dare. But understand this: the Ash-Writ Oath accepts no betrayal. Once taken, it binds you to the truth of ruin. There is no path back."
And they came.
One by one.
Dozens. Then hundreds. Broken disciples. Forgotten elders. Silent ghosts of sect halls that once rotted with corruption. They knelt. They swore.
And the air filled with fire.
—
Far to the west, in the shattered ruins of the Nine-Sun Pavilion, a golden crow opened its eyes.
It saw the throne.
It saw the brand.
And it screamed.
The Ash-Writ Oath had not been seen in nine epochs.
A technique erased from history by the Heavenly Mandate itself.
It had returned.
And Jin was wielding it.
—
Two days passed.
The Dead Heavens Sect was no longer dead.
The inner courts were purged, their corrupted lineages burned out root and branch. The Sky Vault Pagoda, once home to the Elders of Judgement, now stood remade—its glyphs rewritten in bone-ink, its guardians reforged into silence-bound shades.
The Ash-Writ disciples were growing fast. Too fast.
The technique broke every natural law of cultivation.
Instead of building qi over time, it consumed the remnants of decayed spiritual structures—destroyed dantians, failed core formations, even the shattered souls of beasts. And in their place, it built a new root:
The Ash Core.
Where others built towers of light and balance, Ash-Writ cultivators built upon ruin. Their cores glowed not with golden light—but with voidfire. Black flame. Hungry. Silent.
Jin watched them train in the newly reformed Bone Courtyard, where white ash now covered the stone.
A woman approached.
Tall. Cloaked. Her face hidden behind a mask of carved jade, half-broken. But Jin recognized the voice the moment she spoke.
"Ten thousand years," she said, stepping beside him. "And you never learned to stay dead."
He didn't turn.
"I take it you've come to kill me."
"No," she said. "Worse."
She removed her mask.
Revealing the face of Li Yun.
His disciple.
The one he failed.
The one he buried.
Except… she was alive. Not as a spirit. Not as a construct. Flesh. Bone. Soul.
And her cultivation—was terrifying.
Jin's gaze didn't waver. "I buried your body beneath the Screaming Caverns."
"You buried a decoy," she said. "I fled before the Purge. I knew they would betray you. I warned you."
"I didn't listen."
"No. You didn't."
For a long time, silence held.
Then she stepped forward and placed a scroll before him.
"The Five Grand Clans have called a Tribunal. They know you've returned."
Jin opened the scroll.
Inside—death warrants.
His name.
His face.
His Ash-Writ seal.
"They've branded you a heretic," Li Yun said. "The price on your head could buy a planet."
Jin smiled.
"Good. Let them come."
"They will come with legions. Heaven-tier elders. Artifact sects. Bloodscript assassins. You can't take them alone."
"I won't be alone."
He turned, eyes glinting with impossible certainty.
"They think I'm building a sect."
Li Yun frowned. "You're not?"
"I'm building a cultivation plague."
He raised a hand.
The Bone Courtyard responded. The ash swirled. A single pulse of blood-qi burst into the sky—and across the continent, Ash-Writ seeds responded.
Dozens of them.
Hundreds.
Ash disciples awakening in slums. In ruins. In prisons. In other sects. Secretly branded. Quietly converting.
Infecting.
"I spent ten thousand years learning how to consume the dead," Jin said. "Now I'll devour the living."