By ArkGodZ | DaoVerse Studio
The incense had long since burned out.
Jian Yu sat in absolute stillness, yet his breath refused to slow. The restriction imposed by the Council forbade him from cultivating—no channeling, no meditating, no techniques—but the Sutra within him did not understand rules.
It pulsed.
Not with heat, but with hunger.
He had tried to sit like the others once did—spine straight, mind quiet, spirit reaching out to the ambient Qi around him. But the Qi no longer behaved. It no longer flowed gently like water through a garden.
It circled him.
It watched him.
Sometimes it even trembled.
I'm not cultivating, Jian Yu thought. I'm not doing anything.
And yet the world disagreed. The very air around his skin pressed tighter the longer he stayed still, as if drawn into the orbit of a gravity he could not switch off.
He opened his eyes. The flame-shaped mark on his wrist had faded… but only on the surface.
The Sutra of Forbidden Desire was not a technique.
It was a presence.
He stood and moved to the corner of the courtyard, where a narrow alcove had been carved into the stone for solitary reflection. It had no view, no flowers, no warmth. But it was silent.
Jian Yu placed his hand against the stone wall and let his forehead rest against the cool surface.
The cultivation path of the Eternal Flower Sect follows seven realms, he recalled, as if reading from the elder scrolls again:
Spirit Root Realm. Inner Essence Realm. Mortal Soul Realm. Ethereal Expansion Realm. Celestial Core Realm. Spiritual Form Realm. Fragmented Dao Realm.
He was supposed to still be in Spirit Root Realm—Stage 3. But after the Ritual, after the crack in the Petals, he had felt something shift.
Now, he could feel it clearly.
Stage 4.
But it wasn't a breakthrough like the elders described. There had been no moment of clarity. No gentle flow of Qi. Just pressure. Desire. Friction.
I didn't rise... I was pushed.
He turned his hand slowly, palm upward, and focused. Not to cultivate—but simply to listen.
A faint hum answered him. It didn't come from within.
It came from beneath.
Beneath his ribs. Beneath the blood. Beneath the soul.
The Sutra had made its home deep within the foundation of what he was. It had taken root, not in his spirit sea—but in his identity.
This isn't a path. It's a rewrite.
A shadow crossed the edge of the courtyard.
Jian Yu didn't move.
It wasn't a threat. Not yet.
Just a memory.
The old man in the forest.
The one who had smiled with rotting teeth, his fingers stained with herbs and forgotten time. Who had touched the air around Jian Yu's chest and whispered, "The seed is already warm. Don't water it with fear."
Jian Yu hadn't understood.
Now he did.
The old man had seen the Sutra before it bloomed.
He knew what I carried before I did.
But who was he?
Jian Yu opened his eyes again, and for a breath, the edge of the courtyard flickered.
There—just beyond the garden stones—a shape.
A silhouette wrapped in robes.
A figure with no face.
You again… Jian Yu thought, his chest tightening. You're not done with me, are you?
The figure did not speak.
It simply turned.
And vanished.
Far from the Eternal Flower Sect, beneath the roots of a ruined temple swallowed by earth and time, nine candles burned in silence. Their flames did not flicker. They rose straight into the air like blades of golden thought.
The room was circular, carved from black stone that drank sound. A symbol had been etched into the center of the floor—eight petals surrounding a blank core. The ninth had never been carved.
Not yet.
The masked figure stood at the edge of the circle, robes motionless even without walls to block the wind.
"He has reached Stage Four," a voice said. It came from everywhere and nowhere. "The Sutra grows within him faster than we projected."
"And the Petal Ritual did not reject him," said another, older voice. "It bent."
Silence followed.
Until a third spoke—softer, more careful.
"The last time it bent, a city burned. Shall we wait until he walks the same path?"
"He is not the one who burned it," the masked figure replied. His voice was calm, but absolute. "He is the reason the fire ended."
"Spoken like a heretic," someone spat.
"No," the masked figure said. "Spoken like one who remembers."
He stepped into the candlelight. No one moved. No face was visible—only nine shadows gathered around the circle, their robes different in cut and tone, but all marked by the same crimson dot on their masks.
"The boy's presence has awakened more than just the Sutra," the masked figure continued. "We have already received signs—others are stirring. One in the Eastern Peaks. One in the Obsidian Depths. And one who has remained hidden far longer than the rest."
"The traitor," someone whispered.
The room shifted. Tension, not fear.
The traitor.
The old man who vanished decades ago with a fragment of the original Sutra. The one who had declared the cycle broken and fled into the wilds.
The one Jian Yu met in the forest.
"He touched the seed," the masked figure said. "And did not destroy it. He watched it take root. Perhaps he believed... it would die on its own."
"He failed his duty," another voice growled. "He abandoned the Doctrine."
"No," the masked figure said. "He obeyed something older than doctrine. He obeyed the Sutra itself."
"And you would protect him for that?"
"I would understand him."
More silence.
Then a voice asked, "And the boy?"
"Jian Yu is no longer just a vessel," the masked figure answered. "He is a fracture. A mirror. He walks with memories not his own and power that does not obey."
"And yet he has not ascended."
"No. He is still in the Spirit Root Realm—Stage Four."
Murmurs passed like shadows across stone.
"Then how is he resisting us?"
"Because the Sutra does not rise with strength. It rises with longing."
In the dim corner of the chamber, a single candle extinguished.
The silence deepened.
The masked figure stepped forward and placed a black shard upon the floor—identical to the one Jian Yu now carried.
"The others will seek him soon," he said. "Not to test. Not to study. To break him before he remembers too much."
"And if he survives?"
"Then we will no longer be choosing him."
He looked down at the center of the circle.
"We will be following him."
The sun hovered above the peaks like a tired guardian, spilling gold across the sect's high courtyards. Jian Yu stepped out of the shaded path and into one of the lower terraces, where silence usually reigned.
Not today.
A figure waited.
He stood tall, robe tight across his shoulders, the mark of the Inner Disciple rank stitched in silver over his chest. His name was Xie Lan. Jian Yu remembered him—he was one of the first to rise from the Spirit Root Realm, said to have reached the Mortal Soul Realm by sheer dedication.
His eyes now burned with something else.
Not pride. Not curiosity.
Fear dressed as control.
"You shouldn't be here," Xie Lan said, voice steady but strained.
"This path isn't restricted," Jian Yu replied.
"You're not a disciple anymore," Xie Lan said. "You're something else. Something dangerous."
Jian Yu didn't move.
"And that scares you?"
"It warns me."
The wind shifted.
Other disciples watched from balconies above. No one interfered.
They were waiting.
"Are you here to deliver a message?" Jian Yu asked.
"No."
Xie Lan stepped forward. "I'm here to test a theory."
He attacked without warning.
A pulse of spiritual pressure struck the stones, cracking them underfoot. The technique wasn't subtle—Xie Lan's strength bloomed in full, his cultivation bursting outward like a sharp wind filled with blades.
Jian Yu raised no defense.
The force struck him, slammed into his chest, and flung him back against the wall. He didn't cry out. But blood touched the edge of his lip.
"You're not even shielding," Xie Lan said. "No suppression techniques? No talismans?"
"I was told not to cultivate," Jian Yu said, wiping his mouth.
"Then die bound by your own sentence," Xie Lan said.
He charged.
The moment he crossed the center of the courtyard, everything changed.
The world pulsed.
The Sutra awakened.
No Qi surged.
No chant was spoken.
But the stone beneath Xie Lan's foot cracked—no longer from impact, but from rejection.
Petals—black and red—began to drift upward from the ground, curling in the air like smoke.
The temperature dropped.
Xie Lan froze, his fist raised. His aura wavered, and Jian Yu… simply looked at him.
"You shouldn't have forced this," Jian Yu said quietly.
And the Sutra responded.
His eyes flared—not with spiritual light, but with memory. Waves of emotion—not his—erupted from his chest and lashed outward.
Desire.
Pain.
Longing.
Xie Lan gasped, stumbling backward as his own Qi faltered. His mind filled with images not his own—silver-haired figures screaming, petals burning, the sensation of being touched by something too ancient to understand.
Jian Yu stepped forward.
One step.
And the courtyard shifted.
The lotus vines on the walls grew rapidly, twisting and reaching. The petals that had risen now bloomed in midair—spinning slowly around Jian Yu like orbiting moons.
Xie Lan fell to one knee.
"Make it stop—" he choked, clutching his chest.
"I didn't start it," Jian Yu said. "You did."
He stepped closer.
And the world pressed down.
But before the final blow—before the pressure could collapse Xie Lan's spirit root—Jian Yu stopped.
He closed his eyes.
And whispered, "I am not your enemy."
The petals fell.
The vines receded.
The Sutra quieted.
Xie Lan collapsed, unconscious, sweat and blood mingling at the corner of his brow.
The courtyard was silent again.
Above, no disciple spoke.
Not one.
From the high balconies, murmurs finally began to ripple across the sect.
"...Did you see that?"
"Xie Lan couldn't move—he just collapsed."
"He didn't even form a seal. No technique. No gesture. It was like… like the courtyard obeyed him."
"What kind of cultivation was that? That wasn't Qi."
"It wasn't cultivation," someone whispered. "It was the Sutra."
"The Sutra of Forbidden Desire?"
"You mean the one from the old legends? That thing doesn't exist anymore."
"Tell that to the vines that almost strangled a Mortal Soul cultivator."
"And he's still in Spirit Root Realm?"
"Stage Four, I heard. But… it doesn't feel like it."
"No. It feels like he's something else entirely."
"...Do you think the Council will let him live?"
Jian Yu stood in the silence he had created.
The petals were gone now, dissolved into the air. The vines that had erupted from stone had retreated as if ashamed of their hunger. Only the cracked floor and the unconscious body of Xie Lan remained behind to prove what had happened wasn't imagined.
But Jian Yu's heart wasn't steady.
The Sutra had answered without permission. Again.
And this time… it had enjoyed it.
He turned away from the terrace and moved toward the lower gardens, breath uneven, the tremor in his fingers still not subsiding.
His strength wasn't cultivation.
It was pressure, violence, longing—raw and unshaped. If he had taken another step, he might have crushed Xie Lan's mind entirely. The fact that he hadn't was not mastery.
It was mercy.
Or fear.
He found Yuan waiting beneath the old pavilion where the Moon Tree's shadow stretched farthest. She stood with her hands clasped, her robe loose at the sleeves, the soft fabric shifting with the breeze.
"You shouldn't be walking after that," she said. Her voice wasn't scolding—it was protective. Tired. Like she had already watched too many things she didn't understand.
"I didn't ask it to wake up," Jian Yu said. "It just… did."
Yuan stepped closer.
"You didn't let it consume you."
"I nearly did."
She looked into his eyes for a long time.
"I heard what they're saying," she said. "That you fought him without raising a hand. That the vines grew. That the petals spun in air like stars."
"And what do you believe?" he asked.
She didn't hesitate.
"I believe you're still trying to hold back something that was never meant to be caged."
He closed his eyes. "I'm afraid of what it will make me become."
"No," Yuan said. "You're afraid of becoming something you don't understand. But not all transformation is loss."
She reached for his hand and held it. Firm. Present.
Her spiritual presence didn't flare—it settled. Warm, steady, soft like a river too deep to disturb.
And in that moment, the pulse of the Sutra dimmed.
Not because it was silenced.
Because it felt seen.
As they sat together beneath the pavilion, the sunlight slanted through the hanging petals. Jian Yu leaned back against the wood, breath slowing.
But then—he froze.
In the garden below, the earth stirred.
From the base of the farthest wall, a root pushed through the stone. It twisted upward, blooming slowly into a flower.
Not crimson.
Not white.
Black.
Perfect and silent.
And on one of its petals, etched faintly like a scar, was a name.
Li Jian.
Yuan saw it too.
She didn't speak.
Neither did he.
The Sutra didn't need words this time.
Only memory.
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Next Chapter: Chapter 18 – What the Sutra Forgets