Bonewind Plains – Trial Ground
The blood moon hung low in the crimson-stained sky.
The Trial Gate, a tower forged of countless bones and rusted soulsteel, creaked open as an ancient bell tolled thirteen times. Its eerie resonance echoed across the plains, silencing beasts, wind, and even breath.
Dozens of cultivators stepped forward, eyes gleaming with ambition, fear, and bloodlust.
Among them, Yin Wuxie stood still, the edge of his bone dagger wrapped in black cloth, waiting.
A cloaked elder with silver eyes stood at the gate's threshold. He raised a hand and spoke in a voice that shook the bones of the earth.
> "Welcome to the Bloodwind Trials. One hundred shall enter. Ten shall remain. One will ascend."
He dropped a talisman.
It shattered mid-air.
The ground rumbled.
Suddenly, the competitors were engulfed in a red haze and pulled through dimensional tears — into the trial realm.
---
Trial Phase One – Shifting Mirage Lands
Wuxie landed on a fractured field of floating stone platforms suspended over an abyss. Crimson fog curled around him. Illusions flickered at the edge of vision — past enemies, loved ones, memories not his own.
A girl cried out behind him. Her arm had turned into stone — an illusion trap.
Wuxie didn't look back. He began to walk.
The platforms shifted every five steps. Step wrong, and you'd fall — into madness or death. He closed his eyes, letting his corrupted Qi "taste" the terrain.
Each time a platform shimmered with false spirit energy, he marked it.
A disciple of the Azure Cloud Sect sprinted past, sneering.
> "Slow trash."
Two steps later, the boy screamed as the ground vanished beneath him, swallowing him into the void.
Wuxie didn't react.
---
Trial Phase Two – Spirit Beast Gauntlet
Beyond the mirage lands, he arrived at a ruined coliseum grown over with vines and bones. The moment he stepped in, a gate slammed shut behind him.
A roar followed.
Emerging from the shadows came a Crimson Fang Tiger — a mid-tier Spirit Beast with a thirst for Qi and marrow.
Wuxie tossed his cloak aside and licked a drop of blood from his thumb. Dark energy rippled from his veins. He lowered his stance.
> "Come."
The beast pounced — claws like steel, fangs glowing.
SLASH.
The tiger landed. Then froze.
Wuxie had already moved — his bone dagger embedded in the beast's throat, corrupting it from within.
Black tendrils spread. The tiger's body convulsed — and then bowed.
It… submitted.
Wuxie retrieved his dagger and patted the beast's snout.
> "You'll serve me till this trial ends. Or until I consume your core."
The Crimson Fang purred. It followed.
---
Meanwhile – Other Competitors
Elsewhere in the trial realm, chaos reigned.
Mei Hanli fought off a trio of rogue disciples using lotus-petal talismans, while a masked youth from the Heaven Sealing Sect burned a valley down with flame techniques.
Whispers spread of a figure who walked untouched, leaving only corpses and corrupted beasts.
> "They say he walks with death itself." "He wears no emblem." "His eyes are pitch black… like a void."
---
Trial Phase Three – The Spirit Memory Maze
Wuxie entered a cavern lit by floating orbs — each one holding a memory. He stepped forward.
His mother's voice.
A soft lullaby.
His hand twitched. His breath caught.
> "Wuxie…?"
No. He never meet his mother nor knew her voice.
He struck the orb, shattering false memory before it could take hold.
Other cultivators screamed as their minds were trapped within their worst regrets and desires.
Wuxie moved through the maze untouched, dead inside. He had already killed what could hurt him.
At the center, a mirror stood — a relic of the ancient Demon Sect.
It spoke:
> "Name your wish."
He replied:
> "To be feared by heaven itself."
The mirror cracked, bleeding black light. A symbol seared into his arm — a demonic mark.
> [Demonic Art: First Gate Unlocked – Thousand Venom Veins]
---
End of the First Day – 100 → 41
The trial realm trembled.
The cloaked elder stood outside the gate, watching.
A younger cultivator whispered:
> "Only forty-one left on the first day?"
The elder smiled darkly.
> "And the demon child walks again. The one born with black Qi."
---
Closing Scene
Wuxie sat in silence, his Crimson Fang curled at his feet. He opened the sealed scroll on his back, finally unwrapping one of the forbidden techniques.
A glyph pulsed — it showed an ancient sigil and three words:
> "Demon God Reigns."
He closed his eyes.
The sky above cracked slightly — as if the heavens themselves sensed the danger.
*Later, at the Crimson Fang Cave – Beneath Bonewind Plains*
Beneath the trial grounds lies a forbidden sublayer, its entrance sealed with a cursed formation that warps Qi and perception.
But Wuxie, guided by the demonic glyph burned into his flesh, finds the cracks.
His beast familiar, the Crimson Fang Tiger, snarls, uneasy. A heavy presence pulses from below—ancient, suffocating.
Wuxie steps forward. The stone melts beneath his corrupted Qi, and the barrier crumbles with a hiss.
He descends.
As he moves deeper, hallucinations press into him. They aren't dreams — they're echoes of someone else's life.
A child surrounded by shadows.
A tower built on corpses.
A throne of bones beneath a skyless void.
Screaming gods. That actually put a smile on his face
He sees his face in the throne—older, crueler, wreathed in flames of black and violet.
"He... was me? Or will be? " Says Wuixe as he moves further into the cave.
" Hmmm... I thought would be taller and more handsome, not a close copy of my master, a shame. "
An Ancient Chamber – The Heart of Bonewind
At the lowest point lies a black altar, inscribed with ancient Nethergold characters.
Floating above it, sealed in chains of time and jade spirit, is a creature not quite beast, not quite god—a Primordial Shade.
Its presence alone begins to rot Wuxie's mortal side. His breath shortens. His skin cracks. But his eyes glow brighter.
He grins.
The Shade awakens, its single eye opening.
"You wear the mark of the First Demon Emperor… How?"
"I don't know," Wuxie answers, bleeding from the lips. "But I intend to finish what he started."
The Shade growls, teeth scraping ancient bone.
"Many have tried. All failed."
"Then they weren't monsters," Wuxie whispers. "They were men."
Backflash: Wuxie's Origin – Revealed in Fragments
The altar pulses and memories not his own flood in.
A demon child torn from his mother by the Sect of Balance.
A prophecy of a child born under the Dead Star.
The very moment his mother was killed in a blinding flash of light, too bright to finally see the woman that bore him into this world of hypocrisy.
But how he got to his sect? That wasn't shown. But all that was known at this moment was....Wuxie was never meant to live.
He was a vessel.
Yet... he grew. He learned. He fought.
Now?
He's no longer the vessel.
He is the flame.
Present Time: Aboveground – Trial Participants Regroup
Above, the remaining 38 cultivators gather. New alliances form.
Mei Hanli (talismancer) and Bao Zhen (dual-blade style) whisper of a figure descending below.
Disciple of the Heaven Sealing Sect warns: "Bonewind was sealed for a reason."
Some propose hunting Wuxie before he returns.
Too late.
The earth cracks.
A pillar of corrupted Qi explodes from the cavern mouth.
Out steps Wuxie.
Eyes darker than void.
Steps silent as death.
And behind him...
The Primordial Shade, bound by spirit chains, floating like a specter.
"You tried to bury me in this trial," he says to no one in particular. "But I am the trial."
Back at the Trial Gate, the cloaked elder watches.
A bird lands on his shoulder — its feathers made of black paper talismans.
He speaks grimly:
"He has awakened. Not the boy, but the thing within."
"The Heavenly Demon… walks again."