The cave was silent, save for the flickering flame of a single spirit lantern.
Lin Yan sat cross-legged, his hands trembling as he held the crimson scroll. It pulsed faintly, like a living thing. The characters etched on its surface shimmered with a forbidden aura—**The Ninefold Soul-Breaking Mantra**.
"This technique…" he whispered, voice hoarse. "It's not… normal."
"It's not," Mei Qingxue confirmed, her tone calm. "It's a heretical technique once used by broken cultivators to rebuild their spiritual roots—by burning the scars left in their soul and mind."
She paused, then added, "You won't survive it… unless your will is stronger than your trauma."
Lin Yan stared at the scroll.
Part of him wanted to throw it away, curl up in a corner, and wait for the pain to return. Another part—the one that remembered the nights of being chained and drained—gritted his teeth.
"I'll do it," he said finally.
Mei Qingxue nodded. "Then start now."
---
The first layer of the mantra was brutal.
As he recited the incantation, memories he had buried clawed back with vengeance.
He saw Yu Xian'er, the first cultivator who had used him—her voice sweet like honey, her hands like poison. He felt the pain of his meridians being torn, rebuilt, and torn again. He saw himself sobbing silently, too ashamed to scream.
And then—
**The mantra ignited.**
Golden-red flames erupted from his body, not physical, but spiritual. They burned illusions—no, **truths**—etched into his soul. His body convulsed as pain lanced through every nerve, every muscle. Blood leaked from his nose and ears.
He screamed.
"Make it stop! MAKE IT STOP!"
But Mei Qingxue didn't move. She stood like an unmoved mountain, arms crossed, watching him writhe.
"This is your battle," she said coldly. "You want to be free? Then suffer. Break, and rise again."
---
Hours passed. Maybe days.
Lin Yan lay on the stone floor, steaming, barely breathing. His spiritual sea was fractured, and his body was broken. But something **inside him** had shifted.
A small ember flickered at the center of his dantian—faint, fragile, but pure.
**He had cultivated.**
For the first time in his life, not through being drained—but through his own effort.
When he opened his eyes, he met Mei Qingxue's gaze.
She gave him the slightest nod. "You passed the First Trial."
Lin Yan smiled faintly, blood on his lips. "Then bring on the second."
That night, as the snow fell quietly outside, Lin Yan did not dream of chains.
He dreamed of flying.