The memory was not his.
The world spun slowly around the axis of a forgotten corpse.
Damp grass. The scent of rain trapped beneath rot. A child squatted beside the carcass of a dead dog, its fur matted with blood, flies already beginning their feast. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth in grotesque defiance of dignity.
The child did not cry.
He did not speak.
He only stared. For hours.
Until the flies moved aside, and he leaned forward.
His hands—thin, splintered from clawing through wood and stone—reached for the dog. They trembled, not from fear or disgust, but need. Not hunger. Not desperation.
Instinct.
The first bite was shallow. He chewed slowly.
Bone cracked beneath soft teeth. Muscle slid down a throat never meant for such offerings.
And something stirred within him.
A whisper—not a voice, not a presence—but a resonance.
The corpse had died in pain. Alone. Forgotten.
And in devouring it, the boy absorbed everything.
The panic. The betrayal. The last thoughts of the dog, buried under agony. Its loyalty, its starvation, its confusion as it was left to rot.
All of it flooded the child's mind like poisoned ink.
And he smiled.
The next bite came easier.
---
Shen Wuqing opened his eyes.
The memory burned behind his vision—not imagined, not recalled, but inherited. A fracture in time carved into his marrow.
His breath fogged in the still air of the mountain basin. Night had fallen, yet no stars dared shine. Even the moon had forgotten to rise.
In his chest, the Heaven Devourer Physique pulsed.
Not with power. Not with breakthrough.
But with a deeper understanding.
This path he walked—it was not one of conquest. It was not forged through righteous dao or the will of heaven.
It was carved by consumption.
But not just of flesh.
Not just of qi.
Of meaning.
To devour was to take in more than substance. It was to absorb the essence of things that once were. And in return, lose a piece of oneself.
This was the toll.
Each fragment of power gained required something intangible be forgotten.
Names. Faces. Dreams.
The price of becoming was always unbecoming.
And still, he walked forward.
---
The valley shifted as he moved.
Not physically.
But perceptually.
Trees bent away from him not with wind, but with fear. Stones trembled, moss dried, birds fell silent—not dead, simply erased from this moment.
He approached a stream, crystalline in appearance, yet utterly still. The water did not flow. It simply existed, like an ancient scar on the skin of the world.
Wuqing kneeled beside it.
He saw no reflection.
And that did not surprise him.
Instead, he reached into the water and pulled out a stone—small, polished, humming with dormant memory.
He crushed it between two fingers.
The air screamed.
The stream turned black.
Not with ink, not with shadow—but with loss.
A scream echoed. Not in sound, but in presence. From deep beneath the stream, a figure rose—a phantom composed entirely of regrets, memories lost to time.
A cultivator. Centuries dead.
He recognized the robes. Skyfire Sect. Outer disciple. Forgotten long before his sect had fallen.
The ghost lunged.
But Wuqing did not defend.
Instead, he listened.
To its hunger. To its confusion. To the echo of its final words, mouthed in silence:
"Please… don't forget me…"
He reached out. Pressed his palm to its chest.
And devoured.
---
There was no resistance.
The soul unraveled like string, dissolving into Wuqing's core.
But unlike before—he felt it fully. The sorrow. The aching desire to be remembered. The lonely pride of one who had died for a sect that never mourned him.
And when the last trace vanished—
A new mark formed on Wuqing's back.
A spiral. Not drawn, but etched in silence.
He had not grown stronger.
But something within him deepened.
A void, rich with forgotten truths, yawned wider.
He stood.
And he understood.
---
The Devourer's Path had no clear realms.
No glowing qi veins, no inner seas, no golden cores.
Only fragments.
Each memory devoured.
Each scar inherited.
Each soul erased.
They layered, like sediment at the bottom of an unseen abyss.
And somewhere down there, in that depthless dark, a throne waited.
But not for a king.
For a void.
Wuqing looked up.
The moon had returned.
But it did not shine on him.
It recoiled. Pale, uncertain.
And the stars?
They blinked… then looked away.