The gate to the Abyss Library was not a door.
It was a wound.
A vertical tear carved into the mountain's inner wall, pulsing like exposed flesh, stitched together with thin black chains. The air stank of ink, blood, and burned soul marrow.
Two elders flanked it — both blindfolded, both silent. When Yuan Zhi approached, they knelt.
Not to him.
To the shadow behind him.
He didn't turn.
Whatever they saw wasn't for his eyes yet.
The wound opened with a sigh, threads snapping one by one. And the darkness inside welcomed him.
Inside the Abyss
He stepped into a corridor that was neither stone nor wood.
Pulp.
The walls were made from it — pages pressed together, soaked in centuries of ink, skin, and blood. Some of the pages shifted slightly as he passed. Whispered. Wept.
Each step echoed with the sound of rustling leaves — except these leaves sometimes screamed.
A robed figure awaited him deeper inside, standing on a circular platform of bone keys.
No eyes. Just a stitched cloth where sockets should be. His robes were pure white, stained by black fingerprints.
He was hunched, but still towered over Yuan Zhi.
"You seek to rewrite law," the figure said. "And yet, you haven't even survived truth."
"You carry the Devouring Shadow. You've severed your name. You've consumed echoes."
"But have you understood pain?"
The platform spun once.
Three massive tomes rose from the ground, each bound by spine-thread.
One red. One grey. One white.
The Three Broken Laws
"You will not read them," said the scribe. "They will read you."
"And only one shall accept you."
The red tome snapped open.
A wind screamed through the corridor.
I. The Law of Flesh
Pain is cultivation.
The body must rot before it can evolve.
Yuan Zhi was hurled backward.
Not physically. His mind fell into the book.
The Flesh Test
He was strapped to a table.
His arms nailed. His legs bent backward. His chest flayed open — not by blades, but by threads of his own qi peeling skin away strand by strand.
A hundred faceless cultivators stood in a ring, chanting:
"Tear the limit."
"Break the nerve."
"Carve your path."
A single voice whispered in his ear:
"Scream, and you fail."
Yuan Zhi clenched his jaw.
The threads tore deeper. Ribs split.
Veins hummed with burning sludge.
His organs shifted — not metaphorically.
His heart moved to his left shoulder.
His liver shrunk.
His qi pathways twisted like snakes, rerouting violently, not by guidance, but by trauma.
He gritted his teeth.
A single tear slid from his eye.
"Scream, and you fail."
The pain wasn't pain. It was rewriting.
He bit through his tongue. Blood filled his throat. But he didn't scream.
Not once.
He returned to the platform.
The red book snapped shut.
The grey book opened.
II. The Law of Identity
You are not your memories.
You are not your face.
What survives, is true.
The Identity Test-
He stood in a hall of mirrors.
Each one showed a different version of himself.
One was a sect leader. One was a beggar.
One wore a suit and tie — Earth.
One was already dead.
They all moved when he did.
Except one.
It stood still.
And smiled.
"I am you… without restraint," it said.
"No memory. No morality. Just instinct."
The reflection stepped through the glass. And attacked.
They fought with no qi. No techniques.
Just fists. Blood. Nails. Teeth.
Yuan Zhi was overpowered in seconds.
The other him fought like an animal.
Efficient. Precise. Joyless.
But Yuan Zhi didn't need joy.
He needed meaning.
He took a hit to the jaw. Felt bone snap.
Spit blood. Laughed.
He whispered:
"You're the corpse. I'm the grave."
And bit through the reflection's throat.
It gurgled. Fell. Twitched. Died.
The mirror shattered. He returned.
The grey book closed.
Only the white book remained.
The scribe hesitated.
"No one has ever opened this one and returned," he said.
"It holds the Law of Nullity."
"The belief that nothing — not power, not self — should exist."
"You will not survive."
Yuan Zhi placed his hand on the cover.
"I didn't come here to survive."
"I came here to become something survival fears."
Yuan Zhi pressed his palm to the white tome.
It didn't open. It unmade itself.
The cover disintegrated into ash and swallowed him whole.
Inside the Law of Nullity
There was no color. No form. No sound.
No self.
Just the absence of everything.
And then, a whisper.
"You have entered the concept of erasure."
"There is no power here. No cultivation. No meaning."
"To remain is to vanish."
Yuan Zhi opened his eyes—
And saw nothing.
He tried to speak.
No voice.
He reached for qi.
No body.
He tried to think—
And memories slipped through his grasp like smoke.
He saw flashes:
A cage.
Blood on his hands.
The name "Yuan Zhi" written in broken charcoal.
His mother's face? Or someone else's?
Each time he tried to hold a thought—
"Memory denied."
Each time he summoned rage—
"Emotion rejected."
Each time he tried to be—
"Identity forbidden."
And still—
He refused to vanish.
He did not scream.
He had no mouth.
He did not cry.
He had no eyes.
But his will…
It remained.
A single point of pressure in the void.
Then came the voice.
Not a god.
Not a cultivator.
Something older.
Something broken.
"You resist Nullity."
"You should not exist."
"You are… a crack."
"So be it. You wish to survive here?"
"Then pay the cost."
A blade appeared.
No hilt. No edge.
Just the idea of a blade.
"Erase one truth from your existence."
"Memory. Emotion. Skill. Name."
"Choose."
He chose.
"Name."
"Take it."
The moment he spoke—
A scream echoed across a hundred dead dimensions.
Not his.
The void's.
Because instead of giving his name—
He fed it to his shadow.
The beast inside him, still barely formed from the Devouring Scripture, shuddered.
Then howled.
And ate the command whole.
What Happened Next Should Not Be Possible
The Law of Nullity cracked.
A thousand fracture lines tore through the airless black.
Because Yuan Zhi had done the forbidden:
He did not lose his name.
He turned it into a curse.
His name became a brand — a curseword to reality itself.
A mark that whispered:
"I am the flaw you couldn't erase."
The void screamed again. This time it bled.
Yuan Zhi's body reformed from ink and will.
The white book slammed shut.
The scribe gasped — the first breath he'd taken in centuries.
"You… rewrote the law."
"You turned nothingness into a weapon."
Yuan Zhi walked off the platform, bleeding shadows.
The other two books tried to open again.
They failed.
The entire library bowed in silence.
The pages on the walls stopped whispering.
They began chanting.
"Yuan Zhi…"
"Yuan Zhi…"
"The one who was unmade…"
"And returned."
He passed the scribe.
Paused.
"You said I'd pay a price."
The scribe trembled. "You did."
"What did I lose?"
The scribe looked away.
"Your soul can never reincarnate now. You are… written out of fate."
Yuan Zhi's mouth twitched.
Not a smile. Just approval.
"Good."
He stepped out of the Abyss Library.
The wound closed behind him.
But his shadow—
Now it whispered names of others.
Others who had failed.
Others who had died.
It remembered them.
Because he could no longer remember some of his own.
That was the trade.
And it was worth it.
The door to the Abyss Library sealed behind Yuan Zhi like the lid of a coffin.
But the air outside… felt different.
It tasted different.
As if the mountain had exhaled for the first time in centuries.
The shadows he cast were no longer his own. They flickered, stretched, moved on their own rhythm — and whispered other names beneath his breath.
Names of those erased.
He walked through the inner sect courtyard in silence, dragging behind him an invisible weight: the aftershock of the law he'd devoured.
He passed senior disciples. Most looked away. Some stared — then wished they hadn't.
One bowed slightly, without understanding why.
Another dropped their sword mid-practice.
Yuan Zhi didn't speak.
He had nothing left to say to insects.
Black Rain Inner Sanctum – Elder Council Hall
High above the trial grounds, behind a veil of shadow qi, the Tenfold Curtain Hall held a silent council.
Elders gathered behind spiritual curtains, their forms hidden.
Only voices echoed, disembodied and ancient.
"The stray passed the Abyss Library."
"All three trials?"
"Yes."
"What did he lose?"
"His name. Or rather… he weaponized it."
"Blasphemy."
"Brilliance."
"He broke the white law."
"No one was meant to open the white law."
"He didn't open it. He rewrote it."
Silence.
Then:
"Shall we kill him?"
"Too early. Too crude. He has not even been given a technique."
"Then let him climb further."
"If he falls, it will be his fault. If he rises—"
"We'll carve him down ourselves."
The First Scroll
Yuan Zhi returned to his quarters.
Waiting on the blood-soaked mat was a sealed scroll.
No script. No markings.
Just a thin slip of paper — blank, and warm to the touch.
He opened it. Nothing.
Until he blinked.
Then blood started leaking from his eyes.
The scroll didn't teach a technique.
It became a technique.
Blood-Bound Scripture: "Heaven-Eating Curse, Volume 0"
This technique is not taught. It is endured.
You are the quill. You are the ink. You are the page.
Write your cultivation with death.
Below the words, a space appeared:
[Write your first oath.]
He didn't hesitate.
He cut into his own palm and pressed the blood against the scroll.
It hissed. Burned.
Lines formed — not just text, but vows.
"I, Yuan Zhi, curse heaven itself."
"Let every step I take be over a god's grave."
"Let fate bleed trying to stop me."
The scroll swallowed his blood.
It screamed.
And vanished.
His veins lit up like rivers of starlight — but inverted, a deep obsidian hue laced with crimson.
His shadow twisted once.
Then became perfectly still.
The Grave of Fallen Skies – Mission One
The next day, a disciple approached him with shaking hands.
"O-order for you, Outer Disciple Yuan Zhi. M-mission."
Yuan Zhi took the scroll and walked away.
He didn't open it.
Not yet.
Not until nightfall.
When the moon rose high and red, he read:
"Mission: Investigate the Grave of Fallen Skies."
"Objective: Retrieve whatever remains of the Sky-Eater Cultivation Ruins."
"Warning: No returning once the gate closes."
At the bottom, a note scribbled in blood:
"This assignment is a gift. Or a tomb. Depending on your answers."
"Signed, Elder Shuang."
He smirked.
He didn't know who Elder Shuang was.
But soon, Elder Shuang would know him.
Final Scene – The Sect That Ate Heaven
That night, Yuan Zhi stood before a gate of bone and cloud.
It pulsed with divine rot — an ancient ruin where sky itself had died during a failed heavenly ascension.
Some said a god choked on his own qi here.
Some said the laws of cultivation came here to die.
Yuan Zhi simply stepped through.
And the gate vanished behind him.
No witnesses.
No echoes.
Only the scent of burnt clouds and betrayal.
The Grave of Fallen Skies had claimed its next visitor.
But this one wasn't there to dig.
He was there to bury.