The mist did not fade with dawn. It lingered like a living thing, curling between the slender trunks of ancient orchids that carpeted Mist Valley in hues of silver-blue. Dew clung to every petal, whispering secrets from an age long forgotten.
Shen Wei sat cross-legged beneath an old spirit tree whose bark pulsed faintly with qi veins. His breathing was steady now, his body restored from the collapse that had nearly torn his soul apart. Yet inside him, something had changed — the silence of centuries had cracked.
"Mist Valley… or is it the grave of forgotten heavens?"
He muttered softly, his fingers tracing an unfamiliar rune etched into his forearm. It shimmered faintly — the same symbol that had appeared in the dream of the flute maiden.
The melody from last night still echoed in his mind, an echo too pure to be mere music. It had stirred something ancient, a thread of fate that refused to lie dormant.
The Awakening Within
When Shen Wei entered meditation again, he found himself standing not in the valley but within a boundless void.
Black light coiled around him like ribbons of shadow, each thread pulsating with suppressed energy. At the center floated a book — the same tome he had seen before, bound in threads of starlight and sealed by an invisible hand.
The Void Codex.
"You should not be here yet," a voice whispered — low, female, and achingly familiar.
He turned. Out of the swirling dark stepped Lian Yue, her robes pure white, her eyes glimmering with sorrow. Her hair drifted like mist, and her jade flute was clasped to her chest like a relic of regret.
"Who are you truly?" Shen Wei asked.
"I am the echo of what you forgot," she said. "And you, Shen Wei… are the fragment of what I could not destroy."
Before he could speak, she raised her flute — and the void shook with song. A thousand memories cascaded into his mind like shattered mirrors: battlefields drowned in blood, celestial towers burning, a throne made of bone and light.
And at the heart of it — a younger version of himself standing upon the ruins of heaven, sword drawn, facing the gods.
"You defied Heaven's Codex once," Lian Yue said. "Now the heavens remember."
The Vision Breaks
Shen Wei awoke with a violent gasp. The trees around him bent backward from the force of his qi surge. Mist spiraled upward into the dawn sky like a pillar.
A sudden presence approached — a flash of silver robes and the sharp scent of frost.
It was Elder Bai Qian, one of the guardians of Mist Valley, and once a swordsman of the Nine Sects. His long beard shimmered with ice as he stepped forward, expression stern.
"You stir the valley's spirit veins, boy," the elder growled. "Are you seeking enlightenment — or calamity?"
"Perhaps both," Shen Wei replied calmly.
Bai Qian's eyes narrowed as he sensed the strange fluctuation in the youth's aura. "This qi… it does not belong to any of the Nine Paths. It is ancient — void-born."
The elder drew his sword. Frost bloomed along the blade, spreading like winter over steel. "If what sleeps within you awakens fully, not even Mist Valley will remain."
But Shen Wei did not move. Instead, his eyes glowed faintly silver — and behind him, for an instant, the faint outline of the Void Codex appeared.
"You cannot stop what has already begun."
Clash Beneath the Orchids
The first strike split the air. Elder Bai Qian's sword howled with cold energy as it descended like a glacier. Shen Wei raised his hand — no weapon, only the sheer will of his spirit — and the blade met a wall of invisible force.
Qi exploded outward, tearing petals from the orchids in a swirling storm.
"You would resist an elder of the Nine Sects?" Bai Qian thundered.
"No," Shen Wei whispered. "I resist Heaven itself."
His palm opened. Black and silver energy coalesced into the form of a half-materialized sword, its edge shimmering with shifting symbols.
Each swing carved silence into sound, unmaking the frost that met it.
The two fought beneath the ancient trees, every strike a conversation of souls.
Petals burned. Mist turned to glass. The valley trembled beneath the pressure of two opposing laws — frost and void.
Finally, Bai Qian's sword shattered into frost dust. He fell to one knee, breath sharp.
"That power… the Void Codex truly lives within you."
Shen Wei's eyes dimmed. "Then I am cursed."
The Flute of Memory
As silence returned, a soft flute melody drifted once more through the mist.
Shen Wei looked up — and there, standing among the orchids, was Lian Yue.
"You should not interfere," she said softly.
"You keep saying that," he replied. "And yet, you appear every time I bleed."
She smiled — faint, sorrowful. "Because each time you fight, you get closer to remembering."
The air shimmered, and Shen Wei saw — for just a heartbeat — her shadow overlap his own, as though their souls had once been bound.
"Why do I see your past in my dreams?" he asked.
"Because our sins were one," she whispered. "And the Codex remembers everything we tried to forget."
Her flute's final note hung in the air, resonating through every spirit vein in the valley. The orchids bowed, and even the broken sword of Bai Qian hummed in tune.
Then — silence. She was gone.
The Prophecy Returns
That night, as Shen Wei meditated again, the runes on his arm flared. From the depths of his consciousness, a voice spoke — not Lian Yue's this time, but something older, colder, divine:
"When Heaven shatters, only the void shall remain.
The one who reads the Codex will unwrite destiny itself."
He opened his eyes to find the sky above Mist Valley fractured by a faint, silvery scar — the same mark from his vision.
Bai Qian, recovering in silence, whispered a prayer of fear.
"May the heavens protect us… for the Codex has chosen its bearer."
Shen Wei looked at the scarred sky, his sword now solid in his grasp.
"No," he said softly. "The Codex does not choose. It remembers."
The wind shifted. The petals rose again, spiraling around him like ghosts.
And in that endless, silent bloom of orchids, the legend of the Void Codex took another step toward awakening.