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Chapter 3: The Boy at the Grave
The smell was the first thing that registered—thick, greasy, wrong. It clung to his skin like oil, crawled up his nose, sat heavy on his tongue. For a moment, Ayush thought he was sick. Then knowledge that was not his own snapped into place.
Impurities.
Meridian wash.
Rebirth.
He jerked upright with a gasp. His chest heaved; his lungs burned like he'd swallowed charcoal. When he looked down, his body was caked in black, tar‑like grime that smoked faintly in the cool dawn air.[1]
"What… the hell…" His voice cracked. It was higher than it should have been.
Memory hit him in a rush. Not his college, not his phone, not his parents' small flat.
A cold courtyard.
A woman's gentle, exhausted smile.
The Duchess's contempt.
A lonely boy kneeling beside a bed that would never be warm again.
Names rewrote themselves. Ayush blurred and Huo Yuhao came into focus, and for a few dizzy seconds, he was both and neither.
Then another memory—hotter, brighter—rose over all the rest.
A figure wrapped in golden flame, laughing and crying at once as she burned.
A hand pushing something—power, warmth, belief—straight into his soul.
A promise whispered against his ear: "Live. And don't let them chain you."[1]
The Black Book stirred where it lay hidden in his spiritual sea. For now, it stayed shut. The gifts it had hoarded would be death for a body this weak. Timing mattered. Ayush/Huo Yuhao felt only a faint extra weight behind his thoughts, a second heartbeat in the dark.
He moved like a puppet at first, legs shaking as he staggered to the nearby stream. Cold water flashed as he dumped bucket after bucket over himself, scrubbing at the clinging filth until raw, pink skin showed through. Every rinse carried away another layer of weakness left by a childhood of hunger and abuse. Beneath it, the new body felt… clean. Alive in a way he had never felt even on Earth.
He caught his reflection in the water.
A boy of about eleven stared back: black hair, pale face, eyes too calm for his age. But behind the dark pupils, when the light shifted, something else glimmered—like the rim of a golden, pattern‑covered eye hiding just beneath the surface.[1]
"Spirit Eye," he thought. "And more than that."
Because under that eye, where no one else could see, three rings of light rested coiled and asleep, fine as hair, pressed against his soul. The Book's work. Not yet fully formed, but there. Waiting.[1]
He dressed in the least‑torn of his gray clothes and stepped out into the chill. Dawn hadn't broken fully; the world was blue and silent. The Dukes Mansion's grand roofs loomed far behind him now, just a dark outline against the sky. Ahead lay a small mound of earth, lopsided from last night's hurried digging.
His feet found the path without thought.
At the grave, the air seemed heavier. The simple stone marker the servants had stuck in the ground was already tilting. He stared at it for a long time, then knelt. His knees sank into damp dirt.
The pain of Huo Yun'er's death was real, sharp and raw. Ayush had never met this woman, but Huo Yuhao had loved her with everything he had. Their merged soul trembled under the weight of it.
Slowly, he reached for the cheap dagger at his waist—a White Tiger pattern faintly etched on its hilt—and pulled a scrap of wood from the small bundle he'd brought. He carved in silence.
Not "Mother".
Not "Martyr".
After a long pause, he cut two characters—simple, square, a little clumsy: "Divinity".[1]
Half the plaque he tucked into his own shirt, where it lay flat over his heart. The other half he pushed into the soil at the head of the grave. It stood crooked but stubborn, like everything about this life so far.
He bowed once.
"Huo Yun'er," he said quietly, and his voice no longer sounded like a boy's. "I took your son's body. I won't pretend that's not theft. But I swear to you—your hatred is mine now. Your dreams are mine. I'll carry both."
Wind stirred the weeds. No answer came. But some tightness in his chest eased, just a little.
The Black Book pulsed faintly, acknowledging a vow. Deep inside, the treasures stolen from Dragon Valley, from the Yin‑Yang Love Eyes, from ice fields and auction vaults, drifted closer in their orbits.[1] One day, they would fall toward this vow like comets. Not yet.
Ayush/Huo Yuhao straightened. For the first time since waking in this world, he let his mind run ahead.
He knew the plot.
He knew where Tang San waited, watching from a sky full of false laws.[1][2]
He knew how the story was supposed to go: betrayal, leash, godhood in chains.
"Not this time."
He looked one last time at the grave, memorizing every crack in the mound, every blade of grass. Then he turned his back on the Dukes Mansion completely.
Spirit Master.
Star Dou Great Forest.
Tianmeng Iceworm.
Electrolux.
And somewhere behind all of that, like a dark star pulling everything into its orbit, the Black Book and the nine‑element technique sleeping in its pages—the Sun Moon Star Nine Elements that could burn any treasure into pure essence and rebuild it into new power.[1]
Ayush didn't understand the technique yet. He understood war.
"Marshal mind, huh?" he murmured to himself, starting down the path that led away from everything he'd known. "Fine. Let's wage one."
Behind him, in a poor corner of a rich city, the grave stood alone under a paling sky. Ahead, the official road glittered faintly with morning dew, running straight toward a forest where fate had always liked to begin.
Citations:
[1] huo-yuhao-2-1.txt
[2] Huo Yuhao | Soul Land Wiki - Fandom