The character 七 burned behind Wei Shen's eyes long after the gorge vanished behind mountain folds.
Seven. A number. A name. A warning.
Kuo's group moved with the practiced efficiency of people who'd traveled together longer than they admitted. The two farmer-brothers—Bo and Jian—scouted ahead, their simple tools now weapons. The sharp-eyed woman, Li, watched the rear, her twin daggers never sheathed. The silent youth, Ming, kept glancing at the sky as if expecting rain, or worse.
Qinglan walked beside Wei Shen, her hand never far from the slate on her back. "The one across the gorge," she murmured, low enough that only he could hear. "He wasn't wearing Bureau colors."
"Not everything that hunts us is Bureau." Wei Shen flexed his right hand. The blue tracer glowed slightly brighter today—a faint, persistent itch beneath his skin. The Ledger's ink had regenerated to 0.5, but the lifespan counter still read -3 DAYS. A phantom weight.
Kuo dropped back to walk with them, his beard frosted with mountain breath. "You two are jumpier than most. What're you running from?"
"Same as everyone," Wei Shen said evenly. "A future we don't want."
Kuo chuckled. "Fair enough. But that sword-intent slate... that's not standard trial gear. That's heritage. Or stolen."
Qinglan's eyes narrowed. "It's inherited."
"From?"
"Someone the Bureau killed."
The words hung in the thin air. Kuo's smile faded. He looked between them, reassessing. "Marquis Yan's division?"
"You know him?"
"Know of him." Kuo spat to the side. "His agents visited my village last year. Took three children for 'artifact sensitivity testing.' They never came back."
Wei Shen felt the pieces shift. This wasn't just their fight. "Why are you really going to Azure Cloud?"
"To get strong enough to ask for my nieces and nephew back." Kuo's voice was matter-of-fact, but his knuckles were white where he gripped his staff. "And maybe burn a Bureau outpost or two along the way."
The confession changed the air. Not allies yet, but a shared direction.
The trail crested a ridge, and the trial grounds spread below them.
Wei Shen had expected something ceremonial—a paved plaza, viewing stands, sect elders on platforms.
This was a ruin.
A collapsed fortress sprawled across a high valley, its broken walls blackened by old fire. Five jagged stone spires rose from the wreckage, each carved with a different character: 心 (Heart), 骨 (Bone), 血 (Blood), 魂 (Soul), 志 (Will). Between them, hundreds of aspirants milled like ants, their numbers far more than the twenty Kuo had mentioned.
"Three hundred, maybe four," Li estimated, joining them at the ridge. "They'll cull hard."
Ming, the silent youth, suddenly spoke, his voice surprisingly clear. "They already are."
He pointed.
At the valley's edge, where a frozen stream cut through rock, a figure lay sprawled. Not moving. Around the body, other aspirants stepped wide, not looking, as if death was just another obstacle.
"That's new," Kuo muttered. "They usually wait until the trials start."
Wei Shen felt the Ledger pulse. AUDIT: CAUSE OF DEATH glowed. Cost: 0.2 ink. He spent it.
The analysis flashed: SPIRITUAL OVERLOAD. MERIDIANS BURNT FROM WITHIN. RECENT (<2 HOURS). TRACES OF ARTIFICIAL AMPLIFICATION.
"He didn't die in a fight," Wei Shen said quietly. "He took something. A pill, maybe. To boost his cultivation quickly. It killed him."
Qinglan's face tightened. "Desperation."
"Or sabotage," Li suggested. "Someone gave him poison disguised as medicine."
They descended into the valley. The air grew colder, sharper, carrying the scent of pine and ozone. As they approached the ruins, Wei Shen felt it—a pressure, low and constant, like a hand pressing on his sternum. Suppression formation.
His cultivation, already at the lowest rung of Qi Refining, felt smothered. Qinglan's breathing hitched slightly—she was feeling it too.
The farmer-brothers Bo and Jian rejoined the group, their faces grim. "No officials," Bo reported. "No Azure Cloud elders. Just... that."
He pointed to the central spire, the one marked 心 (Heart). At its base, a stone tablet had risen from the ground, characters glowing with cool blue light:
FIRST TRIAL: THE CONTRACT.
CHOOSE A SPIRE. ACCEPT ITS TERMS.
TWENTY WILL ASCEND. THE REST WILL FALL.
TIME: UNTIL SUNSET.
"That's it?" Jian muttered. "No rules? No explanations?"
"That's the point," Qinglan said. "They're testing judgment, not just power."
Wei Shen's gaze swept the spires. Each had a line of aspirants forming before it. The Bone spire had the most—brutes and weapon-masters, their auras aggressive even suppressed. The Will spire had the fewest—quiet, intense types who stood perfectly still.
Then he saw Seven.
The figure stood at the back of the Soul spire line, hooded, hands tucked in sleeves. Not the same person from the gorge—this one was shorter, slimmer. But the same... stillness. The same unnatural poise.
Seven turned, and though the hood shadowed the face, Wei Shen felt the gaze like a physical touch.
The Ledger screamed.
WARNING: HIGH-GRADE ARTIFICIAL SPIRITUAL ENTITY DETECTED.
DESIGNATION: SEVEN (PROTOTYPE).
STATUS: UNBOUND, HOSTILE.
CAPABILITIES: UNKNOWN. THREAT LEVEL: HIGH.
Wei Shen grabbed Qinglan's arm. "Don't look directly. The Soul spire—the hooded one. That's Seven."
She glanced sidelong. "Bureau experiment?"
"Has to be."
Kuo followed their gaze. "Friend of yours?"
"Enemy." Wei Shen forced his hand to relax. "We should avoid that spire."
"Then which?" Li asked. "We need to choose."
Wei Shen studied the glowing characters. THE CONTRACT. His domain. But which spire?
The Ledger offered nothing—no analysis, no guidance. This was his choice.
"Heart," he said finally. "Contracts are about intent. About what you value. That's the heart."
Qinglan nodded. "Heart it is."
They joined the line—fifty people ahead of them. The pressure grew heavier as they approached the spire's base. Wei Shen's breath fogged in the cold. His ribs ached.
The small problem unfolded ten places from the front.
A cultivator in elaborate robes—some minor noble's son—tried to cut the line. He shoved a wiry older woman aside. "Out of my way, crone."
The woman stumbled but didn't fall. She looked at him, her eyes calm. "The spire tests hearts, boy. You've already failed."
"Shut up." The noble drew a dagger. "I'm not waiting behind—"
He never finished.
The spire's character 心 glowed brighter. A beam of blue light lanced down, striking the noble in the chest. He froze, mouth open in a silent scream. Then he collapsed, not dead, but... empty. His eyes open, blinking slowly, recognition gone.
The blue light withdrew, carrying with it a shimmering wisp—a fragment of something golden. His memories? His emotions?
The light absorbed the wisp, and the spire pulsed once, satisfied.
The line went dead silent.
The older woman stepped over the noble's body and took her place at the front. No one else tried to cut.
Wei Shen's throat was dry. "It enforces its own rules."
Qinglan's hand found his, squeezed once, released. A gesture so quick he might have imagined it.
They reached the front.
Before the spire, a stone pedestal held a single sheet of paper and a brush. The contract. Its terms were simple:
I, [NAME], SWEAR TO PURSUE THE HEART'S PATH.
IN EXCHANGE FOR AZURE CLOUD'S GUIDANCE, I OFFER:
ONE MEMORY OF JOY.
ONE FEAR CONQUERED.
ONE DESIRE RELINQUISHED.
SIGN IN BLOOD.
Below, smaller characters: TERMS ARE BINDING. BREACHER WILL BE UNMADE.
Wei Shen stared at the paper. The Ledger hummed, and a new function glowed: CONTRACT ANALYSIS: FULL. Cost: 0.3 ink.
He had 0.3 left.
He spent it.
The contract's true structure unfolded. It wasn't just an oath. It was a spiritual binding that would root in the signer's soul, enforcing the terms. The "memory of joy" would be taken literally—extracted, stored. The "fear conquered" would become a weakness the sect could exploit. The "desire relinquished" would be sealed away.
But there was a loophole.
The contract demanded offering, not surrendering. The difference was subtle but crucial. You could offer something you were willing to lose, not something you cherished.
"Don't sign your true name," Wei Shen murmured to Qinglan. "Use an alias. And choose your offerings carefully. Offer things you're already losing."
She glanced at him, understanding. "The memory of my master's death. I'd rather forget it anyway."
"And the fear?"
She met his eyes. "Fear of being alone."
He felt that like a blow. "And the desire?"
"Vengeance." She said it without hesitation. "I'll relinquish the desire, not the act. I'll still kill Marquis Yan. I just won't enjoy it."
Wei Shen almost smiled. "That's... technically correct."
"The best kind of correct."
He turned to the contract. Signed with a false name: Wei Shan (Mountain). Close enough to his own to not feel like a lie, different enough to break direct binding.
For offerings:
· Memory of joy: The day his father taught him to read contracts. He was already losing his father. The memory was tainted now anyway.
· Fear conquered: Fear of helplessness. He was conquering it daily.
· Desire relinquished: The desire for an easy path. Already gone.
He pricked his thumb, pressed it to the paper.
The contract flared, testing his offerings. He felt a tug at his memories, his fears, his desires. He held firm, focusing on what he was truly giving: not the core of himself, but the shells.
The contract accepted. The paper dissolved into blue light that wrapped around his wrist, forming a faint bracelet of characters before fading.
He had passed.
Qinglan signed next: Lan Qing (Blue Clarity). Her offerings passed. The bracelet formed, faded.
Kuo followed, then Li, Bo, Jian, Ming. All passed, though Ming hesitated on "desire relinquished," his face pale. He signed anyway.
Their group moved past the pedestal to stand at the spire's base. They were among the first hundred to pass. Around the valley, the other spires were filling. Wei Shen counted maybe two hundred successful so far. Still too many.
The sun began its descent.
At the Soul spire, Seven stepped forward. Didn't read the contract. Simply pressed a hand to the paper. The paper blackened, then disintegrated. The spire's light flared red, then blue again, accepting.
Seven moved to stand alone, a circle of empty space around the hooded figure.
"Whatever it is," Qinglan whispered, "the trial accepted it."
"We need to know what it wants," Wei Shen said.
Before he could say more, a horn sounded—deep, resonant, shaking the ground.
From the central ruins, five figures emerged. Azure Cloud elders, their robes the color of mountain mist, their auras so powerful the suppression formation seemed to bend around them.
The lead elder, a woman with hair white as the peaks, spoke. Her voice carried without effort.
"The Contract is sealed. Two hundred and seven remain. The First Trial concludes."
Murmurs rippled. Two hundred seven for twenty slots.
"The Second Trial begins now." The elder raised a hand. "Survive the night."
The suppression formation intensified. Wei Shen gasped as his cultivation was crushed further, leaving him barely stronger than a mortal. Around him, others staggered.
"Your cultivation is sealed to Qi Refining Level One," the elder continued. "Equal footing. The valley is now a hunting ground. At dawn, those still standing proceed."
She smiled, a cold, sharp thing. "There are no other rules."
Then the elders vanished.
For a heartbeat, silence.
Then the killing started.
It wasn't organized. It was chaos. Cultivators reduced to basics—strength, speed, cunning. Weapons flashed. Someone screamed.
Kuo's group formed a circle, backs together. "We hold here!" he shouted.
But the valley was too open. Groups were already targeting loners, the weak, the isolated.
Wei Shen saw Seven move.
Not toward them. Toward the Bone spire survivors—the brutes. Seven moved like water, slipping between fighters, touching them with a single finger to the spine. Each touched person froze, then collapsed, their eyes the same empty void as the line-cutter's.
Soul extraction.
Seven was harvesting.
"Stay away from it," Qinglan said, blades drawn. "Let it thin the herd."
But Wei Shen was watching something else. A group of five aspirants was moving with purpose—not randomly fighting, but targeting specific people. They carried identical short swords. Mercenaries, hidden among the aspirants.
And they were heading for Kuo's group.
"Bounty hunters," Wei Shen said. "Here."
The mercenaries reached them. Their leader, a woman with a scar across her lips, smiled. "Wei Shen. Xu Qinglan. The bounty says alive. The others... collateral."
Kuo stepped forward. "You'll have to go through—"
The mercenary leader moved faster than the suppression should allow. A hidden artifact—a bracer that glowed briefly, bypassing the seal. Her sword took Kuo in the stomach.
He looked down, surprised. Then collapsed.
Li screamed, lunged. The mercenary parried, kicked her back.
Wei Shen acted without thinking. He had no cultivation. No weapons but his knife. But he had the Ledger.
CONTRACT DRAFT: BASIC glowed. Unlocked by the trial? No—by surviving the forest. The reward from the seed contract. He had it now. Cost: 0.5 ink. He had 0.0.
But there was another way.
EMERGENCY PROTOCOL: BLOOD FORGING still glowed.
He could borrow more lifespan.
He bit his tongue again, blood filling his mouth.
BLOOD FORGING ACTIVATED.
LIFESPAN DEDUCTED: 1 DAY.
CONTRACT DRAFT: BASIC — READY.
He focused on the mercenary leader, on the glowing bracer. Forged a contract in his mind:
CONTRACT: DISRUPTION.
TARGET: ARTIFACT BRACER (ENERGY-SIPHON TYPE).
TERM: 10 SECONDS.
CONDITION: USER'S BLOOD CONTACT.
PENALTY FOR BREACH: NONE (SINGLE-USE).
He spat blood onto his palm and charged.
The mercenary leader saw him coming, laughed, raised her sword—
Wei Shen didn't aim for her. He slapped his bloody palm onto her bracer.
The contract activated.
The bracer's glow died. The energy siphon reversed. The mercenary gasped as her own cultivation was sucked into the artifact, overloading it.
The bracer shattered.
The suppression field rushed back in, hitting her at full force. She staggered, suddenly mortal.
Qinglan's blade took her through the throat.
The other mercenaries hesitated. Their advantage gone.
Li and the farmer-brothers attacked, fighting with the desperate strength of people who'd just seen their leader die. Ming, the silent youth, surprised everyone—he moved like a ghost, disarming one mercenary with a twist of his wrist, breaking the man's arm with a sharp jerk.
The remaining mercenaries fled.
Wei Shen dropped to his knees beside Kuo. The wound was bad. Gut-stab. Blood soaked the frozen ground.
Kuo grabbed his arm, fingers like iron. "My nieces... nephew..."
"We'll find them," Wei Shen promised, knowing it might be a lie.
Kuo smiled, blood on his teeth. "Good." Then his eyes fixed on something behind Wei Shen. "That thing... it's coming."
Wei Shen turned.
Seven was walking toward them, having finished with the Bone spire survivors. The hooded figure moved leisurely, as if the chaos were irrelevant.
It stopped ten paces away.
The hood tilted, observing them. Then a voice emerged, genderless, toneless, like stones grinding:
"Heaven-Inscribed artifact detected. Protocol: acquire or destroy."
Seven raised a hand. Pale fingers, almost translucent.
Wei Shen stood, putting himself between Seven and Qinglan. "What are you?"
"Designation: Seven. Bureau prototype. Purpose: artifact retrieval and host neutralization." The head tilted further. "You have used lifespan forging. Your existence is inefficient. You will be recycled."
Seven's fingers extended. Threads of pale light unfolded from them, reaching.
Wei Shen had no ink. No lifespan he could afford to spend. Nothing but—
The sword-intent slate on Qinglan's back hummed.
She felt it too. She ripped it from its wrappings. The black stone gleamed, the single sword groove glowing with stored intent.
Seven paused. "Sword-Saint remnant. Inefficient. But interesting."
Qinglan held the slate like a shield. "Stay back."
"Command not recognized." Seven took another step.
Then Ming spoke, his clear voice cutting through the noise. "It's drawn to spiritual pressure. To artifacts. We need to distract it."
"How?" Li demanded, helping Bo support the dying Kuo.
Ming looked at Wei Shen. "You have the strongest artifact. Run. Lead it away."
"We can't outrun that," Qinglan said.
"You don't need to." Ming reached into his robe, pulled out a small, intricately carved jade disk. "I'm not here for the trials. I'm here to observe. For my master."
He threw the disk at Seven.
It exploded not with force, but with light—a brilliant, blinding flare that contained thousands of screaming spiritual signatures. A memory-bomb.
Seven recoiled, the pale threads retracting. "Contamination. Purge required."
It turned its attention to the disk's remnants, methodically dismantling the light.
"Now," Ming said. "While it's distracted."
Wei Shen looked at Qinglan. At Kuo, dying. At the others.
He ran.
Not away from Seven—toward the central ruins.
If Seven wanted artifacts, he'd give it one. The biggest one here.
The trial itself.
He reached the stone tablet that had borne the contract. Placed his hands on it. The Ledger, responding to his desperation, offered a function he'd never seen:
EMERGENCY OVERRIDE: CONTRACT INJECTION.
COST: ALL REMAINING SOUL INK (0.0) + 2 DAYS LIFESPAN.
EFFECT: TEMPORARILY MODIFY ACTIVE TRIAL CONTRACTS.
He took it.
The pain was different this time—not tearing, but unraveling. Like threads of his life being pulled loose.
He focused on the trial's binding. Forged an addition:
ADDENDUM TO TRIAL CONTRACT:
ALL PARTICIPANTS ARE BOUND TO MUTUAL NON-AGGRESSION FOR THE DURATION OF THE NIGHT.
VIOLATORS WILL BE TARGETED BY THE SPIRES.
He slammed his bloody palms onto the tablet.
The five spires flared. Blue light swept the valley.
Every aspirant with a contract bracelet froze as the new term seared into their awareness.
The killing stopped.
Fights dissolved as people stepped back, confused, compelled.
Seven stood in the center of the light, unaffected—no bracelet. But it looked at the spires, then at Wei Shen.
"Unauthorized modification. You are malfunctioning."
It started toward him again.
But the trial wasn't done.
The spires, now enforcing non-aggression, identified Seven as a violator—an entity without a contract, attacking a signatory.
All five spires turned. Beams of blue light lanced down, striking Seven.
The hooded figure staggered, pale threads flailing as they tried to absorb the energy. "Inefficient... excessive force..."
The beams intensified. Seven's form began to glow, then crack, light leaking from fissures.
"Terminating..."
Then it exploded.
Not with fire, but with a wave of spiritual static that washed over the valley. Every cultivator felt their sealed cultivation flutter, stutter.
When the light faded, Seven was gone. Only a scorched circle on the ground remained.
Silence.
Then the elder's voice echoed again, sounding amused. "Well. That was unexpected."
The five elders reappeared. The white-haired woman looked at Wei Shen, her gaze weighing. "You modified the trial contracts. That should be impossible."
Wei Shen stood, trembling from lifespan loss. "The trial allowed it."
"Did it?" She smiled. "Perhaps. Or perhaps the Heaven-Inscribed Ledger has privileges even we don't understand." Her eyes dropped to his hand, where the blue tracer glowed fiercely now. "You have passed the Second Trial. By surviving. And by showing... creativity."
She looked over the remaining aspirants. Maybe eighty left.
"Dawn comes. The twenty who remain standing will ascend." She glanced at Kuo, being supported by Li and Bo. "The wounded may be healed, if they reach the peaks."
Then she vanished again.
Wei Shen collapsed.
Qinglan caught him. "How much?"
"Two more days," he gasped. "Total: five gone."
She didn't say it was too much. Didn't say anything. Just held him as the sky lightened.
Around them, the survivors gathered—exhausted, wounded, but alive. The bounty hunters were gone, dead or fled. The mercenaries, gone. Seven, gone.
For now.
As dawn broke, the twenty were chosen not by combat, but by the spires—those with the strongest contract bonds, the most compatible offerings.
Wei Shen. Qinglan. Li. Bo. Jian. Ming. And thirteen others.
Kuo died just before the sun rose. Li closed his eyes, took his staff. "I'll find them," she promised his body. "I'll bring them home."
The elders returned, gestured to a path that had opened in the mountain—a staircase of floating stones leading up into the clouds.
"Ascend," the white-haired elder said. "Azure Cloud awaits."
Wei Shen looked at Qinglan. At the slate in her hands. At the survivors around them.
They had passed. They were in.
But as he climbed the first floating stone, the Ledger updated:
SOUL INK: 0.0/1.0 (REGENERATING)
LIFESPAN LOST: 5 DAYS (PERMANENT)
TRIAL CONTRACTS: ACTIVE (MODIFIED)
WARNING: CONTRACT INJECTION DETECTED BY BUREAU NETWORK.
ALERT STATUS: ELEVATED.
NEW THREAT PROFILE: MARQUIS YAN RUZHEN - PERSONAL INTEREST CONFIRMED.
At the top of the staircase, the mists parted, revealing Azure Cloud Sect—a city of white towers and floating platforms, waterfalls flowing upward, spirit-beasts soaring.
A sanctuary.
A cage.
And somewhere within, the man who had taken his father.
Wei Shen climbed.