The cellar walls breathed.
Xiao Hei's tiny fingers dug into Ling Tian's wrist as she dragged him deeper into the molting darkness. The stairs groaned like dying men, their wooden planks splitting to reveal glistening muscle beneath. The air reeked of vinegar and rotting lychees—a scent that made Ling Tian's stomach clench. It was the same stench that had clung to his father's robes the night the clan fell.
"Gege's home now," Xiao Hei chirped, kicking aside a jar labeled "Auntie's Third Face." Glass shattered, releasing a cloud of black spores that coalesced into a woman's screaming mouth before dissolving.
Ling Mei stumbled, her boots sticking to the floor's pulsating veins. "This isn't a cellar. It's a memory."
Qing'er's sword hissed from its scabbard. "Worse. It's a ledger."
She pointed her blade at the shelves. The jars weren't glass but skin, their surfaces etched with Old Zhuyin script. Ling Tian recognized the handwriting—his grandmother's, from the clan's accounting books.
"Father's Last Lie," he read aloud, pulling the closest jar. Inside floated a molar, its roots blackened by poison.
"Open it," Xiao Hei urged, her eyes reflecting the jar's eerie glow.
The moment Ling Tian pried the lid free, the tooth screamed in his father's voice:
"The Key is not a treasure—it's a curse! Destroy it before the sect—"
The voice cut off as Ling Mei grabbed another jar—"Mother's Secret." Inside swirled a lock of hair tied with red string. The moment she touched it, the walls shuddered, shedding layers like a snake.
Revealed beneath:
The Ling Clan's True Ledger.
Written not in ink but in blood and fire, its pages stretched endlessly into the darkness. Ling Tian's mutated hand moved without thought, flipping to the last entry:
"Ling Tian: Purchased for three lifetimes of karma. To be harvested at Dragon's Peak on the blood moon."
The signature? Sect Master Mo's seal, still glistening wet.
Qing'er's blindfold caught fire. "They never wanted the Key. They wanted you."
Ling Tian's claw-hand twisted, stabbing into the ledger. The pages screamed as they burned, but the words reformed faster than the flames could consume them:
"Vengeance is a circle. Break it."
His father's final warning.
Then—
A new line seared itself into existence:
"First Debt: Bai Zhan's father. Kill him with the blade he gifted his son."
The ledger ripped free from the wall, wrapping around Ling Tian's arm like a gauntlet. Xiao Hei clapped.
"Now Gege learns to collect!"