The moment the three maps slid perfectly into the stone slots, the grand doors rumbled.
Boom…
Dust cascaded from the ancient archway as gears older than dynasties groaned awake. Rings of crimson-gold runes spun across the surface, aligning like constellations rediscovering their shape after ten thousand forgotten nights.
With a deep, hollow exhale,the doors opened.
A stale breath of ancient air swept over the combined groups — Blaze Sword Sect, Skyfire Monastery, and Serpent River Clan — carrying with it a scent like burnt metal and distant sorrow.
Zu Tian stepped forward first.
Inside the hall…the silence was wrong.
It was not the silence of emptiness, but the silence of a world that once breathed, then suddenly stopped.
Massive archways framed a circular chamber. Faded murals covered the walls — cities floating in the sky, mountains carved into swords, beasts with wings of starlight. But all of them were cracked, burned, or melted into warped images.
Li Xueyao whispered:
"…This city was mighty. Beyond anything in our sect histories."
Bai Kuan looked around uneasily. "Then where are its bones? Where are the dead?"
No one answered.
Because no one could.
At the center stood a raised platform. Upon it:a portable projection array, half-intact but pulsing with faint white-gold light.
Zu Tian, Yen Mo, and several monks from Skyfire stepped closer.
"Careful," Zu Tian murmured.
But one of the monks — young, rash, trembling from curiosity more than caution — brushed the center glyph.
Hum—
The array flared alive.
Light expanded outward like ripples.
And then—
A vision formed.
Not illusion.Not memory.But a moment sealed in time itself.
The first image was warm.
A courtyard bathed in morning glow.
A middle-aged man in ceremonial robes stood proudly — tall, handsome, vigorous, carrying the energy of a master cultivator. His eyes held a scholar's light, tempered by a warrior's steadiness.
Yi Lin — the name engraved faintly in the projection's corner.
Beside him, a gentle middle-aged woman laughed while adjusting a small red ribbon in the hair of a young girl, perhaps seven years old. Her eyes sparkled like springwater.
Around them, elders smiled. Children played. The air carried music, drums, incense.
A birthday.
A celebration full of warmth, laughter, and quiet hopes.
Skyfire Monk Hongxi murmured, stunned:
"…This city… it lived. It flourished."
The projection continued — the parents hugging their daughter, offering gifts, relatives cheering. For a moment, the hall felt alive again.
Yen Mo couldn't help breathlessly smiling.
Even Zu Tian's usually calm eyes softened by a fraction.
But then—
The projection trembled.
Joy flickered.
Color drained.
Light bled into black.
A scream tore through the vision.
Flames — not ordinary flames, but divine, reality-scorching fire — consumed the courtyard. Houses vaporized into ash. Ground cracked open.
Corpses lay scattered — charred, twisted, hollowed.
The children, the elders, the families…
Gone.
Erased in an instant.
The woman screamed her daughter's name, voice breaking with desperation—but a shadow descended.
A single fiery strike — fast, impossible, absolute — obliterated her.
No body.No ashes.No bones.
Only light.
And then nothing.
The cultivators watching recoiled as if the heat of that strike touched their own skin. Sweat dripped down backs. Several disciples staggered, heartbeats pounding violently.
"What… what kind of attack leaves no remains…?" Li Xueyao whispered.
Zu Tian clenched his fists, jaw sharp.
Monk Hongxi swallowed."Not even a Vein-Carving Realm… not even a Core Formation Realm… could do this…"
Bai Kuan's voice cracked.
"This… this is beyond realm classification."
The middle-aged man — Yi Lin — stumbled into view.
Armor burned. Face bleeding. Eyes wild with grief.
He crawled to where his wife once stood, clutching at empty ground as if refusing to believe she was gone.
Tears struck ash.
"Why…"his voice tore like broken steel,"…why must Heaven mock me so?"
He beat the ground with powerless fists.
Around him, the city collapsed.
Then—
A shadow fell over him.
Yi Lin looked up.
Terror.
Recognition.
And despair so deep it hollowed him.
He whispered one final line:
"What have I, Yi Lin, done… to deserve this cruel fate?"
Then—
BOOM.
The same fiery force struck.
Light consumed him.
His existence erased.
Silence.
The projection ended.
The hall was dead silent.
Three sects.Dozens of disciples.Hardened elders.
Every one of them trembling.
Blaze Sword Sect disciples collapsed to their knees. A serpent clanswoman sobbed uncontrollably. A Skyfire monk chanted under his breath to steady his heart.
Bai Kuan's teeth chattered — not from cold, but sheer fear.
"…If that strike happened today…" he whispered, "none of us would even have a chance to scream."
Yen Mo clutched Zu Tian's arm, voice shaking.
"Senior Brother… w-we shouldn't be here… this calamity… this was no ordinary destruction…"
Li Xueyao's gaze darkened.
"Something erased this entire city… yet left no bones… no remnants… no souls…"
Zu Tian remained still.
But inside his chest, something cold twisted.
The broken sword at his waist vibrated faintly in the unnerving silence — as if reacting to remnants of that impossible power.
No one else noticed.
But Zu Tian did.
The ghostly projection faded from the array plate, leaving nothing but the crackling hush of still-lingering spiritual embers. The great hall—vast, circular, built of a stone older than any known dynasty—felt suddenly too small, too suffocating to contain what they had just witnessed.
No one spoke.
Not the Skyfire Monastery monks.
Not the Serpent River Clan disciples.
Not Zu Tian's own group.
Because what they saw should have been impossible.
Because such devastation… such scale… such a calamity…
Had never been recorded in any sect's archives.
Ever.
Yen Mo was the first to break the silence, voice cracking.
"Senior Brother… if a city this large… this ancient… was destroyed in a single day… how is there no record of it? The attack we saw… that power… it surpassed anything we've ever studied."
Li Xueyao—her flame-lotus mist still faintly orbiting her fingers from tension—whispered:
"Not in our Blaze Sword Sect manuals… not in the traveling scrolls… not even in the Hundred Dynastic Histories. A catastrophe of this scale would shake the world. There should be chronicles… testimonies… legends…"
Bai Kuan shook his head slowly.
"But nothing. Not a single mention. Not a phrase. Not even a rumor."
The three groups looked at one another uneasily.
What disaster wipes out a city?
What power leaves nothing—not bones, not ash, not legacy—behind?
And what force silences history itself?
Zu Tian's expression darkened, though he kept calm. Deep inside his sleeve, the broken sword pulsed once—an almost inaudible hum—like a heartbeat reacting to something ancient.
He said quietly, "That man… Yi Lin. And the woman beside him. They were real. Their child… those people celebrating… none of that was illusion."
"The sudden shift… from celebration… to ruin…"He swallowed.
"That wasn't a natural calamity. Someone… or something… erased this city from existence."
"And from memory," Wen Wei of the Skyfire Monastery added, brows knitted tightly. "There is no trace of this event in any scripture or oral tradition. As if deliberately removed."
A chill passed through the hall—not from cold qi, but from the weight of implication.