Smoke ate the world.

A scream cut through it—close, sharp, and—who voice was it? Chen Eain snapped his focus to his eyes and drove qi there, trying to burn a tunnel through the dark. But nothing happened. He only saw black. The smoke tasted like metal and ash. It crawled into his throat.

The next thing he knew, something slammed into his head. His ears rang, and his body staggered sideways and down. First, stone scraped his shoulder, then his hip, and then his ribs.

"Son of a—"

He hit the cave wall hard enough to make the rock shiver. Chips of grit skittered across the floor.

"What the fuck!"

He immediately felt qi flared ahead of him. Instinct took over and he threw lightning up in front of his face, a thin skin of light cracking over the smoke. It was rushed, too thin and too light. A fist punched through it like it was paper and crashed into his cheekbone. Light burst behind his eyelids.

His head snapped back and warmth rushed from his nose and ran into his mouth.

All of a sudden, everything was worse.

He couldn't see. He couldn't breathe right. And the air—air tasted all foul.

A voice came out of the smoke, close to his ear and smiling. "Chen Eain. I've wanted to teach you a lesson for a long time. I'm glad you walked into our little trap."

His stomach dropped. Threads linked in his head one after another. Of course, it was the Yu Clan doing after all.

Stupid. He'd marched into it like a cow to a butcher.

He couldn't think anymore. Another blow landed, and his teeth snapped together while the world lurched. For a single heartbeat, he could hear nothing but his blood throbbing hard and fast inside his skull.

Anger found his hands. He shoved lightning out from his chest, an uneven wave that crawled over his forearms and bit the air. The blast chewed a hole in the smoke and he heard someone yelp.

He bared his teeth without meaning to. Good. I will shock all of you all and cripple—

A leg hooked behind his knee and kicked. He lifted without wanting to, then flew. The ground met him flat. Air rushed from his lungs with a grunt.

"Argh!"

Dirt filled his mouth. The smoke burned his eyes till water leaked out and turned the dust on his lashes to mud.

He tried to stand. He made it to one knee.

Qi clamped his wrist like an iron shackle and drove him down. Stone kissed his cheek. He pushed back, pulling from his dantian, drawing more and more, but the weight didn't budge. It pressed through his arm and into his shoulder, slow and steady, like someone laying a mountain across him by hand.

"Too slow," the voice said, closer to him now. Breath raked across Chen Eain's ear.

He swallowed blood and spit. His tongue tasted iron and grit. He pulled more qi. It slid through his channels, but when it hit the pressure pinning him, it broke and ran like water against a dam. That strength wasn't normal.

It was unnaturally strong.

He gritted his teeth and wanted to pour every drop of qi into the air—rain lightning until the cave burned. He pushed, felt the current answer him, then something screamed in his head and his focus wavered. Around him other screams flared, the sharp crack of his party's qi snapping like broken ropes. He could hear them, but he couldn't see where they came from. The sound slid under his skin.

A cold whisper tried to curl into his thoughts: give up. You've already lost.

Chen Eain spat the whisper away with a cough. He was the scion of the Chen Clan. He was born to climb the peak. He would not fold to a trick. Pride and hate braided in his chest and he poured more qi out, a thin, frantic thread at first, then thicker, hotter. The foreign pressure pressed back like a hand on his chest, but he shoved anyway, unleashing a [Lightning Frenzy] to hit whoever was around him.

He was soon rewarded with screams, and thankfully, it didn't seem like his people's this time.

A grin spread under the blood on his lips.

He drove his qi into the knot at his wrist, into his shoulders, into the hollow behind his breastbone. The metal weight on him shuddered. He felt the hold loosen, a fraction. He shoved again, raw, blind and furious, and lightning flared in every corner he could sense. If he pushed a little more, he would break out of the hold.

He knew it.

Even when he couldn't see, he wouldn't give up. He would kill every single one of them and send their bodies back to the Yu clan.

"I was told—" his thought halted. "One of you would try this," the voice said. "Renjie gave something for someone exactly like you."

Before Chen Eain could turn his head, a hand clamped over his mouth. Fingers like iron dug into his cheek and jaw. The palm smelled of smoke and oil. Pain shot up his arm, then a pressure locked his throat. He gurgled, tried to bite, tried to unleash a bolt out through the pressure, but the hand held fast.

Something hard and little slid between his teeth.

Before he could spit it out, another blow smashed into the side of his head. White burst across his vision.

The world tilted, and he hit the ground hard.

He tasted dirt. Blood. The pill rolled down his throat as he tried to cough it out, but his body wouldn't listen. It went down anyway.

Rage boiled up inside him. He wanted to tear everyone apart, to make the Yu clan regret ever touching a Chen. He clenched his jaw, pulling at every scrap of qi he had left—

Then it hit.

Something foreign bloomed inside him, cold and slick like oil poured into fire. It spread fast, climbing his veins, slipping into his core. His chest tightened. His heart kicked against his ribs. When it reached his dantian, pain exploded.

It wasn't just pain—it was knives. Thousands of them, scraping, cutting, twisting through his core. He screamed before he even realized it, the sound tearing his throat raw. His back arched. His fingers clawed the dirt. Lightning flickered from him in broken bursts, but it was useless now. He couldn't focus or tame the lightning like he wanted to.

He rolled on the ground, choking on dust. The taste filled his mouth and his muscles seized. His vision swam. Every breath hurt, and every heartbeat burned. He wanted it to stop, wanted anything to stop—

—and then he felt it.

Wet warmth on his face.

Tears.

Chen Eain blinked, stunned. He'd seen enemies cry before. He'd made them cry. But him? The proud heir of the Chen clan? Crying in the dirt like some beaten stray?

He wanted to laugh, but another wave of pain folded him in half. His scream mingled with others echoing through the cavern—his party, his people. Their voices cracked and faded one by one until only silence answered him.

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For the first time, real fear sank in.

What if none of them survived? What if this was it—his end?

The Yu clan had always used this sinkhole to bury their enemies. Even the Chen clan had profited from it often, using it to erase rivals and nuisances alike. It was an unspoken rule for a reason: no one went in alone.

Chen Eain did not want that. Nothing in him wanted that end. He was meant to climb, to break the heavens, to become the immortal people bowed to. A sinkhole full of bones was not part of that picture.

The pain stole his words. He couldn't do anything about what was happening to him at the moment, but roll in the dirt, each turn a blade through his chest as his dantian felt like it was being ground to dust. Smoke pressed at his nose.

Through the damn torture, he momentarily forgot where he was, because everything was painful—too painful for him to think like a normal person.

A face cut through the blur, and it felt like a momentary escape from pain, but when it got close, he saw a huge man, grinning like someone who had chanced upon a treasure.

He blinked as his senses suddenly recognised who the man was. Someone he'd seen only on brief occasions, but knew, simply because he was one of the famous wastrels of the Yu Clan.

Yu Murong. The bastard stood there with a polearm on his arm and a grin on his face.

He spat, the wet smack loud in Chen Eain's ears. The spit hit his cheek, mixed with the tears.

Something hot and furious rose in Chen Eain—shame, rage, and pride bleeding into one. He reached for his qi, pushed with everything he had. Lightning wanted to tear out of him and turn Murong to ash.

Pain answered instead. It flared through his core like a belligerent furnace, so bright and raw his teeth hurt. His eyes bulged and he threw his head back with a howl that tasted of grit and metal. He felt the dantian press, a hot, brittle knell like bone about to snap.

Murong laughed slowly and softly. "So loud," he said, as if Chen Eain were an annoying insect. "Keep screaming. It makes my enjoyment far better."

How fucking dare he?!

He felt lightning surge through his body in anger so strong that it could make the bastard a charred corpse, but when he tried, another excruciating pain erupted through him.

His eyes widened as another scream left his lips.

His body hurt, his eyeballs felt like they were about to burst and his dantian… His dantian was on the verge of breaking down. He felt—no, he knew it.

"You… filth. What… What did you do to me?" his voice came out ragged, each word a scraped whisper.

The coward only smiled. "A little gift from a friend," he said, voice oily. "It floods your dantian with strong foreign qi. You can't use your own anymore." He spat on the floor. "Don't ask how it works, I don't know or care. Feels good to see you like this after you killed so many of my cousins. Father was right. Sinkhole trips are fun."

Chen Eain's mouth went dry. He felt the foreign qi like ice pouring into his core, cold and crawling. He stared at the man's face until the grin looked carved. "You crippled me," he managed.

The man shrugged, amusement in the curl of his lip. "Not yet. You'll recover. But crippling you—that's a lovely idea. Could fetch me more resources." He turned his head and called, loud enough for the cave walls to echo it back. "Hey, you lot, how do you feel about crippling Young Master Chen Eain?"

An uproar answered him, they were hungry voices and a chorus of "Yes!". Chen Eain felt his heart fall into a bottomless pit. The world tilted and his stomach went hollow.

By sheer will he rolled his head to find his party. The sight hit him like a second blow. Cousins he had trained with since boyhood lay like broken idols: one face up, eyes wide and empty; another curled against the rock, blood dark at his mouth; a sword stood from a younger man's belly, the handle slick with mud. Some had been smashed against the wall until their bones sang under the skin.

Were they alive? He couldn't tell. Chen Eain didn't care which of them would live or die. All that mattered was that he survive—to spit vengeance into the faces of every man standing here. Maybe that single, savage need was the only reason he kept his eyes open: to memorize the faces of his tormentors, every sneer, every smirk.

He forced the words out, each syllable a flint: "You don't know what you're doing. The Chen clan will never—"

He felt a jab right on his cheek and lost his words. The man leaned close. "I don't care what the Chen clan will do. You've lost. But I don't like the look in your eyes."

Then his fist hit Chen Eain full in the face.

Pain cleaved through him and Blood filled his mouth again, warm and bitter. The edges of his sight went soft and gray. He tried to spit, to speak. "Let me go," he ground out, each word a broken stone.

They did not care. Around him boots scuffed on rock and voices argued like trading merchants. A short Yu man spoke up. "What do we do with him? Kill him? He looks like he has a spatial ring."

Another voice answered. "Kill him. He's killed so many of our kin in this sinkhole." Chen Eain's chest dropped as if someone had cut his rope. The thought that he might die here burned colder than any wound.

A cautious voice tried to hold them back. "That could start a clan war. He's prized in the Chen clan."

Laughter snapped out from someone else. "He went down too easy for someone supposed to be strong."

A cruel sneer followed. "He's been coddled. Strip him and he might turn out to be a woman."

More anger flared under the pain like a flare in his gut, but when he tried to move his hand the effort crashed through him like a struck bell. Knives of fire stabbed his dantian and his arm fell back useless. He could not even lift a finger.

Smoke curled again and shadows leaned in. The voices above his head argued whether to bury him or break him. But he stayed still in the dirt.

Even if the Yu bastards didn't kill him, the pain might. He wanted to keep listening—to lock their words in his mind—but smoke pulled at his sight until the burly man's face blurred, then ran together like wet ink. His lids grew heavy.

He groaned; the sounds were small and ragged. No help would come this deep in the sinkhole. The voices above him thinned, words melting into a low, hollow hum. He fought to stay awake, to catch breath and meaning, but his body was uncooperative: muscles slack, qi weak, and the knives in his dantian stinging with every heartbeat.

Sleep pressed at him like a warm hand. He did not know if he wanted to wake. Would he wake at all? Fate held the answer, not him.

Darkness slid over his vision slowly. Before it closed, one clear thing rose up in him—not fear, not pity, but a red, cold promise. If heaven showed him mercy, he would take it and pay them back in full. If heaven did not, the names of every man standing above him would be carved into the world by his hand—one way or another. If not in this life, then in the next one.

Then the dark took him.

***

A/N - You can read 30 chapters (15 Magus Reborn and 15 Dao of money) on my patreon. Annual subscription is now on too. Also this is Volume 2 last chapter.

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