The Pavilion was no longer quiet.
Since Li Fan’s return from the Crownless Path, the wind carried whispers. Elders watched him with uncertainty. Disciples bowed more deeply—or avoided his gaze altogether. Even Yue Xian had begun to look at him like he was fading into something too large for the mountain to contain.
But far beyond the Scarlet Cloud peaks, beyond borders mortals could name…
A ship of bone sailed the sky.
It glided without sails.
Forged from the spines of celestial beasts, powered by the withering chants of sacrificial priests, the Skyborne Ossuary tore through space itself. Each oar was a femur of an extinct god, and its mast bore a single banner: an eye crying blood.
Within its hull stood a man wrapped in death.
He wore white robes trimmed in crimson, his skin pale as bone. No heartbeat stirred within his chest. In place of pupils, he bore jade runes, carved directly into his eye sockets.
“The Crownless has emerged,” a voice rasped from a severed head bound to the wall.
“Then I go to test him,” replied the man, voice like rusted silk.
He was Ji Xuan.
The Disciple of Divine Bone.
Chosen heir of the Profane Court’s Bone Throne. Half-human. Half-relic.
Li Fan stood atop the pavilion’s outer wall, watching the sunset.
He had not slept since returning from the Path. The world felt… heavier. Each breath a little more distant. The Crownless brand above his heart pulsed with quiet heat—a heartbeat of defiance, reminding him of who he had once been and what he had just chosen.
Yue Xian appeared beside him.
“You don’t eat. You don’t sleep. You hardly speak.”
“Because I know what’s coming,” Li Fan said.
She frowned. “We all know something is coming. But you—”
Suddenly, the sky cracked.
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A ripple of pale light tore through the heavens, and in its wake descended a coffin-shaped vessel of bone.
The Skyborne Ossuary slammed into the ground just outside the Pavilion.
Wards shattered.
Mountains trembled.
From the coffin-like hull, Ji Xuan stepped out barefoot, every inch of his body humming with suppressed death aura. He wore no sword. No staff. No armor.
Just bone dust.
And power.
“Crownless,” he called, his voice calm and dry. “Will you greet me… or must I take your Pavilion apart?”
Li Fan appeared on the field, blade in hand.
“You speak boldly for a servant.”
Ji Xuan smiled, serene.
“I am no servant. I am heir to the Bone Throne. But this is not politics. I come not with gods. I come to test you.”
“The one who defied the Path of Heaven.”
The battle began with silence.
Then—shockwaves.
Ji Xuan lifted a hand, and from his palm grew a blade made of divine ribs, twisting into the form of a jagged spear.
Li Fan surged forward, activating the Starforged Pulse – Breath of the Shattered Sky.
Light clashed with death.
Each swing of Li Fan’s blade tore the very breath from the air, fragments of shattered stars trailing behind him.
Ji Xuan answered with chilling grace—his spear humming with the hum of ancestral death, his movements laced with the slow patience of one who had buried cities.
Their strikes carved craters into the ground, shook the core of the mountain, shattered trees and split clouds.
At last—Li Fan was struck through the shoulder.
And Ji Xuan, bleeding from the mouth, stepped back.
“Good,” Ji Xuan whispered. “I wanted to hate you. But now I see.”
“You are what they feared. A man without a leash.”
“Your existence validates my heresy.”
Li Fan grunted, clutching his bleeding shoulder. “So what now? Kill me?”
Ji Xuan shook his head.
“No. I leave you a gift.”
He threw down a scroll wrapped in bone.
“The first chant of the Divine Ossuary Sutra. It is forbidden in every realm. Even the gods tremble at its final verses.”
“You will need it.”
“For the Godslayer’s Beacon has been lit.”
He turned, stepped back into his bone ship, and with a final whisper—
“Prepare, Crownless. The True Gods are stirring.”
The Skyborne Ossuary vanished into the horizon.
And the Pavilion… stood in stunned silence.
