His dead heart missed a beat.
His body tensed—subtly, but enough. Muscles long since withered still remembered the instinct of fear.
His thoughts flickered—too fast, too sharp, fragments of possibility racing through his mind like shattered glass. Had she discovered it? Had she seen through the cracks in his qi? Was this… a probe?
Because no—he was not an ordinary corpse.
Not like the others, whose flesh rotted into dull husks, whose minds fragmented into instinctual malice and broken hunger. No.
He remembered.
He remembered his name. His path. The scent of rain before his first tribulation. The weight of the sword he once called divine. The hand he held before the heavens shattered.
He remembered everything.
He knew who he was.
Actually he had not failed the tribulation by accident. It had been orchestrated. Every step calculated. Every backlash accounted for. Reaching the Yin Revenant Realm would have bound him within the cycle of harmony and transcendence.
