The cultivator did not draw his blade. That alone told Lin Yu everything.

  Only the ignorant rushed at legends. The wise hesitated—long enough to die slower.

  “You should leave,” the man said, voice steady but tight. “Whatever debt the sect owes the Demon Clan, it is not worth paying in blood tonight.”

  Lin Yu stepped forward. The wind twisted around him, tugging at his dark robes as if recognizing its former master. His presence pressed down on the clearing, invisible yet suffocating, like a storm holding its breath.

  “Debt?” Lin Yu echoed softly. “No. This is interest.”

  The cultivator’s hand finally moved—toward a talisman, not a sword.

  Too late.

  Lin Yu’s foot touched the ground, and the world lurched.

  The earth cracked in a perfect line between them, spiritual pressure erupting outward. Trees bent. Leaves shredded into dust. The cultivator was hurled back, slamming into a stone pillar hard enough to leave spiderweb fractures. Blood spilled from his mouth.

  Lin Yu did not chase. He never needed to.

  “You recognized me,” Lin Yu said calmly. “Which sect taught you the courage to speak my title aloud?”

  The cultivator laughed weakly, coughing red.

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  “You really… don’t know?”

  Lin Yu’s eyes narrowed.

  “Know what.”

  “Your name,” the man said, lifting his head despite the pain, “never stopped being spoken.”

  The wind stilled.

  “For years,” the cultivator continued, “rumors spread through the upper realms. A sealed demon blade. A fallen clan heir. A cultivator who survived the Nine Heavens’ purge.”

  Lin Yu’s fingers twitched.

  “They said you were dead,” the man went on. “Then they said you were crippled. Then sealed. Then… waiting.”

  Silence stretched thin.

  “And now?” Lin Yu asked.

  “Now,” the cultivator whispered, “they say the Demon Clan’s blade has awakened.”

  Lin Yu turned away. The night felt smaller than it had moments ago.

  “So that’s how it is,” he murmured. “They couldn’t finish the job.”

  A low hum resonated from his body—deep, ancient, restrained only by will alone.

  Somewhere far beyond the clouds, something answered.

  The cultivator’s eyes widened in horror.

  “You’re still bound—if you release that power now—”

  “I won’t,” Lin Yu said.

  He glanced back once, eyes cold and sharp as shattered obsidian.

  “Not yet.”

  With a casual flick of his hand, a surge of energy knocked the cultivator unconscious.

  Lin Yu stepped past him, walking toward the distant lights of the cultivation city beyond the forest.

  If his name was being spoken again…

  Then enemies would follow.

  Sects would move.

  Old graves would be disturbed.

  And the ones who sealed the Demon Clan—the ones who watched his family burn—would finally remember why they feared that name in the first place.

  Lin Yu smiled, slow and dangerous.

  “Prepare yourselves,” he whispered to the night.

  “This time, I won’t disappear.”