The final bell rang.
Its sound wasn't loud. It didn't thunder.
It whispered.
Like someone closing a door in a burning house.
The stone beneath Lu Tian's feet trembled. New glyphs lit up along the arena floor. A circular gate cracked open in the center of the trial ground, its rim carved with names too faded to read.
Elder Shanxue's voice echoed overhead again, quieter now.
"The final gate opens. One may pass. One may return."
No one moved.
Lu Tian looked around.
Four were dead.
Two were missing.
Three remained: himself, Yan Xue, and the disciple with the broken pride, the one who thought he'd win without effort.
The coward didn't even make eye contact now.
He was waiting to see which of them would step forward.
Yan Xue didn't wait.
She walked toward the gate without hesitation.
Didn't look back.
Didn't ask permission.
Lu Tian followed.
And the gate opened wider.
The disciple behind them called out.
"Only one of you can come back!"
Yan Xue stopped for a breath.
"Then bring a body bag."
They stepped through together.
The world changed.
They weren't in the arena anymore.
They weren't anywhere the Sect wanted people to see.
They stood in a hallway lined with iron doors.
The air stank of rotting incense and dried blood.
The torches weren't made of flame, but spirit-fire, flickering blue, casting no heat.
Lu Tian recognized this place from the novel.
The Rootless Ward.
Where the Sect dumped failed cultivators, half-completed experiments, and those who had touched forbidden techniques and lived, if only barely.
No one was supposed to enter.
And no one was supposed to leave.
The walls whispered.
Some of the doors trembled.
Yan Xue drew a thin dagger from her waist. Not a spirit weapon. Just steel sharpened enough to split bone.
"You know what this place is?" she asked.
Lu Tian nodded.
"I know what's buried here."
She glanced sideways. "Then you know what comes next."
He did.
The trial wasn't a fight between them.
Not directly.
It was a hunt.
In the center of this ward, behind door 99, was a creature once human, one that had failed Spiral mapping and consumed its own Root to survive.
Now it had no voice, no Qi signature, no thoughts.
Just hunger.
To complete the trial, one of them had to kill it.
Or die trying.
They walked in silence for a while, stepping over cracked runes and the bones of those who tried before them.
Then Yan Xue spoke again.
Her voice was steady. Too steady.
"I know what you're doing."
Lu Tian said nothing.
"You're not here to survive. You're here to rewrite something."
Still, he didn't answer.
She smiled faintly.
"I'm not against that. But if you try to betray me, I will carve your scar-weapon out of your chest and feed it to you."
Lu Tian met her eyes.
"I believe you."
She smiled wider.
"Good."
Door 99 was sealed with bone nails and golden scripture.
The glyph above it read only: NO NAME REMAINS.
Lu Tian stepped forward and placed a hand on it.
The metal was ice cold.
The Spiral stirred inside him.
So did Shidu.
And the Silent Remnant Ring grew hot against his skin.
He looked at Yan Xue.
"We kill it together," he said.
"Then what?" she asked.
"Then we decide who gets to walk out."
She didn't hesitate.
"Deal."
He unsealed the door.
It creaked open.
Darkness surged out.
But not the kind that blinded.
The kind that remembered.
Lu Tian stepped through first.
The creature inside was waiting.
And it smiled.
Not because it was human.
But because it recognized him.
Because it was what he could become, if he spiraled too deep and forgot what he was before pain.
And maybe, some part of him already had.
The moment Lu Tian stepped through the threshold of Door 99, he felt it, not a shift in temperature, not a change in lighting, but a tightening of space. As if the world inside this chamber didn't follow the same rules as the one he had just left.
The walls were flesh-colored stone, pulsing faintly, veins of black Qi coursing through them like rot feeding a corpse too stubborn to decay.
The door slammed shut behind him and Yan Xue, the sound dull, like earth being shoveled over a grave. There was no light, but they could see. Not with their eyes, but with something deeper. The Abyss recognized its own.
The creature was waiting at the far end of the chamber, curled in the center of a broken formation circle. It no longer resembled a man, but it still wore the shape of one.
Skin peeled back along the ribs, as if something inside had grown too large and pushed outward. Its head was smooth, featureless except for a mouth that opened too wide and never closed.
From its back sprouted tendrils, fragments of failed scar-skills, now wild and aimless, twitching like the dying limbs of a dead technique. But what struck Lu Tian the hardest wasn't its appearance.
It was the feeling that he knew this thing.
Not its name. Not its face. But the weight it carried. That raw, hollow throb of someone who had offered too much of themselves to the Spiral and gotten nothing back. This was what happened when you gave memories, gave pain, gave everything, and there was nothing left to give.
A Rootless Abyssal. A scar cultivator who spiraled so deep they collapsed into something simpler. Hunger. Instinct. Regret given flesh.
The creature stirred. It hadn't moved until now. But the moment Lu Tian stepped further into the chamber, it lifted its head, and its mouth cracked into a grin. There were no teeth. Just a raw tunnel of black Qi leaking from within.
Yan Xue stepped beside him, her blade drawn. Her stance was clean, steady, but he saw the tension in her jaw. She had never seen something like this. No one who hadn't read the records, or the book, in Lu Tian's case, could prepare for it.
"It's blind," she whispered. "But it sees through pain."
Lu Tian nodded. "It feeds on it. Don't let it taste yours."
She flicked her dagger once, and they moved.
The fight began in silence.
Not out of stealth, but because sound had no place in this chamber. The moment they lunged forward, the air thickened, warped. Every movement pulled at their minds. Each step dragged old memories forward.
Lu Tian felt his hands go numb. Not from cold, but from the sudden echo of a memory, his sister's voice calling his name, a night he had tried to forget.
The creature lunged.
Lu Tian dodged left, pivoted off a cracked rune, and slashed upward with Shidu, the scar-weapon springing to life in his hand. The blade struck, and the monster howled, not in pain, but in recognition.
Black blood sprayed, but instead of weakening, the thing grew faster, as if it had been waiting to be touched by something that remembered what it used to be.
Yan Xue circled to the right, slicing at the tendrils with surgical speed. Each one she cut bled a memory, not hers, but someone else's.
The room filled with whispers. Faces flashed across the stone. A crying child. A burning house. A man alone in a river, screaming into water. The Rootless Thing didn't just carry scars. It was scars.
Lu Tian knew what had to be done.
Normal wounds wouldn't kill it.
They had to tear out its last tether to itself, its final, broken Root.
And to do that… someone had to connect.
Not with hate. Not with violence.
But with empathy.
He stepped forward. Slid his blade back into his robe. And opened his Spiral wide.
The pain hit like a storm. The creature shrieked and charged him, mouth wide, claws drawn back, but stopped inches from his face. It stared at him, trembling. Lu Tian didn't move.
"I know you," he said quietly. "You broke because no one remembered you."
The creature made a sound like choking.
"I remember," Lu Tian said again. "And I forgive you."
Then he reached forward and placed his hand on its chest.
Not with Qi.
Not with force.
With acknowledgment.
A crack split the monster's body from collar to gut. Light, black, blue, gray, spilled out. The tendrils fell limp. Its mouth closed.
Then it collapsed.
No roar. No final strike.
Just an exhale.
And silence.
Yan Xue was at his side in an instant, checking his pulse, gripping his shoulder tighter than necessary. He hadn't realized how pale he'd gone. He didn't even feel cold anymore.
"Are you insane?" she whispered, half-angry, half-shaken. "You let it touch your Spiral."
"I didn't," he replied. "I let it see it."
"And what if it tried to take it?"
"I was willing to lose that piece of me."
Her eyes burned into his for a long time. Then she let go.
Together, they turned toward the back wall.
Where the final gate was now open.
A spiral-shaped seal burned faintly along the stone above it.
No voice called from the outside.
No elder declared a winner.
Because this part of the trial wasn't about victory.
It was about what you left behind when you walked out.
Lu Tian stepped forward. And didn't look back.