MTLNOVEL Chapter 13: *Chapter 13: The Fractured Path**
The cave was silent save for the drip of water echoing like the heartbeat of the earth. Li Tian sat cross-legged on the cold stone floor, the **Whispering Willow Manual** open before him. Moonlight filtered through cracks in the cavern ceiling, casting silver veins across the pages. His fingers trembled as they hovered over the newly revealed script—**Eternal Supreme Scripture**, its characters glowing faintly with celestial intent.
He had deciphered the hidden layer days ago, the manual's crude mortal techniques peeling away like a chrysalis to reveal the divine core beneath. But now, faced with the truth of what he held, Li Tian hesitated.
*This is madness*, he thought, tracing the intricate meridians diagrammed in starlight ink. The scripture demanded channels wider than rivers, a dantian vast enough to swallow oceans. His mortal body—a cracked clay cup—would shunder at the first sip of such power.
Yet the alternative was unthinkable.
Wen Lin's coughs had grown wetter, darker. She hid blood-spattered rags beneath her bed, but Li Tian smelled the iron tang each time he entered their hut. The village healer had offered bitterroot tea and empty platitudes. *A season, perhaps two*, he'd murmured, thinking the boy asleep.
Li Tian pressed his palms to the cave floor. The stone's qi rose to meet him—slow, patient, *earthly*. For weeks, he'd honed the **Earthen Veil Technique**, blending his essence with rock and soil until even Hong's jeering pack passed him by unseeing. But stealth wouldn't mend ruptured lungs.
"Begin with the breath," the scripture commanded in angular glyphs that hurt to behold. "Draw the void between stars. Let it scour the vessel clean."
He closed his eyes. Inhaled.
The change was instantaneous.
Where mortal cultivation trickled qi like spring melt, the scripture *flooded*. Cosmic energy roared through Li Tian's meridians, a supernova crammed into matchstick veins. He convulsed, spine slamming stone as his dantian *screamed*. Visions erupted behind clenched eyelids—the Eclipse Citadel's obsidian spires, the Thunder Sovereign's laughter like grinding continents, the Flame Sovereign's hair trailing comet-fire as she raised the killing blade—
"*No!*"
The denial tore from him in the Old Tongue, syllables that cracked stalactites from the ceiling. The energy surge faltered. Li Tian rolled onto hands and knees, retching bile tinged with starlight.
---
**Fourteenth Moon Cycle**
Failure became ritual.
Each dawn, Li Tian emerged from the cave shaking, robes stiff with sweat and blood. Each dusk, he returned, driven by Wen Lin's fading breaths and the scripture's siren call.
The villagers noticed.
"That boy's gone fey," Old Man Heng muttered at the well, clutching his bamboo ladle like a ward. "Saw him talking to shadows by the barley fields."
"Demons," Widow Lan agreed, making the three-fingered sign against evil. "First his father taken by the mountain, now this. The Guo bloodline's cursed."
Li Tian heard them. Let them whisper. Their fear kept them distant, and distance kept his secrets safe.
Until the night the mountain answered.
---
He'd pushed further than ever before. The scripture's third breathing cycle thrummed in his bones, qi coiling like a caged storm. His nose bled freely now, crimson patters painting the manual's pages.
*Almost*, he thought, riding the razor's edge between control and annihilation. *If I can just—*
The cave *shuddered*.
Li Tian's eyes flew open. The lichen's bioluminescent glow had deepened to corpse-green. Something vast and ancient stirred in the mountain's roots, drawn by the scripture's forbidden song.
"No," he whispered. "Not yet."
The **Earthen Veil Technique** snapped into place, qi leashed tight. But the damage was done.
Stone groaned. The plinth holding the manual split with a sound like breaking bones. From the fissure rose a tendril of smoke—no, *mist*—that coiled into the shape of a nine-tailed fox. Its eyes burned with stolen starlight.
"Little thief," it purred in a voice of grinding tectonic plates. "You ring bells meant for gods."
Li Tian froze. He knew this presence. In the heavens' bestiaries, they were called **Kitsune of the Deep Vein**—spirits born from the first magma flows, keepers of earth's primordial wrath.
"This one begs forgiveness," he said, Old Tongue formalities rising unbidden. "The scripture's call was unintended."
The fox tilted its head, mist tails lashing. "Unintended. Interesting." It flowed around him, cold as glacial runoff. "Your soul smells of dead stars, mortal. What bargain have you struck with oblivion?"
Li Tian's mind raced. Truth here could be lethal, but lies would crumble before those ancient eyes. "No bargain. Only... borrowed time."
The Kitsune stilled. One vaporous paw pressed against his chest, where the Primordial Core's shard lay hidden.
"Ah." The spirit's voice softened. "The fallen king's last gambit. How quaint."
Before Li Tian could react, the mist surged into his nostrils, his mouth, the spaces between his cells. Agony followed—not the crude pain of broken bones, but the exquisite torment of *being unmade*.
"Your vessel is unworthy," the Kitsune intoned from within his marrow. "But the earth remembers its debts."
The cave erupted.
Qi like liquid stone poured into Li Tian, not through meridians but *pores*, rewriting his flesh from the atoms outward. He screamed as skin hardened to mineral scales, as his dantian *ruptured* and reformed, twin cores spinning like binary stars.
When consciousness returned, the Kitsune was gone. The manual lay closed, its pages blank.
And Li Tian...
Li Tian *burned*.
---
**Dawn, Fifteenth Moon Cycle**
Wen Lin woke to the smell of ginger broth.
"Tian'er?" she croaked, squinting at the figure by the hearth.
Her son turned. Moonlight through the shutter slats caught his eyes—no longer the soft brown of fertile soil, but the glittering black of volcanic glass.
"I found medicine," he said, offering a steaming bowl. The liquid swirled with iridescent herbs she didn't recognize.
She drank.
Heat blossomed in her chest, gentle as a spring sun. The ever-present ache in her lungs dissolved.
"What—"
Li Tian pressed a finger to her lips. His touch left faint crystalline patterns on her skin. "Rest, mother. The mountain has spoken."
Outside, the villagers whispered of tremors. Of foxes with too many tails glimpsed in the barley fields.
And in Bone Hollow Cave, the stone plinth bore fresh claw marks—nine parallel grooves, deep enough to hold eternity.
---