幽影归来 Phantom Reborn

"Not everyone dies by the blade. Some die while still alive."

---

My name is Kaslin.

Kas, as in a bird resting;

Lin, as in drawing near to death.

That's what my mother named me on the day I was born.

She said:

> "You were born on the edge of war, like a swallow nesting under broken walls. Just being alive is already a miracle."

But later, she died.

Killed by cultivators.

They called themselves outer disciples of the Lingyun Sect, claiming my father had once stolen spiritual herbs. They came to search our house and interrogate our souls.

To be fair, my father wasn't a good man.

He sold poison, lied, gambled, and once broke three of my mother's ribs.

But still, I thought—

If he were to die, it should've been by my hands.

Not from his brain being shattered by their soul-shaking technique.

I had just turned twelve that day.

---

I remember the last look in my mother's eyes.

It wasn't pleading for help.

It was begging—for them not to take me away.

She said: "They want to refine you… Don't tell them you're my daughter."

I didn't understand what she meant at the time.

Until they pinned her down at the doorstep and tortured her soul in front of me.

She didn't scream.

Didn't struggle.

She just kept looking at me. Her eyes didn't waver.

And then, she died.

---

I thought I would die too.

They said I had a "half-spirit root body"—unfit for cultivation, no use for refining.

So they threw me down an abandoned well outside the village, sealed it with a stone slab, and said:

"Let her starve to death."

I survived there for seven days.

Living off the bugs that crawled down the walls, licking moisture off the stones, even biting my own fingers to drink blood.

On the seventh day, a strange man dug me out.

He asked:

"You're still alive. Is it because you want to kill someone?"

I didn't answer.

But he grinned and said:

"Then let me teach you how to kill."

---

He was a symbol master.

He taught me poison runes, how to refine medicine, and tricked me into swallowing failed pills, calling them "Soul Igniters."

He said:

> "To kill cultivators, your body's not enough. You need clarity. You need poison. You need resolve."

I trained under him for two years.

Drew a hundred talismans a day, failed ninety-nine.

Ran three miles uphill without panting.

Drank crushed snake bile and timed myself to endure the burning.

When I said I was scared, he locked me in a dark room and made me listen to my mother's dying cries—

Captured by his "Sound-etching Rune."

"If you're afraid, then listen to this all night," he said.

I listened seven times.

After that, I wasn't afraid anymore.

---

I killed my first man when I was fifteen.

An outer sect servant from Lingyun Sect, drunk and staggering down our path.

He cursed loudly about "half-spirit trash only good for pill fodder."

I let him keep talking.

By his third insult, I shoved a silver rune drenched in snake venom into his mouth.

He lasted four breaths before dying.

I tossed his body into the ravine.

That night, I didn't sleep.

I waited for guilt to come.

It never did.

All I felt was—

A bit of relief.

---

So I kept searching. For that man.

His name was Mu Youlou.

My mother's final breath whispered his name.

I overheard the cultivators say he ordered the "disposal of defective families."

My parents were just one batch.

Now he's risen to become a vice-warden of the Phantomwater Hall, still in charge of "spirit child reallocation."

I suspect—

He's already targeting another girl.

That girl... is probably named Wan'er.

---

Then I met the one called Shen Lan.

He didn't look like a killer. Thin, quiet, poor as a beggar.

But he sensed me, countered me, pinned me.

His eyes were colder than any rune.

I knew—he's one of us.

Not listed among the cultivators.

Not written in destiny.

Living in the cracks of the world, clawing his way out of the filth with one breath left.

That's why I spoke to him.

Not to ask for help.

Not to form an alliance.

But to gamble.

To bet that he's not just pretending to be broken.

He wasn't.

---

Now we're going to kill Mu Youlou.

Shen said he doesn't save people, doesn't shield blows—

He only kills.

I said fine.

I don't believe in people either.

I only believe in knives.

We're not "allies."

We're just two blades,

pointed at the same throat.

---

[End Note: Extra Chapter]

> "I didn't survive. I tore myself out of death."

"That's why I kill—because it's the only proof I'm still alive."