Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 136 – A Brother’s Ghost

The sky above the Shaded Marsh was no sky at all—merely a curtain of ash and miasma stretching over stagnant waters that reflected nothing. No birds cried. No insects buzzed. Only the rippleless stillness of black, oil-thick swamplands that devoured breath and thought alike. freeweɓnovel.cѳm

Rin Xie stood at the edge of a drowned shrine, ankle-deep in decaying lotus petals. His robes had long since darkened from blood and death, his skin etched with soul-calligraphy that pulsed faintly. His eyes, once clear, now carried the cold weight of a man who had outlived his own innocence.

In his palm, a fragment of bone writhed.

"Li Jian," he said.

The name hung in the air like a broken prayer.

From the heart of the sunken shrine, a figure emerged—not walking, not floating, but unfurling. Like a drowned man learning how to move again. White burial robes clung to a translucent frame. The face was blurred at the edges, as if the world itself struggled to recall it.

But Rin remembered.

He would always remember.

"Rin," said the figure. The voice trembled with distortion—like echoes pulled from a cracked soul bell. "You came... even after what I did."

"I came to see what remained," Rin said. "I didn't expect it to be you."

Li Jian, his sworn brother from the Azure Echo Sect. The boy who once laughed through storms, who had stood beside him when they were still disciples. Who died—or so Rin believed—on the night the Sect was burned, its core disciples butchered, its inheritance scattered.

But the truth, as always, was uglier.

The ghost did not step forward. Instead, it remained tethered to the shrine's core—a hollow cenotaph where incense never burned.

"I'm not a ghost," Jian whispered. "Not fully."

"You're a Remnant Soul," Rin said. "A half-bound specter. Between worlds."

"I'm worse," Jian said. "I'm a traitor."

The wind stirred—no natural wind, but a current of spiritual decay from the swamp's soul fog. It carried whispers. Names. Deaths that hadn't finished dying.

Rin stood unmoved. "Explain."

Jian's form flickered.

"When the sect fell... I wasn't killed. I fled. I bargained. I gave up the core formation map, the burial treasures, even the location of the Soul Pond. In exchange, I was promised immortality."

"By whom?"

"The Eighth Flame Immortal—Su Huan of the Blazing Samsara Tower. He... used me. Anchored a thread of his divine will in my soul."

The name struck like a bell toll.

Rin's fingers twitched. "Su Huan's sect was destroyed centuries ago."

"Fragments remain. He rides the corpses of disciples. He needed a vessel to reawaken in this world. I offered mine."

Rin's face didn't change. But inside, he cursed.

A divine remnant. An immortal thread. Even asleep, the old monsters left shadows in the bones of the world.

"You chose power over us," Rin said.

"I chose survival," Jian replied. "I didn't know what would be asked. I didn't think—I was young. Afraid. And then it was too late. He rooted himself in me. My mind shattered. I became... this."

His form crackled. Ghostflame veins surged across his chest like lightning trapped in flesh.

"I broke free when his attention shifted. The immortal thread sleeps—for now. But I can't run. Not again."

Jian bowed, fully prostrating.

"I'm not asking forgiveness, Rin. I don't deserve it. But please... end me. Before he awakens."

Rin stared at him in silence.

The marsh whispered around them. The shrine trembled with ancient resonance. This place—once a Soul Anchoring Ground—still carried enough spiritual weight to hold a Remnant Soul like Jian's.

A place to die.

Rin stepped forward, his shadow eclipsing Jian.

But he did not strike.

Instead, he knelt.

And placed a talisman on the ground. Woven from paper soaked in his blood, etched with soul-binding scripture, and pinned by a needle of Ghostbone.

"You asked for death," Rin said coldly. "But death is not mercy. It is release."

Jian looked up. "Then what will you do?"

Rin pressed his palm to the talisman.

The runes flared to life. Chains of lightless soulsteel burst from the shrine walls, snaking around Jian's form.

"You betrayed us," Rin said, his voice flat. "But knowledge is value. And value must be extracted. I don't have the luxury of compassion. Nor can I waste a tool."

Jian screamed—but not from pain.

From understanding.

"I see," he whispered. "You've become one of them."

"No," Rin replied. "I've become worse."

The chains snapped into place. Jian's form compressed—twisting, folding, spiraling into the talisman like water pulled into a drain. His screams became echoes. Then echoes became silence.

Rin rose, pocketing the talisman. It glowed with faint soullight. A sealed Remnant Soul. A map of betrayals. A hidden fragment of immortal will.

Not yet a weapon. But someday, perhaps.

Above, the sky churned. A single thread of flame slithered across the heavens, unnoticed by mortal eyes. Far beyond the marsh, something stirred—an echo of Su Huan's divine thread, twitching in response to its vessel's pain.

But it did not awaken.

Not yet.

Rin turned away from the shrine.

He walked across the marsh in silence, each step sinking slightly into the rot. He did not look back. What had been buried was not forgiven. What was sealed was not safe.

But knowledge was worth more than blood.

And Rin Xie was a cultivator of death—not peace. Not redemption.

The wind whispered again. This time, Rin listened.

Fragments of Jian's memories had begun bleeding into the talisman. In them, he saw flashes—conspirators cloaked in night, buyers of sect secrets, masked cultivators bearing the symbol of a forgotten dynasty: The Nine-Rooted Lotus.

The same emblem Rin had seen once before—in the broken dreams of a dying man within the Vale of Hollow Bones.

The pattern was emerging.

And death had always loved patterns.

Rin's pace quickened. He reached the edge of the swamp where his temporary shelter lay, built from corpsewood and anchored with death wards.

He set the talisman down.

Unsealed it partially.

Not enough to release Jian, but enough to hear.

"What do you remember?" Rin asked.

"Fragments," came the voice. Hollow. Controlled. "One name surfaced before the immortal's will took hold. Lady Murong."

Rin stiffened.

The name did not belong in this world anymore.

Lady Murong—the sect matriarch of the Obsidian Frost Pagoda, a reclusive faction thought long dead after the Frost War. She was a whisper in historical scrolls. A cultivator of the Eternal Preservation Dao, rumored to have found a way to freeze her own soul at the peak of Half-Step Immortal.

Rumors. Ghosts. Lies.

But the dead often leave trails.

"She was there?" Rin asked.

"She brokered the deal. Handed over the Soul Severing Bell that allowed Su Huan's thread to bind to me."

The Soul Severing Bell.

A Death-Grade relic capable of slicing a soul into obedient fragments. A forbidden item of the Wraith Pantheon.

Rin's jaw clenched.

"What does she want?"

"She's trying to rebuild the Path of Immortal Puppetry," Jian whispered. "She needs vessels. She needs... deaths. Refined ones."

A pause.

"Like you, Rin."

Rin did not speak.

He resealed the talisman, placed it in a soul-pocket within his core-bound robe, and stood facing the storm-ridden horizon.

The pieces were aligning. The massacre of Azure Echo. The immortal thread. The sealed soul. The Nine-Rooted Lotus. The Wraith Pantheon's return.

And now, a forgotten Matriarch chasing forbidden immortality.

They all pointed in one direction.

To a deeper war.

To the truth behind Rin's own Death Core—the reason why Heaven had cursed him with the ability to refine death itself.

He had thought himself a defilement.

Now he suspected he was a seed.

Someone had planted him. And now, they were watering blood into the soil.

"I will find her," Rin said to the void. "And when I do... she will understand that death cannot be preserved."

He turned once more into the storm.

Behind him, the marsh swallowed the shrine. The petals dissolved. The wind silenced.

And deep within the sealed talisman, Li Jian wept quietly—not for himself, but for the boy Rin used to be.

That boy was gone.

Only death remained.

To be continued...