Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 147 – Spirits That Beg for Chains

The wind did not howl in the Gorge of Chained Lament.

It whimpered.

It crawled across the stone like dying breath clawing from split throats, dragging behind it the spectral weight of countless unseen mouths. Rin stood at the precipice, his shadow bent and thin in the waning, ashen light of a cracked sky. The gorge stretched for miles, a jagged wound in the earth flanked by obsidian ridges shaped like screaming faces, as though the land itself had once wept and then hardened into despair.

This was where forgotten spirits came to scream for captivity.

Not for release. Not for vengeance.

But for chains.

The gorge had no true name, not in any scroll or map, but in the whispered records of soulbound cultivators, it was called Cradle of the Unbound Dead—a cursed gorge that birthed nothing but fear. They said the void beneath it was endless, deeper than even the Primordial Graves that predated the Heavens themselves. A place where the concept of death unraveled into something worse.

Rin's robes fluttered with the wind, layered in ragged black and blood-kissed silk, now stitched with the remains of the resurrection sect's robes and ash-veined bark from the Scorched Valley. His Death Core pulsed coldly in his chest. Here, it hummed with particular sharpness—like a creature that recognized kin. Or prey.

He stepped forward, stone cracking beneath his boot, and the gorge answered.

A whisper—no, a thousand whispering voices laced with hunger—rose from the depths.

"Bind me. Please. Bind me. Let me forget. Let me forget the dark..."

A roiling fog of pale gray souls slithered up from the depths, colliding with one another in frantic dances of suffering. They had no eyes, only mouths filled with the silence of despair. Some had faces—warped, collapsed, deformed by centuries of uncontained memory. Others had none at all. Only their desperate longing remained.

These were the Unmoored. Souls that had severed their karmic ties too violently, or died in realms without reincarnation, or betrayed all bonds so thoroughly that even Samsara refused them.

Rin watched them, unmoving.

They reached for him. He let them.

The first touched his fingers—and dissolved.

The second screamed his mother's name, though it had never known her.

The third wept blood from empty sockets, and begged, "Give me a name so I can forget it again."

He walked through them, letting the specters pass through his body, burning his flesh with their emptiness. It didn't matter. The pain was shallow. The grief within was far older.

After several steps, the gorge changed.

Stone became bone. Bone became rune. And soon, he stood before a throne of rusted iron chains, embedded in the side of the cliff as though grown like roots.

Upon it sat a figure.

Not a spirit. Not a living thing. But something in between.

The spirit's body was wrapped in countless chains forged of prayer-scribed links. Its eyes—each a different shade of sorrow—glowed dimly. Its mouth was covered by a death mask carved from white jade and inscribed with apology sigils that had long since faded into cracked, meaningless etchings.

It did not move as Rin approached.

Only when Rin stood directly before it did the spirit's chains rattle, as if reacting not to his presence—but to his Death Core.

"...You are not of the gorge," the spirit said, voice low, voice cold, yet somehow grateful. "But you bear the scent of perfected death. Like a nail driven through Heaven's eye."

Rin didn't answer. He studied the spirit's mask. His fingers tingled with the urge to tear it free and see what festered underneath.

Instead, he asked, "What are you?"

The spirit tilted its head.

"A thing that begged too late for chains," it replied. "I am Yi Mu, once of the Death-Seers of the Fourth Twilight Sect. I defied the calling of the void and sealed myself here with rites no longer taught. But my bindings weaken. And when they do... I will forget what it meant to be restrained. And then I will fall. Or worse—climb."

Rin didn't flinch.

He had seen gods dissolve. He had listened to the dead sing lullabies in plague-ridden towns. He had become the executioner of grief.

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"I seek the Death-Forged Portal," Rin said. "Tell me where it lies."

Yi Mu was silent for a time.

Then the chains around its torso tightened. A few links cracked. Its mask bled mist.

"I will," Yi Mu said. "But only if you bind me to yourself. A final seal. Make me part of your soul, your core. Let me speak no lies, let me twist no truths. Bind me—and I shall never abandon you. Even if you abandon yourself."

"Why?" Rin asked.

"Because the void is worse than any cruelty you might imagine," Yi Mu whispered. "It does not erase you. It remembers you forever. And it reminds you every moment what you once were. Even regret cannot escape it. Bind me, cultivator. Bind me and save me from myself."

Rin stepped closer.

He thought of the Tower of Echoes.

Of the Vale of Hollow Bones.

Of Xie Yun's silence in the cavern where even words feared to exist.

He thought of the many corpses that dreamed of breath, and the sentient dagger Ny'xuan still sleeping beneath his robe, nestled against his ribs like a coiled god.

And then he thought of his own heart.

Still beating.

Still warm.

Still too merciful.

He reached out and placed his hand upon Yi Mu's chest. Death Qi surged from his palm like a black tide. He carved runes into the spirit—not with ink or blade, but with intention. With concept. With command.

They etched themselves into Yi Mu's spectral body, glowing with cruel red fire.

Binding Sigil of Obedience. Binding Rune of Pulse-Vow. Chain Seal of Void Rejection.

Each was a part of a greater technique he had once glimpsed in the dreams of dead sages—a forbidden binding used by soul-harvesters who enslaved spirits during the first war against death.

But Rin refined it.

He twisted the art to a new shape.

He added one final rune. A brutal concept that shattered compassion from its very structure.

The Rune of Pulse-Speech.

It dictated that Yi Mu would only be able to speak when Rin's heart beat. If it ever stilled—even for a moment—Yi Mu's mouth would become nothing but a grave.

The bindings sank into place.

Yi Mu screamed.

The chains on the throne shattered as they were absorbed into Rin's Death Core. The jade mask cracked, revealing a twisted mouth filled with white flame. Its eyes dulled. Its body collapsed—but the spirit itself lingered, now tethered to Rin's soul like a shadow tethered to flame.

Rin stepped back.

Yi Mu floated behind him, silent.

He waited.

Then, slowly, his heart thudded once.

Yi Mu gasped—and a single word emerged:

"Thank...you..."

Rin said nothing.

He didn't smile.

Didn't nod.

He simply walked forward, leaving the broken throne behind, the Unmoored still screaming beneath the chasm, some reaching for him—but recoiling as Yi Mu's new aura flared out in warning.

He walked to the edge of a cliff deeper in, where the fog thinned and the stones became etched with glyphs in a language that predated even the death pantheon—glyphs that had not been written, but sacrificed into the stone.

Yi Mu floated beside him, silent once more until Rin's heart gave another slow beat.

"The Death-Forged Portal lies beyond the Scars of Origin," Yi Mu said. "A place carved by the first being who ever refused death. Not defied it. Refused it. You will need offerings to enter. Not of blood. But of truths you never wanted to face."

Rin's eyes narrowed.

"What truth is left that I haven't consumed?" he asked.

Yi Mu's eyes glowed faintly.

"That you are still alive," it said.

And then silence.

Because Rin's heart did not beat again for a long, long time.

He stood at the edge of the world, breathing slowly, the wind scraping past his ears like the sighs of forgotten gods. Beneath him, the gorge howled. Spirits clawed at stone. The chains of other failed bindings lay scattered in the deep, gleaming faintly with the dreams of those who once thought mercy was something sacred.

And Rin Xie—he who had refined his own grief, who had drunk from the wounds of the dead and carved meaning from silence—turned away from the edge and walked toward the Scars of Origin.

Yi Mu floated behind him, bound and obedient.

A soul that begged for chains.

And now wore them.

Forever.

To be continued...