Sword Marks Beneath the Heavenly Dao

This heavenly order bears three untouchable marks. The first is called the Mark of Fate. Carved into the spiritual altars of all living beings, it weaves a net of destiny from which no one can escape. The second is called the Bride’s Mark. Planted inside sword cultivators, it imprisons three thousand sword souls, all of them reduced to vessels. The third should never have existed. It has no name and appears in no book of fate. Even its very existence is part of a lie that has lasted three hundred years. They call him Lu Li. A “perfect vessel” whose name is a lie, whose memories are fabricated, and whose scars all belong to someone else. The heavenly order wants him as a pawn, dancing across the net of fate until he dies. The sword corpse wants him as a vessel, to become kindling in an eternity of pain. Even the woman who created him sees him only as a furnace for reviving her beloved. Until, on Washing Sword Cliff, Lu Li used a scar to “stitch” time back together as it came apart. Until, on the Star-Burial Plain, he used the anguished cries of three thousand sword souls as fuel to ignite his “false self.” Until, before the Gate of Guixu, he faced the sword corpse’s emissary, the descending gods and Buddhas, and the sky crisscrossed with cracks, and softly said: “These scars are mine.” “This pain is mine.” “This cursed body...” He raised his hand. Three thousand pale-gold scars opened their eyes in his palm. “...is mine too.” “If you want to take them, did you ask them first?” That day, the sky began to bleed. That day, a mark that should never have existed began to grow upward. It would grow until it reached the heart of the heavenly order. And there, carve its own name. Core quote: “Your scars are proof of the heavenly order’s crimes.”