Chapter 7: The Eye Reopens

Chen Songnian never returned from the ridge.

Or rather—what returned wearing his skin, walking with his gait, was not entirely him.

The beggars in the slums were the first to notice.
He no longer muttered. No longer staggered.

He walked straight.

Silent.

His eyes—no longer cloudy with madness—now gleamed with a steady, inhuman calm.
The pupils were slightly… off.

Vertical.
Slitted.
Like a serpent’s.

He carried nothing.
No bundle.
No jade.
Not even his name.

At night, strange things began to happen in the city.

Dogs whimpered and clawed at closed doors.
Mirrors cracked without touch.
Children dreamed of a pale man standing at the foot of their beds, whispering in a language older than time.

Some said they heard scratching beneath the floorboards.
Some heard it in their coffins—though they were still alive.

Temples reported missing incense and blood-stained altars.
Geomancers found their compasses spinning endlessly, needles pointing to nowhere.

One night, at the city’s southern gate, a sentry found a man standing barefoot in the mud, head tilted skyward, eyes gleaming.

“Who goes there?” he barked.

The man didn’t respond.

Only raised one hand… and pointed at the earth.

The next day, that sentry was found dead in his home—limbs twisted, eyes bulging, mouth filled with soil.

The jade fragments buried at Panlong Ridge began to pulse.

Not visibly—but those attuned to qi felt it.

Something was rising.

In dreams, old monks saw visions of a black coffin buried beneath a bleeding ridge.
At its center, an eye slowly opened, wide and endless.

The Eye that sees all.
The Eye that judges.
The Eye that feeds.

And in the slums, Chen Songnian walked the alleys, unseen by most, unnoticed by many.

Until one day, he stopped before the great ancestral temple—once the heart of the city’s spiritual protection.

He stood for hours, unmoving.

Then… he smiled.

It was not a human smile.

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To be continued in Chapter 8: The Temple Burns