Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 123 – The Bone-Eating Sect

The wind howled across the hollow plateau, dragging with it the scent of blood and rot. The stone beneath Rin's feet pulsed faintly—as if it remembered the agony it had soaked up over centuries. Cracks in the earth exposed marrow-colored stone, veined with calcified essence, and bones—tens of thousands—formed a mosaic that spiraled inward toward a sunken ziggurat in the distance.

There were no birds here. No insects. Even the wind carried silence with it, as though afraid to disturb the appetites of the dead.

Rin stepped forward, the aftermath of the tomb duel still simmering in his bones. His Death Core pulsed with a slow rhythm, digesting the last of the skeletal elder's soul-fragments and refining them into pure intent. Soul Flare lingered in his chest, an ember that whispered of grief sharpened into annihilation.

He did not sense the ambush. Not in time.

The marrow-veined ground split beneath him.

A chain erupted from the earth, barbed with hooked bone, and wrapped around his leg before he could react. Another burst upward, spearing into his shoulder. His Death Core flared instinctively, but the chains drank in his death-qi greedily, feasting on it like starved leeches.

Dozens of figures emerged from the ground like carrion phantoms.

They wore robes stitched from skin, dyed yellow with fat and blackened by soot. Their eyes gleamed like rotting pearls, and every one of them reeked of boiled marrow and spiritual corrosion. At their head stood a gaunt man, half his face a polished skull. He held a ladle of bone in one hand, and a brazier of steaming marrow in the other.

"We greet the bearer of the Death Bone Relic."

His voice was thin, rasping, yet each word cracked with ritualistic force. The figures around him hissed and prostrated themselves.

Rin fought against the chains, but they coiled tighter, tearing at flesh and soul both. A fragment of Soul Flare surged to the surface, but was immediately smothered by the marrow-bound sigils that crawled along the chains like living worms.

"Your struggle is proof of your worth. Fear not, Relic-Bearer. Your sacrifice will stretch our years, extend our bones. You will be consumed in reverence."

The Bone-Eating Sect.

Rin had heard of them in whispers—banished from the main cultivation domains for crimes too obscene even for the wicked. They believed that immortality did not lie in defying death, but in stealing it—siphoning it from bone, essence, and spirit alike.

To them, the marrow was not just tissue. It was the seat of memory, intent, and soul.

Rin's core, having refined countless deaths, had become an anomaly. To them, it was the ultimate sacrament: a Death Bone Relic, the crystallized essence of end itself.

He was dragged through a tunnel of fossilized limbs, down into the marrow-temple beneath the ziggurat. The walls were alive, made from interlocked skeletons, their sockets glowing faintly with soul-fire. Whispering, weeping. The dead had been eaten, and yet not released. Their suffering was part of the structure.

Torches of femurs burned with green flames. Censers hung from skulls, leaking mind-numbing smoke. Every breath Rin took eroded his resistance. He was stripped of weapons, his robe torn to expose his spine. Runes were carved into his back—ritualistic sigils that bled slowly, mapping his life's agony.

He was laid upon an altar of hipbones. Marrow sap oozed from the stone beneath him.

Dozens of acolytes encircled the altar. They began to chant.

"Bone that births bone. Death that feeds death. Give unto us what you have taken."

The sect master approached, bearing a drill made from the tusk of a soul beast. Its tip glowed with a cruel golden light.

"The Ritual of Marrow Communion begins."

Pain, unholy and pure, exploded through Rin as the drill pierced into the vertebrae near his Death Core. It was not simple physical agony—it was invasive, soul-rending. Every twist of the drill pulled at his will, unraveling memories and blending pain with presence. His Soul Flare tried to ignite, but the marrow-siphoning seals doused it.

Time fractured.

Rin felt his breath slip from his lungs as his vision bled into haze.

He was dying.

But he had died before. He had tasted it and refined it. Now, he had to refine again.

Pain is not the enemy. Pain is a gate.

He sank inward, diving beneath the surface of his own awareness, past the limits of mind and body. His Death Core pulsed weakly—cornered but alive.

And there, in the deep void behind pain, he found it.

The Threshold of Suffering.

A metaphysical plane only those on the verge of death could enter—a place where sensation became cultivation, and torment became transformation. It was not a realm. It was a crucible.

He floated, disembodied, in a sea of screaming light. Every ray of brightness was a nerve aflame. Every shadow was a memory twisted by agony. Faces from his past screamed at him—sect brothers who betrayed him, masters who tried to destroy him, souls he had slain.

"You cannot endure this."

"You will become what you hate."

"Die, and feed the world."

Rin clenched his disembodied teeth.

"No."

He reached into the sea of pain, letting it pass through him. He did not resist. He accepted. He consumed. He refined.

His Death Core responded.

The marrow-drain faltered. The sect master stumbled, clutching his bleeding eyes. The drill screamed as it overloaded with foreign energy. The runes etched into Rin's flesh cracked, releasing a burst of death-qi so pure it flayed the surrounding flesh-cultivators alive.

The altar crumbled.

Rin opened his eyes—not in the physical world, but in the Threshold of Suffering—and saw his own bones gleaming like obsidian beneath translucent flesh. Every inch of him had become a conduit for pain, memory, and death. The marrow in his spine glowed with unrefined agony.

He had become a furnace of torment.

And in that moment, he understood the next layer of his path.

Marrow Ascendancy.

A technique that allowed him to store death-intent, spiritual grief, and refined agony within his own marrow, turning his skeleton into a death-construct. He could become indestructible, not by resisting death, but by embodying it at its most intimate level.

Pain ceased to be an enemy. It became an ally. A raw material. A bridge.

Rin surged back into the physical world.

Chains shattered.

The sect acolytes turned to flee, but their bones bent backward—Rin had already imprinted his death-intent upon their marrow when they touched him. He clenched his fist.

Bones imploded. Dozens of figures collapsed into puddles of pulped flesh.

The sect master screamed and unleashed his final technique—a storm of bone-shards infused with soul-sigils. But Rin did not move. His marrow flared with stored grief, igniting into a ghostly flame.

Soul Flare: Suffering Bloom.

The fire erupted outward, consuming every shard, every chant, every hidden formation.

And then silence.

The marrow-temple cracked. The whispers ceased. Bones wept blood.

Rin stood alone in the ruin, his robe drenched with the ichor of the devoured. His back burned with ritual scars, but his eyes burned brighter. The Bone-Eating Sect was gone. Their greed had refined him, and for that, they would be remembered only as ingredients in his path.

He stepped out into the dying light of dusk, the Soul Flare flickering beneath his skin like a second heartbeat. Behind him, the marrow-temple collapsed, unable to contain what it had birthed.

Rin Xie, the cultivator who refined his own death, had once again crossed a boundary—and come out sharpened.

To be continued...