Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 137 — To Use the Living and the Dead

The cold light of dawn seeped faintly through the jagged cracks of the ancient cavern, casting fractured shards of pale gold across the labyrinthine chamber. The air was thick with dust and the metallic tang of old blood. Silence hung heavy here, like a living shroud—waiting, watching, breathing. This place had never known life; only death had sculpted its stone bones.

At the cavern's center, Rin sat cross-legged before an altar of cracked bones, fractured teeth, and faded ash—remnants of forgotten corpses that time had all but devoured. The altar was a dark sanctum carved from granite veined with red streaks like dried blood. Around him, the faint murmur of a sealed soul echoed—a presence trapped in chains forged from spiritual iron and sorrows unshed.

Li Jian's soul.

A flicker of cold fire danced in Rin's eyes as he reached out, hands trembling not from fear or weakness, but from the brittle weight of inevitability. He was no longer the boy who had once felt the sting of grief in his marrow. That child was buried beneath layers of iron will and sharpened hatred. The corpse-rooted blade he sought to forge would be the final crucible of his pain and calculation.

"Bones. Ashes. And a soul chained in quiet torment," Rin murmured, his voice low and resolute. "From these, I will birth the edge of my will."

He grasped the brittle bone fragments, cracked ribs stained with age and cruelty, and began weaving them with strands of his own death qi—black as a starless void, cold as the grave. The death qi was not mere energy; it was distilled inevitability, a manifestation of the universe's cruel finality. With it, Rin bound the bones together, molding them into a jagged shape, sharp yet uneven—wild and primal like the roots of a dead tree that clawed desperately at the earth.

These bones were not simply bones; each carried the imprint of the lives once contained within, souls that had been shattered or crushed under the weight of fate. Some were from war-torn battlegrounds, others from abandoned villages consumed by famine and plague. Each fragment pulsed faintly, as if whispering the last breath of a life now extinguished.

But this weapon—this blade—was not to be forged of death alone.

Rin scattered a handful of gray-white ashes into the crucible of his forging circle, the ashes of those who had been reduced to nothing but memory and dust. The ash was weightless, drifting like silent snow over the dark stone. When the ashes met the black death qi and the tangled bones, a faint, eerie glow spread across the blade's forming silhouette.

The final, most crucial component was the sealed soul of Li Jian.

Trapped inside an arcane spirit vessel fashioned from the hollowed skull of a death god's disciple, the soul was still—yet stillness was its deception. It held a simmering storm of rage, betrayal, and silent agony, locked away in spiritual chains that no living being could break. Li Jian's life had been stolen by treachery, and his soul had been imprisoned to feed a greater design—a tool of power and vengeance.

Rin's hands did not falter as he reached into the vessel, his fingers piercing the spectral veil that separated the living from the dead.

The soul recoiled, a muted scream echoing in the silence of the chamber, but Rin grasped it firmly, drawing it into the heart of the blade's growing core.

The weapon took shape with a tortured beauty—an extension of the decay and life it had consumed. Its edges were jagged like fractured tombstones; its surface bore the faint shimmer of restless spirits caught between worlds. The blade exhaled a soft breath, a dark pulse that synchronized with Rin's own heartbeat.

It was no ordinary weapon. This was a vessel of souls, of death's endless cycle—rooted in the past and reaching into the future.

Each soul it consumed would not be lost but absorbed, their strength woven into the blade's ever-shifting form. It would evolve—not through traditional cultivation, but through sacrifice, through the death of others—through Rin's cold suppression of the very grief that had once threatened to drown him.

Rin's gaze hardened, the flame of old emotions now smothered under layers of stone-cold resolve.

"I will no longer feel grief. Only calculation," he said, voice hollow and absolute, like the last echo in a tomb.

Grief was a weakness that bound the soul to the past—the weight that slowed a cultivator's ascent, the poison that made one human, fragile, mortal. Rin had burned that bridge long ago.

Now, he was a vessel of ruthless intent, a calculation made flesh.

The blade in his hands was an extension of this new self—each soul it devoured would grant strength but demand sacrifice: the sacrifice of feeling, of empathy, of memory. The blade would grow sharp not only in steel but in spirit—a weapon tied to the suppression of his deepest wounds.

The Corpse-Rooted Blade was more than a weapon—it was a mirror of Rin's own fractured soul. It reflected the shadows he had buried beneath layers of cruelty and ambition. Each spirit consumed was a memory excised, a flicker of pain locked away in the cold vault of his mind.

But this suppression came with a price. The more souls it absorbed, the more Rin's humanity slipped beyond reach. He was becoming something else: less man, more force. A calculated storm that would not bend or break.

Few in the cultivation world dared to tread the path Rin now carved. The art of soul consumption was a forbidden technique whispered of in ancient texts and cursed scrolls—a technique banned for its cruelty and the profound corruption it wrought on its users.

The blade's evolution would be tied not to mere power, but to the subtle interaction between Rin's emotional state and the souls trapped within. Each soul was a shard of a shattered world, a voice forever silenced.

To wield the Corpse-Rooted Blade was to become a tyrant over death itself—a master who used both the living and the dead as instruments.

Rin's mind churned as he considered the blade's potential. It was not enough to consume only the dead; he must also harness the living.

Living souls could be bound, broken, and ultimately consumed. They were raw power and untapped potential. But to use the living was to risk empathy, to risk chaos.

Rin's eyes narrowed.

He would be neither saint nor sinner. He would use the living and the dead as tools—sacrifices on the altar of his unyielding will.

The chamber seemed to pulse with silent approval. The blade was complete—for now. It lay across Rin's lap, a deadly promise forged from death's deepest roots.

Rin rose, blade in hand, his breath steady as stone.

The world beyond awaited, filled with enemies, betrayals, and the broken remnants of a cruel cosmos. But Rin Xie no longer feared death, grief, or pain. Those were shackles he had shattered.

From this day forward, only calculation would guide his path. freёnovelkiss.com

The corpse-rooted blade would drink from both living and dead, evolving with every sacrifice.

And Rin would become the death he once feared—a force that refined itself not through mercy or regret, but through ruthless, unyielding intent.

To be continued...