Chapter 152: The Corpse Moon Ritual
When the moon forgets how to die, the dead remember how to breathe.
The night did not fall.
It descended—slow, suffocating, heavy with omens. The moon, bloated and bruised, pulsed like a corpse held too long in stagnant water. Its light dripped through the canopy of deadwood trees, turning the forest into a realm of exposed flesh and phantom breath.
Rin Xie walked alone.
His robes hung loose, caked with the remnants of spiritual ichor and dried soil. Beneath the fabric, his body was changing—not healing, not growing, but evolving in a direction that did not belong to mortals or immortals.
The pulse he had carved from death still echoed faintly in the artifact he carried, but already he had outpaced its significance.
He had come seeking whispers. And they had answered.
Rumors of a Corpse Moon Ritual—a technique said to awaken forgotten corpse beasts, bind their souls to moonlight, and birth undying soldiers—had spread through a withered spirit trader's dying breath. Rin had bought that rumor with one tooth and the memory of his own mother's funeral.
It had led him here.
To the Cradle of Pale Roots, an ancient ruin buried beneath a forest that had not bloomed in four centuries. No map marked it. No path led to it.
But death recognized its own. And it welcomed Rin like an old, bitter friend.