Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 129 – To Burn the Moon

The first sign came as a shadow without source.

Rin stood at the edge of the Hollow Plateau, a windless height carved by ancient battles. The ground was pitted with graves too shallow to forget. Broken banners twitched where no breeze stirred, and rusted weapons protruded like ribs from the corpse of history.

Yet above it all—light fell. Cold, silver. Too pure.

Moonlight.

He narrowed his eyes.

A pale luminescence bled across the plateau like spilled frost. His death aura recoiled as if burned, retreating into his marrow. His breath stuttered. His blood shivered.

Lunar Suppression.

They were here.

The Pale Creed, servants of the Nameless Moon.

Moon-attribute cultivators were rare. Not because the moon was weak, but because it refused remembrance. The Celestial Path of Lunar Enlightenment demanded that its followers discard names, emotions, and even reflections. They became reflections of light, not light itself—ritual fragments of the moon's eternal aloofness.

Their techniques disrupted death.

Not with flame. Not with radiance.

With absence.

Moonlight cleansed. Moonlight pacified. Moonlight erased all decay.

To Rin's Death Core, it was poison.

A figure stepped from the descending silver veil.

White robes. No feet—just drifting mist. No mouth—just a silver brand where lips should be. Her eyes were twin crescents, luminous and blind.

She bowed, motionless.

"Rin Xie," she intoned—not with sound, but with pressure against his skull. "You walk beneath the moon. This is violation."

He said nothing. His breath was shallow. His core was sluggish.

A second figure emerged, robed in obsidian silk woven with moonstone threads. He held a chain made of spine-links, from which hung three severed heads—each grinning with peace.

The man spoke with sorrow.

"We bring mercy. You carry too much death. You soil the sky."

Rin clenched his fists. His Death Core pulsed, but the aura could not expand. It withered beneath the oppressive silver sheen.

He was being strangled—not by power, but by the rejection of his nature.

The Pale Creed was a cleansing order.

But to Rin, they were executioners.

He turned and ran.

Not in fear—but with purpose.

They followed.

Three more emerged from the higher slopes. Moonlight leapt from body to body, forming a moving prison of silver radiance. Trees bowed. Soil froze. The graves beneath the plateau sealed themselves, unwilling to breathe.

But Rin had already chosen his destination.

An ancient ruin—once known as the Field of Ten Thousand Vows.

Long ago, armies had clashed here for the right to claim a divine corpse buried beneath the roots of a celestial tree. Ten thousand cultivators died. None ascended. Their hatred remained, entombed in silence.

It was perfect.

Rin crossed the threshold and staggered—his own aura burning against him. The air was thick with remnants of final techniques. Ghost-fires flickered in the cracks of forgotten spears. Blood still wept from severed earth-veins.

The moonlight weakened here, caught in the weight of unresolved death.

Still, the Pale Creed entered—hovering with contempt, yet cautious.

One stepped forward. The woman with crescent eyes raised a hand, and a beam of compressed moonlight slashed toward Rin.

He didn't block it.

He dove—straight into a pit of broken helms.

The beam struck a rusted halberd.

The halberd screamed.

Rin heard it not with ears, but with marrow. The scream was of loyalty betrayed. Of brothers burned. Of hope sharpened and snapped.

He smiled.

Perfect.

He pressed a hand into the shattered bones and channeled Grief Reclamation.

Ten thousand dying screams surged into his Death Core.

It bloated.

Cracked.

Then bled—a new pulse.

A new domain.

Rin whispered the name—not to cast it, but to become it.

Moonless Pyre.

The world inverted.

No light.

Not even darkness.

The moon vanished from the sky—not physically, but conceptually. Within the domain, there had never been a moon. No tides. No comfort. No soft radiance.

Only death.

The Pale Creed faltered.

Their suppression failed.

Rin rose.

His aura exploded outward—a funeral gale wreathed in memory-scorched cinders. Where his footsteps landed, even shadows dissolved. Not from brightness, but from the annihilation of contrast.

He faced the moonlit priestess.

She opened her arms, attempting to form a prayer seal. The technique was a Lunar Reflection Lotus, a field-based suppression array that inverted a cultivator's intent.

But in the Moonless Pyre, there was no light to reflect. fɾēewebnσveℓ.com

Her seal faltered.

Rin advanced and raised a hand.

His palm burned with Ashen Recollection Flame, now laced with battlefield death.

He pressed it into her chest.

She melted—not with pain, but with unknowing. Her robes fluttered into silence. Her bones turned to questions that no longer had context.

She died as if she had never been named.

The chain-bearer screamed—not in agony, but in ritual cadence. He flung the three heads toward Rin, each infused with compressed moonlight.

"Mercy in Radiance!"

They exploded—detonating as crescents of absolute white.

Rin countered not with raw strength, but with conceptual weight.

He raised his hand.

And offered a single memory:

The first time he touched his mother's corpse.

The warmth still in her hands. The decay not yet begun. The lie that she might still wake up.

That memory detonated like a black sun.

The lunar crescents faltered. Curved inward. Broke.

The chain-bearer coughed blood. His robe cracked down the middle, revealing a torso without a heart. In its place, a sphere of frozen light beat with slow agony.

Rin seized it.

Refined it.

And named it: Lunar Absence Core.

The Moonless Pyre responded—consuming the core, deepening the domain. The battlefield howled as dead soldiers rose—not physically, but spiritually. They joined Rin—not as allies, but as echoes synchronized with his hatred.

The remaining three moon-priests faltered.

One tried to flee.

The Pyre did not let him.

No moon meant no direction.

He ran, and ran, and arrived back where he started—again and again, until Rin caught him and burned his soul into a question.

Another turned to fight—conjuring Silver Lament Storm, a technique that turned regret into blades.

But Rin had none.

He caught the storm and shaped it into a coffin.

Crushed it shut.

The final priest knelt.

"You—what are you? You are not death. You are its betrayal."

Rin said nothing.

He raised both palms.

And offered the battlefield a gift.

Ten Thousand Final Breaths.

The ground sighed.

Not with wind. Not with release.

With grudge.

The Moonless Pyre reached its apex.

Even the stars above dimmed—as if the absence below was too vast to ignore.

The final priest vanished—not slain, not exiled.

Forgotten.

Erased not by violence, but by the weight of death refined into negation.

Rin stood alone once more.

But he did not collapse.

He breathed.

Deep.

Stillness returned.

The Moonless Pyre dissolved—slowly, reluctantly, folding itself back into his Death Core.

Where light had once ruled, only memory remained.

Domain Gained: Moonless Pyre

A death-attribute field that erases the conceptual presence of light. Nullifies lunar, solar, and reflective techniques. Converts battlefield death residue into refined spiritual backlash. Strengthens anti-light constructs and deathborn will-based attacks.

Item Gained: Lunar Absence Core

The crystallized heart of a moon priest who forgot his own name. Can be used to forge anti-radiance constructs or create conceptual blind spots. Unstable unless bound to a negation domain.

Insight Gained: Death of Reflection

Attaining this insight allows the cultivator to sever attachments mirrored in the world. Grants resistance to illusion, echo-techniques, and false memory constructs. Side effect: prolonged use may erode self-recognition.

Rin exited the Field of Ten Thousand Vows beneath a sky where the moon no longer shone.

Not because it had been destroyed.

But because, for now, he had denied its relevance.

To be continued...