Chapter 7: After the Flame-Less

After that day, the name of Flame City was erased.

Not by an official decree.

But because no one dared speak it aloud.

The historians left a vague record in the archives—
"Flame Calendar Year 3721, the flame order of a certain city collapsed. One day without flame. Later, sealed."

No reason.
No responsible party.
No name.

Yet everyone who survived remembered that day.

The day the flame disappeared.

The first to notice were the cultivators.

At dawn, they followed their usual routines, running flame techniques—but the flame within them… did not respond.

Not exhaustion.

Disconnection.

Flame Veins intact. Meridians fine. Flame techniques flawless. Yet no matter how they guided it, the flame no longer appeared.

Some thought it was a problem with themselves.

Until the first scream rang out in the streets.

Flame devices failed.

Refining furnaces went cold.

Protective flame arrays collapsed as if they never existed.

For the first time, flame cultivators realized—
Everything they had relied on for survival was not innate.
It was permission granted by the system.

That day would be known to later generations as:

The Flame-Less Day.

Above the ruined city, the Flame Sovereign hovered.

For the first time, he did not float in flame.

He stood on the edge of a broken wall, feet on gray-white embers, cooled and dead.

The city felt as if the world had forgotten it.

“Confirm the results,” the Flame Sovereign said to those behind him.

Several high-level flame cultivators knelt and responded.

“The flame order persists, but this location has… been skipped.
Flame cannot function here.”

The Flame Sovereign was silent for a long moment.

“And the individual?”

No one answered immediately.

Finally, a deputy of Flame Sovereign rank spoke in a low voice:

“No corpse detected.
No living response detected either.
Only at the city center… traces of rule erosion were found.”

The Flame Sovereign closed his eyes.

He knew exactly what that meant.

It was not death.

It was system-level isolation.

“Publish the results,” he said, opening his eyes. His voice calm.

“Disaster Flame Walker Lin Jin, confirmed self-destruction.
This city is a flame disaster quarantine zone.
Any approachers will be treated as contaminated.”

The command went out.

The Flame Domain’s high council exhaled.

In their eyes—problem solved.

But the world had not returned to normal.

Three months later.

In a small town a thousand miles from Flame City, a flame cultivator noticed instability in his flame during nighttime practice.

His techniques were correct.
His Flame Veins intact.

But the moment the flame manifested, it collapsed on its own.

As if something had preemptively negated it.

He ignored it.

Until the next day.

An anomaly erupted in the flame mine outside town.

The flame energy went out of control. All flame properties failed. Miners were severely injured by feedback.

A patrolling flame envoy detected an unfamiliar mark.

Not a residue of any known flame system.

But a kind of blankness.

In the records, it was temporarily labeled:

Flame Order Anomaly · Void Type

Six months later.

Similar anomalies began appearing in different regions of the Flame Domain.

Small in scale.
Brief in duration.
Like aftershocks.

The high council grew wary.

But no matter how they traced it, they could not find the source.

Because the source was no longer within the Flame Domain.

Meanwhile.

On the other side of the Flame Domain.

A place known as the Wastelands Beyond Flame.

No flame energy.
No flame mines.
No cultivator dared to step foot here.

Legends said this was a fragment of the world before flame was born.

Deep within the wasteland, a “human-shaped” figure lay quietly among the rocks.

Skin gray-white, as if repeatedly burned and cooled.

The flame pattern on its chest shattered.

No heartbeat.
No breathing.

Yet inside that body—

Something was slowly reforming.

Not flame.
Not life.

But cognition.

A form of existence that no longer relied on flame.

At one moment.

The body’s fingers twitched slightly.

Then came a clearer breath.

Air entered the lungs, yet no flame was ignited.

Eyes opened.

No black flame in the pupils.

Only a profound, near-empty gray.

He looked at the sky, voice hoarse, yet fully aware.

“…Where… am I?”

No one answered.

Only the wind, blowing across the wasteland.

Meanwhile, in a secret chamber somewhere in the Flame Domain, an ancient disc used to monitor the flame order suddenly cracked.

Along the fracture, an old, long-forgotten warning appeared:

“When flame fails, the world will be redefined.”