Cultivator of the End: I Refine My Own Death-Chapter 143 – A Duel Where Pain Speaks Louder

The Screaming Graveyard did not whisper.

It howled.

It was not a place but a wound carved into the world's memory, a valley swallowed whole by a war no history dared record. The soil was blackened, not by fire, but by sorrow; each grain of dirt had once drunk the blood of someone who screamed in agony, betrayal, or both. Above, the sky was not sky, but a dome of petrified lungs—each one eternally gasping, the silence between gasps tighter than death itself. Beneath, every step Rin took released voices not his own—cries of murdered mothers, sons calling for gods who never came, lovers whose names had been forgotten.

Rin Xie stood at the heart of this grave, blade unsheathed. Not Ny'xuan—she slept. This was a lesser blade, forged of shadow-iron, one that could only cut if gripped with memory.

His opponent was no ordinary rogue cultivator, but a Law-Bound Duelist of the Bone Thrones, wielding a Deathstaff carved from the marrow of a saint who had lived in agony for three hundred years. His skin was tattooed with inverted scripture. His name was gone—given up to the graveyard to gain entrance. In this place, only pain spoke. And Rin was about to scream.

"Do you know the rules, deathchild?" the Duelist intoned, voice buzzing with insectile rot. "Here, you do not kill with power. You kill with loss. Every strike you make must be sharpened with grief. If you swing without mourning, your weapon will crumble. Pain must speak, or you will fall."

Rin nodded.

He knew.

The graveyard accepted no lies. No hollow emotions. It would tear apart any illusion not built on the bedrock of authentic sorrow.

The Duelist struck first—fast as the cracking of a memory long repressed. His staff screamed as it cut the air, trailing ribbons of regret. It struck Rin's blade—and Rin remembered.

He remembered a boy with cracked fingers and frostbitten lips, starving outside the Azure Echo Sect's gates, begging for entrance. That boy had been him.

He twisted his blade, and the weapon held.

Because that pain had been real.

Rin pushed forward. Slash. He infused it with the memory of a sister who had drowned beneath a cursed pond, trying to catch a lotus petal for him on his sixth birthday. She had not known the pond was haunted. The cut bit shallow into the Duelist's shoulder.

Blood hissed from the wound—but the Duelist laughed. "Good," he whispered. "Let the screams sharpen us."

Rin moved again. Parry. Spin. Thrust. Each motion dragged another memory into the open. His arms ached not with exhaustion, but remembrance. He was not just fighting; he was bleeding with purpose.

Yet with each remembered scream, the soil awakened. The ground pulsed, and phantom hands reached upward, trying to drag him down. Faces formed in the dirt—faces of those he'd failed, abandoned, or killed. They wept ichor.

Cinder watched from the edge of the graveyard, crouched low, still as bone. His eyes did not blink. His feet burned slightly where they touched the sorrow-soaked earth, but he did not move. He was watching Rin, mimicking every breath the death cultivator exhaled—slow, sharp, ragged. Matching him. Learning. Something in the child's own cultivation stirred—quiet and terrifying.

Rin struck again, sword glowing with the echo of his mother's voice—soft, distant, calling his name before she was executed by the sect elders for refusing to sacrifice him in a spirit-binding ritual. Her death had made him an orphan. Her memory gave his sword a serrated edge.

The Duelist faltered, then retaliated—slamming his staff into the dirt. A geyser of pain erupted—a scene forced into the air like bile: a village burning, children laughing as they were boiled alive by corrupted Qi. Rin saw himself among them.

False memory. Psychological warfare.

The ground accepted it anyway.

He reeled.

And in that moment, the Duelist lunged, staff aimed at Rin's spine.

Rin blocked—barely. His blade shattered on impact.

Not enough pain, the graveyard whispered.

His hand bled, not from the break, but from the sudden absence of memory to fuel his counter.

And then he saw it.

The memory he hadn't used.

His master.

Yun Shou, the silent man who had taken Rin in after the fall of Azure Echo Sect. Who had taught him the basics of breathing through pain, of hiding strength beneath grief. Who had died—exploded—while shielding Rin from a divine beast's wrath during their escape from the Scorched Plateau. Who had never once spoken a word of blame, even as his skin melted and his Qi shattered.

Rin's knees buckled.

The Duelist laughed. "Ah. There it is. The one you never processed."

The staff struck his ribs.

Bone cracked. Blood coughed.

Rin fell to one knee.

"I killed him," Rin whispered.

The graveyard stilled.

"I killed Yun Shou. He died because I was too weak. I could've refined that death, but I ran. I ran."

The staff came down again—but this time, Rin caught it.

With his bare hand.

The flesh sizzled. Smoke rose.

But he did not let go.

Tears streamed down his face, but they were not weakness. They were admittance. And with them, came power.

"I still run," he said. "Every day. From his voice. From the warmth of his hand. From the fact that the only man who ever loved me didn't ask me to be a weapon."

He stood.

And the graveyard shivered.

A sword grew in his hand—not one he summoned, but one that the soil offered. A blade of screams, forged from the very pain he had just released. Its edge hummed with unfiltered, undiluted grief.

The Duelist stepped back.

Too late.

Rin moved with a breath that broke bones.

One strike.

The blade cut through the Duelist's arm—and his name spilled out of the stump like black mist.

The man shrieked.

Not in pain.

In recognition.

"My name was... Soryin," he gasped. "I had a sister. I forgot her to gain entrance here."

Rin stepped forward. "Then this pain is yours. And you can keep it."

The second strike tore through the Duelist's chest.

The third split his Deathstaff.

The fourth ended his scream.

The body dissolved—but the name lingered.

Soryin.

The graveyard accepted it. The memory became part of the soil.

Rin knelt.

His hands trembled. Not from strain—but from truth.

He had spoken his pain. Not buried it.

And the Screaming Graveyard was silent—for the first time in centuries.

Cinder walked to Rin.

He did not speak.

Instead, he mimicked Rin's exhale.

And Rin felt it.

His killing aura had seeped into the child—not through force, but observation. The boy had watched his every motion. Memorized his rhythm. Internalized his sorrow.

Rin stared.

"Why?" he asked. freeweɓnøvel.com

Cinder blinked. Then—finally—spoke.

"To understand," he whispered. "So I don't forget you. Like he did."

Rin did not answer.

He simply rose.

Together, they left the graveyard.

Behind them, the soil shifted once.

And whispered no more.

To be continued...