The pain was real.
A dull throb pulsed beneath Fang Xi's ribs as he leaned against the creaking wooden frame of the door. His breaths came shallow and slow, each inhalation dragging through weak lungs like wind through broken reeds.
The body was fragile.
The world around him — crude.
Gray clouds clung low over Broken Soul Mountain, a forgotten ridge deep within the Eastern Wastes. The Ironwood Sect, one of three minor sects nestled here, barely qualified as a cultivation school. Its outer sect disciples — no more than thirty youths — trained in rough breathing techniques and swung sticks they called swords.
"And I, the Heavenly Demon, dwell among these insects."
His lips curled faintly. Not with anger. With precision.
"Good."
"No one will look here. No one will suspect. Not until it is far too late."
Inside the outer disciple quarters, Fang Xi sat cross-legged on the cracked stone floor of his hut, a rotting talisman lantern flickering beside him.
His body trembled faintly as he tested his breath, guiding the barest trace of Qi into his dantian. It was like threading fire through wet paper — slow, painful, delicate.
"Meridians: blocked in two places. Root: low-grade, impure. Muscles underdeveloped. No known talents. This body… would be trash in even the weakest sect."
He closed his eyes.
"Yet I remember."
"I remember devouring Primordial Soul Beasts in the Bone Abyss. I remember swallowing the heartflame of the Crimson Immortal."
"No power now. But the knowledge remains."
The door creaked open. A thin shadow stepped in — a boy no older than sixteen, with patchy facial hair and a smug look.
"Still pretending to cultivate, Fang Xi?" said the youth, arms crossed. "They say you haven't even entered Qi Condensation. Six months in the sect, and you can't sense Qi?"
Fang Xi blinked slowly.
Zhao Min. Lazy outer disciple. Mid first layer Qi Condensation. Slightly favored by a junior elder due to distant clan ties. Bullies those beneath him to feel tall.
He said nothing.
Zhao Min scoffed. "Trash," he muttered, kicking over Fang Xi's wooden bowl as he left.
Water spilled across the dirt floor.
Fang Xi stared at it for a long moment, watching the ripples fade.
"You'll be useful later."
"When I need a pawn… or a corpse."
That night, Fang Xi returned to the sect's outer herb garden, carefully timing his steps beneath the pale moonlight. Elder Li had gone to sleep drunk again, the air reeking faintly of spirit-wine.
In a corner where the soil turned dark and damp, a cluster of Cracked Root Vine grew, overlooked and half-frozen.
"Cracked root — bitter, weak, unrefined. Useless in alchemy. But when mixed with frost marrow and aged blood iron…"
He dug quietly, collecting several tubers in a linen pouch.
"It will burn. It will scar. But it may open a path."
Two nights later.
Fang Xi sat in his hut, the roots crushed to pulp, mixed with dust scraped from a disused prayer charm. The concoction shimmered faintly under the lantern light — a thin, gray paste that smelled of ash and bile.
He hesitated only once.
Then he swallowed.
The pain came like a wave of ice and fire — crawling through his gut, up his spine, curling around his ribs. He clenched his teeth until blood welled in his gums. His vision blurred. His breath hitched.
And then—
A flicker.
In his dantian, barely visible, a sliver of light began to coil.
Qi.
His first true strand in this life.
It was pitiful. Dull and slow. But it was his.
And from it, he would rise again.
Outside, snow began to fall gently on the broken roof. The mountain slept, unaware.
But in a rotting hut at its base, the seed of an ancient evil had been planted once more.
And this time, it would not be uprooted so easily.