The sun hung low over Azure Cloud Mountain, casting golden light over the sprawling sect grounds. Spirit cranes glided between peaks, their calls echoing through the valleys. Disciples bustled in the training fields, refining their Qi under the stern gazes of elders.
And at the very base of the stone steps leading to the outer sect's main square...
Li Fan lay in the dirt.
Again.
Blood trickled from a split in his lip. His gray robe was torn at the shoulder, revealing a faint network of old scars. Above him, three disciples stood in a loose circle, laughing.
"You should just stay down there, Fan. The ground suits trash like you." The leader, Hu Cheng, twirled his wooden practice spear. He was tall, broad-shouldered, and smug in the way only a disciple from an inner elder's family could be.
Li Fan didn't answer. He wiped the blood from his mouth and slowly, silently, picked himself up.
"Still pretending to be tough?" sneered another. "You've got no spirit root, no Qi, and no right to be here. You should be feeding pigs, not wasting space at the training ground."
The crowd of outer sect disciples nearby pretended not to hear. Some turned away. Others watched with guilty amusement. None would speak for him. No one ever had.
Li Fan's eyes flicked toward the steps. His wooden sword—just a training tool, barely weighted—was still lying near the top, where Hu Cheng had knocked it from his hands.
"You done?" he asked quietly.
Cheng blinked. "What?"
"You're not very good at talking. Or fighting."
The silence was immediate. Even the wind seemed to pause.
Hu Cheng's face twisted with rage. "You think you're better than me, you crippled bastard!?"
He lunged.
The practice spear thrust forward, fast but predictable. Li Fan didn't dodge. He shifted just enough that the blow grazed his ribs instead of breaking them.
It hurt. Of course it hurt.
But pain was nothing new.
As Cheng recovered, Li Fan stepped inside his reach, grabbed the shaft of the spear with both hands, and yanked it downward with a twist.
The other boy stumbled. And for the first time, Li Fan struck.
A palm to the chest—not a Qi strike, not a fancy technique. Just a blow driven by pure, practiced precision.
Cheng staggered backward, winded.
Li Fan didn't follow up. He just turned, climbed the steps slowly, and picked up his sword.
Then he walked away.
He heard one of the onlookers mutter, "Did he just...?"
---
By the time the sun set, Li Fan sat alone at the edge of the sect's boundary forest, nursing his bruised side beneath a gnarled old tree.
It wasn't much of a victory. He hadn't won, not really. Just surprised them. He didn't have Qi. He didn't have power. Just a stubborn body that had learned how to take a beating without breaking.
He unwrapped the cloth bundle beside him—a stale bun, a dried strip of meat, and a half-cracked jade pendant.
The pendant had belonged to his mother, or so the servant woman who raised him claimed. A useless thing. Dull. Cold. It never glowed like other spiritual relics. But for some reason, Li Fan kept it with him always.
He rolled it between his fingers. It caught the last rays of the setting sun.
Then something strange happened.
A whisper—not a sound, but a sensation. A weight in his chest, like the first drop of rain before a storm.
The jade warmed.
And cracked.
A jagged line split the surface, revealing something beneath. Not gold, not crystal... but darkness. A sliver of absolute black, deeper than shadow, colder than night.
Li Fan froze.
The forest around him held its breath.
And then the pendant pulsed.
Pain lanced through his hand and arm. He dropped the jade, but it hovered, suspended midair. Threads of dark light—almost invisible—reached out and entered him. Not violently. Not maliciously. But with purpose.
The ground shuddered.
And before his eyes, the tree behind him split open, revealing a narrow crevice in the earth. Old stone steps led downward into blackness.
A hidden path.
A hidden legacy.
Li Fan stared, breath shallow.
He should turn back. He should tell someone. He should run.
But he didn't.
He stood, clenched his bruised side, and stepped into the darkness.
---
The stairway twisted beneath the mountain like the veins of a buried beast. The air was cold, dry, and oddly quiet—no wind, no insects, not even the echo of his footsteps.
As he descended, torches flared to life with ghostly violet flame. He passed ancient carvings—beasts devouring the sun, men meditating in fire, a figure with no face standing beneath a shattered sky.
At last, the tunnel opened into a chamber.
Circular. Empty.
Except for a single stone platform in the center, upon which floated a scroll wrapped in black silk. And behind it, etched in the wall:
> "Cultivation begins with control."
"Power begins with pain."
"The Void accepts all."
Li Fan approached.
The jade pendant floated out of his sleeve, drawn toward the scroll. As it neared, the black threads extended again—and this time, they reached into his spine, his meridians, his soul.
He collapsed, choking.
Agony.
Every old wound reopened. Every scar burned. His body screamed—but he did not.
Because beneath the pain… something moved.
Something impossible.
A thread of Qi—pure and cold—formed within him. Not pushed in. Not channeled. Created, drawn from the pain itself, as if the suffering was fuel.
His broken meridians didn't reject it.
They welcomed it.
He opened his eyes.
The scroll had unraveled in the air, its pages moving with invisible wind. Words burned themselves into his mind—Void Root Manual, a cultivation method older than the sect itself.
A way to grow not despite injury, but through it. Every blow he took, every ounce of pain, would be converted into Qi.
Not borrowed. Not stolen. Forged.
Li Fan began to laugh.
Not loud. Not crazed. Just a dry, quiet thing—like a man remembering something important after a long time.
The sect had called him trash.
He was about to become something else entirely.
He stood slowly, the pain still coursing through him—but now it was different. It was power, raw and unrefined, like lightning behind his eyes. The Qi in his body was faint—barely a trickle—but it was there. And it was his.
Not borrowed from the world.
Not passed down by a master.
Earned.
He took a step forward—and the air shimmered. The scroll dissolved into motes of dark light, which surged into his body like embers drawn into a forge. The stone platform cracked. Dust fell from the ceiling.
The chamber was collapsing.
He ran.
Up the spiral path, heart pounding, lungs burning. The violet torches flickered and died one by one as he passed, leaving only darkness behind him. But something else burned brighter inside him now—a spark that refused to go out.
He emerged from the hidden stair just as the earth rumbled and sealed shut behind him, the crevice vanishing as if it had never existed.
The pendant fell into his palm—dull and inert once more.
He looked up at the stars, chest rising and falling. The wind carried the scent of pine and spirit grass. Somewhere in the distance, a bell rang to signal nightfall in the outer sect.
Nothing had changed.
And yet—everything had.
Li Fan closed his hand around the pendant. His fingers trembled, not from fear… but from resolve.
If pain was his path—
If the heavens had abandoned him—
Then so be it.
He would walk alone.
And the heavens would learn to regret.