The office was sterile, bathed in the pale glow of monitors. Lin Feng leaned back in his swivel chair, rubbing his temples. "The manager gets angry almost once a month, don't know why. He's gonna find a fault in something, definitely. And then tomorrow... he'll get back to politely asking us to make the impossible happen. I give up."
Across the cubicle partition, a middle-aged man with kind eyes behind simple glasses looked up from his screen. He wore the same standard-issue company polo as everyone else. This was Lao Chen, the heart of their department.
"C'mon, Lin Feng, you can't give up," Lao Chen said, his voice a steady, calming presence. "Yeah, the manager gets in his moods, but he's not so bad. Seriously. Look at me," he chuckled, a self-deprecating sound. "I'm old and still in a beginner-tier job. You? You could get promoted easily. But I figured out my limit. To get better, I'd have to work myself to the bone for years. And honestly? This isn't bad."
He sighed, a contented sound, and looked down at the family photo taped to his monitor. A smile touched his lips. "This isn't bad either. I have a family. A nice wife who wanted to be a fashion designer. You know how hard that is to break into? But it doesn't matter. She makes digital art from home now, and she's happy. I have two kids, too. Twin girls. We're a happy family. The income I get from this job... it's enough. It lets us live happily."
He looked back at Lin Feng, his expression earnest. "And that's why, no matter what happens, I'm not leaving this job. It's not just a 'job' anymore. It's what makes my family's happiness possible. I don't even have greed for more money. I've already started saving for everyone's future."
"And you should listen to this too, Lin Feng. Don't leave. Even if an obstacle appears in front of you... you shouldn't give up. You find your reason." He gestured to the photo with a soft, unwavering certainty. "For me, it's them. You find your 'enough', and you hold onto it. No matter what."
Lin Feng looked at him, a deadpan expression on his face. He waited a beat, letting Lao Chen's heartfelt advice hang in the air.
"That's a great story, Lao Chen. Truly," Lin Feng said, his tone flat. "But I wasn't planning on quitting the job."
A slow, knowing smirk touched his lips.
"I was planning on 'forgetting' about the meeting. If the manager can't find me, he can't find any faults."
For a beat, Lao Chen just stared. Then, a snort of laughter escaped him. It grew, mingling with Lin Feng's own quiet chuckle, until both men were laughing at the absurdity of it all, the sound a bright, human noise in the sterile office air.
The memory of Lao Chen's voice faded, but the concept it carried—'find your enough'—echoed in the void of Lin Feng's surrender. And in that darkness, he didn't need to search. His 'enough' had always been there.
It was the feeling of Meixiu's hand ruffling his hair after a long day, whether in their quiet quarters on Veiled Silence Peak or in a life that felt like a half-remembered dream. It was the sound of her teasing laughter, a constant echo through two existences. It was the unshakable, mischievous presence that had been his sole certainty since the beginning of his memory—in this world and the one before. He trained, he endured, he sought power for one simple, absolute reason: to ensure that laughter never stopped. To protect the one person who mattered across any lifetime.
This was not a limit. This was the foundation. And a foundation cannot be broken.
The vast, dormant ocean of Void Qi did not break its confines because he commanded it. It broke because his reason for being—the will to stand up and go home to her—finally resonated at the same frequency as the power within. His 'enough' was not a destination to find, but a truth to accept.
The glass prison shattered.
A pressure that had no place in this world manifested. It was the weight of a promise made to a mother's smile, and the silence of a love that demanded an entire universe to safeguard. It crushed sound and breath alike, not with malice, but with absolute, terrifying purpose.
Then, the Heavenly Obsidian dome above the arena—the transparent, nearly indestructible pane meant to contain Foundation Establishment-level battles—shattered. It did not crack. It exploded inward into a billion glittering, silent motes of dust, vaporized by the sheer, oppressive weight of the energy now blooming within the arena.
Lin Feng's body was lifted from the ground. He levitated, his arms outstretched to his sides, his head thrown back in a posture of unconscious, conquering authority. He was wreathed not in light, but in a shroud of living, swirling void. The energy was so dense it was impossible to see his features; he was a man-shaped hole in reality, a silhouette of absolute darkness.
Above, the sky itself responded. Dark, roiling clouds gathered with impossible speed, churning directly overhead. They were not natural storm clouds; they were the color of a deep, starless midnight, a perfect mirror of the energy cloaking Lin Feng. At the very edges of this phenomenon, normal, grey rain clouds swirled in a terrified perimeter, as if afraid to touch the central darkness.
The reactions from the spectators were a symphony of pure, unadulterated terror and awe.
The Arena Master in his control niche stumbled back, his face a mask of bloodless horror. "That pressure... it defies cultivation! It's one of the Conceptual Qis... but it can't be!" He was a veteran of a thousand battles, and he was witnessing a universal principle stepping into reality.
On the terraces, disciples screamed, some fainting outright. The female disciples from the Cerulean Cloud Clan were a mix of sheer terror and mesmerized awe. Some trembled, hands clamped over their mouths, while others stared, their earlier infatuation now mixed with a fearful reverence, unable to look away from the terrifyingly magnificent figure he had become.
Jian Nian, the mute disciple, had fallen to his knees, his entire body shaking. He wasn't scared; he was in rapture. He stared at the void-clad figure as if witnessing a god, his soul laid bare before this ultimate expression of silent, overwhelming power.
Mo Yun, the analyst, had dropped his scroll and inkpot. They lay forgotten, staining the walkway. All calculations, all theories, were obliterated. He could only mutter a single, broken phrase over and over: "The laws... the very laws of qi are being rewritten..."
Shi Jian, the massive disciple, stood rigid, his immense muscles coiled not in aggression, but in primal tension. His usual stoic expression was shattered, replaced by a look of profound, humbled shock. He did not bow; he faced the phenomenon like a cliff facing a tsunami, acknowledging a power that rendered his own strength utterly meaningless.
The minor elders were a cacophony of panic, their individual voices now clear.
One elder, his voice trembling with a mix of terror and devotion, pointed a shaking finger at the vortex in the sky. "A Heavenly Tribulation... for a disciple who hasn't even formed a proper foundation? The very heavens are confused, their laws broken by this... this anomaly!"
"Forget his realm! Look!" another elder breathed, her eyes wide with awestruck horror. "He's not enduring it; he's consuming it. The heavens are not judging him; they are feeding him."
A third elder, his face ashen, could only whisper a dire warning. "We are not witnessing a tribulation... we are witnessing the birth of a calamity. This boy is not a disciple; he is a vortex that will drag us all into ruin."
The elder in the plum robes was not panicked. She had sunk to her knees, her fervent devotion transformed into a religious ecstasy. She was weeping openly, her hands clasped in prayer. "I knew... I knew you were a scripture... a divine punishment... a blessing..."
The Mountain-Crusher Ape had frozen mid-beat. Its yellow eyes, once glowing with predatory confidence, were wide with an animalistic terror far deeper than any pain Lin Feng had inflicted. It took a stumbling step backward, then another, a low whine of absolute submission escaping its throat. The mountain was afraid of the sky falling.
And at the center of it all, Lin Feng hung in the air, a nexus of impossible power, a silent question mark etched into the fabric of the world. The spectacle was not just rare; it was a myth made flesh, and it had every single soul present in its terrifying, awe-struck grip.
The dark, roiling clouds above the shattered arena swirled into a vortex of terrifying power. Deep within the midnight-black mass, a blinding, violet light began to gather—the coalescing fury of a Heavenly Tribulation, a punishment for a power the very heavens deemed illegitimate.
A single, colossal bolt of violet lightning, thick as an ancient tree, began its descent. It was a lance of divine judgment meant to erase the anomaly from existence.
It never reached its target.
Before the tribulation lightning could even fully form, the shroud of Void Qi surrounding Lin Feng reacted. It did not defend. It did not counter-attack.
It devoured.
Tendrils of absolute blackness shot upward from Lin Feng's floating form, not to meet the lightning, but to embrace it. Where the violet light of heavenly punishment touched the void, it was simply… extinguished. Silenced. The terrifying energy of the tribulation was consumed, absorbed into the expanding darkness without a sound, without a shockwave. It was not a clash of powers, but a feast. The vortex of clouds itself began to warp, pulled downward like thread into a needle, siphoned into the growing void.
The spectators could only watch, their minds breaking under the weight of the impossible.
"He's… he's eating the tribulation…" a disciple whispered, his sanity fraying.
"The heavens themselves… are being consumed…" an elder stammered, his body trembling uncontrollably.
Far away, on Medicine Soul Peak, Li Meixiu dropped the rare spirit herb she was holding. The sky above the distant Primal Sanctum had turned into a scene from a world-ending prophecy. She clutched Mr. Bunbun tightly to her chest, her knuckles white.
"Oh, my…" she murmured, a strange, cold worry gripping her heart, entirely separate from the awe everyone else felt. She didn't know why, but the terrifying phenomenon made her soul ache with a deep, maternal fear. "It's alright, Mr. Bunbun," she whispered, stroking the plush rabbit's ear. "Don't be scared. It's just… a very loud, show-offy cloud. Nothing to worry about." But her eyes remained fixed on the devouring sky, a line of concern etched on her brow.
Elder Tao, standing beside her, did not speak. He simply watched, his teacup forgotten, his expression unreadably grave.
High above the arena, hidden within the panic, a figure clad in unmarked black robes saw not just chaos, but sacrilege. This anomaly was an affront to the natural order, a poison that had to be excised before it could fully metastasize. He knew any projectile, any technique of pure energy, would be devoured by that hungering void. There was only one way: the cold, sure kiss of a physical blade, imbued with all his killing intent.
With a guttural cry, he launched himself from the shadows, a gleaming sword materializing in his hand. He became a living spear, diving straight down toward the heart of the void-clad figure, his blade aimed to cleave Lin Feng in two.
A collective scream rose from the crowd. The Arena Master roared a futile warning. But they were all too slow, too stunned.
They were not faster than the flash of crimson that answered.
A line of red light, not thin but vast and impossibly bright—a slash that looked like a bleeding scar torn across the fabric of the sky itself—appeared from a horizon so distant it defied comprehension. It was a strike meant to be seen, a declaration. It crossed the entire expanse in the space between heartbeats and passed only through the diving assassin.
For an instant, the man hung in the air, his body perfectly bisected from crown to groin by the luminous red line. His expression was one of pure, uncomprehending shock. Then, both halves of his body vaporized into swirling motes of crimson ash that were themselves swiftly devoured by the expanding void.
The crimson scar in the sky faded, leaving behind a stunned, breathless silence more profound than any noise.
Then, the whispers began, hushed and trembling with awe.
"The Emperor...?" a minor elder breathed, his face ashen. "That was the Emperor's Crimson Promise... a strike that only he can make..."
Another elder, older and wiser, nodded slowly, his eyes wide. "He is watching. The Imperial Majesty himself is bearing witness from the distant capital. He has judged the assassin, and he has judged... this." He gestured weakly at the void-clad figure below.
On the walkway, Mo Yun felt a chill that had nothing to do with the devouring void. This was no longer just a sect matter. The eyes of the entire empire were now upon them.
And through it all, the main event continued unabated. The tribulation was not just gone; it was being digested. The dark clouds churned violently as they were pulled downward, their substance unraveling into streams of black and violet energy that poured into the shroud around Lin Feng. The void swelled with each passing second, having consumed the heavens' wrath and now consuming the very sky, growing larger, deeper, and more terrifyingly absolute. The air grew thin and brittle, as if the world itself was being drained into the silent, all-consuming maw of the awakening void.
Far from the chaos of the Celestial Sword Pavilion, all was serene in the heart of the Imperial Palace.
Emperor Jin Tianming stood on a marble balcony overlooking the royal gardens. With a soft click that seemed to silence the world, he sheathed a simple, unadorned longsword. A faint crimson light—the last echo of a slash that had torn across the sky to erase an assassin—faded from the blade.
A handful of court elders and officials, their robes in disarray, skidded to a halt behind him. They had seen their Emperor suddenly rise from his throne and stride with urgent purpose towards the balcony, his gaze fixed on the distant horizon. They had feared an attack, a coup. But all they saw were strange, dark clouds gathering unnaturally fast over the distant Celestial Sword Pavilion.
"Your Majesty?" one dared to ask, panting. "Is it... a storm?"
Emperor Jin Tianming ignored them. His tall frame was a silhouette against the manicured landscape. His long black hair, interwoven with faintly glowing fragments of a broken sword, stirred in a wind that did not touch the trees. His golden eyes were locked on the devouring vortex in the distance, a phenomenon they were too weak and too far to truly perceive.
A slow, menacing smile spread across his face, a expression of pure, unadulterated delight.
"So," he murmured, his voice a low rumble of power that was for his ears alone, yet it carried like a decree. "It awakens. Now our realm holds two of the Conceptual Qis. The balance of fate tilts."
A wave of exhilarated murmurs immediately rippled through the assembled courtiers. "Two Conceptual Qis!" "By the heavens, both exist within our realm!" "What glorious fortune!" The air buzzed with fierce pride and soaring ambition. To possess one Conceptual Qi was a divine blessing. To possess a second was an undeniable mandate of heaven, a promise of an era of unchallengeable supremacy for their realm.
A presence manifested behind him. Crown Prince Jin Weilong stepped forward, having approached without the frantic haste of the courtiers. His jade dragon scale armor shimmered softly. He was slightly shorter than his father, but his bearing was no less imperial. His handsome features were calm, his own golden eyes observing the distant phenomenon with detached analysis. A scarred hand rested on the hilt of his sword. He spoke as if the murmuring crowd simply did not exist.
"Father," the Crown Prince said, his tone flat, devoid of jealousy or appreciation, merely stating a fact. "Don't I already possess one? And my Qi is rather... superior to whatever chaotic spectacle this is."
The Emperor chuckled, a sound like grinding stones. He did not turn, his gaze still locked on the devouring void. "Superior? Perhaps. But different. A sword and a shield are both weapons, yet they serve different masters. Having more," he said, the menacing smile returning, "is always better than having only one. It provides... options."
He looked back toward the Celestial Sword Pavilion, his voice calm and measured, yet carrying the weight of absolute certainty.
"That... is the Qi of Nothingness."
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