Even the heavens refused to answer him.
The rain had long since ceased, but the sky above the Tianxu Mountains remained a dull, ashen gray. There was no thunder. No wind. Only silence—a vast, unbearable silence that seemed to press down from the heavens themselves.
A boy knelt beneath a withered tree at the peak of a lonely cliff, his robes soaked with mist, his small hands curled into fists against the cold stone beneath him. His name was Feng Yinlei, though no one in the sect called him that anymore. To them, he was merely the boy without thunder.
In a realm where thunder was the first sign of divine favor, and spiritual roots awakened with blinding bolts of lightning, Feng Yinlei had awakened to… nothing. No crack of lightning. No pulse of power. No spirit root revealed itself within him.
Only silence.
At the age of ten, during the grand Awakening Ceremony attended by elders and disciples alike, children of the sect stood before the Heavenly Echo Altar, awaiting the judgment of the heavens. When it had been Feng Yinlei's turn, the sky remained still. The clouds refused to gather. The winds refused to rise.
He remembered the whispering among the disciples.
"He's cursed."
"Even the thunder ignores him."
"His meridians must be broken…"
And the worst one, whispered by an elder who thought he couldn't hear:
"Such children are born to suffer. The heavens have turned their faces away."
He had been cast aside after that. Not banished from the Zhenlei Sect, but left to rot on its edges, sweeping floors, cleaning latrines, running errands. A silent servant among thunder-born geniuses.
They gave him no scrolls, no guidance, no cultivation arts. He was deemed unworthy.
And yet, Feng Yinlei endured.
He did not protest. He did not beg. He simply remained—watching, listening, learning.
By day, he cleaned the training fields and observed how disciples breathed during meditation. He watched their footwork as they sparred, memorized the chants they muttered under their breath, and traced the movement of their qi with quiet fascination.
By night, he returned to the cliff. The withered tree there was said to be dead, struck by lightning ages ago and never blooming again. But it was the only place that felt… alive to him.
He would sit beneath it, cross-legged, and stare into the fog that covered the valley below. He never expected the heavens to answer him anymore.
Until one night—they did.
It began not with light, but with a pulse.
Barely perceptible, like the soft breath of the earth itself. Feng Yinlei had been meditating as usual when a sudden warmth stirred deep within his chest. A single beat. Then another. Then stillness.
He opened his eyes.
The tree above him—still gnarled, still dead—shimmered faintly in the moonlight. Its bark bore faint, silvery lines like veins pulsing under old skin.
A voice—not one he heard with his ears, but one he felt in the marrow of his bones—spoke without words:
"What is sealed… is not gone."
The moment passed, and everything was silent again. The silver veins faded. The warmth inside him receded, but did not vanish. It lingered, like an ember beneath ash.
From that night on, Feng Yinlei returned to the tree not only to sit—but to listen.
He listened to the silence.
He breathed in rhythm with the mist.
He placed his hand against the cracked bark and felt—something. A pattern, faint and ancient, like a forgotten melody carved into the world itself.
"Still pretending to be a cultivator?" sneered Wu Shuren, a senior outer disciple, as he kicked over the bucket Feng Yinlei was carrying one afternoon.
The cold water splashed across Feng Yinlei's legs, soaking through his worn robes.
Wu Shuren smirked. "Heard you were out howling at the cliffs again. Do you think silence will teach you cultivation?"
Feng Yinlei simply bowed and picked up the bucket without a word.
He'd learned long ago that speaking back only fed the fire. Besides, Wu Shuren wasn't wrong—Feng Yinlei was trying to learn through silence.
And to his own surprise… it was working.
---
It began with dreams.
In one, he stood within a stormless void, and all around him were sealed doors, each humming with quiet energy. One of them was slightly ajar. He approached it, reached for it, but before he could open it fully, he'd awaken—gasping, sweat-drenched, and heart pounding.
In another, he stood beneath the tree and watched as bolts of black thunder danced through its branches, twisting in unnatural patterns—silent, yet alive.
Each morning after those dreams, his body felt stronger. His limbs no longer trembled under strain. His breath grew deeper. The bruises from sweeping stones all day no longer lingered.
He was… changing.
The silence was no longer empty.
It was speaking.
---
On the eve of his thirteenth birthday, the skies shifted once more.
He had returned to the cliff, heart heavy with questions. Three years had passed since his failed awakening. Three years of being invisible. Unwanted.
He sat beneath the tree and closed his eyes.
The wind picked up.
Then—a crack.
Not of thunder, but of something breaking within him.
Agony lanced through his spine, as though chains buried deep in his flesh were being torn apart. He bit down on a scream, but blood still spilled from his lips. His vision blurred.
He felt his heartbeat slow… and then stop.
In that instant, time itself seemed to halt.
A voice—not from the heavens, but from within—echoed through his mind:
> "The Dao you seek is not heard.
It is remembered."
> "The thunder that does not sound… strikes deepest."
Then came the silence again.
But this silence felt different.
It wasn't empty.
It was complete.
And inside that stillness… something bloomed.
A spark.
A pulse of energy. Small. Barely there.
But undeniably his.
---
When he opened his eyes, dawn had not yet broken. His body was sore, but intact. His blood had dried on his chin. He pushed himself up, limbs trembling.
Then he realized—
He could feel the ground beneath his feet—not just physically, but spiritually.
He reached within, and felt a thread of energy coiled in his core. Weak. Sealed. But alive.
Tears blurred his vision for the first time in years.
He had a spirit root.
No… not born of thunder like others. Not called by lightning.
But shaped by silence.
Forged in rejection.
He didn't know what it meant yet, or what path it would lead him to—but it was real.
He was no longer hollow.
---
Later that morning, rumors spread through the sect.
Lightning had struck the old cliff during the night—just once. No rain. No storm. Just a single, silent bolt that lit up the sky before vanishing.
Elders investigated. No damage was found. No sign of burning.
Only the old withered tree, whose bark now bore faint patterns of silver, like veins of divine metal.
They called it a mystery. An omen. Some called it a disturbance in the natural order.
No one suspected Feng Yinlei.
Why would they?
To them, he was still the boy without thunder.
But within him, thunder had never been the point.
The Dao he would walk… was not forged by storms. It was carved in silence.
And it had already begun.
"In silence, he was forgotten.
Through silence, he will be remembered."