Chapter 3.5 – Beneath Still Waters
The sun had long set beyond the cracked horizon, bleeding its last light into the dust-choked sky. Hearth's Edge lay in uneasy silence. The villagers celebrated behind their shuttered doors, toasting the good fortune of two youths chosen by a sect. Laughter and cheap wine spilled into the air, masking the anxiety that always followed after cultivators departed—like a windstorm that might return at any time.
But Lin Chen did not celebrate.
He sat alone beside the stone he could not move.
The boulder had become a silent ritual—his place of defiance, his measure of growth. Not once had he been able to budge it. Not with strength. Not with focus. Not even with his will, honed through years of hardship. But that was fine. Cultivation was not a sprint—it was the slow erosion of weakness.
And in this world, he had much to erode.
His cultivation path was not bound to any sect or scroll. He did not study under a master. He had no Qi techniques, no spirit artifacts, no medicinal elixirs. All he had was his body, a fractured memory of ancient breathing arts from his past life, and an unrelenting soul.
As night deepened, he sat cross-legged and began his breathing routine.
Inhale. Slow. Deep. Hold.
He drew in the air not just into his lungs, but into his bones, his marrow. He imagined it wrapping around his heart, whispering into his muscles, cooling the fire of fatigue in his blood. Each breath was a thread in a tapestry he could not yet see.
Exhale. Long. Controlled. Let go.
As he breathed, his awareness expanded—not outward, but inward. Into the cavern of his body. Into his meridians, dark and sluggish. Into the dantian at the base of his navel.
There, he found it again—stillness.
A stillness so deep it did not feel empty, but coiled. Waiting.
Like a lake frozen over, hiding monstrous depth.
And he understood: his dantian was not lifeless—it was dormant.
Something ancient slept there.
—
The next morning brought trouble.
At dawn, the elder's goat pen was found shattered. Two animals missing. Deep claw marks on the posts. No ordinary beast could've done it.
Rumors swirled. Some said it was a mountain leopard, others whispered of a cursed spirit beast. The cultivators had taken the only talismans with them, and no one in the village had spiritual defenses.
Except, perhaps, one.
Lin Chen examined the claw marks in silence. He found faint Qi residue—something most wouldn't sense. Feral. Chaotic. Old.
Tracks led north, toward the Whispering Ravine.
No one went there. The land was said to be haunted, poisoned by failed cultivators who died screaming into the void.
But Lin Chen went.
—
The ravine was a scar in the land, deep and narrow, veined with black moss and pale stone. It breathed cold air even at midday. There were no birds. No insects. Just the sound of dripping water from unseen cracks.
Lin Chen walked cautiously. His footsteps soft. Every sense stretched.
Then he saw it.
A creature lay curled in a cave hollow—part-wolf, part-serpent, covered in grey scales and matted fur. It radiated Qi, thin but volatile. It was wounded. A shard of bone jutted from its thigh.
A Lesser Ravine Beast. Half-spirit, half-mortal. Normally hunted by outer sect disciples for cores and meat.
But this one... was dying.
Lin Chen should have retreated. Should have killed it for the bounty its body would fetch.
Instead, he sat across from it, just outside the hollow. He removed a pouch of stale bread and tore it in half.
"You're not the only thing the world forgot," he said, tossing it gently toward the beast.
It growled, but didn't strike.
They sat there for hours. Silent. Watching each other.
That night, Lin Chen returned with herbs. Not to heal, but to numb pain.
The beast let him approach.
—
Over days, a strange companionship formed. Lin Chen did not name it. He did not try to tame it. But he meditated beside it, sometimes spoke aloud, sometimes simply sat in shared silence.
And something changed.
Not in the beast.
In him.
During one meditation, as wind blew softly into the ravine, he felt a shift in his dantian. A tiny crack. A single spark. Like a flint against stone.
And then—movement.
The still lake had rippled.
He opened his eyes. The beast stared back at him, unblinking.
They understood one another now.
Neither were supposed to exist in this world the way they did.
But both would carve their place.
—
Back in the village, Elder Fan watched Lin Chen return each evening with dirty robes and a faraway gaze. The elder said nothing.
But that night, in a cracked scroll hidden behind a broken shrine, the old man searched for a sigil he hadn't seen in sixty years.
When he found it, his hands trembled.
Beneath it were three words, written in archaic dialect:
Heavenly Dust Vein.
A root thought extinct.
A root not born—but forged.
ed