The mountain wind was sharp enough to cut bone.
The Blackflame Peak was not a place the Lin clan's children were allowed to wander.
It was said to be cursed, a remnant of the ancient war between immortals and devils.
The stone here was black as charcoal, the soil barren, the sky above it always bruised with storm clouds.
The elders warned that cultivation done here would twist one's foundation, corrupt one's soul.
Lin Xun came anyway.
He had no cultivation to twist.
At sixteen, he was the cripple of the Lin clan, a family renowned for their blazing fire arts.
Where his cousins burned with spiritual flame, his body carried only silence. No matter how many times he tried, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth refused to flow into him. His meridians—those invisible channels within the body where power should circulate—were shattered since birth. A verdict as final as death.
In a clan where strength determined worth, this was his sin.
Even his father, once proud of him, had grown cold. His cousins mocked him, the servants ignored him, and the elders had already written his name into the rolls of the useless. In two years, he would be sent away, stripped of clan resources, forgotten.
Still, Lin Xun refused to yield.
Every night, when the clan's estate grew quiet, he climbed to Blackflame Peak. The trek was long, his limbs weak, and the air thin. By the time he reached the summit, his chest heaved as though he had fought ten battles. But he came all the same.
He sat cross-legged upon a jagged slab of black stone and breathed.
Inhale. Exhale. Inhale. Exhale.
He imagined the world's spiritual energy pouring into him, filling his broken body, stitching together what heaven had denied. But no matter how hard he tried, the result was always the same: nothing.
Tonight was no different. His breath was ragged, his body trembling with exhaustion. He opened his eyes, staring at the endless darkness.
"Why?" His whisper vanished into the wind. "Why was I even born, if not to cultivate?"
The heavens did not answer. They never did.
But tonight, the silence broke.
The sky roared.
A bolt of lightning split the heavens, tearing across the clouds like a divine blade. It slammed into the black stone beneath him with a deafening crack.
Lin Xun should have died. A mortal body had no right to withstand heaven's fury. Yet when the flash cleared, he found himself sprawled upon the stone, alive, skin smoking but flesh intact.
And the stone beneath him was no longer plain.
A glowing rune now sprawled across its surface, etched in jagged lines of molten silver. It pulsed faintly, like the heartbeat of a living thing.
Lin Xun's eyes widened. He reached out with trembling fingers and touched it.
The rune flared.
Power surged into him—wild, violent, like a flood bursting through a shattered dam. His body convulsed, his vision blurred.
Pain seared through his veins as if molten metal was being poured into them. His throat tore with a scream.
But within the pain, something else stirred.
Flow.
For the first time in his life, the spiritual energy of heaven and earth moved within him.
His broken meridians, long thought useless, lit up like rivers under moonlight. He could feel it coursing, gathering, colliding, remaking.
Tears spilled down his cheeks. His hands shook as he clenched them into fists.
"I… I can feel it…" His voice was hoarse, broken, but filled with a fierce joy. "The heavens cursed me crippled… then I'll carve my own path against them!"
The rune pulsed brighter in answer, and Lin Xun's blood boiled. He saw visions—flashes of a battlefield where gods and demons clashed, their corpses littering a burning sky.
A black-robed figure stood amidst the carnage, inscribing runes upon stone slabs with blood and thunder. Each rune carried the power to defy fate, to rewrite heaven's law.
And the rune beneath him… was one of those.
The vision faded, leaving him drenched in sweat, his breath shallow. But the power had not vanished. It continued to circulate inside him, reforging what was broken.
His shattered meridians screamed with pain, but where they cracked, they also reknit. The lightning burned away their weakness, remolding them anew.
He did not know how long he endured—minutes, hours—but when the light finally dimmed, Lin Xun collapsed forward, gasping.
His limbs trembled, but his heart thundered. For the first time, he felt it—the faint, undeniable presence of qi within him.
Weak. Flickering. But real.
He laughed, a ragged, half-mad sound. "So this is… cultivation."
The storm above rumbled, as though mocking him, or perhaps acknowledging him.
Lin Xun's eyes hardened. "I don't care what the clan says. I don't care what fate says. From tonight on, I am no longer a cripple."
The next morning, he returned to the Lin clan estate.
The great compound sprawled across the valley below Blackflame Peak, its red-tiled roofs gleaming in the rising sun. The clan's banners, embroidered with blazing phoenix fire, snapped in the wind. Dozens of disciples were already training in the courtyards, their bodies wreathed in flame, each strike scorching the air.
Lin Xun walked among them unnoticed, his plain robes marked him as nothing more than a servant's shadow.
But in his chest, he carried a secret none of them could imagine.
He stopped outside the martial grounds, where his cousin Lin Feng demonstrated his prowess. Fire roared from Feng's fists, scorching a ring of earth around him. The younger disciples cheered, the elders nodded in approval.
Lin Feng turned, catching sight of Lin Xun lingering at the edge. His lips curled. "What are you staring at, cripple? Hoping to learn? Useless trash like you should be cleaning stables, not watching cultivators."
The laughter that followed stung, but not as it once did.
Lin Xun met his cousin's eyes, silent. For years, he had endured humiliation in silence because he had no choice. But now…
Now, he carried qi within him.
The urge to speak, to declare his rebirth, burned on his tongue. Yet he forced it down. If word spread, the elders would descend upon him.
They would want to know where his sudden power came from. They might seize the rune stone, brand it dangerous, strip him of it.
No.
His secret must remain his own.
For now.
He turned away, ignoring the jeers that followed him. Inside, his heart was steady. Let them laugh.
He would remember every voice, every sneer, every lash of scorn. When the time came, he would repay them all.
That night, Lin Xun returned to Blackflame Peak.
The rune stone awaited him, dim now, but still pulsing faintly. He sat upon it again, closed his eyes, and guided the qi within him. The flow was clumsy, jagged, slipping away as often as it obeyed. Yet with each breath, it grew steadier.
Hours passed. Sweat dripped from his brow, his body ached, but his heart surged. The crippled boy was gone.
In his place, a cultivator was born.
And above the clouds, thunder rumbled once more.
As though the heavens had taken notice.