Azure Peak Sect was encased in a cloud of disappointment from the morning mist.
Chen Feng knelt in the punishment hall, his robes torn and stained with dried blood. Around him, disciples whispered—some with pity, most with contempt. The stone floor beneath his knees had grown warm from three hours of stillness, yet he maintained his position without tremor or complaint.
'Five years,' he thought, his jaw tightening imperceptibly. 'Five years of humiliation, and still they test me.'
Elder Shen approached, he's foot step echoing through the cavernous hall. The old man's beard, white as mountain snow, swayed with each measured step. His eyes held neither kindness nor cruelty—only the cold assessment of one weighing a tool's usefulness.
"Chen Feng." The name fell like a stone into still water. "You have failed the Qi Condensation trial for the seventeenth time."
Murmurs rippled through the assembled disciples. Chen Feng kept his gaze lowered, counting the cracks in the floor tiles. Thirty-seven visible from this angle. He had memorized them all.
"This humble disciple accepts his inadequacy," Chen Feng said, the words ashes on his tongue.
Elder Shen circled him slowly, like a hawk examining wounded prey. "Your meridians are damaged beyond conventional repair. Your dantian barely retains spiritual energy. Tell me—why does Azure Peak Sect continue to waste resources on you?"
The question hung in the air, sharp as a blade.
Chen Feng's fingers, hidden in his sleeves, curled into fists. Because my father died defending this sect's honor. Because Elder Mo promised him on his deathbed. Because you fear the political consequences of casting out a war hero's son.
But he said only: "This disciple does not know, Elder."
"Correct." Shen's voice carried a note of satisfaction. "You do not know your place, yet we tolerate your presence out of respect for Chen Zhen's sacrifice. However—" He paused, letting the weight of the word settle. "—our patience is not infinite."
Behind Elder Shen, a young man in pristine azure robes stepped forward. Zhao Tian—the sect's rising star, his face almost beautiful in its symmetry, marred only by the cold ambition in his dark eyes.
"Elder Shen, if I may?" Zhao Tian's voice carried the musical quality of one who had never known hardship. When the elder nodded, he continued: "Perhaps Brother Chen requires additional... motivation to overcome his limitations."
The slight emphasis on 'brother' drew snickers from several disciples.
Chen Feng finally raised his head, meeting Zhao Tian's gaze with eyes that revealed nothing. The two had entered the sect on the same day, five years ago. One had ascended to the seventh level of Qi Condensation, earning praise and resources. The other had remained trapped at the threshold, unable to even form a stable cultivation base.
"What do you propose, Disciple Zhao?" Elder Shen asked, though his tone suggested he already knew the answer.
"The Outer Disciple Competition is in three months," Zhao Tian said, his smile widening fractionally. "If Chen Feng cannot reach the second level of Qi Condensation by then, perhaps he should be... released from his obligations to the sect. Surely that would be mercy, freeing him from expectations he cannot meet."
'Ah,' Chen Feng thought distantly. 'So that's the play.'
The suggestion was clever. Framed as compassion while ensuring Chen Feng's removal. The Outer Disciple Competition was mandatory for all disciples below Inner Sect status. Without reaching the second level, he would be eliminated in the first round—a public humiliation that would give the sect grounds to expel him without dishonoring his father's memory.
Elder Shen stroked his beard thoughtfully. "An interesting proposal. Chen Feng, what say you?"
Every eye in the hall fixed upon him. This was the moment they wanted—his breakdown, his pleading, his final degradation.
Instead, Chen Feng pressed his forehead to the cold stone floor, performing the full prostration of acceptance. "This disciple will strive to meet Disciple Zhao's expectations."
Silence.
It was not the answer they had anticipated. Zhao Tian's smile faltered for the briefest moment before reasserting itself. Elder Shen's eyes narrowed fractionally.
"Very well," the elder said slowly. "You have three months. Dismissed."
Chen Feng rose, his movements controlled despite the stiffness in his limbs. He bowed once more and turned toward the exit, aware of every gaze tracking his departure. He could feel their thoughts like insects crawling across his skin: Pathetic. Delusional. Dead man walking.
Let them think what they wished.
The morning sun hit his face as he stepped outside, warm and indifferent to human concerns. The Azure Peak rose behind the sect buildings, its summit perpetually shrouded in clouds. Legend said the sect's founder had achieved enlightenment at that peak, touched by celestial light that opened pathways to immortality.
Chen Feng had stopped believing in legends three years ago.
He made his way toward the Outer Disciple quarters, a cluster of worn buildings at the sect's periphery. His room was barely larger than a storage closet—a sleeping mat, a cultivation cushion with stuffing leaking from several tears, and a small trunk containing his few possessions.
Only when the door closed behind him did Chen Feng allow his shoulders to slump.
His hand moved to his chest, pressing against the spot where his dantian resided—that crucial energy center that every cultivator relied upon. Beneath the skin and muscle, he could feel it: a hollow space where power should gather and grow. The spiritual energy he managed to absorb leaked away like water through cupped hands.
This was the result of the "accident" five years ago, during the entrance examination. An explosion during the talent assessment, blamed on a faulty formation array. Only Chen Feng knew the truth—the subtle push of spiritual energy from another candidate, the way the examiner had looked away at the crucial moment, the speed with which the investigation concluded.
But truth without proof was merely paranoia.
He pulled the trunk open and removed a small wooden box from beneath a false bottom. Inside lay a jade slip, its surface covered in hair-thin cracks. His father's last gift, pressed into his hands with bloody fingers and desperate urgency.
"When you are ready," Chen Zhen had whispered, his life bleeding out onto the battlefield. "When you have nothing left to lose... remember who you are."
Chen Feng had been ten years old. He hadn't understood then.
He understood now.
The jade slip contained a cultivation technique—one his father had warned him never to reveal. The Celestial Demon Scripture, a forbidden art that walked the line between divine and demonic, derided by orthodox sects as a path to corruption and madness.
For five years, Chen Feng had resisted. He had tried the righteous path, attempted to fix his damaged foundation through conventional means, endured humiliation while hoping for a miracle.
Three months until the competition. Three months until his expulsion, and likely his death—the wilderness beyond the sect was unforgiving to failed cultivators.
He held the jade slip in both hands, feeling the faint pulse of power within it, like a heartbeat trapped in stone.
'Forgive me, Father,' he thought. 'I am not strong enough to walk your righteous path.'
Chen Feng pressed the jade slip to his forehead.
Information flooded his consciousness—not gentle, but violent, like a river breaking through a dam. Cultivation methods, forbidden techniques, warnings written in blood and suffering. The Celestial Demon Scripture did not offer power freely. It demanded sacrifice, risked transformation into something inhuman.
But it offered one thing conventional cultivation could not: a foundation built not on perfect meridians and pristine dantians, but on will, on hunger, on the deliberate consumption of spiritual energy through means others considered taboo.
Pain lanced through his skull as the knowledge settled into place. When Chen Feng finally lowered the jade slip, his hands were shaking and blood dripped from his nose.
In the mirror across the room—a luxury he'd salvaged from a trash heap—his reflection stared back. Same thin face, same ordinary features, same dark eyes.
But something behind those eyes had changed.
Chen Feng set the jade slip aside carefully and moved to sit cross-legged on his cultivation cushion. The technique was clear in his mind now, burning like brands: to begin, he needed spirit stones, the more the better. But outer disciples received only two spirit stones monthly—barely enough to sustain basic cultivation.
He would need to find another source.
A knock at the door interrupted his planning.
"Chen Feng?" A soft voice, female. "Are you alright? I heard about the punishment hall."
Lin Mei. One of the few disciples who had shown him any kindness, though even she kept her distance in public. A wise decision—association with failure bred its own stigma.
"I'm fine," he called back, keeping his voice steady. "Thank you for your concern, Senior Sister Lin."
A pause. "If... if you need anything..."
"I know where to find you."
Her footsteps retreated, soft as falling leaves.
Chen Feng returned his attention inward, beginning the first breathing pattern of the Celestial Demon Scripture. Unlike orthodox cultivation that drew in spiritual energy to purify and circulate it, this technique actively pulled at the ambient energy with hungry intent, forcing it into his damaged dantian like water into a cracked vessel.
It shouldn't work. By all conventional understanding, the energy should simply leak away.
But the Scripture didn't store energy in the dantian—it compressed it within the meridians themselves, transforming the body into a network of energy pathways that fed upon spiritual power like a beast consuming meat.
Pain flared as the first wisps of energy entered his system, burning through damaged channels. Chen Feng gritted his teeth and maintained focus. Pain was temporary. Humiliation was forever unless he changed his fate.
Sweat beaded on his forehead. His muscles trembled. But slowly, infinitesimally, power began to gather—not in his broken dantian, but woven through his very flesh and bone.
Outside, the sun tracked across the sky. Disciples moved through their routines: training, studying, political maneuvering. None knew that in a forgotten room at the sect's edge, a discarded failure was taking his first steps down a path that would shake the foundations of the cultivation world.
Chen Feng cultivated until sunset, then beyond, pushing past the point where his body screamed for rest. When he finally opened his eyes, the room was dark and his robes were soaked through with sweat.
But he could feel it—a thread of power, thin as spider silk but undeniably present, woven through his meridians.
In three months, they expected him to fail.
He would show them what failure truly meant.