The dismissal bell tolled, its sonorous chime echoing through the mist-shrouded peaks of the Verdant Cloud Sect.
For most disciples, it was a signal to rush to the dining halls or to secure a good spot for evening meditation.
For Lin Feng, it was the signal for another kind of ritual.
"Move faster, trash!"
A shove sent him stumbling forward, his worn disciple's robes offering no protection against the sharp pebbles of the path.
He caught himself against a cold stone wall, his hands scraping raw.
"Brother Hu wants his laundry done before nightfall," sneered a lanky youth, snatching the simple cloth satchel from Lin Feng's shoulder. "And the latrines near the West Pavilion need scrubbing. Consider it your contribution to the sect."
Lin Feng didn't respond. He simply kept his head down, his gaze fixed on the worn toes of his boots.
Words were fuel. Resistance was a luxury he couldn't afford.
For three years, since his aging grandfather, a former outer sect steward, had passed and left him this precarious position, this had been his life.
The boy with the Dormant Meridians. The spiritual cripple. The sect's whipping boy.
He was sixteen, but the constant spiritual poverty and manual labor had carved lines of weariness into his face that made him look older.
The bullies, having achieved their daily goal of reinforcing their own superiority, laughed and swaggered away, his satchel swinging from one of their hands.
Lin Feng waited until their voices faded before he pushed off the wall.
He didn't head to the dining hall. The portions allotted to him were meager at best, and often "forgotten" entirely.
Instead, he turned towards the back hills, towards the one place they usually left him alone, the Scrap-Script Pavilion.
It was a grand name for a dilapidated wooden building that housed the sect's discards: broken spirit tools, jade slips with fractured formations, and mountains of mildewed scrolls containing incomplete or failed cultivation manuals.
The air inside was thick with the smell of dust and decay.
To everyone else, it was a monument to failure. To Lin Feng, it was a library.
He couldn't cultivate the energy they prized, but he could understand the theories.
He devoured the texts on herbology, formation foundations, and the history of the cultivation world.
It was the only way he could feel connected to the path he was forever barred from walking.
Tonight, however, the silence of the pavilion felt heavier than usual.
A deep, resonant thrum seemed to vibrate through the very floorboards, a sensation that was felt rather than heard.
It was coming from the main training grounds.
The Inner Sect Disciple Examination.
He knew he shouldn't. It was a special kind of torture to watch what he could never have.
But like a moth to a flame, he found himself drawn to the edge of the forest overlooking the vast, flagstone square.
Hundreds of disciples sat in orderly rows, their faces bathed in the ethereal glow of moonlight and the shimmering light of their own cultivated Qi.
At the center of the platform, Elders in silken robes sat upon elevated daises, their auras so dense they made the air waver.
And then there was her.
Su Lingshan.
She sat apart from the others, not out of arrogance, but out of necessity.
A faint, visible mist of cold air swirled around her, and the stone beneath her was coated with a delicate layer of frost.
Her features were exquisitely carved, like jade, but held an untouchable, frigid beauty.
The Prodigy of the Frozen Phoenix Constitution.
They said she had formed a perfect Qi Core before she was fifteen.
She was the sect's brightest hope, a world apart from someone like him.
As Lin Feng watched, the Elder presiding over the examination held up a massive, black iron bell, the Soul Resonance Bell.
To pass, an inner sect disciple candidate had to make it chime purely with the force of their spiritual energy.
One by one, disciples stepped forward. A focused blast of Qi would result in a dull, shallow clang.
Some managed a clearer note. Many failed to make a sound at all, their faces crumbling with shame as they were waved away.
Then, it was Su Lingshan's turn.
She didn't step forward aggressively. She simply rose, a movement so fluid it seemed to defy gravity.
She didn't even lift a hand. She merely glanced at the bell.
A strand of her silver-blue Qi, visible to the naked eye, shot forth.
It wasn't a blast, but a precise, elegant thread.
DONG—
The chime was not loud, but profound. It was clear and pure, resonating not just in the air, but in the bones of every spectator.
It vibrated through the flagstones, up through the soles of Lin Feng's feet, and settled deep in his chest.
The sound spoke of vast, untapped power and an ancient, icy loneliness.
For a single, unguarded moment, as the chime faded, Su Lingshan's eyes swept across the crowd.
They passed over the adoring disciples, the nodding Elders, and for a heartbeat, scanned the dark tree line.
Lin Feng froze. He was deep in the shadows, he was sure of it.
But for an instant, he felt as if her gaze, cold and clear as a mountain lake, had passed directly over him.
A shiver that had nothing to do with the cold ran down his spine.
He quickly melted back into the forest, his heart hammering.
He was a fool. A pebble looking up at the moon.
There was no connection, only the vast, unbridgeable chasm between them.
He hurried back to the Scrap-Script Pavilion, the image of her and the sound of the bell burned into his mind.
The usual despair felt sharper tonight, more acute.
The silence of the pavilion was no longer a comfort, but a cage.
Seeking a distraction, he rummaged through a new pile of discarded scrolls left by an impatient librarian.
Most were the usual dross. Then, his fingers brushed against something different.
It wasn't a jade slip or a paper scroll. It was a small, rectangular piece of obsidian-black wood, so dark it seemed to drink the light around it.
It was cool to the touch, and its surface was inscribed with faint, silvery lines that formed no pattern he recognized.
As he held it, the strange thrum from the examination grounds seemed to echo inside his own skull.
But it was different this time. It was paired with a new sensation, a faint, desperate pull from the black wood tablet.
Driven by an impulse he didn't understand, Lin Feng closed his eyes, trying to feel it.
He had no Qi to probe with. All he had was his own feeble spirit, his Dormant Meridians like locked doors in a hollow house.
He focused on the tablet, on the silvery lines. He imagined them glowing.
Nothing happened.
He let out a bitter sigh. Of course. What had he expected?
It was then, in that moment of absolute dejection, that he felt it. Not a flow of energy, but a crack.
A sensation deep within his chest, as if a tiny, ancient seal, holding back an ocean of nothingness, had finally splintered.
A wave of vertigo washed over him. The world didn't brighten with spiritual light.
Instead, it grayed. The colors of the pavilion leeched away, the solid shelves and scrolls becoming translucent, ghostly.
And in this new, monochrome world, he saw them.
Shimmering, faint impressions hovering in the air.
A translucent figure repeating a sword form in a corner, its movements frantic and incomplete.
Another, hunched over a long-vanished desk, scribbling furiously on a non-existent scroll.
Whispers, not of sound, but of pure intent, regret, failure, a technique almost perfected, a name forgotten.
They were echoes. The residual memories of the countless cultivators who had failed in this very place, their strongest emotions and last thoughts imprinted upon the fabric of reality.
He was not sensing Qi. He was seeing ghosts. The ghosts of ambition.
Lin Feng's eyes snapped open. The world was back to normal.
The pavilion was solid, the scrolls were dusty.
The black wood tablet in his hand was now warm.
He dropped it as if it were a hot coal, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
He looked around wildly, but the pavilion was empty. Silent.
Except it wasn't. He could still feel them. The whispers were gone, but the presence of those echoes remained at the edge of his perception, a silent, mournful chorus.
He had spent his whole life unable to perceive the world of cultivation.
Now, he was seeing the cemetery of its dreams.
And he had no idea what it meant, or how deep the abyss beneath his feet truly went.