Lin Wei sat up, his heart hammering against his ribs. The stream trickled beside him, the scent of fresh pine and wet stone filling his nostrils. The cold was real, the bruises a vivid reality—and yet, the memory of the immense, emerald Void Eye was even more real.
He felt an unfamiliar energy coiled in his spiritual sea, not the gentle, flowing Qi that real cultivators possessed, but a hungry, coiled black void. It felt cold, ancient, and undeniably powerful.
Devour and Refine all forms of energy. The words echoed in his mind.
He glanced around, trying to find a source of energy to test this terrifying new ability. The Azure Sky Sect was built on a minor spiritual nexus, but the Qi here was too sparse to feel. His eyes fell on the cracked stone that had hidden the Fragment. It was just a regular rock now.
Then, his gaze landed on the only other source of energy nearby: the discarded laundry basin. Inside it, floating on the murky water, was a single, low-grade Spiritual Stone. Jian Lei must have dropped it during the beating or had been planning to plant it on Lin Wei to frame him. It pulsed with a faint, white light—the tangible essence of condensed Heaven and Earth Qi.
In the past, merely holding one would have done nothing for him. A cultivator would absorb the Qi slowly, refining it into their own cultivation base. For Lin Wei, it would have been like trying to fill a sieve with sand.
But now... driven by a sudden, irresistible compulsion, Lin Wei picked up the stone. It felt warm and smooth. He didn't try to 'cultivate' it; he simply focused on the coiled, black void behind his eyes, on the memory of the emerald Edict.
Devour.
The Spiritual Stone instantly glowed with a frantic intensity, and the white light within it began to stream out, not into the air, but directly into Lin Wei's hand, through his skin, and into his core.
The feeling was overwhelming. It wasn't the slow, steady drip of normal cultivation; it was a violent, rapid suck. The energy rushed in, not clean and pure, but a chaotic torrent of Qi, mixed with the impurities of the stone itself.
Most cultivators would have been crippled by trying to absorb such a discordant mix so quickly. Their Meridians would have burst.
But the moment the energy reached his core, the terrifying, black void of the Void Eye Edict activated. The raw, white Qi was instantly pulled into the core, where it was not just refined, but violently purified and compressed.
The energy that emerged from the void was dark green, dense, and utterly stable. It flowed into the empty channels of Lin Wei's Mortal Roots, which acted less like roots and more like conduits now, wide and open.
Boom!
A silent thunderclap resonated in his spirit. He felt a sudden, profound breakthrough. The invisible barrier he had lived with his entire life, the cage of the mortal, had been shattered.
Qi Condensation, First Level.
The low-grade Spiritual Stone in his hand crumbled to dust, its essence completely stripped away. The entire process took less than ten breaths of air. Lin Wei was breathing heavily, his entire body alight with a new, vibrant energy. He felt stronger, faster, and his eyesight was suddenly crystal clear, able to pick out the veins in the granite rock.
I... I have cultivated! I am a cultivator!
The elation was instantly sobered by a cold thought. This was not the Qi Condensation of his peers. His energy was darker, denser, and had been acquired in a manner that was monstrously fast and utterly unnatural.
Lin Wei looked down at his hands, then up the mountain path where Jian Lei had disappeared. The memory of the beating was fresh, the new power a burning fuel. He had to clean the robes before morning. But now, he wouldn't just be scrubbing to survive.
He was scrubbing to survive long enough to Devour his way to a power that would make Jian Lei and his ilk crumble like the Spiritual Stone in his palm. The Edict had given him a tool. Now, he needed a plan.