The small, dusty room became his entire world.
For three days, he was a hermit, a scholar of his own pathetic condition. He was a ghost haunting the edges of the clan's awareness. A bowl of thin congee would appear outside his door once a day, left by a servant who never lingered. It was the bare minimum required to keep him alive, and he devoured it gratefully each evening. His waking hours were spent hunched over the bamboo scroll, 'Introduction to Mortal Meridians.'
At first, it was gibberish. A complex anatomical map of pathways and acupoints with names like 'Central Pillar' and 'Nine-Branched River.' It was arcane, alien. But as he forced himself to read and reread, tracing the lines on the diagrams and then trying to locate the corresponding points on his own body, a strange thing happened. The fog in his mind began to recede.
He started to understand the language of his own prison.
The scroll described the human body as a vessel, a network of channels designed to transport energy called Star Force. He read about how a cultivator could turn their senses inward, to feel the flow of their own blood, the beat of their own heart, and eventually, the faint hum of their own life force. It was a necessary first step before any true cultivation could even be attempted.
He tried it. He sat on his bed, crossing his legs in the awkward, unfamiliar posture shown in the diagrams, and closed his eyes. He tried to "listen" to the noise of his own body.
He was immediately assaulted by a cacophony. The frantic, terrified drumming of his own heart. The rushing sound of blood in his ears, a constant, roaring static. The feeling of the air, cold and thin, scraping against the inside of his lungs. His own stray thoughts were a chaotic storm: the mocking smirk of his mother, the dismissive arrogance of his cousin, the looming threat of the Governor's tribute, now only two days away.
The scroll said a true novice must learn to push their awareness past these sensations. He tried. He focused, concentrating all his will on listening for something, anything, beyond the biological noise.
He failed. Utterly.
For hours, he sat, and the noise was all there was. It was an impenetrable wall of his own mortality. There was no "terrifying fall," no silent void. There was only the loud, insistent, inescapable reality of his own weak, mortal body. The frustration was a physical thing, a knot of tension in his shoulders and a burning in his eyes. This, this first, most basic step—even this was beyond him.
Defeated, he scrambled for the other scrolls he had taken from the library. The simple histories. If he couldn't understand the inner world, he would damn well understand the outer one.
He unrolled the 'Abridged History of the Azure Empire' and began to read, his hunger for knowledge now a ravenous, desperate thing. He learned of the Empire's expansionist creed, the Path of Dominion. He learned of the Unspoken Accord that kept powerful cultivators from interfering in mortal politics.
And he learned about the Veiled Peaks Province.
A single passage made the blood drain from his face.
"…the province is notable for a unique, pervasive suppression field, emanating from a great Seal upon the highest peak of the Titan's Tooth range. This field leeches ambient Star Essence from the air, making cultivation exceedingly difficult. It is believed that no cultivator within the field's influence can ever hope to surpass the Third Stage of the Star-Forged Path…"
No one could get past Stage 3.
The entire province, his entire clan, was trapped in a cage.
He thought of the other scroll he had taken, the 'Introduction to Mortal Meridians.' It described the very basics he had learned as a boy. Star Essence was the raw, ambient energy of the world itself, drawn from the stars. A cultivator's entire journey was about learning to absorb it.
The First Stage, Stellar Awakening, was about perception. It was the ability to finally feel that essence, to open the soul's senses. It granted no real power.
The Second Stage, Stellar Foundation, was about the body. Using internal Star Force to temper the skeleton, turning mortal bone into a durable, powerful foundation. It was a purely internal strengthening. This was Yang Wei's realm.
And the Third Stage, Stellar Reforging, was about the pathways. It meant the meridians had been reforged, made strong enough to project one's Star Force, however weakly, into the outside world. It was the first taste of true, external power. The realm of the Patriarch and the clan elders.
It's not just a dying clan in a backwater province. It's a prison. A massive, open-air prison designed to keep everyone inside weak. And these fools are fighting over the scraps in their cell. The knowledge was a physical weight. It explained everything. The clan's decay. The desperation. The inability to resist the Governor's encroachment. They weren't just failing; they were suffocating, their growth permanently stunted by the very mountains that defined their home.
His eyes fell on the last scroll he'd taken: 'Common Yāoshòu of the Titan's Tooth Range.' He unrolled it, his hands unsteady. If the cultivators were caged, what about the beasts?
He read about the Stone-Shelled Rams and the Shadow-Phase Lynx. He learned of the Gravity-Scale Drakes in the Drake's Maw Pass, creatures whose presence was so heavy it could warp the air itself.
And then he saw it. An entry at the very end of the scroll, marked with a warning.
The Ancient Drake Tyrant. Beast King. Domain: The Weeping Spires. A legendary creature, its power is believed to have reached a level equivalent to a human cultivator far beyond the Third Stage. Its continued existence within the suppression field is a mystery that has baffled scholars for centuries.
Beyond Stage 3. The beast had found a way.
The scroll offered no explanation, only speculation. That the beast subsisted not on the thin ambient energy, but by directly consuming rare, energy-rich minerals deep within the mountain. That its bloodline was so ancient and powerful it could defy the suppression.
Whatever the reason, it was a crack in the wall of his despair. It was proof that the cage was not absolute. There was a way. A bug in the system.
"He will starve."
Yang Zhan's voice was a low, frustrated rumble in the elegance of his wife's sitting room. He paced back and forth, his warrior's frame too large, too full of restless energy for the small, fragrant space. The tribute was due tomorrow. The air in the entire estate was thick with a funereal dread.
"The boy has barely left that room in three days," he continued, running a hand through his hair. "The servants say he just reads. What good will that do?"
Madam Liu sat on her divan, a vision of fiery, bored elegance. She examined her perfectly manicured fingernails. "Perhaps he is learning how to read his own eulogy," she purred, her voice devoid of any sympathy. "It is the only text of value he is likely to produce."
"Liu'er!" he growled. "He is your son."
"Is he?" she countered, her amber eyes flicking up to meet his. "The thing in that room is a stranger wearing my son's face. A stranger with a silver tongue and a lecher's gaze. The quiet, pathetic boy I knew is gone. The coma… it changed him." And I have not yet decided if the change is for the better, she thought. But it is… interesting.
Yang Zhan sighed, the anger draining out of him, leaving only a weary sadness. "He is still our blood. We cannot let him waste away. Lan'er brought him his congee today and said he looks like a ghost. Pale as a sheet." A flicker of paternal guilt crossed his face. "I cannot face the ancestors knowing I let my son starve in his own home, no matter how… useless… he has been."
Madam Liu's eyes narrowed. Her husband's foolish sentimentality was an irritation. But… perhaps there was an opportunity here. The boy was a strange new tool. A tool needed to be maintained. A starved, weak tool was of no use to anyone.
"Fine," she said with a sigh of exaggerated annoyance. "You wish to play the doting father? Then play it. I spoke with Lan'er's maid this morning. The First House is swimming in pills and draughts for their precious genius. She mentioned a stock of low-grade Mortal Vitality Pills they give to their outer disciples to help with their chores."
She stood up, her crimson robes whispering around her. "Go to her. Beg my dear sister-in-law for one of her scraps. A single pill. It will not make him strong, but it will keep him from collapsing in a hallway and shaming us further."
She smiled, a slow, calculating expression. "Tell her it is for the sake of the family's face. She understands the value of appearances."
Yang Zhan looked at his wife, then nodded reluctantly. It was a humiliation, begging from the First House. But it was a father's duty.
A knock, sharper and more insistent than his father's, echoed from his door. It was evening on the fourth day. The tribute was due tomorrow.
He quickly rolled up the scrolls, his heart pounding. He slid the door open to find his mother, Madam Liu, standing there. She held a small, lacquered box in her hands.
She looked him up and down, her eyes lingering on his disheveled state, a faint wrinkle of distaste on her perfect face.
"Your father seems to think you are fading away," she said, her voice a silken whip. She thrust the box towards him. "He pleaded with your First Aunt, and she has deigned to grant you a single scrap from her table. From her private stores."
He took the box, his fingers brushing against hers for a barest fraction of a second. The touch was cool, impersonal, yet it sent a jolt through him. He opened it.
Inside, nestled on a bed of silk, was a single, pea-sized pill. It was a dull, earthy brown and smelled faintly of ginger and ginseng. A Mortal Grade Vitality Pill. The lowest of the low.
"Don't get used to it," she said, her eyes cold. "This is the last charity the Second House can afford. The tribute is due tomorrow. After that… we are on our own."
He looked from the pill to her face, at the hard lines of stress around her beautiful, contemptuous eyes. He saw not just a cruel mother, but a desperate woman backed into a corner. He bowed his head, clutching the box. "Thank you, Mother." The word felt like ash in his mouth.
She merely snorted, a soft, dismissive sound, and turned away, her crimson robes swirling around her as she left.
He closed the door, his back sliding down the rough wood until he was on the floor. He stared at the pill in his hand. A drop of water in a dry river. It would do nothing for his cultivation—he had none. It was a purely physical aid. It would only give him a bit of strength, clear his head from the constant hunger.
But that was enough.
Knowledge was his only weapon. And to wield it, he needed to be sharp.
He placed the pill on his tongue. It tasted bitter and earthy. A moment later, a gentle warmth spread through his stomach, not a surge of power, but a simple, welcome relief. The gnawing ache of hunger abated, and the fog of malnutrition that had clouded his thoughts began to clear.
He picked up the scrolls again, his eyes burning with a new, feverish intensity. The beast had found a way. The cage had a crack.
And he would find it.