The events of the day caught up with him all at once. The challenge. The beating. The discovery of his immortality. The frantic searching. His body demanded rest.
Then, the pillow beneath his head began to emit a clouded light, flickering in tune with his emotions.
The light was faint at first. Barely visible. Like dying embers in a fireplace. But it was there. Real. Growing stronger.
A faint hum.
The sound was almost subsonic. More felt than heard. A vibration that resonated through his skull directly into his consciousness.
Yang Kai's eyes snapped open.
Sleep vanished instantly. His senses went on high alert. Something was happening. Finally. After all his searching, something was responding.
He felt it, a strange, almost invisible pulse coming from beneath his head.
It was like a heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Ancient. The pulse carried weight, as if something incredibly old and powerful was stirring from long sleep.
Confused, he sat up. That was when he saw it.
His frustration had made him careless. He had not even noticed the blood trickling onto the pillow. But now, it was gone. Absorbed.
The blood from his wounded hand had continued dripping while he lay down. Without realizing it, he had achieved blood recognition not through deliberate action but through accident.
Or was it fate?
And now, it was being absorbed.
The blood sank into the stone like ink on paper, vanishing completely. The black surface seemed to drink it hungrily, pulling every drop into itself until no trace remained.
The black pillow under Yang Kai's head suddenly burst forth a black ray. This black ray emerged from the black stone and hovered in the air for a bit before drilling into Yang Kai's head. Instantly disappearing from sight.
Pain exploded through his consciousness. Not physical pain but something deeper. Something fundamental. The black ray carried information, knowledge, awareness that was not meant for mortal minds.
Yang Kai gasped, his body convulsing. It felt like his soul was being rewritten.
At the same time, in an ancient and desolate place a strange presence descended. Like tidal waves, the collapse of snow, any person in front of him was insignificant that strange presence thought.
The vision came unbidden. Yang Kai was no longer in his hut. He stood in a place that should not exist. A realm of endless desolation where nothing lived and nothing could live.
The sky was blood red. The ground was cracked obsidian. Mountains of bones stretched to the horizon.
And in the center of it all, a presence. Something so vast, so ancient, so powerful that comprehending it threatened to shatter Yang Kai's sanity.
This was not a person. Not a god. This was something beyond such classifications. A force of nature given consciousness. An existence that had transcended mortality so completely that the very concept seemed laughable.
Yang Kai suddenly opened his eyes, his whole body sweating and bursting with fear.
He was back in his hut. The vision had ended. But the terror remained. His heart pounded like a war drum. His lungs heaved as if he had run a marathon. Cold sweat drenched his entire body.
What was that? What had he just witnessed? The presence in that desolate place had been overwhelming. Just perceiving its existence had nearly destroyed him.
Yang Kai's breath came in short gasps. His body trembled, drenched in sweat. The presence was suffocating. For a moment, he thought he might pass out. But then, something within him, some buried instinct, forced him to steady himself.
His immortality activated. The gift from the old man in the void kept him from succumbing to the terror. His soul stabilized, his consciousness anchored back to reality.
Without that protection, the vision alone might have killed him.
Hurriedly he got up, folded up the deerskin blanket and repositioned.
His hands shook as he moved. The blanket fell twice before he managed to fold it properly. His coordination was shot, his body still recovering from the shock.
This feeling, his gut told him that it was not the same.
The pillow felt different. The weight had changed. The texture had changed. Even the temperature seemed different against his hands.
It was like a thick book was being thrown into the air, with the pages spread out as it landed. Yang Kai was flabbergasted, momentarily forgetting to catch it.
The transformation happened before his eyes. The solid black stone began to ripple like water. Its edges softened, expanded, unfolded in a way that defied physics.
His hands trembled. The weight shifted, and before he could react, the pillow slipped from his fingers, hitting the ground with a heavy thud, but when it landed, it was no longer a stone. It had unfolded into a thick, ancient book.
The sound echoed through the small hut. But Yang Kai barely noticed. His attention was entirely focused on what lay on the ground.
Where a black stone pillow had fallen, a black book now rested.
The book was large, roughly the size of a person's torso. Its cover was pure black, so black it seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it. There were no markings, no title, no decorations. Just smooth, featureless black material that looked like stone but felt like leather.
It was empty. But the book's pages could not let him see through it. He gently tried to tear a page, but he could not tear it at all.
Yang Kai picked up the book carefully, as if handling something that might explode. The pages were thick, substantial, made of material he did not recognize. They felt like paper but were clearly much more durable.
He tried to tear one. Just a small rip to test its strength. The page did not budge. It might as well have been made of steel.
This thick book, left him speechless, though there were no words.
Every page was blank. Pure white emptiness. No text, no diagrams, no markings of any kind. Just page after page of nothing.
Yet Yang Kai could feel power radiating from it. This was no ordinary book. This was something significant, something that had been waiting for him.
Mysterious. Yang Kai turned to the first page, and nothing. Staring at the blank book page.
He focused his mind on the page. Tried to will text to appear. Dripped more blood on it. Channeled what little World Energy he could gather. Nothing worked.
The page remained stubbornly blank.
With little effort, he still found little change to the page. Then he discovered there was a little change to the page. The strange presence that appeared in the desolate place of his dreamed had appeared again. A line of golden coloured characters had started to appear.
The text materialized slowly. One stroke at a time. Golden light traced characters that Yang Kai could read despite never having seen this style of writing before.
The knowledge came directly to his mind. Not learned but understood. As if the book was communicating meaning directly to his consciousness.
"Blood is cited, the golden body descends, not a miracle, but a golden immortal!"
Yang Kai's breath caught.
The words were not just text. They carried weight. Power. Intent. Each character seemed to resonate with fundamental laws of the universe itself.
The words burned into his soul.
He barely had time to register them before a massive, overwhelming presence descended.
The same presence from his vision. The entity from that desolate place. It was here. Watching. Judging. Its attention focused on Yang Kai like the gaze of a supreme being upon an ant.
Like a tidal wave. Like a collapsing mountain. Like the roar of a god.
Yang Kai's knees buckled. The pressure was physical. Real. Crushing. If not for his immortality, his body would have been flattened into paste.
Something ancient had awakened.
Whatever consciousness resided in this book, it had been sleeping. For how long, Yang Kai could not guess. Decades? Centuries? Millennia? But his blood had triggered something. Called to something.
And now it was awake.
Yang Kai's mind went blank.
Self preservation instincts screamed at him to run. To throw the book away. To flee High Heaven Pavilion and never look back. But his body would not obey.
He was frozen. Paralyzed by the sheer magnitude of the presence bearing down on him.
Gradually, other lines slowly appeared.
"Proud golden body, rules the fence, indomitable spirit, will it descend!"
More golden text manifested. The characters were bold, domineering, written with absolute confidence. This was not a request or a suggestion. This was a declaration.
Eight lines and thirty two words occupied an entire page. Giving one a dominating heavenly and earthly feeling, as if those words were imbued with domineering spirit.
Yang Kai read them all. His eyes traced each character, and with each word, understanding grew. This was an inheritance. A legacy left by someone, or something, beyond mortal comprehension.
The Black Book had revealed its first secret.
But Yang Kai knew instinctively that this was only the beginning. The book contained more. Much more. Layers upon layers of knowledge waiting to be unlocked.
He had found his cheat item. His golden finger. His cultivation novel protagonist advantage.
The question was whether he was strong enough to bear it.
The presence slowly faded. The pressure lifted. The golden text remained, glowing faintly on the page. Yang Kai collapsed to his knees, gasping for breath.
His entire body trembled. Cold sweat dripped from his face. But despite the terror, despite the overwhelming power he had just encountered, a smile crept across his lips.
This was it. This was what he had been searching for. The Black Book would be his path to strength. His method of rising from Trial Disciple to the peak of the Martial Dao.
Yang Kai did not know what a "golden body" was. Did not understand what "golden immortal" meant. But he would learn.
He had time. He had immortality. And now, he had a treasure that could change everything.
The journey to the peak began here, in a tiny hut, with a mysterious black book and a young man determined to never lose again.
Yang Kai's laughter echoed through the small room. Quiet at first, then growing louder. The laughter of someone who had just discovered hope in the depths of despair.
The Black Book pulsed with faint light, as if acknowledging its new master.