The character for "Void" burned in Li Yao's mind, not with heat, but with an absolute coldness that threatened to freeze his thoughts. The stream of text that followed was not composed of words he could read, but of concepts, of sensations, of a profound understanding of absence that was directly imprinted onto his soul.
The Void Scripture: First Verse – The Unfoundation.
To build a tower that scrapes the heavens, one must first dig a foundation deeper than the abyss. Others fill their vessel with energy. You must become the vessel that contains the absence of all things. Let the world in, for only by allowing all to enter can you truly become empty.
Li Yao sat in the pavilion until the pre-dawn light began to tinge the eastern sky, his body unmoving, his mind reeling. This was not a cultivation method. It was the antithesis of one. Every teaching of the Verdant Mountain Sect, from the most basic breathing exercise to the most advanced Earth Law technique, was about consolidation, strengthening, and filling the body with vibrant energy.
This… this was about dissolution.
He finally stood, his joints stiff. The world looked the same, yet everything had changed. The buzzing auras of the other disciples, which he had only been able to infer before, now felt like loud, garish flames in his perception. The natural energy of the mountain vein felt thick, almost cloying. It was as if he had been deaf his whole life and could now hear, but the only thing to hear was a silence so profound it had a texture all its own.
He went through the motions of the day like a ghost. At the training ground, he performed the physical forms, but internally, he was experimenting. Instead of trying to make his muscles resonate with the earth, he tried to make them not resonate. He imagined his flesh becoming permeable, his bones becoming hollow, allowing the force of his movements to pass through him and into the void.
"Daydreaming again, Junior Brother?" Zhang Fan's voice cut through his concentration. The older boy landed from a powerful leap, the impact sending a small shockwave through the ground that most disciples would feel in their soles. Li Yao felt it, but it was distant, muted, as if he were feeling it through a thick layer of wool.
"Merely contemplating the nature of solidity, Brother Zhang," Li Yao replied, not breaking his rhythm. "If the ground can be firm, surely we can learn to be… less so."
Zhang Fan snorted. "Nonsense. The Earth Law is about unyielding strength. Your problem is you yield too easily." He turned away, already bored.
That's exactly it, Li Yao thought. I'm learning to yield to everything.
His chance to test his newfound understanding came sooner than expected. As part of their preparation for the tournament, the disciples were sent to the "Stone Forest," a training area filled with monolithic pillars infused with Earth energy. The task was simple: use their physical strength and burgeoning energy to shatter one of the smaller pillars.
One by one, disciples stepped forward. Zhang Fan, with a focused shout, channeled his energy and punched, cracking his pillar in two. Liu Mei, a quiet girl with Mist Talent, used a series of precise, vibrating palm strikes to reduce hers to gravel.
Then it was Li Yao's turn. A few snickers rippled through the crowd. He walked up to a pillar that was barely half the size of the others. He placed a hand on its cool, gritty surface. He could feel the dense, sluggish Earth energy within it, a low hum of stability.
He closed his eyes. He didn't try to summon strength. Instead, he enacted the First Verse of the Void Scripture. He breathed in, and on the exhale, he willed the concept of "self" to fade. He was not a fist striking a stone. He was the space between the fist and the stone. He was the emptiness into which the stone's stability could flow.
He pushed.
It wasn't a muscular push. It was an invitation. A suggestion of absence.
A web of fine cracks spread from his palm with a sound like shattering ice. Then, without a loud explosion, the pillar silently collapsed in on itself, crumbling into a neat pile of inert, grey dust. The Earth energy within it was simply… gone. Not dispersed, but nullified.
The snickers died instantly. The training ground fell into a stunned silence.
Elder Guo, who had been observing with a placid expression, suddenly stood up straight, his eyes wide. "What… how did you do that, disciple?"
Li Yao opened his eyes and looked at the pile of dust, then at his own unmarked hand. He felt… nothing. No drain, no surge of power. It was as effortless as breathing out.
"I suppose it was less stable than it looked, Elder," Li Yao said, his face a mask of serene innocence. "Perhaps it was already hollow."
The elder stared at him for a long moment, his gaze penetrating. Li Yao met it calmly, the void in his heart reflecting the elder's scrutiny without revealing anything.
"…Perhaps it was," Elder Guo finally said, though his tone was deeply suspicious. "Return to your duties."
That night, in the solitude of his humble room, Li Yao meditated again. This time, he didn't just feel the silence. He could direct it. He focused on the faint, ever-present warmth of his own body—the residual vitality of a first-realm cultivator. Following the scripture's guidance, he didn't try to refine it or amplify it. He allowed it to dissipate. To empty.
It was a terrifying sensation, like willingly stopping his own heart. A coldness spread from his core. His breath fogged in the warm room. He was walking to the very edge of mortality, peering into the abyss that the scripture promised was his true foundation.
Just as the cold became almost unbearable, a miracle occurred.
Nature abhors a vacuum.
The moment he created a true point of emptiness within himself, the world rushed in to fill it. But it wasn't the thick, cloying natural energy of the mountain. It was something purer, more fundamental. It was the faint, cosmic current he had never been able to perceive—not as a flow of energy, but as a potential that his void actualized. It slipped into the emptiness he had created, not filling him, but marking him.
A single, perfect drop of refined essence coalesced in his dantian. It did not glow. It did not radiate heat or power. It was a drop of absolute darkness, a pinprick of void given form.
Li Yao opened his eyes. They did not shine with profound light like the stories of those breaking through. Instead, they seemed to deepen, the pupils swallowing the scant light of the room, making his gaze unsettlingly profound.
He had not stepped into the Energy Perception Realm.
He had dug a hole straight through it and found something else on the other side. The Unfoundation was laid. The first brick of a tower that aimed not for the heavens, but to become the space in which the heavens themselves existed.
He looked out his window at the countless stars, the distant, shining points of light in the vast, dark canvas of the night.
"A void can contain anything," he murmured, a faint, knowing smile on his lips. "Even the stars themselves. I wonder what else I can put in here."