Chapter 15: The Price of Awakening
The silence after the dragon's dream was deafening.
For three days, they trekked north through the Marches as the land underwent a quiet death. The purple mist bled from the air, leaving behind a skeletal landscape of grey trees and metallic streams. The intelligent malice was gone, but the centuries of poison remained in the soil and water, a fading scar.
The group was changed. Borus walked taller, his color returning as the ambient drain on his vitality ceased. Lin's eyes lost their haunted glaze, though she watched Feng now with the focus of a strategist, not a debtor. Kael was sullen, his wounded arm healing poorly without the constant pressure of environmental corruption to fight. He watched Feng with a coiled resentment that had nowhere to go.
And Scholar Wen… he was a man who had found the answer to his life's question and wished he hadn't. He followed Feng like a shadow, his earlier academic fervor replaced by a grim, awestruck caution. He no longer saw a specimen. He saw an event.
Feng himself moved in a bubble of deep fatigue. Consuming the core conflict had been an apocalyptic exertion. His new, stable nexus of power was a profound advancement, but it was empty, a magnificent engine with no fuel. He felt hollowed out, scraped clean. The black jade shard and silver seal-disc in his pack were heavy with potential, but they were not food. They were tools, and he was too weak to lift them.
He needed to feed. But the Marches, now just a toxic wasteland, offered only bland poison, not the vibrant tribulation he craved.
On the fourth day, they reached the northern edge of the blight. Before them stretched a vast, windswept grassland under a clear, cold sky—the Golden Steppe, according to Wen's maps. The border between ruin and a harsh, but living, world.
They made camp on the last blighted hill, looking out at the clean expanse. It was time to part ways.
"My research is complete," Wen announced, his voice flat. "The nature of the Marches' curse is resolved. I will return to the nearest scholarly enclave to document it." He turned to Feng. "You carry a dangerous truth, Feng. Not just power, but a precedent. The world is not ready for a cultivator who treats heavenly wrath and mortal sacrifice as ingredients. They will call you demon. Heretic. Worse."
Feng met his gaze. He didn't care about names.
Wen sighed. "I will not speak of you. Consider it… payment for the spectacle. But others will come. The cleansing of the Marches will not go unnoticed. Power vacuums attract attention." He bowed, a stiff, formal gesture, and without another word, turned and began walking east, alone, back toward civilization.
Borus clapped Feng on the shoulder, a gesture that was almost friendly. "You're a strange one, boy. But you stood when the roots pulled. I owe you. If you're ever near the Ironwood outpost, I'll stand you an ale." He hefted his hammer and lumbered off after Wen, preferring the scholar's known path to the wild steppe.
Lin and Kael remained.
Lin checked the bindings on her spear. "The Steppe is bandit country. Nomad tribes. Beast herds. You'll need a guide who knows how to avoid attention."
Kael scowled. "Why? The pup's a one-man catastrophe. He doesn't need us."
"He's exhausted," Lin said simply, her eyes on Feng's pale, drawn face. "And he just changed the weather for a thousand miles. Every cultivator with a sense for Qi for two provinces felt that. Hunters will come. He needs eyes at his back while he recovers." She looked at Kael. "And you need a share of whatever comes next. You lost coin on the last job. Your arm is weak. You won't make it alone."
Her logic was merciless and true. Kael's greed warred with his survival instinct. He looked at the vast, empty steppe, then back at Feng, who stood silently watching them decide his fate. Finally, he spat on the blighted ground. "Fine. But I get first pick of any loot. And when he's back on his feet, we renegotiate."
It was settled. The scholar and the brute were gone. The knife-fighter and the survivor remained.
They descended into the Golden Steppe. The air was clean, sharp with the scent of dry grass and distant snow. The Qi here was thin but vibrant, wild and free. It was a shock to Feng's system after the dense, curated corruptions of the sect and the Marches.
They walked for a day without seeing another soul. Feng's hunger grew, a painful gnawing in his spiritual core. He tried to pull in the ambient Qi, but it was like trying to drink a lake through a straw. His refined, hungry Dao needed substance, not this thin broth.
Late in the afternoon, Lin raised a fist. She pointed to the west. A plume of dust.
"Riders," she murmured. "Many. Moving fast. Not a trade caravan."
They hid in a dip in the land, watching. A band of twenty horsemen thundered across the plain, their clothes a mix of furs and stolen silks, their faces hard. They were trailing three captives—tribespeople, their hands bound, stumbling behind the horses. Slavers.
Feng felt nothing for the captives. Their fear was a distant, petty thing. But he looked at the slavers. Their Qi was a brutish, violent red. They were strong, most at Qi Gathering stages four or five, the leader a solid stage six. They were brimming with the tribulation of cruelty, of domination, of easy violence.
They were food.
His hollow dantian screamed at the sight.
"We go around," Lin whispered. "Too many."
Kael nodded fervently.
Feng shook his head. He pointed at the slavers, then at his own mouth.
Lin's eyes widened. "You can't be serious. You're a ghost of yourself. That's a war party."
Feng was already moving, not toward the slavers, but on a parallel course, staying low in the grass. He had a plan. A desperate, simple plan.
He needed a bottleneck. He found it half a mile ahead—a dry wash, a narrow cut in the earth where the slavers would have to slow, riding single-file.
He scrambled into the wash, lying flat against the sandy bank. Lin and Kael, after a furious silent argument, followed, taking positions on the opposite bank. They were committed now.
They didn't have to wait long. The thunder of hooves grew louder. The slavers, laughing and shouting, urged their captives into the wash. The leader, a bald man with a scar across his lips, rode at the front.
As the first horse passed below him, Feng didn't attack. He waited. He let half the party enter the narrow passage.
Then he stood up.
He didn't roar. He didn't summon a flashy technique. He simply exhaled.
He pushed the last dregs of his power, the hollow ache of his exhaustion, and the profound, unsettling nature of his Dao outwards in a single, silent pulse.
It was not an attack of force, but of presence. The aura of a thing that had devoured a dragon's dream.
The horses at the front screamed, rearing in primal terror. The slavers shouted in confusion. The tribulation of their violent confidence met a tribulation of a completely different order—a silent, hungry void that spoke of geological ages and celestial wrath.
In that moment of chaotic distraction, Lin and Kael struck.
Lin's spear took the lead slaver in the throat as he fought his panicked horse. He fell without a sound. Kael, his face a mask of frantic greed and fear, threw his daggers into the confused mass, aiming for eyes and throats.
Feng jumped down into the wash. He didn't go for the armed men. He went for the fear.
He walked into the heart of the panicked, milling horses and shouting men. A slaver saw him, a skinny kid, and swung a curved sword. Feng didn't block. He let the blade bite into his shoulder—a shallow, burning cut. Contact.
The moment the steel touched him, he inverted the flow. Through the wound, he didn't just absorb the physical impact; he drank the slaver's violent intent, his surety of the kill. The man's eyes went blank mid-swing, his will to fight extinguished. He staggered back, weapon dropping from nerveless fingers.
Feng moved on. A slash across his ribs from another blade. He consumed the attacker's aggression. A punch to his jaw. He consumed the brute force behind it.
He was a phantom, bleeding from a dozen minor wounds, each wound making him stronger as he stole the very will to harm him. He wasn't fighting them; he was turning their assault into his breakfast.
The slavers, already panicked by the unnatural aura and the ambush, now faced something worse. A creature that grew stronger the more they hurt it. Their courage, their bloodlust, their tribulation of being the predators, was being eaten alive.
It broke them.
Those not immediately killed by Lin's precise spear or Kael's opportunistic daggers turned their horses and fled, driving back through the wash, trampling their own in their terror.
In less than two minutes, it was over. Eight slavers lay dead. The rest were gone. The three tribespeople cowered in the sand, staring at the bloody, silent boy who stood amidst the carnage, his wounds already closing, his eyes dark and deep.
Feng sank to his knees, not from injury, but from surfeit. He was full. The violent, crude tribulations of the slavers flowed into his hollow core, a roaring, hot river of stolen will and aggression. It was not refined. It was barely digestible. But it was volume. It flooded his meridians, fueled his new nexus, and began the process of true recovery.
He sat in the sand, breathing deeply, as the last of the slavers' hoofbeats faded. The throbbing hunger was gone, replaced by a glowing, fierce saturation. He was still far from his peak, but he was no longer starving.
Lin cleaned her spear, her face pale. She had seen Feng fight before, but this… this was different. This was passive, terrifying consumption.
Kael was looting the bodies with frantic haste, his earlier fear replaced by exhilaration. "Spirit stones! Good blades! These bastards were rich!"
Feng ignored them. He looked at the freed tribespeople. An older man, a woman, and a boy. They approached him slowly, their fear of him now greater than their fear of the slavers. The old man knelt, pressing his forehead to the sand.
Feng stood. He didn't want their worship. He pointed north, then at them, then made a shooing motion.
They understood. They bowed again, then turned and ran, vanishing into the tall grass.
Lin walked over, holding out a waterskin. "You… fed."
He took it, drinking deeply. The water washed away the taste of blood and stolen rage.
"They'll talk," Kael said, joining them, a bulging sack in his hand. "The ones that got away. They'll describe you. A boy who eats fights."
Feng didn't care. Let them talk. Let the hunters come. He had eaten a dragon's dream. The tribulations of men were just spices.
He looked north, across the endless steppe. Somewhere out there were stronger things. Deeper poisons. Greater conflicts.
He had paid the price of his awakening with exhaustion and blood. Now, fed and focused, the true journey began.
He was Xiao Feng, the Flux. The Eater of Tribulations.
And the Golden Steppe, with all its wars, its beasts, and its hidden powers, looked like a banquet waiting to be served.