Darkness.
Not the familiar, gloomy dark of the Roots, with its distant glow-moss and leaking gray light from above. This was an absolute dark. A dark that pressed against his eyes, his skin, his very soul. It was thick, cold, and tasted of ancient stone and forgotten air.
Lin Feng crawled.
His left shoulder screamed with every movement, a white-hot brand of pain. The rest of him was a chorus of aches—from the impact with the wall, from the desperate flight. He moved by feel, one hand scrabbling ahead in the pitch black, the other cradled uselessly against his chest. The rough, damp stone scraped his knees through his thin pants.
He didn't know how far he'd gone. A hundred feet? A thousand? The crack had narrowed, widened, dipped, and turned. He was in the guts of the floating island now. A place of tectonic seams and primeval hollows.
He finally collapsed, his back against a cold wall, his breath coming in ragged, sobbing gasps that echoed strangely in the confined space. The silence that followed was heavier than the dark.
He was alone.
Truly, utterly alone for the first time in his life. There was no snoring from other boys, no coughs from Old Man Luo in the next room, no distant, hated sound of Gao's footsteps. There was only the void, the pain, and the cold flower nestled beneath his heart.
It was that cold that kept him from slipping into unconsciousness. It was a persistent, gnawing chill, separate from the damp air. It centered him, even as it terrified him.
[Status: Host Vital Signs Stabilizing. Adrenaline Depletion Detected. Pain Levels: High.]
[Passive Skill Activated: 'Shadow's Embrace' (Basic).]
[Effect: Host metabolism slowed. Bleeding minimized. Energy consumption reduced by 30%.]
[Note: This is not healing. This is preservation. Seek proper medical attention or cultivate healing qi.]
Cultivate. The word was a bitter joke. He was a root-rat. Orphan trash. Cultivation was for the children in the shining terraces above, with their pill diets and elder guidance.
A flicker of text, silver and stark against his mind's eye, appeared.
[New Primary Quest Generated: 'Foundation In Darkness'.]
Objective: Achieve First Breath of Shadow Qi.
Description: Your vessel is empty. The Shadow Lotus provides a seed, but the garden is yours to tend. Draw the ambient dark essence into your body and cycle it through your nascent meridian pathways.
Reward: Unlock [Status Screen]. Unlock [Shadow Essence Basic Manipulation]. +0.1 to all base attributes.
Failure: The Lotus's hunger will turn inward. Soul erosion will commence.
Soul erosion. The words carried a finality worse than death.
"How?" The word left his cracked lips, a dry rustle in the dark. He wasn't expecting an answer.
[Directive: Host solicited guidance. Accessing basic cultivation primer.]
A flood of simple, clinical information streamed into his thoughts. It was like remembering something he'd never learned. Cultivation: The art of drawing external ambient energy (Qi) into the body, refining it with one's spiritual intent, and circulating it to strengthen the vessel and spirit. Standard elements: Fire, Water, Earth, Wood, Metal, Wind, Lightning. Rare/Forbidden elements: Light, Shadow, Void, Blood…
Shadow Essence: A variant of dark qi, tempered not by absence of light, but by the concept of concealment, mystery, fear, and potential. Highly reactive to emotional states. High risk of 'Resonance Feedback.'
First Breath Method (Shadow-Aligned):
1. Assume a meditative posture (compensate for injury).
2. Still the conscious mind. Do not seek emptiness. Acknowledge your emotions—fear, pain, anger—but do not let them ride you. Let them be the soil.
3. Extend spiritual sense. Feel the darkness not as an absence, but as a presence. A thick, liquid potential.
4. Inhale. Draw not air, but intent. Pull a thread of that dark potential into your body through your skin, your breath, your will.
5. Guide it along the 'Meridian of Twilight' (referencing basic meridian map… uploading).
A schematic, glowing with soft silver lines, superimposed itself over his internal perception. It showed a network of pathways through a human form, with one—a faint, branching line running from the crown of the head down the spine and coiling in the lower dantian—highlighted in pulsing blue.
It looked impossible. He was a broken body in a hole.
But the alternative was the Lotus eating his soul.
Gritting his teeth, Lin Feng shifted. He couldn't sit cross-legged. His shoulder wouldn't allow it. He ended up slumped against the wall, legs outstretched, his good hand resting on his stomach. He closed his eyes. The darkness behind his eyelids was no different from the darkness outside.
Still the mind.
How? His mind was a screaming animal. It replayed Gao's sneer. The crack of Luo's bone. The cold hunger of the shadow tendril. The terrifying weight of the Lotus.
[Suggestion: Do not silence the noise. Use it. Anchor.]
An anchor. He needed something solid in the storm.
He thought of Old Man Luo's hands, gnarled and stained from Shadow-roots, gently showing him how to hold a knife so he wouldn't cut himself. The memory was a small, warm ember in the freezing dark.
He focused on that warmth. The fear and anger still churned around it, but the ember was his center.
Extend spiritual sense.
He didn't know what that meant. He just… reached out. Not with his body, but with the part of him that could feel the Lotus's cold. He pushed that feeling outward, into the blackness around him.
And he felt it.
It wasn't empty. It was alive. Not with creatures, but with a slow, heavy, dreaming energy. It was the essence of deep places, of weight, of secrets kept for millennia. It was cold, yes, but it was also patient. And it was everywhere. It clung to the rocks, it pooled in the low points of the tunnel, it drifted in the still air like black dust.
Draw it in.
He inhaled, a slow, shaky breath. He focused on his anchor—the memory of kindness—and imagined that dark energy as a fine mist. He willed it to come to him.
For a long time, nothing happened. He was just a hurt boy breathing in a cave.
Then, on his tenth, twentieth, fiftieth breath, he felt a faint tug.
A single strand of the ambient darkness, almost imperceptible, stirred. It drifted towards him, drawn by the vacuum of his empty meridians and the faint gravitational pull of the Shadow Lotus within him.
It touched his skin.
It felt like ice-water seeping through his pores, but from the inside out. A shocking, invasive cold that followed the path of the highlighted 'Meridian of Twilight' on his mental map. It was a jagged, painful line of frost tracing down from the top of his head, along his spine. Agony flared, different from his injury—a cleansing, brutal agony of something foreign forcing its way through atrophied, unawakened pathways.
He gasped, almost losing his focus. The ember of memory flickered.
Hold the anchor.
He clung to the image of Luo's hands. The cold thread advanced, agonizingly slow, leaving a trail of numbness and a strange, thrumming potential in its wake. It was like frost etching a circuit onto glass.
Finally, after what felt like hours, the thread of shadow essence completed its tortuous journey. It pooled in his lower abdomen—his dantian—where the Shadow Lotus resided.
The moment it made contact with the Lotus, the artifact reacted.
The dormant flower seemed to pulse. The strand of shadow essence was absorbed, refined in an instant, and transformed. What had been a wild, cold energy became something sharper, denser, more his. A droplet of pure, liquid shadow now sat in his dantian, orbiting the Lotus like a tiny, dark moon.
The effect was immediate.
The pervasive cold inside him receded slightly, becoming more integrated, less hostile. The pain from his broken pathways faded to a dull ache. And his perception… shifted.
He could see.
Not with his eyes. The darkness remained absolute. But he could now perceive the world in gradients of shadow. He could feel the shape of the tunnel, the texture of the wall behind him, the empty space ahead, all painted in his mind in varying depths of black and deeper black. It was a world of outlines and voids.
[CONGRATULATIONS.]
[Primary Quest: 'Foundation In Darkness' – COMPLETE.]
[Rewards Claimed.]
[Status Screen Unlocked.]
A transparent screen, edged in subtle silver, materialized in his vision.
NAME: Lin Feng
AGE: 15
CULTIVATION: Shadow Qi – Stage 1 (Awakened)
HEALTH: 31/100 (Injured: Fractured Left Clavicle, Severe Bruising)
SHADOW ESSENCE: 1.1/10
ATTRIBUTES:
Strength: 4 ➜ 4.1
Agility: 5 ➜ 5.1
Constitution: 3 ➜ 3.1
Spiritual Sense: 6 ➜ 6.1
Resonance Stability: 5/100 (Low)
[SKILLS:]
Shadow's Embrace (Passive – Lv.1): Survival utility.
Shadow Sense (Passive – Lv.1): Perception within pure darkness.
[ARTIFACT:]
Nine Petals Shadow Lotus: Seal Status: 9/9 Intact. Symbiosis Level: 0.1%
Lin Feng stared at the numbers. They meant little, yet they meant everything. They were proof. He had done it. He had taken the First Breath. He was no longer just a mortal. He was… something else.
A wave of exhaustion, deeper than any he had ever known, crashed over him. The mental and physical toll of the cultivation session was immense. But beneath the fatigue was a tiny, fragile spark.
It wasn't hope. Not yet.
It was the simple, grim satisfaction of a step taken. Of not being eaten by the darkness inside him. For now.
[New Quest Generated: 'Sanctuary'.]
Objective: Find a secure location to rest and recover.
Warning: Extended exposure to high-density shadow essence without a stabilized core may lead to 'Phantom Whisper' events. Your emotional state is the gate.
Phantom Whispers. He didn't like the sound of that.
Using his new Shadow Sense, Lin Feng peered down the tunnel. It stretched ahead, descending slightly. In the distance, his shadow-sight detected a larger hollow, a chamber of some kind.
He pushed himself to his feet, using the wall for support. The world in shades of black was disorienting, but he could navigate. He shuffled forward, one slow step at a time, leaving the tiny crawl space behind.
The tunnel opened into a cavern about the size of the orphanage's main hall. Stalactites, like stone fangs, dripped from the ceiling. In the center of the cavern floor was a still, black pool. And along one wall…
His shadow-sight picked up geometric shapes. Not natural.
He approached. They were ruins. A few collapsed stone blocks, too smooth, too square to be natural formations. Carved into one large, tilted slab were faint markings—a language of sharp angles and flowing curves that hurt his eyes to look at. This was not from the Xuanji Sect. This was older. Much older.
This was a place. His place. For now.
He slumped down against the ancient carved stone, the cold of it seeping through his clothes. He took a small, hard bun from his pocket—the one he'd taken from Luo. He stared at it in the absolute dark, seeing it only as a denser shape of matter against the nothingness.
He took a bite. It was dry. It was the best thing he had ever tasted.
As he chewed, alone in the ancient dark, with a forbidden artifact in his soul and a sliver of shadow qi in his veins, Lin Feng did something he hadn't done in years.
He smiled.
It was a small, broken, dark thing.
But it was his.
[Resonance Stability: 5 ➜ 7/100.]
[Note: Acceptance is a viable foundation. Proceed.]
The darkness around the pool seemed to ripple, as if something deep within it had taken note of the new, faint pulse of shadow in the ancient cavern.