The winter wind howled through the courtyards of the Han Clan, carrying with it the scent of impending snow and the bitter sting of humiliation.
Han Feng knelt on the frigid stone tiles of the Ancestral Plaza, his thin robes offering no protection against the ice. Before him stood the Awakening Pillar a towering monolith of obsidian etched with ancient runes meant to measure a youth's cultivation talent.
"Han Feng! Step forward!" the Great Elder shouted, his voice dripping with thinly veiled contempt.
Han Feng rose, his legs stiff. He could feel the eyes of hundreds of clan members on his back. Among them was Han Jun, the son of the Great Elder, who wore a smirk of predatory anticipation.
As Han Feng placed his palm on the cold obsidian, he closed his eyes and prayed. Please. Just once. Let the heavens be fair.
The pillar hummed. A faint, pathetic flicker of grey light struggled to rise from the base, crawling barely an inch before dying out with a hollow hiss.
The silence that followed was deafening, broken only by a burst of raucous laughter from the front row.
"Grey light? Zero affinity?" Han Jun cackled, stepping forward. "Even the clan's kitchen maids can produce a yellow glow! Han Feng, you truly are the greatest 'trash' our family has produced in four hundred years!"
The Great Elder sighed, a sound of feigned disappointment. "Han Feng. Clogged Meridians. Zero Qi Affinity. According to clan law, you are stripped of your status as a direct descendant. Tomorrow, you will be moved to the outer stables to serve as a groom."
Han Feng's fists clenched so hard his nails drew blood. "My father was the Clan Leader. He disappeared protecting our borders! You would throw his son into the stables?"
"Your father is gone, and his talent clearly didn't pass to you," the Elder snapped. "Now, begone!"
That night, Han Feng sat in his dilapidated room on the edge of the estate. He held a small, rusted iron ring in his hand the only thing his father had left behind.
"Trash... Clogged... Zero..." He whispered the words like a curse. "If the heavens won't give me a path, I'll carve one through the dirt!"
In a fit of rage, he punched the stone wall. The skin on his knuckles split, and a drop of crimson blood smeared across the surface of the rusted ring.
The room didn't just go dark; the world seemed to vanish.
Han Feng gasped as the walls of his shack dissolved into a vast, endless void. Above him, stars didn't just twinkle they roared with power. In the center of this void stood a woman.
She was draped in robes of starlight, her hair a cascading waterfall of silver that seemed to flow upward. Her eyes were a piercing violet, cold enough to freeze his very soul, yet ancient beyond measure.
"Ten thousand years," the woman spoke, her voice vibrating in Han Feng's marrow. "I have waited in this relic for a soul with the Myriad Star Physique. And the heavens send me... a dying ember."
"Who are you?" Han Feng gasped, clutching his chest. "Where am I?"
"I am Shi Yue. As for where you are you are inside your own destiny," she said, gliding toward him. "Those fools call your meridians 'clogged.' They are not clogged, boy. They are simply too vast for the pathetic 'Qi' of this world to fill. It is like trying to fill the ocean with a single raindrop."
She pointed a finger at his forehead.
"I will give you a choice. Remain a mortal and live a hundred years in the mud. Or, accept the Star-Devourer Manual. You will be hunted. You will be hated. You will have to consume the very essence of the heavens to survive. But you will never, ever kneel again."
Han Feng looked at his trembling hands, then up at the silver-haired Empress. He thought of the stables. He thought of Han Jun's smirk.
"I've spent my whole life kneeling," Han Feng rasped, his eyes burning with a sudden, dark fire. "Give me the power to stand."
Shi Yue smiled a dangerous, beautiful curve of the lips. "Then hold your breath. This is going to hurt."
She slammed her palm into his chest.
A pillar of blinding white starlight erupted from the ring, shooting through Han Feng's roof and piercing straight into the night sky. Inside his body, the "clogs" in his meridians didn't just clear they exploded.
His bones began to vibrate at a frequency that shattered the floor beneath him. He wasn't just breathing air anymore; he was inhaling the cosmos.
The "trash" of the Han Clan was gone. The Star-Devourer had awakened.