The deeper they walked into the alley, the thicker the shadows became. The ambient glow of the Sect's lanterns faded behind them, swallowed by the damp, towering brick walls.
"Alright, rat. This is far enough," the bulky youth grunted, crossing his arms. He sneered, his spiritual aura flaring slightly—a pathetic display of the third level of Qi Condensation. "Where are the stones? If you make me dig through the mud for them, I'm going to break three of your fingers instead of one."
Dver stopped walking. He stood with his back to them, perfectly still.
"Did you hear me, trash?" The youth took a heavy step forward, reaching out to grab Dver's shoulder.
In the span of a single heartbeat, the cowering, trembling boy ceased to exist.
Dver didn't turn around. He simply pivoted on his heel, dropping his center of gravity. As the bully's hand reached out, Dver's arm shot up, his fingers clamping around the boy's wrist like an iron vise.
Before the youth could even register the movement, Dver violently twisted his hips and yanked the arm downward.
CRACK.
The sound of the elbow snapping backward echoed like a dry branch breaking in the silent alley.
The bully didn't even have time to scream. As his mouth opened, Dver's free hand shot forward—a rigid, flat-palmed strike that connected directly with the youth's throat. The cartilage of his windpipe crushed inward with a sickening crunch. The bulky disciple collapsed to his knees, his eyes bulging in absolute horror as he clutched his ruined throat, gagging on his own blood.
"What the—!" The second disciple stumbled back, the color draining from his face. Panic hijacked his nervous system. He frantically reached for the cheap iron sword strapped to his waist, channeling his Qi into his legs to retreat.
He was too slow.
Dver closed the distance with terrifying, unnatural speed. He didn't use Qi; he used the explosive muscle memory forged from dodging the snapping maws of demonic horrors in pitch darkness.
As the second boy drew his sword halfway from its scabbard, Dver stomped down hard on his kneecap. The joint inverted with a wet pop. The disciple shrieked, his leg giving out. As he pitched forward, Dver calmly grabbed the hilt of the half-drawn sword, slammed it back down into the scabbard, and drove his knee directly into the boy's face.
Bone shattered. The disciple hit the wet cobblestones, completely unconscious.
The fight had lasted exactly three seconds.
It wasn't a duel. It was the clinical butchering of livestock.
Dver stood over them, his breathing completely even. The heavy, agonizing pain in his chest was still there, a constant reminder of his failing, stolen body. But his eyes were empty. He looked down at the bulky youth, who was writhing on the ground, suffocating, staring up at Dver with a gaze of unadulterated terror. He didn't understand. This wasn't Dver. The Dver he knew cried. He begged.
"Beautiful," the Void God hissed in Dver's mind, a sound like grinding tectonic plates. "You break their shells so efficiently. But they are still breathing, Dver. Let me out. I am starving."
"Eat," Dver whispered.
The temperature in the alley plummeted below freezing. The ambient light didn't just dim; it actively died.
From beneath Dver's feet, his shadow began to boil. It stretched and expanded, crawling up the damp brick walls like a living, viscous tar. The bulky youth, still choking on the ground, tried to scramble backward, weeping in pure terror as the darkness coiled around his ankles.
Dver raised his hand, his palm facing the two broken disciples.
A suffocating, ancient gravity erupted from his flesh. It wasn't a suction of air; it was a suction of reality.
The shadows engulfed the two boys. Their muffled, agonizing screams were abruptly cut short as the Void went to work. It didn't just tear their flesh or drink their blood. It dissolved them. Their cultivation bases, their lifeforce, their memories, their very physical matter were stripped down to absolute nothingness and funneled directly into Dver's palm.
Dver threw his head back, gasping as a pure, condensed torrent of raw energy slammed into his fractured meridian channels.
It was absolute agony, followed immediately by euphoric relief. The black, abyssal energy surged through his stolen body, violently forcing the weak, cracked meridians of the original Dver to expand, thicken, and harden. His muscles tore and rebuilt themselves denser. His internal bleeding stopped.
The third level of Qi Condensation. The fourth. The fifth.
Dver clenched his fist, intentionally severing the breakthrough. If he advanced too high, the Sect Elders would sense the sudden spike in power. He forced the remaining energy deep into his core, burying it within the Void.
When the darkness finally receded back into Dver's natural shadow, the alley was completely empty. There was no blood on the cobblestones. There were no bodies. There weren't even clothes. The two bullies had been completely erased from existence.
Except for one thing.
Lying on the ground, glowing faintly in the moonlight, was a small, black wooden token. It had survived the Void's digestion.
Dver crouched down and picked it up. It was a communication talisman, the kind used by Inner Sect disciples to issue secret orders to Outer Sect trash.
Dver turned it over. Carved into the back was a single character: Vane.
Dver's empty eyes narrowed. The original Dver hadn't just been bullied. These two had been paid to make sure he was dead.
"It seems," the Void God chuckled darkly, "the skin you stole comes with enemies."
"Good," Dver replied, his voice a flat, dead calm. "Enemies have cultivation. Cultivation is food."
The morning gong of the Outer Sect did not ring; it shattered the dawn like a physical blow.
In the sprawling dirt courtyard of the disciple barracks, three thousand Outer Court members knelt in perfect, rigid lines. The mountain air was bitterly cold, but no one dared shiver. Pacing before them was Deacon Shen, a man with eyes like rusted iron and a temper to match.
"I will ask one more time," Shen's voice boomed, carrying a wave of oppressive Qi that made the weaker disciples gag. "Where are Zhao and Lin?"
Silence.
Shen's heavy gaze swept over the kneeling masses until it locked onto a figure near the very back. Dver.
"You," Shen snapped, pointing a thick, calloused finger. "Rat. They were hunting for you last night. Speak."
Dver didn't just answer; he performed. He let out a pathetic squeak, violently flinching as if Shen had struck him. He scrambled forward on his knees, his head practically buried in the freezing dirt.
"T-they did, Deacon!" Dver stammered, his voice trembling so violently his teeth chattered. "T-they cornered me near the alley! But I ran! I swear, I ran as fast as I could and hid in the latrines all night! The smell... I didn't come out until the gong! Please, don't let them beat me again!"
A ripple of cruel, mocking laughter washed through the kneeling disciples. To hide in the filth all night just to avoid a beating—it was the ultimate display of cowardice.
Deacon Shen's lip curled in absolute disgust. He waved his hand dismissively, turning away. "Pathetic trash. Zhao and Lin probably chased a beast into the lower woods and got themselves eaten. Roll call is over. Get to your duties."
Dver kept his forehead pressed to the dirt until the Deacon was gone.
"Flawless,"the Void God mocked in his mind. "You grovel with such natural talent, Dver."
Dver didn't reply. As he stood up, dusting the dirt from his knees, his mind was already calculating the odds of the next phase. The sect was nothing but a massive betting table, and every interaction was a wager of risk versus reward. The disappearance of the two bullies was a low-risk gamble that paid off with a perfect alibi.
But his physical body was a problem.
Thanks to his meal the night before, the frail, cracked vessel of the original Dver had been radically reforged. Beneath his baggy, ragged grey robes, his physique had completely transformed. He wasn't bulky or massive; he was lean, packed with dense, hyper-defined musculature that looked like it had been carved from tempered steel. A web of old, silvery scars—souvenirs from the pitch-black pit—crisscrossed his torso.
He moved with a lazy, almost bored slouch, his hands tucked loosely into his sleeves. It was the relaxed posture of an apex predator that knew it didn't need to flex to be the deadliest thing in the room.
But if he ever had to fight in public, his raw, explosive physical strength would instantly give him away. Cultivators used Qi; they didn't snap necks with bare hands. He needed a cover story. A martial art that justified his physical supremacy.
Dver navigated the winding, crowded paths to the Martial Arts Pavilion, a towering, three-story pagoda that smelled of old parchment, dust, and cheap incense.
He bypassed the bustling sections for sword arts and elemental Qi manipulation, heading straight for the darkest, dustiest corner of the first floor: Body Refinement.
In the Blood Lotus Sect, Body Refinement was considered a path for untalented failures. It required agonizing pain, slowly destroyed the user's meridians, and offered very little magical power.
Dver ran his fingers over the discarded jade slips until he found exactly what he needed.
The Asura's Iron-Blood Mantra. A suicidal technique that involved violently compressing one's own blood vessels to generate explosive physical force. Anyone who practiced it usually died of internal hemorrhaging by the age of twenty.
It was the perfect disguise.
Just as Dver picked up the jade slip, a heavy hand slammed into the wooden shelf, trapping his arm.
"Drop it, rat."
Dver slowly turned his head. Standing next to him was a young man in pristine, silk-lined grey robes. It was Ma Chen, an Outer Court tyrant ranked in the top 500. Two lackeys stood behind him, snickering.
"I need something to balance a wobbly table in my courtyard," Ma Chen sneered, looking Dver up and down with absolute contempt. "That garbage manual will do perfectly. Hand it over, and maybe I won't break your jaw."
"Eat him,"the Void God whispered, a spike of cold hunger stabbing the back of Dver's eyes. "Swallow his arrogant tongue."
Dver's mind instantly ran the odds. A direct kill? One hundred percent chance of exposure. A brutal, public beating? Eighty percent chance of drawing an Elder's attention. An 'accident'? Zero risk. High reward.
Dver let his shoulders slump. He clutched the jade slip to his chest, taking a trembling step backward. "S-Senior Ma... please, I just want to learn..."
"I said give it!" Ma Chen barked, stepping forward and viciously shoving Dver in the chest.
Dver let the push connect. But the moment Ma Chen's force transferred, Dver perfectly shifted his center of gravity. He threw himself backward, flailing his arms wildly as if completely out of control.
As Dver "stumbled," his left heel whipped out with surgical, blinding speed, hooking directly behind Ma Chen's ankle. At the exact same microsecond, Dver's elbow flailed backward, driving the hardened point of the bone directly into a major nerve cluster on Ma Chen's inner thigh with the force of a falling anvil.
THWACK.
"Aaaarrgh!"
Ma Chen's leg instantly paralyzed. The sheer agony of the crushed nerve sent his brain into shock. He collapsed like a puppet with its strings cut, his face smashing brutally into the hardwood floor. He shrieked, clutching his thigh, unable to comprehend what had just happened.
To his lackeys, and to the Pavilion Elder watching from a distance, it looked exactly like Ma Chen had aggressively pushed Dver, tripped over his own feet, and pulled a muscle in a humiliating, clumsy fall.
Dver scrambled to his feet, panting heavily, looking utterly terrified.
"I'm sorry! I'm so sorry, Senior! You pushed me, and I lost my balance!" Dver bowed frantically, clutching the Asura manual tight. Without waiting for a response, he turned and sprinted out of the pavilion like a frightened rabbit.
As he stepped out into the cool afternoon air, leaving Ma Chen's humiliated screams echoing in the pagoda, the cowering posture vanished. His lazy, slouched stride returned.
"You play the clown far too well," the Void God grumbled, annoyed that there was no blood.
"I'm just placing my bets," Dver whispered, looking up toward the pristine floating peaks of the Inner Sect. "When the stakes are high enough, I'll collect the debt."
Suddenly, the hair on the back of Dver's neck stood up.
A gaze.
It wasn't the harsh, probing scan of an Enforcer. It was soft, immensely powerful, and chillingly pure. Someone was watching him from the bridge of the highest floating peak.
Dver didn't look up, but he felt the suffocating pressure of a flawless, untainted aura wash over him.
The Saintess.