The agonizing scream of the mortal boy faded into the howling winds of the Azure Cloud Province, swallowed by the vast, indifferent emptiness of the world.
Above the smoking crater that had once been a home, the violent maelstrom in the sky began to settle. The chaotic fusion of violet flames and golden sword light dissipated, leaving the firmament scarred but quiet. The battle of the high-realm masters had concluded. To them, it was merely a brief exchange of Dao intents, a minor dispute over a fleeting resource or a clash of egos.
To Shang Jue, it was the end of the universe.
He knelt in the blood-soaked dirt, his small hands still clutching his father's ruined coat. He did not notice the three streaks of pristine, incandescent light descending from the clouds. They moved with the grace of immortals, untouched by gravity, their robes fluttering elegantly against the harsh winter wind.
They landed at the edge of the crater. The very earth seemed to grovel beneath their feet, the dust settling instantly so as not to soil their immaculate white silk robes, which were embroidered with the insignia of a silver sword piercing a cloud. These were cultivators of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion, an Orthodox sect renowned for its absolute adherence to the Dao of the Sword.
The leader was a young man with eyes like polished jade and a complexion as smooth as porcelain. An ethereal, suffocating aura radiated from his body-the unmistakable pressure of a Core Formation expert half-stepping into the Nascent Soul realm. Behind him stood two junior disciples in the Foundation Establishment realm, their faces masks of arrogant detachment.
"Elder Martial Brother," one of the junior disciples said, waving a hand in disgust at the smell of charred flesh and ozone. "The stray Sword Qi merely hit a mortal hovel. There is no demonic remnant here. Let us return. This dirt stains my spiritual sense."
The leader, the one whose deflected strike had vaporized Shang Fan, did not immediately reply. He stepped closer to the crater, his cold jade eyes landing on the gruesome scene: the shattered corpse of the massive woodcutter and the tiny, blood-covered boy weeping beside him.
There was no remorse in his gaze. Not a single ripple of empathy disturbed the tranquil surface of his Dao heart. To a cultivator who had refined his Qi and touched the boundaries of the heavens, mortals were no different from the blades of grass they stepped upon.
"Such fragile vessels," the leader murmured, his voice echoing with an unnatural, resonant harmonic that commanded the surrounding air. "A mere fragment of my Sword Intent, deflected and drained of ninety percent of its power, and yet it reduces them to meat. The Mortal Foundation is truly a pathetic existence."
Shang Jue heard the voice.
Slowly, the boy turned his head. His eyes, swollen and red, locked onto the three pristine figures standing at the edge of his father's grave. He saw their spotless white robes. He saw the silver swords hanging from their waists. He saw the absolute, sterile indifference in their eyes.
"You..." Shang Jue's voice was a ragged, broken croak. He pushed himself to his feet, his hands dripping with his father's blood. "You killed him."
The two junior disciples frowned. One of them stepped forward, releasing a fraction of his Foundation Establishment aura-a wave of spiritual pressure meant to force the insolent mortal to his knees, crushing him flat against the dirt as a lesson in hierarchy.
"Insolent ant," the disciple sneered. "You dare speak to an Elder of the Heavenly Sword Pavilion with such a tone? You should be thanking the heavens. To be purified by Elder Martial Brother's Sword Intent is a far greater destiny than rotting in this frozen wasteland. Kneel and offer your gratitude."
The spiritual pressure washed over Shang Jue like an invisible tidal wave. A normal mortal adult would have had their bones splintered, their lungs collapsed, their mind shattered by the sheer weight of a cultivator's aura.
But Shang Jue did not fall.
He stood there, ankle-deep in his father's blood. The invisible wave of Qi crashed against his frail, malnourished body and... dispersed. It simply vanished, sliding off him like water off an impenetrable monolith.
The invisible wave of Qi crashed against his frail, malnourished body and... broke. It did not crush him to the dirt. It did not shatter his bones.
To the junior disciple, it was an impossible sight. A mortal should have been instantly flattened. Yet, Shang Jue stood rooted in his father's blood. Perhaps it was the absolute, suffocating weight of his grief acting as an anchor, rendering spiritual pressure utterly meaningless compared to the crushing agony in his chest. Or perhaps it was a terrifying, instinctual defiance-a mortal will snapping into something entirely unnatural, refusing to bend even a fraction of an inch to a heaven that had just robbed him of his entire world.
The junior disciple's brow furrowed, his eyes widening slightly in genuine confusion. Why didn't the boy collapse? Is the chaotic, lingering Qi from the Elder's deflected strike interfering with my aura? Or is this wretch simply too numb from shock to even feel the suppression?
Shang Jue didn't notice the cultivator's shock. He didn't care about their pressure. The profound, bottomless well of grief within him was suddenly pierced by something else...
As he stared at the men who had murdered his father and demanded gratitude for it, the warmth of his tears stopped. The wetness on his cheeks froze in the winter air. The pure spark of ambition he had felt earlier-the desire to cultivate to save his father-was violently snuffed out.
In its place, a terrifying metamorphosis occurred.
The sorrow crystallized. His heart, severed from its only tether of love, turned into a shard of absolute, freezing black ice. The boy's face, previously contorted in the agony of a child, went utterly dead. His dark eyes lost all their light, transforming into twin abysses of pure, concentrated vengeance.
"Gratitude?" Shang Jue whispered. His voice was no longer broken. It was terrifyingly calm, carrying a chill that rivaled the winter winds. "You take my world... and you call it purification."
The Core Formation leader narrowed his jade eyes, finally looking at the mortal boy with a sliver of attention. There was something deeply unsettling about the look in the child's eyes. It wasn't the frantic, useless anger of a cornered beast. It was the quiet, absolute certainty of an incoming calamity.
For a fraction of a second, an inexplicable, cold dread brushed attuned to the heavens, trembled ever so slightly, as if standing against the Elder's refined Dao heart. His supreme spiritual sense, before the maw of an ancient, sleeping Primordial Fiend.
Impossible, the Elder thought, suppressing the absurd feeling instantly. It is just a starving child in the dirt.
"Do not waste your breath on the dead, Junior Brother," the leader said coldly, turning away. He flicked his pristine sleeve, completely dismissing Shang Jue from his reality. "The heavens are vast. If every ant screamed when a mountain moved, the Dao would be deafening. We leave."
"Yes, Elder Martial Brother." The juniors sneered one last time at the boy, stepping onto their flying swords.
With a flash of brilliant silver light, the three "immortals" tore through the sky, ascending back into the clouds, leaving nothing but the echo of their arrogance and a ruined mortal life behind.
Shang Jue did not scream after them. He did not throw stones at the sky.
He simply stood in the freezing wind, watching the silver streaks disappear into the horizon.
The Heavenly Sword Pavilion. He etched the name into his bones. He carved the image of their robes into his soul. If this was what it meant to be a Cultivator-if this cruel, heartless arrogance was the 'Great Dao' they pursued-then he would not walk their path. He
would carve his own. He would drag himself through the mud, he would tear through the flesh of the earth, and he would climb the heavens solely to tear them down from their thrones.
The mortal boy turned back to the crater. He had a grave to dig.
Frozen by the deep winter and baked hard by the residual heat of the stray Sword Qi, the dirt in the crater was akin to solid iron.
Shang Jue had no shovel.
The hut and all their meager tools had been reduced to ash. All he possessed were his two small, malnourished hands and a jagged, splintered fragment of the ancient withered tree that had miraculously survived the blast.
He knelt in the center of the devastation and began to dig.
It was an impossible task for a twelve-year-old boy. With every strike of the wooden splinter against the frozen earth, a jarring shock traveled up his thin arms, rattling his bones. When the wood splintered further and became useless, he used his bare hands. He clawed at the dirt like a starving beast. His fingernails cracked and tore away. His fingertips bled profusely, the warm crimson mixing with the freezing mud, but he did not stop. He did not even flinch.
Hours bled into the encroaching night. The pale moon rose, casting a haunting, silver pallor over the ruined landscape. The temperature plummeted to a lethal degree, freezing the sweat on Shang Jue's brow and turning his breath into thick clouds of white mist.
Yet, he felt no cold. The terrifying, black inferno that had ignited within his chest consumed all physical sensation. His movements were mechanical, driven by a will that had utterly bypassed the limits of his mortal shell. He dug until the skin of his palms was flayed raw, until his muscles screamed and tore, until a deep, dark trench was carved into the heart of the crater.
Moving his father's massive, heavy body was a torment of its own. Shang Jue strained until capillaries in his eyes burst, hauling the silent, blood-drained weight of Shang Fan into the earth.
He arranged his father's limbs with agonizing care, smoothing the ruined, charred coat as best as he could. He wiped the dirt from Shang Fan's cold, peaceful face. For a long, lingering moment, Shang Jue stared down into the grave. This man was his entire history. This man was the only god that had ever shown him mercy.
Slowly, Shang Jue began to push the dirt back in.
With every handful of earth that fell, a piece of Shang Jue's humanity was buried alongside his father. He buried the boy who smiled at wild yams. He buried the boy who feared the howling wolves of the Blackpine Ridge. He buried the naive child who believed that surviving the winter was the ultimate victory.
When the mound was finally complete, the moon was at its zenith.
Shang Jue stood up. His body was a bruised, bloodied, trembling ruin, but his posture was terrifyingly straight. He stood before the nameless dirt mound, the wind whipping his torn tunic around his frail frame.
He shed no more tears. His face was an impenetrable mask carved from frost and shadow.
"I will not drown, Father," Shang Jue whispered to the wind, his voice devoid of any tremor, possessing a chilling resonance that seemed to sink into the very earth. "I will leave this place. I will survive."
He looked up at the indifferent, starry firmament. The heavens were vast, beautiful, and sickeningly silent.
"And when I am strong enough," he continued, the words slipping from his lips like a cursed vow binding his very soul, "I will find the Heavenly Sword Pavilion. I will find the 'immortals' who stand upon the clouds. And I will teach them what it means to bleed in the dirt."
He turned his back on the grave. He did not look back.
With nothing but the bloody rags on his back and a heart severed from the mortal coil, Shang Jue took his first step out of the crater, walking toward the absolute unknown of the vast continent.
As the solitary, bloodstained boy marched into the freezing, desolate wasteland, the fabric of the world shifted in silence. The Heavens did not notice him. To the Great Dao, he was less than a speck of dust carried by the winter gale.
But beneath the boy's coarse, ruined tunic, pressed tightly against his scarred and freezing chest, an ancient relic awakened. The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth.
For countless eras, it had remained dormant, an ignored fragment of a lost antiquity, possessing no spiritual aura that a normal cultivator could detect. It was a dead thing, waiting for a catalyst. It did not require the pure, refined Qi of a Foundation Establishment master. It did not seek the profound, philosophical enlightenment of
a Dao-seeking Sage.
What it required was a Will. An Intent so dense, so absolute, and so purely unyielding that it could crack the very foundation of destiny.
Sensing the terrifying, abyssal resolve radiating from the mortal boy's severed heart-a willpower that felt inexplicably ancient and impossibly heavy-the thick, dark leather cover of the book grew warm.
A faint, imperceptible hum vibrated against Shang Jue's ribs.
Within the closed covers, hidden from the eyes of gods and men, the infinite, ruined pages of the manuscript began to turn on their own. The scorched, blank parchment rustled violently as if caught in a phantom hurricane. The faded ink of the ancient language began to glow with a faint, chaotic silver light, rewriting itself, shifting and aligning to match the terrifying destiny of its new master.
The wheel of Samsara clicked forward. The mortal had taken his first step upon the Path, entirely ignorant of the supreme shadow he cast upon the world.
The Azure Cloud Province did not mourn for Shang Fan, nor did it offer sanctuary to his orphaned son. As Shang Jue walked away from the scorched crater, the temperature plummeted, transforming the biting wind into an invisible sea of icy blades.
He had walked for perhaps two hours, though time in the featureless, frozen wasteland was measured only by the numbing of his extremities and the agonizing throb of his flayed hands. The adrenaline and the fiery rage that had fueled him through the burial were beginning to wane, leaving behind a profound, hollow exhaustion. He was a mortal boy, starved and battered, marching into a winter night that routinely claimed the lives of seasoned hunters.
His bare, bruised feet dragged through the accumulating snow. He needed shelter. If he remained in the open plains, he would be a frozen corpse before midnight.
Through the gloom, his dimming eyes caught the jagged outline of a rock formation-a cluster of massive, frost-covered boulders thrusting out of the earth like the broken teeth of a dead titan. Gathering the absolute last dregs of his strength, Shang Jue stumbled toward them.
He found a narrow crevice between two immense stones. It was barely wide enough for a grown man to squeeze into, but for a malnourished twelve-year-old, it offered a shallow, suffocating shield against the howling wind. He crawled inside, curling his knees to his chest. He had no fire, no blanket, and no food. The cold seeped through the stone directly into his marrow.
His physical body was shutting down. His breathing grew shallow, and a treacherous, warm lethargy began to coax his mind toward sleep. It was the winter's most deceptive trick-the gentle lullaby before death.
"I will not drown..." His own vow echoed in his mind, striking his fading consciousness like a hammer.
Shang Jue violently bit his own tongue. The sharp, metallic taste of blood flooded his mouth, and the sudden spike of pain jolted him awake. He forced his eyes open in the pitch-black crevice.
"I cannot sleep," he whispered through chattering teeth. He needed something to anchor his mind, something to pull his focus away from the freezing death creeping up his limbs.
With trembling, raw fingers, he reached inside his torn tunic and pulled out The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth.
In the absolute darkness of the stone crevice, an impossibility occurred. The book was no longer an inert block of ruined leather. It emanated a faint, chaotic silver luminescence. It was not a bright light; rather, it was like looking at the reflection of distant, dying stars on a dark ocean.
The heat radiating from the cover seeped into his frozen hands, providing a tiny, miraculous fraction of warmth.
Shang Jue stared at it, his breath hitching. The artifact had awakened. It had felt the absolute, world-breaking intent forged in the fires of his grief, and it had responded. He slowly opened the cover.
The pages, which mere hours ago had been blank, scorched, or faded by the passing of eons, had transformed. The chaotic silver
light flowed across the parchment like liquid mercury, weaving itself into complex, profound characters that burned themselves directly into Shang Jue's retinas.
It was no longer a mere memoir or a collection of vague
philosophies. The text had aligned itself with him. He traced the glowing characters, reading the new, terrifying preamble:
"The Great Dao is a thief. It steals the chaotic energy of the void to birth the stars, it steals the soil to birth the trees, and it steals the lifespan of mortals to feed the Immortals. The orthodox paths preach harmony and submission to the heavens. They are fools, dining on the scraps of the universe."
Shang Jue's heart hammered against his ribs. The words resonated
with the black ice in his chest. The 'Immortals' he had seen-the ones who murdered his father-preached purification, yet they were nothing but arrogant butchers.
He continued to read, the silver light reflecting in his dark, unblinking eyes.
"To truly ascend, one must not beg the heavens for Qi. One must
seize it. The mortal vessel is closed, locked by the chains of mediocrity. The orthodox method gently knocks on the meridians, waiting decades for them to open. If you possess no innate talent, no divine bloodline, the doors of the heavens will remain forever shut to you."
The text paused, the silver mercury shifting rapidly to form the next, crucial lines.
"But there is another way. The path of the Origin. The path of Absolute Plunder. Do not knock on the door of the meridians. Shatter them. Draw the chaotic breath of the world directly into the flesh. Let it tear you apart, and reforge yourself in the agony. Only a will heavier than the heavens can survive the First Breath of the Abyss."
Shang Jue stared at the glowing manual. It did not offer a peaceful meditation technique. It offered a method of violent, self-inflicted torture to forcefully rip the ambient Qi from the world. It stated clearly that doing this without a supreme will would result in the
cultivator's body exploding into a mist of blood.
He closed the book. The faint silver light vanished, plunging the crevice back into darkness.
He sat in the silence, listening to the howling wind outside. A normal mortal would have discarded the book as demonic heresy. A
rational mind would fear the promised agony and the high probability of a gruesome death.
But Shang Jue was no longer a normal mortal, and his rationality had been buried beneath a mound of dirt in the Azure Cloud Province.
He closed his eyes. He tried to sense the "Breath of Heaven and Earth" as the book described. He tried to feel the energy that the orthodox cultivators commanded so effortlessly. Nothing.
His mortal body was completely sealed. He had no innate talent. He had no mythical bloodline. His Dantian was a dry, hollow void, and his meridians were shriveled and locked tight. If he were tested by any sect, he would be thrown out as a piece of trash devoid of spiritual roots.
The realization should have brought despair, but instead, it only solidified his resolve. If the heavens had locked the door, he would simply tear down the house.
He did not attempt to forcefully draw the Qi yet. The manual was
clear: 'Let it tear you apart, and reforge yourself in the agony. He knew that in his current, half-frozen, starved state, the shock would instantly kill him.
He needed an anchor.
He needed to push his body into a state of absolute, life-or-death crisis where his survival instinct and his terrifying willpower would fuse into a single, unstoppable spearhead.
He needed to face the wilderness.
He hugged his knees, wrapping the faint warmth of the ancient book against his chest, and began to forcefully control his
breathing, enduring the agonizing, freezing night through sheer, unadulterated spite.
Hours passed. The wind's shrieking eventually dulled into a steady, low moan. The gray light of morning began to bleed through the cracks of the boulders, signaling that he had survived his first night in the abyss.
Shang Jue pushed himself out of the crevice. His joints popped and ground against each other, his body stiff and aching with every microscopic movement. He picked up the rusted, jagged iron axe head he had brought from the ruins.
He stepped out into the knee-deep snow, his dark eyes scanning the bleak, blinding white horizon. His stomach was a cavern of pain, demanding sustenance.
He tightened his grip on the rusted iron. He would find food. He would push his body to the absolute brink, and when the moment of life and death arrived, he would take the First Breath of the Abyss. He would seize the heavens, or he would die trying.
With the ancient book resting silently against his severed heart, the
mortal boy marched deeper into the lethal wasteland, unaware that a massive, predatory shadow was already tracking his scent through the snow.