The damp, heavy silence of the cave was broken only by the rhythmic sound of approaching footsteps. Lin Shara, the Grand Elder of the Eternal Lotus Sect, walked toward the center of the chamber where Yun Caos stood. The boy was motionless, surrounded by a floor that had been permanently altered; the once-dark stone was now a glassy, crystallized violet, a testament to the energy leaking from his very pores. At ten years old, Yun was no longer just a pupil or an orphan she had rescued from the sea. He was becoming a force of primordial nature—a force that the Sect was not yet prepared to witness, let alone understand.
"The Sect Master has called for the Decennial Assessment," Shara said, her voice echoing off the crystalline walls. There was a faint tremor in her tone, a worry she had successfully hidden for a decade but could no longer suppress. "Every disciple under the age of sixteen must demonstrate their progress in the outer court today. The elders are suspicious of your isolation. I can no longer keep you hidden in this cave, Yun."
Yun looked down at his hands. Though he appeared calm, he could feel the crystalline structure of his bones humming with an ancient, restless frequency. It was a hunger, a silent demand to consume the energy of the world around him. "If I go out there," he whispered, his voice deep and resonant, "they will see it. They will see the purple light that lives under my skin. They will know I am different."
"Not if we seal it," Shara replied firmly. She stepped behind him, her fingers glowing with a soft, green light. With surgical precision, she produced three silver needles, each etched with complex suppressing runes that shimmered with a cold, metallic blue. One by one, she drove them into specific meridian points along his spine.
The effect was instantaneous. The overwhelming pressure Yun emitted, which made the very air feel heavy, vanished. To any observer, he now appeared as a common, somewhat frail boy with a pale complexion and eyes as deep and silent as an abyss. The "sheath"—his flesh—was now a closed door, hiding the "sword" of his chaos bones from the world.
As they emerged from the cave and descended toward the main plaza, the scale of the sect became apparent. Thousands of white marble steps led to a massive square where hundreds of disciples were already gathered. The air was thick with the scent of incense and the vibrant, multicolored hum of standard Qi. Disciples were showing off their mastery: plumes of fire danced in the air, whirlpools formed in stone basins, and blades of wind cut through target dummies.
When Yun Caos walked into the plaza following the Grand Elder, a ripple of whispers followed them.
"Is that the one? The boy Shara has kept in the forbidden cave?"
"He looks so weak. I can barely feel any Qi coming from him. Is he even a cultivator?"
Yun ignored the taunts. His attention was locked onto the center of the plaza, where the Spirit Measuring Stone stood. It was a terrifying monolith of obsidian, three stories tall, designed to measure the purity and attribute of a cultivator's internal energy. It had stood there for three thousand years, unmoved and unbreakable.
"Yun Caos, step forward," the Head Examiner commanded, his voice booming across the plaza.
As Yun walked toward the monolith, the silver needles in his back began to grow ice-cold. The Memory within his bones—the ancient Hunger that had once devoured the chaos of the early universe—was waking up. It didn't care about "measuring" power; it only knew how to take.
"Place your hand on the stone and circulate your Qi," the examiner said with a bored sigh.
Yun reached out. The moment his palm touched the cold obsidian, he didn't circulate Qi. He didn't have any. Instead, the purple whirlpool in his heart skipped a beat, and a surge of primordial void rushed toward his hand.
The stone didn't glow red for fire or blue for water. Instead, a terrifying sound of cracking—like a mountain splitting apart—echoed through the plaza. The obsidian began to lose its luster, turning a dull, lifeless gray at the point of contact. The grayness spread like a plague, moving up the monolith at an impossible speed. The stone wasn't measuring his power; it was being hollowed out.
Yun felt a rush of ecstasy as the ancient energy of the stone was sucked into his bones, feeding the crystal marrow. Panic flared in Shara's eyes. She realized the needles couldn't hold back a hunger this old.
"Yun, stop!" she cried out.
But it was too late. With a deafening explosion that sent a cloud of dust into the sky, the three-thousand-year-old treasure shattered into fine, colorless sand. The shockwave, tinged with a faint violet hue, knocked the nearest disciples to the ground.
Yun Caos stood alone amidst the ruins of the sect's most sacred tool. The silence that followed was absolute. He wasn't a genius cultivator. He was something the world had forgotten to fear: a Devourer of the Primordial.