The shrine was quiet again. The kind of silence that didn't just fill the room—but settled inside Qin Feng's chest, deep and still.
"Since you have resolve," the spirit finally said, its voice low and calm, "I shall give you... a miracle."
Qin Feng didn't respond right away. He was still trying to process what the spirit had said. A miracle? What could that mean?
Then something shifted in the air.
The shrine grew colder. Not harshly, but like the first breeze before a storm. The space around him trembled gently—barely noticeable, but steady, like a drumbeat beneath the surface of the world.
The spirit's voice echoed once more, quieter this time. "I have not touched the mortal realm in many lifetimes. But for you... I will offer a sliver of my light."
Suddenly, Qin Feng felt it.
A pulse gentle but impossibly vast swept over him. It wasn't like spiritual essence or martial power. It wasn't energy he could feel in his body. It moved differently through his spirit, his very soul.
He gasped and fell to his knees.
The pressure was overwhelming, but not in the way that crushed. It was weightless and endless, like being dropped into the center of the sky. He felt as though the world around him no longer existed. No stone beneath his feet. No shrine. No air. Just light.
"I cannot give you strength," the spirit said softly, "but I can help you see."
Then the light began to focus, gathering around his head , where his soul pulsed like a faint ember. That ember flickered. It was small. Weak. But it was alive.
Qin Feng clutched his robes tightly.
He could feel the second stage, the Soul Seed still forming. It hadn't matured. It wasn't ready. But the spirit wasn't forcing it. It wasn't rushing him. Instead, it wrapped around that growing seed, nurturing it, gently urging it forward.
Time seemed to stretch.
He didn't know if it was minutes or hours or even days, but he held on. Through the ache in his limbs, through the cold sweat on his skin, through the tearing sensation that clawed at the edges of his mind, he held on.
The spirit's voice returned, closer this time. "When the soul becomes still... when it listens without reaching, waits without expecting... that is when the Eye opens."
The pain grew sharper. Not in his body, but behind his eyes.
He cried out.
It felt like something was being pulled apart. Not broken, but unsealed.
A curtain.
A barrier that had always been there but never noticed. Now, under the weight of the spirit's light and his own resolve, it began to thin. And then,
It shattered.
There was no flash. No thunder. No roaring force. Just a quiet sound, like silk tearing in the dark.
And then... the darkness shifted.
He still couldn't see with his eyes. But for the first time in his life... he could feel what sight might be.
It wasn't a full picture. More like threads. Patterns in the air. Shapes that moved through the silence. He could feel the shrine's walls, the stones beneath him, even the faint residue of long-faded auras that lingered in the sacred space.
Tears welled up in his blind eyes.
Not because he could finally see the world, but because he had reached something real. Something his heart had never dared to hope for.
"I..." he whispered, voice trembling. "I see..."
The spirit didn't speak. It didn't need to.
In that moment, all of existence had quieted. And within that stillness, something shifted in Qin Feng's soul.
The light receded slowly. Not vanishing, but embedding itself deep within him.
He didn't know how long he knelt there. Minutes. Hours.
But when it was over, and he finally drew in a breath without shaking, something in him had changed forever.
His Eye... had opened.