The moon sat low, shrouded behind clouds that didn't dare to thunder. Somewhere deep in the forested outskirts of the Lower Sky Realm, a man walked beneath the canopy.
Lucien.
Barefoot, unhurried, his robes still torn from the prison's decay. Shadows clung to him like loyal dogs, curling behind his steps without sound.
Yet with every pace forward, the spiritual qi in the area pulled back.
As if nature itself feared suffocation.
Above, dozens of cultivators watched from trees and floating talismans. Cloaked in veils, blades primed, they had no sect emblem. Assassins.
"Target confirmed. Male. Black hair. Unregistered cultivation."
A woman whispered into her jade scroll.
"Orders?"
The voice that replied was slow. "If he resists, end him."
The forest fell into silence.
Lucien's eyes—silver now, not born from birth but from the abyss—flicked up.
"You've wasted your footsteps," he said.
His voice was a ripple through space. Not loud—but weighty, unnatural. Like it didn't belong here. The talismans cracked midair. A tree branch snapped under pressure, and one of the cloaked cultivators crashed to the ground.
"How…?" he gasped. His qi scattered like ash.
Lucien stepped forward, slowly. "I told you. Your steps were wasted."
The air folded behind him. Black threads slithered around his wrist, converging into a single shape.
A sword. No handle. No hilt. Just a blade of condensed void.
"You've begun absorbing?" whispered the girl.
The Whisper of the Void had taken shape beside him again, face unreadable. "No. He hasn't absorbed anything. That's just his… presence."
Lucien raised the sword. "You wanted to measure me. So—measure."
The first cultivator charged. Late Nascent Soul. Fast. Experienced.
He never made it past three steps.
Lucien vanished from sight. A soundless flash followed—
—and the man was already collapsing, throat neatly parted, blade gone before the blood even had time to spill.
The other assassins screamed, trying to retreat—teleportation slips, invisibility charms, formation scrolls.
Lucien extended one hand, palm open.
The night froze.
A field of dark gray light pulsed from his body—not qi, not magic. Something else.
All teleportation talismans withered mid-use. Spatial distortions dissolved. Even the flame from a lantern flickered… and died.
The Whisper of the Void smiled for the first time.
"You called that your suppression domain?" she murmured.
"No," Lucien said. "That was just me… remembering how to breathe."
The rest of the cultivators were gone in moments. No theatrics. No mercy. His sword did not hum, and the ground took no scars.
But every corpse looked like it had died without understanding what killed them.
As the silence returned, Lucien looked at his hand.
His eyes narrowed.
"That wasn't even the Abyssal Core yet…" he muttered.
The girl stepped beside him, black eyes reflecting the bodies.
"You're regaining it faster than expected."
Lucien's reply was quiet, nearly lost to the wind.
"They just wanted to see if I was alive."
"And what will they send next?"
Lucien smiled coldly. "Someone they're willing to lose."