Morning never truly arrived in Wraithbone Ridge.
The sky remained cloaked in bruised purples and ash-gray clouds, as if the sun itself had turned its gaze away from this cursed land. The wind, laced with grit and bone dust, howled low across the shattered stones, carrying whispers of long-forgotten battles.
Lin Xuan sat cross-legged beneath the dead tree where it had all begun. His limbs ached, his back was stiff from the cold, but his mind was impossibly clear.
A strange transformation had begun.
Within the core of his body—where once there had been nothing but hollow spiritual emptiness—there now pulsed a mote of darkness. No, not merely darkness. It was void. A presence of absolute absence. It didn't radiate qi, nor did it flow. It simply… existed. Silent. Still. Eternal.
Lin Xuan focused inward. The techniques he had scavenged from stolen scrolls told him that the first step of cultivation—the Qi Condensation Realm—was to draw spiritual energy into the dantian and slowly refine it.
But when he did so now, the result was entirely different.
He pulled a thin thread of spiritual energy from the environment, guiding it into his body using the most basic breathing technique. The strand glimmered faintly, like a firefly dancing on the edge of existence. But the moment it neared the void mote in his dantian—
Silence.
No burst of power. No resistance. The energy didn't merge. It was consumed. Obliterated.
And in its place, something else stirred. A soft ripple, subtle yet vast, spread from his core outward, causing the very air around him to grow still. The thin grass near his feet browned. The insects fell silent. Even the wind hesitated.
Lin Xuan opened his eyes slowly.
"That wasn't qi refinement… it was erasure."
This void, whatever it was, did not absorb energy—it deleted it.
He should have been afraid. Any normal cultivator would have recoiled, sought a sect master or healer. But Lin Xuan had no one. No master, no clan, no protection. Even his name had been self-given. What did he have to lose?
"To ascend, you must become the absence."
The words—spoken by that cosmic voice during the vision—echoed once more in his soul. He clenched his fists. If this was the power the Void Emperor had left behind, then he would not fear it. He would wield it.
Still, one truth remained:
He had reached the limit of what he could achieve alone.
To cultivate further, he needed more qi. More technique. Resources. Blood, if necessary.
And there was only one place within reach that could provide that.
Ashen Root Sect.
A minor sect in name only. It lay nestled in a crag of blackened cliffs on the eastern side of the ridge, built upon a network of ancient roots that stretched deep into the marrow of the earth. There, orphans and castaways were turned into weapons, if they survived long enough. Cultivation there was not a spiritual journey, but a war of attrition.
And Lin Xuan had already made his decision.
He stood, brushing the dust from his robe. The crude digging knife he had used for three winters hung from his belt. It would not be enough if he was attacked by beasts or fellow wanderers, but it was all he had.
The path eastward was long, stretching through canyons and dead valleys haunted by low-level spirit beasts and worse—rogue disciples banished from the sects they'd once served.
As he began to walk, each step slow but steady, a soft hum followed in his wake.
The mote within him, still and soundless, seemed almost… expectant.
Three Days Later
Ashen Root Sect came into view at sunset, rising from the bones of the ridge like a fortress built from ancient decay. Dozens of crooked spires jutted from the cliffs, each wrapped in chains of black iron. A blood-colored fog clung to the gates, and beyond it, Lin Xuan could see movement—disciples dueling, others carrying corpses, elders floating on bone talismans, their faces hidden behind masks of polished ivory.
A bell tolled. Low and mournful. A new trial was about to begin.
He stepped toward the gate.
A guard in rusted armor sneered at him. "You come to join? You look like wind would break you."
Lin Xuan didn't flinch. "I've come to cultivate. I brought no recommendation."
The guard raised an eyebrow. "No clan? No master?"
"No one."
The man chuckled. "Then you'll die quickly."
Lin Xuan looked up at the towering sect, eyes calm.
"Even if I do, I'll make the ones who kill me bleed."
There was silence.
Then, the gates opened.