Consciousness returned not as a dawn, but as the silent, absolute ignition of a star in a forgotten sky.
Lin Feng's eyes opened.
And the world was remade.
A shroud of silent, black flame ignited over Lin Feng's vision, flames of absolute nothingness that did not burn or flicker, but saw. The physical world—the shattered arena, the pale, terrified faces, the bruised sky—was still there, but it was a ghost-image, a pale sketch laid over the true, thrumming tapestry of existence. He saw the world not as form, but as flow.
The air itself was a river of light. A thousand different hues swirled in a chaotic yet beautiful dance. He saw the clean, silver-white streams of sword qi bleeding from the disciples below, the deep, earthy browns and greens of life force, the volatile, crackling oranges and reds of raw, untempered power. It was a symphony of energy, and he could hear every note.
His gaze, sharpened by the Qi of Nothingness, sliced through the crowd. He saw not people, but walking constellations of power. A senior disciple to the east blazed like a well-tended forge, his qi a robust, fiery orange concentrated in his core and flowing down both arms in balanced, powerful streams. His pathways were wide and clear, a testament to solid foundation-building. Nearby, a minor elder from the Alchemy Department was a different kind of spectacle—not a blazing fire, but a deep, complex whirlpool of verdant green and muted gold. Her reserves were vast, but the qi moved in intricate, looping patterns through her meridians, speaking of refinement and control rather than raw combat power, her focus pooled in the delicate bones of her hands and wrists.
He looked up.
And the world held its breath.
Floating in a loose ring around his position were figures of such staggering power they were like suns in his new vision. One was a tapestry of controlled, razor-sharp silver threads—Elder Xiu, her qi so finely woven it seemed to stitch the very air into obedience. Another was a roaring, untamed storm of violet lightning—Elder Feng, a contained tempest whose qi paths flared brightest around his core and scarred arms. A third was a deceptively warm, golden glow—Elder Bao, whose qi felt dense and nourishing, yet pooled with deceptive weight around the twelve floating points of his butter knives.
His eyes slid past them, drawn inexorably to the two brightest stars.
To his master. Elder Lan was not a sun, but a singularity. A perfect, flawless sphere of absolute zero, radiating not light, but a cold so profound it defined the space around it. Her qi did not flow; it was, immutable and eternal, a silent verdict upon a noisy world. The black flames of his vision recoiled from her, not in fear, but in recognition of a kindred, if opposite, absolute.
And then, the center.
The man in simple gray robes, missing an arm, a horrific scar mapping his torso. His qi was not a color or a shape. It was the mountain itself. It was deep, immeasurable, a foundation of reality. It did not flare or roar; it simply endured, heavier than spacetime, older than sorrow. It was more than all the Inner Sect Elders combined, a calm, bottomless ocean to their raging rivers. Lin Feng didn't need an introduction. The missing arm, the scar, the sheer, unassailable weight of him—this could only be the legend. The Sword Saint. Hong Ye.
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Lin Feng's lips, invisible to all but perhaps the two figures who understood stillness best.
'So the final approval authority has arrived,' he observed, the thought as dry and factual as a ledger entry. 'I suppose a heavenly tribulation counts as a sufficiently escalated incident report.'
His attention turned inward, to the aura of devouring blackness that still cradled him, holding him aloft in the air. It was no longer a wild, leaking storm. It was an extension of his will. He could feel it now, not as a separate, rebellious force, but as the very breath of his soul. The Qi of Nothingness. It coiled and uncoiled at the barest whisper of his intent, a loyal and utterly lethal hound finally recognizing its master.
He looked down at his own hands, turning them over in the air. Through the lens of the black flames, he saw himself not as flesh and bone, but as a vessel. His meridians, once merely pathways, were now rivers of polished obsidian, flowing with a dark, silent power that drank the light of the world around it. He could feel the perfect, effortless control humming in his veins. Every bruise from the ape, every strained muscle, every wisp of fatigue—it was all gone, scoured away and replaced by this new, terrifying wholeness. The glass prison had shattered. The storm was now his to command.
He floated there, a nexus of silent annihilation in a sky full of watching suns, and for the first time, he was not struggling against the current. He was the current.
And he was ready to see where it would flow.
His dark eyes, still wreathed in their silent, black conflagration, finally met the gaze of the Sword Saint. It was not a challenge, nor a plea. It was a simple, stark acknowledgment of a presence that commanded the very mountain beneath them. Lin Feng gave a single, slight nod. Respectful, but devoid of subservience.
In the next fractured heartbeat, the space where he floated was empty.
There was no sound of displaced air, no blur of motion. For the spectators below, it was a discontinuity in reality—one moment he was a dark star in the sky, the next, he was simply gone.
The Mountain-Crusher Ape, leaning heavily against a shattered section of the arena wall, its wide yellow eyes still glazed with animalistic terror from the devouring phenomenon, had no time to process the shift. A pale hand was already pressed flat against the stone-like hide of its chest.
Lin Feng stood before the beast, his expression impassive. There was no grand wind-up, no shout of effort. He simply pushed.
It was not a physical shove.
Where his palm made contact, a circle of the ape's chest simply… ceased. Not the flesh, not the bone, but the very life-force that fortified it. The dense, earthen-brown qi that had made the beast an immovable object vanished into absolute negation, erased from existence in a silent, invisible burst.
The effect was instantaneous. A crater of nullification bloomed internally. The ape was hurled backward with impossible force, its massive body crashing clean through the arena wall it had been leaning against. Stone and spirit-metal reinforcement exploded outward as the beast was flung from the arena entirely, tumbling into the training grounds beyond in a lifeless heap, completely unconscious. The fight, which had once pushed Lin Feng to his absolute limit, had ended with a touch.
And as his form solidified on the arena floor, the sky above turned blue.
The oppressive, devouring black vortex winked out of existence. The unnatural gloom vanished, replaced by the serene, familiar blue of a high-mountain day. The sudden return of untampered sunlight felt like a benediction.
A collective, shuddering sigh of relief swept through the disciples. Some stumbled to their knees, laughing and crying at the same time. The plum-robed minor elder let out a choked sob of pure, unadulterated reverence.
Lin Feng's gaze swept past the new hole in the wall, past the stunned faces of Jian Nian—whose stoic mask was fractured into pure, raw shock—and landed on the Arena Master, who stood ashen-faced amidst the ruins of his domain.
His voice, when he spoke, was calm and clear, cutting through the lingering silence.
"My apologies for the damage to the ceiling," Lin Feng said, his tone as dry as the dust settling around them. He tilted his head back slightly, indicating the vast, open sky where the arena's protective dome had once been.
He stood amidst the devastation he had both endured and wrought, the blue sky stretching overhead, and waited. The current had flowed, and it had left a new landscape in its wake.
The silence that followed Lin Feng's apology was thicker than the mountain's deepest mist. Every eye, from the lowest disciple to the hovering paragons of power, was locked on his shirtless, dust-streaked form. He had not just broken the rules of the arena; he had rewritten the very definition of a Foundation Establishment cultivator.
The spell was broken by a low, appreciative whistle.
Elder Bao drifted forward on a lazy current of air, his twelve butter knives resuming their playful orbit. "Well, I'll be a roasted spirit-boar," he chuckled, his jolly voice cutting the tension like a warm knife. "Shatters the ceiling, redecorates the walls, and puts the main event to bed with a pat on the chest. And he remembers his manners! Kid, if you ever get tired of the silent treatment over at Veiled Silence Peak, Drunken Sword Peak has a wok with your name on it. We appreciate flair."
A grunt like grinding thunder came from Elder Feng. He hovered with his massive arms crossed, lightning scars stark against his skin. "Flair? That wasn't flair, you old gourmand. That was efficiency." His stormy eyes, alight with a spark of pure, unadulterated approval, scanned Lin Feng from head to toe as if assessing a newly forged blade. "To move through space not by tearing it, but by... sidestepping it. And that strike. No wasted motion. No grand declaration. Just a command for something to cease, and it did. Hah! Magnificent."
From a pool of shifting shadows, Elder Xiu's voice emerged, soft as silk and just as cutting. Her blindfolded head tilted a precise three degrees. "Efficiency is one word. 'Catastrophic variable' is another." Her fingers twitched slightly, as if plucking at the threads of fate she constantly monitored. "You have not merely advanced, Disciple Lin Feng. You have introduced a new piece on the sect's game board. The repercussions will be... extensive." There was no praise in her tone, only a cold, calculating fascination.
Elder Lan said nothing. She stood a little apart from the others, a statue carved from moonlight and winter. The faint, unnerving smirk on her lips was the only answer she would ever deign to give.
Throughout it all, Sword Saint Hong Ye remained silent. His gaze, heavy as a range of mountains, remained fixed on Lin Feng. He did not assess the technique or calculate the variable. He simply observed the phenomenon itself—the calm at the center of the storm, the young man who had faced annihilation and had instead made it his weapon.
Lin Feng endured the scrutiny, his own void-touched eyes meeting each Elder's comment with a neutral expression. When the brief chorus of reactions faded, he finally spoke, his voice still flat, yet now carrying a new, unshakable certainty.
"The beast was still standing," he stated. "My task was to defeat it."
The silence stretched, thick and heavy, after Lin Feng's simple declaration. It was a silence that belonged to the Sword Saint alone, and he let it hang, his gaze a physical weight upon Lin Feng, measuring the soul behind the newfound power.
When he finally spoke, his voice was calm, yet each word carried the mass of the mountain range itself. "Disciple Lin Feng." The name was not a call, but a pronouncement. "Do you comprehend the scale of the disturbance you have caused?" He did not wait for an answer, his blunted-steel eyes seeing through to the core of the issue. "A Foundation Establishment opening, and you shake the very pillars of heaven. This is both a blessing and a profound curse for this sect." A rare, grim flicker passed through his gaze. "I dread to imagine the tribulation that will herald your Nascent Soul."
As the final word left his lips, the world changed.
A spiritual pressure began to emanate from the Sect Leader, a density that did not seek to crush, but to test the very foundation of Lin Feng's being. The air congealed into a viscous, invisible ocean, pressing in from all sides. The Elders exchanged sharp, startled glances; even Elder Lan's icy composure seemed to crystallize further in surprise at the Sect Leader's direct intervention. Below, disciples gasped as the residual force made their own breaths short and labored.
Lin Feng's body stiffened. He felt his bones groan a silent protest, a sensation he hadn't experienced since before his awakening. Yet, his spine remained ramrod straight, his posture unyielding. Internally, his Qi of Nothingness stirred—not as a controlled technique, but as a primal, instinctual reaction. A cold, hungry vortex spun to life in his dantian, its innate desire to devour and negate flaring against the overwhelming foreign pressure that threatened its host. It was a starving beast facing a tidal wave, lacking the strength to consume it, but refusing to be drowned.
The Sword Saint's eyes narrowed infinitesimally. He sensed it—not just the resistance, but the unique, reactive hunger of the energy within the young man. It was a subtle pull, an attempt to unravel the very fabric of his spiritual weight.
"The nature of your power..." Hong Ye's voice lowered, gaining a sharper, more dangerous edge. "It does not simply resist. It seeks to consume. It echoes the devouring hunger of the demonic path." He leaned forward, just a fraction, and the pressure intensified, focusing into a spearpoint aimed solely at Lin Feng's core. The marble beneath Lin Feng's feet cracked in a perfect circle around him. "So, I will ask you directly. Will you walk the path of humanity, or will you become a slave to this... void?"
The final word was a hammer blow. The focused pressure doubled, seeking not to break his body, but to force the truth from his soul. The air around Lin Feng shimmered with the strain, the black flames in his eyes guttering against the immense, clarifying weight of the Sword Saint's will.
The immense spiritual pressure sought to grind him into the shattered marble, to force a confession of weakness or a plea for mercy. But Lin Feng did not break. He did not even bend. Instead, he met the Sword Saint's gaze, and his expression sharpened into one of absolute, crystalline clarity, as if he were cutting through the oppressive weight with the edge of his will alone.
When he spoke, his voice was steady, layered with a resonance that had not been there before, a depth forged in the heart of the void.
"Sect Leader." The title was acknowledged, but held no subservience. "Our first meeting is... more intense than I anticipated."
He took a single, measured breath against the ocean of force. "I have not yet learned to wield a sword properly," he continued, his words deliberate and clear. "But when I do, it will move for only two purposes: to protect the one person I live for, and to erase whoever threatens that peace."
A wave of stunned whispers rippled through the disciples. The plum-robed elder let out a faint, choked sound of delirious devotion. The Arena Master stared, his single eye wide—this was not the groveling apology or sworn oath he expected, but a declaration of a loyalty so absolute it bordered on heresy.
"And she," Lin Feng said, the word dropping into the silence with the weight of a vow, "would never accept me as anything less, or anything more, than the human she knows."
The implication hung in the air, stark and undeniable. His power, the terrifying Qi of Nothingness that echoed the demonic, was irrelevant. His entire world, his entire moral compass, was already defined by a single, unwavering point. He would not become a slave to the void, because he was already, and would forever be, bound to her.
The Elders reacted visibly. Elder Bao's eyebrows shot up, his usual jollity replaced by stark surprise. Elder Feng's thunderous scowl deepened, but with a flicker of something that might have been understanding. Elder Xiu's head tilted further, her blindfolded gaze seeming to recalculate every assumption she had just made. Only Elder Lan's composure fractured. Her faint, icy smirk vanished as she brought a hand to her brow, her head tipping back in a gesture of pure, unadulterated disbelief. It was the look of a master strategist who had just watched her most powerful piece declare it would only move to protect a single pawn.
And throughout it all, the Sword Saint Hong Ye remained immovable, his spiritual pressure unrelenting, his eyes fixed on the young man who had just defined his path not by the sect's laws, but by a single, unbreakable bond.
"Do you understand what you are saying, Disciple Lin?" Hong Ye's voice was low, a rumble of tectonic plates. A faint, almost imperceptible snort of disbelief escaped him. "Not for the sect, not for the path of righteousness… but for a single person."
He did not wait for a reply. The immense spiritual pressure that had been crushing Lin Feng vanished in an instant, retracted so completely it was as if it had never been.
Lin Feng's body, which had been held rigid by sheer will, stumbled a half-step forward as the opposing force disappeared. His knees buckled slightly, but he caught himself immediately, his posture snapping back to its unwavering straightness, his dark eyes never leaving the Sect Leader's.
"Fine," the Sword Saint said, his tone final, a judgment rendered. "I will take you at your word. For now." His eyes narrowed, and the air grew cold with the promise of consequence. "But if the day comes that this power of yours confuses you about which path is yours… do not blame me for beating sense back into you."
He turned, his gray robes swirling soundlessly, and began to walk away. A collective, shuddering sigh of relief passed through the gathered Elders; Elder Bao wiped a bead of sweat from his temple, while Elder Feng let out a tense breath he seemed to have been holding.
The Sword Saint paused after a few steps, speaking without looking back, his voice carrying a rare, almost weary note of hard-won experience that seemed to echo down from the highest, loneliest peaks.
"A word of advice, Disciple Lin. Cultivation is a lonely road. The higher you climb, the more you leave behind." He glanced over his shoulder, his single eye holding a depth of solitude that was more terrifying than any pressure. "To tie your entire existence to another… that is a weight that will one day crush you, or them."
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