A week passed.
The boy whose body I now inhabited had a name--Lin Feng. A name that was once whispered with dread across ten thousand worlds, now belonging to a frail orphan living at the edge of Qingyang Village.
I had learned much.
He was seventeen. Weak. Scorned. Spirit root shattered in a sparring accident two years ago, which in this backwater region was practically a death sentence. His parents had long passed--killed during a minor sect skirmish--and his distant relatives had tossed him out like rotting meat once his cultivation stalled.
Now he lived alone in a crumbling shack, fed by the pity of the village chief and the occasional leftover scraps from those who used to call him "brother."
Pathetic.
But strangely fitting.
No one expected anything from this Lin Feng. He had no family, no talent, no destiny. He was invisible. Forgotten. That made him dangerous.
And I--I was not broken. Not anymore.
Each morning, I woke with the sun, sat on the rotting wooden floor, and focused. Not on gathering qi--there was no point with the meridians in this state--but on memory.
I pieced myself back together, fragment by fragment.
Thousands of years of knowledge. Forbidden cultivation methods. Sealed techniques. Names I had once erased from history clawed back into my mind. It was slow. Painful. But necessary.
There was one method that survived nearly intact.
The Void Pulse Technique.
A forbidden art I crafted in the last era. It bypassed normal qi circulation. No root needed. It devoured ambient spiritual energy and condensed it directly into physical resilience and latent power--but at a cost.
The cultivator's mind would begin to drift into the void. Madness. Hallucinations. The line between self and nothingness would blur.
It had nearly killed me once. But now? It was my only path forward.
And I would walk it again.
I waited until nightfall. The shack was cold, the wind leaking through gaps in the rotted walls. I sat cross-legged on the bare earth, drawing a crude circle of ash and blood on the ground. A single flickering candle lit the space.
I bit my thumb, let the blood drip into my palm, and muttered the first incantation.
"Void within, Void without… All things return to silence."
The temperature dropped.
The candle flickered once, then dimmed as the light around me bent unnaturally inward, pulled into the spiral rune I etched on the floor.
I inhaled deeply.
And screamed.
A soundless howl tore through my soul as the void responded.
It didn't rush in gently. It consumed.
My body convulsed, tendons tightening like drawn bowstrings. Pain seared across my limbs as the technique forcibly pulled energy--not from the world, but from the cracks between it. It bypassed natural qi entirely.
I felt something change.
The bones in my arms cracked, not from breaking--but from reforming. Muscles twitched as hidden energy seeped into every cell, strengthening what was weak, restoring what had been lost.
I coughed blood. My vision blurred.
But I kept going.
This was nothing compared to the trials I once endured in the Abyssal Crucible.
Hours passed. The void pulsed around me, steady and alive. I didn't sleep. I didn't need to. The next morning, when I opened my eyes, my back was straight. My breath was steady.
And for the first time since waking in this new life, I felt strong.
Not a cultivator's strength. No flashy techniques. No flying swords.
But raw, physical strength.
I stood. My legs didn't tremble. I stepped outside.
The sky was gray with early mist. Dew clung to the dry grass, and the scent of ash and manure lingered in the village air.
I walked through the dirt roads, toward the communal spring.
Along the way, people turned to look.
Not out of awe.
But disgust.
There were whispers. Some barely hid their laughter. Others scowled like my presence offended them.
"There goes the cripple again. Still hasn't died yet?"
"Must be eating rat meat. No way he's surviving off qi with that shattered root."
"Should've stayed in his shack. Waste of air."
I didn't react.
I wouldn't give them the satisfaction.
But I remembered their faces.
Especially one....Liu Yuan.
Once Lin Feng's childhood friend. Now a proud outer disciple of the Ironwind Sect. He passed me on the road, tall and smug, his spirit energy flaring ever so slightly, as if to remind me who the real cultivator was.
He looked me up and down, then scoffed.
"Didn't expect you to crawl out of your rat hole this early. What's the matter? Finally decided to sell that corpse of a body to the village girls?"
I stared at him. Calm. Silent.
He frowned at my silence and stepped forward, blocking the path.
"You deaf now, Lin Feng?"
A pause.
Then I spoke.
"No. Just bored of insects buzzing."
He blinked.
Then his hand moved.
Faster than most villagers could see, he lashed out with a palm strike aimed at my chest—a casual blow, meant to knock me down, maybe crack a rib or two. A lesson.
But he wasn't ready.
I caught his wrist.
His eyes widened.
"You--" he began.
I twisted, pivoted my weight, and slammed his body into the dirt with a single fluid motion.
It wasn't a cultivator's technique.
It was precision. Leverage. Efficiency. Things I once taught to assassins who killed kings in the night.
The village fell silent.
Liu Yuan coughed, struggling to rise. His robes were soiled. His pride, shattered.
"I'll kill you," he spat.
"No," I said coldly. "You'll try."
And then I walked away.
Just like that.
Back in the shack, I stared at my hands.
They no longer shook.
The void had begun to accept me again. My path, though narrow, was open.
But this was just the first step.
The Ironwind Sect's outer gates were opening in two weeks. A rare event—once every three years, they allowed mortals and commoners to enter the preliminary trials. The reward? A single outer disciple token.
To most, it was a dream.
To me, it was a foothold.
I would enter the sect.
Not because I needed it.
But because my enemies were watching. And nothing drew prey like a wolf dressed in sheep's skin.
Let them think me weak.
Let them think I crawl, while others soar.
Soon, I would show them--
The void does not forget.