The silence in the servant dormitory was broken only by the thin, ragged breaths of Mei Lan. She woke to the acrid smell of ozone and the deep, throbbing ache in her chest—not a pain, but a profound hunger. It was the first time in her seventeen years she hadn't woken to the immediate demands of the Azure Water Sect kitchen. The faint morning light filtered through the small window, illuminating the worn wooden table beside her pallet. There, glittering faintly, was a white pill.
She reached for it, her fingers, usually stiff from scrubbing pots, moving with an unfamiliar, graceful precision. The pill felt cool and clean, unlike anything she had ever seen. The spiritual purity radiating from it was overwhelming, causing her suppressed Qi Meridians to vibrate painfully, desperate to consume it. She didn't question its origin. Questioning meant weakness. In her life, opportunity was a fleeting specter, and survival was the only law. She swallowed the pill without water.
The effect was not a gentle nourishment; it was a violent spiritual exorcism.
The Purification Pill, supercharged by its absolute purity (a byproduct of Lin Tian's Heaven-Shaking Dao System), sought out the foreign spiritual energy that Sect Master Luo had been unknowingly feeding into her to suppress her talent. The pill hit this stagnant energy like a divine hammer, shattering the invisible cage around her spirit.
WHOOSH.
Mei Lan gasped as the world shifted. Colors sharpened. Sounds became distant. Her body was no longer an exhausted shell; it was a perfect, coiled spring. An incredible, fierce energy roared to life in her Dantian—the energy of the Innate Sword Soul.
She saw the world not in matter, but in vectors. Every wooden support, every shard of rock in the mountain, and every breath of air was suddenly a perfect line, a trajectory waiting to be cut.
[System Notification: Sword Intent: Awakening Complete. Cultivation: Qi Condensation Stage 1 (Initial Breakthrough).]
She didn't understand the voice, but she understood the feeling: Strength. Absolute, terrifying strength that had been stolen from her.
Mei Lan stood up, the rough servant robes feeling like an insult against the perfection of her new inner self. She stepped out of the dormitory just as Sect Master Luo and two elders arrived, their faces etched with desperation.
"Stop her! She has awakened the Sword Intent! Seize the girl before she leaves the mountain!" Sect Master Luo screamed, throwing a net of spiritual chains toward her.
Mei Lan didn't panic. Her mind was cold, clear, and perfectly analytical. Her Innate Sword Soul already possessed the technique to defeat this attack.
She hadn't learned a single technique in this life, yet she knew: The net's weakest point is the central node, energized by the Core Elder's secondary Qi. Cut the node, and the weave unravels.
Without a word, she raised her hand. There was no sword; there was only her index finger, which she held out like a blade. She focused the newly birthed Sword Qi in her Dantian, pushing it out in a thin, humming line.
The Sword of Nothingness.
The ethereal, invisible blade sliced through the air and struck the exact central node of the net. The spiritual chains instantly frayed, collapsing into smoke before they reached her.
Sect Master Luo froze, his Soul Transformation expert eyes wide with disbelief. This was not the attack of a newly awakened cultivator; this was the technique of a peerless Core Formation expert who had mastered the very essence of the Sword Dao!
"Impossible! What did you consume?!" Luo roared.
Mei Lan's eyes, now hard and glittering with inner light, finally fixed on him. Her voice was flat, devoid of emotion, yet ringing with lethal intent. "You held me here. You suppressed my path."
Her accusation was simple, cold fact. She had no anger, only pragmatic necessity.
The Sect Master, still reeling from the General's confrontation and Lin Tian's subtle Qi disruption, was unstable. Mei Lan didn't wait for him to recover. She knew this place could not contain her.
She turned and ran—not down the main path, but straight up the vertical cliff face behind the dormitory. Her Sword Qi pulsed, allowing her to leap with inhuman power, anchoring her fingertips into the rock as if they were blades.
"She is escaping!" the elders yelled, launching themselves into the air.
Mei Lan reached the peak and stopped for a single, terrifying second. She turned back and unleashed a tidal wave of pure, concentrated Sword Intent—a physical pressure that felt like being crushed by a million heavy swords. It wasn't an attack, but a statement of absolute dominance.
Sect Master Luo and the elders were slammed back against the mountain, gasping for air. They were immobilized, their spiritual energy temporarily paralyzed by the sheer, foreign purity of the Divine Sword Intent.
Mei Lan did not look back. She saw the vast, sprawling Azure Cloud Kingdom stretching out before her—a landscape of danger, resources, and endless enemies. She knew she had nothing but the clothes on her back and the terrifying hunger of her Innate Sword Soul.
Strength is the only truth, she thought, leaping across the mountain ranges, already practicing the Sword of Nothingness with every stride. I will acquire it all.