The encounter with Liu Mei solidified Li Yao's new routine. His days were a cycle of mundane chores and profound exploration. Under the guise of "secluded meditation," he spent his nights in the waterfall cave, practicing the principles of the Void Scripture. His control over the "Unseen Ripple" grew; he could now extend his nullification field to a distance of three feet, creating a sphere around him where energetic techniques sputtered and died. He named this ability the "Warding Emptiness."
But it was the Ancestral Prayer Pavilion that held his deepest fascination. The ghost of a memory he had touched—the ancestor etching a formation of forgetting—was a clue. The pavilion was a seal, and his void essence was a key that resonated with the silence it enforced.
For weeks, he methodically swept the pavilion, his spiritual sense, sharpened by the void, brushing against every stone, every pillar. He was not looking for energy; he was listening for the lack of it, for the unnatural silence that suggested something was being hidden.
He found it in the western corner, behind a large incense burner that seemed permanently affixed to the floor. To any other cultivator, this spot felt normal, a place of quiet reverence. To Li Yao, it felt like a hole in the world. It was an emptiness more profound than his own, an imposed void that swallowed all spiritual inquiry.
He placed his hands on the floorboards. Instead of probing with energy, he did the opposite. He poured his own void essence into the silence, not as an attack, but as a greeting, a recognition of a kindred absence.
Who... seeks the forgotten?
The voice was not a sound. It was a thought that bloomed directly in his mind, dry and dusty as ancient bones. It held no malice, only a deep, weary curiosity.
"I am Li Yao. A disciple of the void," he thought back, projecting his intent into the emptiness. "I seek to understand what is hidden."
A disciple of the void... the presence mused. The scripture has chosen a new heir. It has been... ten thousand years? Twenty? Time becomes meaningless in the silence.
The presence shifted. Li Yao felt a flicker of something—not energy, but pure information, a packet of compressed history and law.
I am a wisp of the One Who Sealed, Grandmaster Shi Yuan's first disciple. Before he founded this sect, he fought in the Era of Sect Wars. He did not just defend. He captured. Beneath this pavilion lies a prison, holding a fragment of a Chaotic Sovereign's will that he defeated. A being of pure, alien law that would unravel our reality if it escaped. My master used a Law of Oblivion to make the world forget it, and to make it forget itself.
Li Yao's blood ran cold. A Chaotic Sovereign? That was a being of myth, a figure from the primordial chaos that predated the very laws of this world. A mere fragment of its will was buried here, under the Verdant Mountain Sect?
Why tell me this? he projected.
Because the seal weakens, the wisp replied, its tone grim. Time erodes all things, even Oblivion. The spiritual veins of the mountain shift. In a century, perhaps less, it will fail. The sect today has no one who remembers, no one who understands the nature of this threat. They would try to fight it with force, and force would only feed it. But you... you who cultivate nothingness... you might be able to do what my master did. Not to fight it, but to unmake it. To convince it that it does not exist.
The weight of the revelation settled on Li Yao. His strange path, his isolation, was not just a personal journey. It had a purpose. He was being entrusted with the sect's deepest, most dangerous secret.
What must I do? he asked.
Grow, the wisp sent, its voice fading. Comprehend the Void Scripture. Reach the Law Awareness Realm by your unique path. Only when you can perceive the laws as structures to be deconstructed, rather than forces to be wielded, will you be able to face what is sealed here. I have guarded this secret for millennia. I am... tired. The void calls to me as well. Now, it is your watch.
The presence vanished, leaving behind only the profound, enforced silence of the seal.
Li Yao remained kneeling, his hands on the floor. The broom lay forgotten beside him. The tournament, the sect politics, even his own steady growth—it all seemed suddenly small, trivial. He was no longer just a disciple with a strange technique. He was the warden of a sleeping catastrophe.
He looked at his hands, the tools of his emptiness. A calm resolve hardened within him. The path was clear. He had to ascend, not for glory, not for longevity, but for duty. He had to reach the peak of mortality not just to transcend it, but to ensure there was still a world left to transcend into.
The void within him seemed to pulse in agreement, no longer just a source of power, but a mantle of responsibility. The first step was the tournament. The resources, the exposure to other laws—it was no longer a mere opportunity. It was a necessity.
He stood up, picked up his broom, and resumed his sweeping. The motion was the same, but the intent behind it had changed. Every swing was now a meditation, every breath a step closer to the power he needed to guard the world from what lay forgotten beneath his feet.