The mist that clung to the lower slopes of Mount Cang was cold, the kind of damp cold that seeped through thin hemp robes and settled deep in the marrow.
Jiang Yi paused, leaning on his broom made of coarse twigs. He exhaled, watching a puff of white breath dissipate into the grey morning. Above him, piercing the cloud layer like a jagged spear, was the main peak of the Azure Cloud Sect. That was where the true disciples lived—the ones who could manipulate Qi, fly on swords, and shake the heavens with a wave of their hands.
Down here? Down here was just mud, wet stone, and Jiang Yi.
"Stop dreaming, trash," a voice sneered from behind him.
Jiang Yi didn't flinch. He gripped the broom handle tighter but turned with a practiced, submissive bow. "Senior Brother Luo."
Luo Feng, a robust outer disciple wearing the pale blue robes that Jiang Yi coveted, kicked a bucket of slop over the stairs Jiang Yi had just spent an hour cleaning. The foul-smelling liquid cascaded down the stone steps.
"The Elder complained that the path was slippery," Luo Feng grinned, his eyes gleaming with malicious amusement. "Clean it again. If I see a speck of dirt when I return from morning practice, you won't get a meal ticket today."
"Yes, Senior Brother," Jiang Yi said quietly, his eyes fixed on Luo Feng's boots.
Luo Feng scoffed, bored by the lack of resistance, and bounded up the stairs, his movements light and aided by the faint trace of Spirit Qi he had cultivated.
Jiang Yi waited until the footsteps faded. He didn't curse. He didn't cry. He just stared at the mess. Anger was a luxury for the talented. For a seventeen-year-old with a clogged meridian system and "waste" aptitude, anger was just a way to get killed.
He knelt and began to scrub.
Jiang Yi had been bought by the sect five years ago as a servant. He had tested his talent at the entrance ceremony, touching the Spirit Stone with trembling hands. The stone hadn't glowed. It hadn't hummed. It had remained a dull, grey rock. Null Spirit Roots.
He should have been sent away, but the sect needed labor, and he had nowhere to go. So, he swept. He hauled water. He watched the immortals fly above him and swallowed the bitterness in his throat.
By the time he finished recleaning the stairs, the sun was setting, painting the mist in hues of bruised purple. His stomach rumbled, a hollow ache he had grown used to. He walked toward the cliffside where the servant quarters were located, but a strange glimmer in the underbrush caught his eye.
It wasn't the glow of a spirit herb or the shine of a dropped coin. It was a dull, rhythmic pulse, like a dying heartbeat made of light.
Jiang Yi looked around. The path was empty. Curiosity, usually a fatal trait for a servant, moved his feet before his brain could protest. He pushed aside a thorny bush and scrambled down a small embankment.
Half-buried in the mud was a sphere.
It looked like a stone marble, no bigger than a bird's egg. It was cracked, its surface black and rough, but through the fissures, a faint, azure light pulsed weakly.
Jiang Yi reached out. His fingers brushed the cold surface.
Thump.
A sound echoed—not in his ears, but inside his chest. Jiang Yi gasped, clutching his heart. The marble seemed to stick to his finger. The cracks on its surface widened.
"Hungry..."
The voice whispered directly into his mind. It sounded ancient, parched, and terrifying.
Jiang Yi tried to shake his hand, to throw the thing away, but it was fused to his skin. "What—what are you?" he stammered aloud.
"Hungry!" the voice roared, no longer a whisper.
A suction force erupted from his palm. Jiang Yi screamed silently as he felt his vitality—the very life blood in his veins—being dragged toward his hand. His vision blurred. His knees buckled. He was going to die here, drained dry by a cursed rock in the mud, and no one would even notice he was gone.
Is this it? he thought, his consciousness fading. After five years of eating scraps and bowing to bullies, I die as fertilizer?
No.
A spark of defiance, hot and irrational, flared in his chest. He grabbed the wrist of the hand holding the stone with his other hand.
"If you want to eat," Jiang Yi gritted out, blood trickling from his nose, "Take the dirt! Take the air! I am mine!"
He didn't know how to cultivate. He didn't know how to move Qi. He only knew the stubbornness that had kept him sweeping stairs for five years while others quit or died. He mentally shoved back against the suction, visualizing the vast, misty mountain around him.
The stone paused. It seemed confused by the resistance of a mere mortal.
Then, the suction inverted.
Instead of pulling from him, the stone flared blindingly bright. It tore at the ambient air, ripping the thin Spirit Qi from the atmosphere, purifying it instantly, and violently injecting it into Jiang Yi's body.
CRACK.
The sound of his clogged meridians shattering under the pressure was loud in the quiet dusk. Pain, sharper than any beating, tore through him. Black sludge—the impurities of seventeen years—oozed from his pores.
Jiang Yi passed out, the glowing stone sinking into the flesh of his palm, vanishing as if it had never been there.