Nalan Ziyan woke with a start when the first rays of sunlight came through the gaps in the wooden walls.
For a long moment, she lay completely still on her sleeping mat, staring at the ceiling. Her mind was filled with fragments of what had happened the night before—the red light, the shadows rising from the scroll, the voice speaking inside her head, the burning sensation on her forehead.
Had it been a dream? It must have been a dream. Things like that didn't happen in real life. She was just an ordinary village girl, a washerwoman's daughter. Magic and supernatural powers belonged in the stories that old grandmothers told children by the fire.
But even as she tried to convince herself, she knew it wasn't true.
She could feel something different inside her. Something had changed. The knowledge that had been forced into her mind was still there, clear and accessible, like memories of things she had always known.
Slowly, she reached under her pillow.
Her fingers touched cold leather and smooth metal.
The scroll and the necklace were there, exactly where she had hidden them before falling asleep. The scroll was cold to the touch, unnaturally cold, just as it had been last night. The necklace's red stone had lost its glow, but it was warm against her palm.
Not a dream, then. It had really happened.
Ziyan sat up and looked around the room. Her father was still asleep in his corner, his breathing rattling and uneven. The first light of dawn was creeping through the walls, painting pale stripes across the dirt floor.
She pushed the scroll and necklace back under her pillow and got to her feet.
The first thing she noticed was how easy it was to stand up.
Every morning for as long as she could remember, waking up had been difficult. Her body would ache from the previous day's work. Her muscles would be stiff and sore. Getting out of bed felt like lifting a heavy weight.
Today, there was none of that.
She felt light. Refreshed. As if she had slept for a week instead of a few hours.
Ziyan frowned, looking down at her hands. They looked the same as always—small, thin, calloused from years of washing clothes. But something was different. She could feel it in her bones.
She decided to test it.
Moving quietly so as not to wake her father, she went out to the small courtyard behind the house. There was a well there, old and mossy, with a wooden bucket attached to a rope. Drawing water from this well had always been a struggle for her. The bucket was large, and when it was full, it was incredibly heavy. She usually had to use both hands and brace her feet against the well's edge just to pull it up.
She dropped the bucket into the well and heard it splash at the bottom. Then she grabbed the rope and pulled.
The bucket came up easily.
Not just easily—effortlessly. She pulled it up with one hand, barely straining at all. The full bucket of water, which must have weighed at least thirty pounds, felt like it weighed nothing.
Ziyan stared at the bucket in disbelief. She lifted it with one arm, held it out to the side, and felt only a mild tension in her muscles. She could have held it there for hours.
"What happened to me?" she said aloud, her voice barely above a breath.
A fit of coughing from inside the house interrupted her thoughts. Her father.
She set the bucket down and hurried back inside.
Her father was awake now, sitting up on his mat, his thin body shaking with each cough. The sound was wet and terrible, like something was tearing inside his chest. When the fit finally passed, he lowered his hand from his mouth. Ziyan saw the cloth he had been coughing into.
It was stained with blood. Fresh blood, bright red against the dirty fabric.
Her heart clenched painfully.
"Father," she said, kneeling beside him. "How are you feeling today?"
He looked at her with tired eyes. Once, those eyes had been full of life and laughter. Now they were sunken and dim, surrounded by dark circles.
"I'm fine, daughter," he said, his voice weak and hoarse. "Just a little cough. Don't worry about me."
But it wasn't just a little cough. It hadn't been "just a little cough" for months now. The sickness was eating him from the inside, and they both knew it. The village healer had done what she could with her herbs and remedies, but what he really needed was proper medicine. Real treatment from a real doctor in the city.
And that cost money. Money they didn't have.
Ziyan helped her father drink some water, then began preparing the morning meal—a thin rice porridge, the same thing they ate every day because it was all they could afford. As she stirred the pot over the small fire, her mind wandered to the scroll hidden under her pillow.
The knowledge that had been implanted in her mind was becoming clearer now, arranging itself into something she could understand. It was a cultivation technique—a method for absorbing power from the world and storing it inside the body. With enough power, a person could become stronger, faster, healthier. They could live longer. They could do things that ordinary people couldn't do.
They could save someone who was dying.
But this technique was different from normal cultivation methods. She didn't know how she knew this, but she knew it with certainty. This was not a righteous path. This was something darker—something that required pain and blood and shadow.
"The devil's art," she thought. "That's what the elders would call it."
And yet, as she looked at her father struggling to sit up, struggling to breathe, she knew she had no choice.
She had to try.
The day passed slowly. Ziyan went through the motions of her daily routine—cooking, cleaning, washing clothes, fetching water—but her mind was elsewhere. She kept thinking about what she would do when night fell. She kept reviewing the knowledge in her head, trying to understand exactly what she needed to do.
Several times, she caught herself staring at the scroll's hiding place, eager to look at it again. But she forced herself to wait. Daylight was too dangerous. Someone might see.
When Mrs. Liu from next door stopped by to check on them, Ziyan forced herself to smile and make normal conversation.
"How is your father today?" Mrs. Liu asked, peering into the dim house with concern.
"A little better," Ziyan lied. "He ate some porridge this morning."
"Good, good. You're such a good daughter, taking care of him all by yourself. If you need anything, just ask, you know that."
"Thank you, Auntie Liu. You're very kind."
After the neighbor left, Ziyan sat by her father's side and watched him sleep. His face was so thin now, the bones clearly visible under the skin. His breathing was shallow and irregular.
He didn't have much time left. Weeks, maybe. A month or two at most.
Unless she did something.
Finally, night fell.
Ziyan waited until the village was completely silent. She waited until her father had taken his medicine and fallen into a deep, drugged sleep. She waited until even the dogs had stopped barking and the insects had taken over the night with their sounds.
Then she moved.
She took the scroll and the necklace from under her pillow and tucked them into her clothes. She slipped out through the back door, moving silently across the small courtyard. The night was very dark—the new moon was approaching, and there were no stars visible through the thick clouds.
She walked away from the village, following a path she knew by heart. There was a forest about half a mile from the village—a thick, tangled place where the trees grew so close together that even daylight couldn't penetrate. People avoided it even during the day. They said spirits lived there.
Tonight, Ziyan walked straight into it.
The darkness didn't frighten her. In fact, it felt welcoming, like a cool blanket on a hot summer night. She moved between the trees without hesitation, her feet somehow finding safe ground even though she couldn't see where she was stepping.
Deep in the forest, she found a clearing at the base of an enormous old tree. The trunk was so wide that ten people holding hands couldn't have circled it. The roots spread out in all directions, creating natural seats and platforms.
This would do.
She sat down on one of the roots and spread the scroll out on the ground before her. Even in the complete darkness, she could see the drawings on it. They seemed to glow with a faint light of their own—not bright, but visible.
The necklace she hung around her neck. The red stone lay against her chest, cool and heavy.
Then she closed her eyes and began.
The instructions in her mind were clear. First, she had to sit in a specific position—legs crossed in a particular way, hands resting on her knees with the fingers forming a certain shape. She adjusted her body until everything felt right.
"First... abandon fear. Accept pain."
She breathed in.
It was not a normal breath. According to the knowledge in her head, she was supposed to filter the air—to draw in only the cold, the dark, the negative energy that filled the night. To pull that energy into her body and use it as fuel.
At first, nothing happened. She breathed in and out, trying to follow the instructions, but all she felt was ordinary cold air entering her lungs.
She tried again. And again. And again.
Minutes passed. Maybe an hour. Sweat began to form on her forehead despite the cold. Her legs started to ache from sitting in the same position.
Still nothing.
Doubt crept into her mind. Maybe she was doing it wrong. Maybe the knowledge in her head wasn't real. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing, and this was all just—
Then she felt it.
The air around her suddenly became heavy, as if the atmosphere itself had thickened. And something began to enter her body.
It came through her skin, through her breath, through every pore. A cold, dark energy that felt nothing like anything she had experienced before. It was like swallowing ice water, but from the inside out. It was like being submerged in a frozen lake.
And then the pain started.
It felt like a thousand needles were being pushed into her body all at once. Every inch of her skin burned. Her muscles cramped and twisted. Her bones felt like they were being squeezed in a vice.
"Mother!" The word escaped her lips before she could stop it—an instinctive cry for comfort that would never come.
She wanted to run. Every instinct screamed at her to stop, to get up, to escape from this agony. Her body tried to move, tried to uncurl from the position she was holding, but she forced it to stay still.
She thought of her father. She thought of his sunken face, his blood-stained cloth, his labored breathing. She thought of the years of poverty, the hunger, the humiliation. She thought of watching her mother die because they couldn't afford a doctor.
The memories gave her strength.
She clenched her teeth so hard that something cracked. Her lower lip split open, and blood flowed into her mouth.
The moment she tasted her own blood, everything changed.
The dark energy that had been slowly seeping into her body suddenly rushed in like a flood. It was as if the blood had opened a gate, and now the power was pouring through without restraint.
The necklace on her chest grew hot. Not warm—hot, almost burning. The red stone seemed to beat in rhythm with her heart.
Inside her body, she could hear things breaking. Fibers tearing. Bones cracking and reforming. It was the sound of her body being destroyed and rebuilt at the same time. The pain was beyond anything she had ever imagined—beyond what she had thought a human being could endure.
Tears streamed down her face. Her body shook uncontrollably. But she didn't move from her position. She didn't stop.
"This is the price," the voice in her head said. "For power, you must pay in pain."
She began to understand. The pain wasn't something to be avoided—it was part of the process. The dark energy was tearing her body apart and putting it back together stronger. Every fiber that broke was replaced with something better. Every bone that cracked healed denser than before.
Under her skin, she could feel something moving. Dark energy, flowing through pathways she hadn't known existed. Opening channels that had been closed. Cleaning out impurities that had accumulated over years of poor food and hard work.
She began to sweat, but it wasn't normal sweat. It was black—thick, oily, and foul-smelling. The impurities in her body were being pushed out through her skin. The smell was terrible, like rotting meat mixed with sewage.
Time lost meaning. She didn't know if minutes had passed or hours.
Finally, deep in her lower abdomen—in the place the knowledge called the "dantian"—she felt a warmth forming. It was small, barely noticeable at first, but it grew steadily. The dark energy she had been absorbing was collecting there, condensing into something solid.
A core. The first step on the path of cultivation.
She opened her eyes.
The world looked different.
It was still the middle of the night, still pitch black in the forest. But she could see everything. Every leaf on every tree. Every insect crawling on the ground. Every owl watching from the branches above. Her vision had become something beyond normal—something that didn't need light to function.
Slowly, carefully, she stood up.
Her body ached everywhere, but underneath the pain was something else. Energy. Strength. Power.
She looked at her hands. They were pale—paler than they should have been. Her fingernails had grown slightly longer and seemed sharper. The veins under her skin were more visible, tracing dark lines across her flesh.
Near her foot, there was a dead branch—thick and dry, the kind that took effort to break even for a grown man.
She picked it up and squeezed.
The branch crumbled to splinters in her grip.
Ziyan stared at the broken wood in her hand. She hadn't even tried. She had barely applied pressure. And the branch had shattered like it was made of dried leaves.
"This power," she breathed. "This is real."
But even as exhilaration filled her, she noticed something else. Something troubling.
Her mind felt different. Colder. Harder. Things that would have frightened her yesterday seemed trivial now. The dark forest, the isolation, the dead of night—none of it bothered her anymore.
And there was something else. A hunger she couldn't quite identify. A desire for... something.
A rabbit hopped across the clearing in front of her.
Before, Ziyan would have thought it was cute. She might have tried to catch it as a pet, or let it go about its business.
Now, looking at the rabbit, she felt only one thing: the urge to kill it. To feel its blood on her hands. To—
She shook her head violently, forcing the thought away.
"No," she said aloud. "I'm not a monster. I'm still human. I'm still me."
But even as she said it, she wasn't entirely sure it was true.
She gathered the scroll and checked that the necklace was secure around her neck. Then she began the walk back to the village.
At home, she drew water from the well and washed herself thoroughly. The black residue on her skin took a long time to scrub away, and the smell was difficult to remove. When she finally looked at her reflection in the water bucket, she barely recognized herself.
Her skin was whiter than before. Her eyes seemed deeper, darker, with a strange intensity that hadn't been there yesterday. She looked older. More dangerous.
She looked like someone you wouldn't want to meet alone at night.
Exhaustion finally caught up with her. She barely made it to her sleeping mat before collapsing. Sleep took her instantly.
But even in sleep, her body continued to work. The dark energy in the air slowly seeped into her, drawn by the core in her dantian. The red stone on her necklace glowed faintly, standing guard over her transformation.
Outside, the village dogs began to bark. They barked all night, restless and afraid, as if they could sense something terrible approaching.