The Trash of Iron Mountain
The higher a cultivator ascends, the louder the world becomes.
In the Northern Wilderness, power was not measured by wisdom or restraint. It was measured by volume. Immortals screamed the names of their techniques to the heavens. Gods demanded worship with voices that shattered mountain ranges. The Great Dao itself hummed with a vibration so intense it could liquefy the bones of the unworthy.
To the people of the Mortal World, this noise was glory. It was the sound of the divine.
To Leo, it was just a migraine.
Leo was eighteen years old. He was thin, with messy black hair tied back by a piece of rough twine. He wore the faded grey tunic of a servant, patched at the elbows and stained with soot.
He sat in the muddy backyard of the Iron Mountain Sect's servant quarters, his knuckles pressed against the cold, hard earth.
"Ninety-nine..." Leo wheezed, sweat dripping from the tip of his nose. "One... hundred."
He collapsed onto his stomach, gasping for air. His arms shook violently. His lungs burned as if he had inhaled broken glass.
Most cultivators in the Iron Mountain Sect didn't sweat. They circulated Qi to refresh their bodies. They could lift boulders with a wave of their hand and fly on swords that left trails of neon light.
Leo had to fight for every inch of movement.
He rolled over onto his back, staring up at the sky.
Above him, a disciple flew past on a flying sword. The sword left a jagged trail of bright pink energy that buzzed like a broken lightbulb.
Leo winced and covered his eyes.
"Too bright," he whispered. "Why does everyone have to be so shiny?"
Leo had been born with Zero Spiritual Veins.
In a world where Qi was everything, he was less than nothing. He was a defect. A mistake. The Sect only kept him around because he was willing to clean the latrines and haul lumber for no pay.
But Leo had a secret. Or rather, a habit.
Since the Heavens refused to give him energy, he had decided to make his own.
He sat up and crossed his legs. He didn't assume the lotus position of a cultivator. He just sat comfortably.
He closed his eyes and focused on the silence between his heartbeats.
'If I cannot be loud,' Leo thought, 'I will be heavy.'
He began his breathing exercise. It wasn't a technique found in any scroll. It was something he had instinctively started doing when he was five years old to stop the headaches caused by the "noise" of the world.
Inhale.
The breath took thirty seconds. He pulled the air deep into his lower abdomen, compressing it until his lungs felt like iron tanks.
Hold.
He held the breath for forty seconds.
To an observer, he looked like a statue. But inside his body, a terrifying transformation was taking place. Deprived of oxygen, his cells didn't die. Instead, they panicked, adapted, and hardened. His bones fractured microscopically and healed instantly, becoming denser than granite. His blood turned heavy, flowing like mercury.
Exhale.
He let the air out in a thin, silent stream.
He didn't know it, but he wasn't gathering Qi. He was rejecting it.
While other cultivators filled themselves with gas to float, Leo was compressing his existence to sink. He was unknowingly walking the first step of the Nothing Path: [The Anchor].
"Hey, Trash!"
A rock the size of a fist sailed over the wooden fence.
It struck Leo squarely in the shoulder.
THUD.
It didn't bounce off. It hit him with a dull, heavy sound, like a stone hitting a bag of wet sand.
Leo didn't flinch. He didn't even open his eyes. He just finished his exhale.
Two disciples in the blue robes of the Outer Sect stood at the gate, snickering. Their hands glowed with faint blue light—Rank 1 Spirit Qi.
"Still doing your 'exercises'?" the taller one sneered. "Look at him. He thinks if he breathes hard enough, the Heavens will pity him."
"Leave him, Chen," the other laughed. "He's useful. If we kill him, who's going to fix the roof of the Elders' hall?"
They laughed, their voices echoing down the path. To Leo, their laughter sounded like metal scraping against glass.
He rubbed his shoulder. There was no bruise. The rock had shattered upon impact with his skin, leaving only dust on his tunic.
'They are right,' Leo thought, standing up and brushing the dust away. 'I have no talent. I'm just a servant.'
He turned to look at the work he had to do.
In front of him lay a heavy oak table that had been brought down from the Elder's Hall. One of the legs had snapped in half during a brawl between two drunken disciples.
"Fix it by sundown, or no dinner," the Steward had said.
Leo sighed. "I need a hammer."
He looked around. The tool shed was locked.
"Great."
He looked at the broken leg. He looked at a rusty iron nail lying in the dirt.
Usually, driving a rusty nail into seasoned oak wood required a heavy mallet and considerable strength.
Leo picked up the nail. He placed it against the wood.
He placed his palm flat against the head of the nail.
'Just push,' he told himself. 'Be heavy.'
He didn't channel Qi. He didn't shout a technique name.
He simply applied the density he felt in his lungs to his hand.
He pushed.
CRUNCH.
It wasn't a tapping sound. It was the agonizing scream of wood fibers being obliterated.
Leo's hand didn't just drive the nail in.
His hand sank into the wood.
The solid oak yielded like soft butter. The nail vanished completely, buried deep inside the timber. The force of his "gentle push" fused the two pieces of wood together so tightly that the grain merged.
Leo pulled his hand out. There was a perfect imprint of his palm pressed into the oak, compressed as hard as stone.
"Ah," Leo sighed, looking at the handprint. "Too hard again. I really have no control."
He rubbed his hand. It wasn't scratched. It wasn't even red.
For a split second, the air around his fingers seemed to warp, as if gravity itself was bending to accommodate his mass. But Leo didn't notice. He just thought his eyes were playing tricks on him.
The next morning, the drums of the Iron Mountain Sect beat like thunder.
It was the day of the Monthly Assessment.
Hundreds of disciples gathered in the main plaza. In the center stood the Testing Stone—a massive block of black obsidian, ten feet tall, enchanted to measure raw power.
"Li Wei! 500 pounds of force! Rank 3 Qi!" The Elder shouted.
The crowd cheered. A boy with a glowing fist bowed arrogantly.
"Chen Po! 600 pounds! Rank 3 Qi!"
Another cheer.
Leo stood at the back of the line, holding a broom. He wasn't supposed to be here. He was supposed to be sweeping the stairs.
But he wanted to know.
He had been doing his breathing exercises for ten years. He wanted to know if he had reached even the bottom of Rank 1.
"Next!" The Elder looked at his list, then frowned. "Leo? The Servant?"
The crowd went silent. Then, a wave of snickers rippled through the plaza.
"Why is the trash here?"
"Does he want to break his hand?"
"Maybe he's going to clean the stone with his broom!"
Leo walked up the stairs. He looked small and frail compared to the muscular cultivators. His grey tunic fluttered in the wind.
The Elder looked at him with a mix of pity and annoyance. "Leo, this stone is enchanted. If you strike it without Qi to protect your skin, you will shatter your bones. Go back to the stables."
"I just want to try," Leo said softly. "Just once."
The Elder sighed and stepped back. "Fine. Don't bleed on the stage."
Leo stood before the massive black stone.
He didn't take a martial arts stance. He didn't scream "HAA!" like the others.
He just stood there, looking bored.
He remembered his breathing.
Inhale. Hold.
'Be heavy,' he thought. 'Just a little push.'
He threw a punch.
It was slow. To the audience, it looked like a child's punch. There was no whoosh of wind. No glowing light. No aura.
The disciples laughed. "Look at that! It's in slow moti—"
Leo's fist made contact.
THUD.
It wasn't a crack. It wasn't a boom.
It was a sound so deep, so heavy, that it bypassed the ears and vibrated directly in the stomach.
The floorboards of the stage groaned. The Elder's tea cup, sitting on a table ten feet away, shattered.
The Testing Stone didn't explode.
Instead, the massive, 2,000-pound block of enchanted obsidian moved.
It slid backward.
SCREEEEECH.
It carved a deep trench into the stone floor, plowing through the granite tiles like a ship through water. It slid for ten feet, hit the back wall of the stage, and stopped.
Dust filled the air.
The laughter died instantly.
The plaza was dead silent.
The Elder's jaw dropped. He stared at the trench in the floor, then at the stone, then at Leo.
Leo stood there, shaking his hand.
"Ow," he muttered, rubbing his knuckles. "That stone is really hard."
He looked at the Testing Stone. It was still intact. There were no cracks on the surface.
Leo's shoulders slumped.
'I knew it,' he thought bitterly. 'Everyone else made it glow or crack. I just pushed it. I really have zero spiritual power.'
He looked at the stunned Elder.
"Did I pass?" Leo asked.
The Elder walked over to the stone. He placed his hand on it. He tried to sense the Qi residue.
"Zero Qi," the Elder whispered, his voice trembling with confusion. "No magic. No technique. Just... pure... physical... muscle?"
The Elder looked at Leo as if he were looking at a monster. But Leo interpreted the look as disappointment.
"I understand," Leo said, bowing his head. "I failed. I'll go back to cleaning."
He picked up his broom and walked off the stage, his back hunched in defeat.
The crowd parted for him, not out of respect, but out of confusion. They didn't know what they had just seen.
Leo didn't realize what he had done.
As the Elder leaned against the Testing Stone to steady himself, the stone suddenly collapsed.
It didn't break into chunks.
It turned into fine black powder.
Leo's punch hadn't cracked the surface. The density of his blow had traveled through the stone, pulverizing the molecular structure of the obsidian from the inside out, while leaving the shell intact.
[System Error]
...Anomaly Detected in Sector 9...
...Kinetic Force exceeds Mortal Limits...
...Source: Unknown...
Leo walked back to the servant quarters, kicking a pebble.
"I need to do more push-ups," he whispered to himself. "I'm still too weak."