The morning mist clung to the Redwood Village like a shroud, thick enough that Chen Feng could barely see the ancient pine trees that surrounded the small mountain settlement. He stood at the edge of the cliff overlooking the valley below, a wooden bucket in each hand, having just completed his morning water-fetching routine from the spring half a mile down the mountain path.
At sixteen years old, Chen Feng had the lean build of someone accustomed to physical labor, with dark hair tied back in a simple tail and calm brown eyes that seemed older than his years. His clothes were plain homespun cloth, patched in several places, marking him as the son of a humble woodcutter. Nothing about his appearance suggested anything extraordinary, and that was precisely how he preferred it.
He began the walk back toward his family's small cottage, his steps careful on the moisture-slicked stones. The bucket handles creaked rhythmically with each stride, a familiar sound that had accompanied his mornings for as long as he could remember. Most of the village still slept at this hour, with only Old Man Zhang's rooster breaking the pre-dawn silence with its enthusiastic crowing.
As Chen Feng approached his home, he noticed his father already awake, sharpening his axe on the whetstone in the yard. Chen Wei looked up as his son approached, and the resemblance between them was clear despite the twenty years of hard mountain life that had weathered the older man's features.
"Up early again," Chen Wei observed, not looking up from his work. The rhythmic scrape of metal on stone punctuated his words. "You're always the first one awake these days."
"Couldn't sleep," Chen Feng replied simply, setting the buckets down near the door. It was not entirely true, but nor was it entirely false. The truth was that Chen Feng had been experiencing increasingly vivid dreams lately, dreams of vast emptiness and strange symbols that seemed to burn themselves into his mind. He had chosen not to mention these to anyone, knowing that his practical father would likely attribute them to eating too much dried meat before bed.
His mother emerged from inside, already dressed for the day despite the early hour. Madam Chen had a kind face and gentle hands that had tended countless scraped knees and minor injuries throughout Chen Feng's childhood. She smiled at the sight of the water buckets, then gestured for both men to come inside for breakfast.
The morning meal was simple but filling: rice porridge with pickled vegetables and a small portion of dried fish that a traveling merchant had traded for firewood the previous week. They ate in comfortable silence, the way families do when they have lived together long enough that words become optional.
"The autumn harvest festival is in three days," Chen Wei mentioned as he finished his portion. "The village chief mentioned that some representatives from Azure Peak Sect might be passing through. They occasionally recruit talented youngsters from the outer villages."
Chen Feng glanced up, recognizing the careful neutrality in his father's tone. The topic of cultivation sects was one that appeared irregularly in their household, always accompanied by a mixture of hope and resignation. In the Crimson Cloud Kingdom, ordinary families rarely produced cultivators, and even rarer were those who achieved anything significant in the cultivation world. Most who went to test their aptitude returned disappointed, their spiritual roots too poor to warrant acceptance.
"I could go observe," Chen Feng offered, though his tone carried little enthusiasm. He had long ago accepted his likely fate as a woodcutter like his father and his father before him. It was an honest life, and he found satisfaction in the simplicity of it.
His mother reached over and patted his hand. "No harm in watching, at least. Who knows what fortune might bring?"
After breakfast, Chen Feng gathered his own axe and accompanied his father into the forest. The Redwood Forest that surrounded their village was ancient, with trees so tall that their tops disappeared into the permanent mist that shrouded the mountain peaks. Chen Wei had taught his son from an early age which trees could be harvested and which must be left alone, maintaining the delicate balance that allowed the village to sustain itself without depleting the forest's resources.
They worked in companionable silence, the sound of axes biting into wood echoing through the morning air. Chen Feng had always found a meditative quality to this work, the repetitive motion allowing his mind to wander while his body performed the familiar task. Today, however, he found his attention drawn to small details he had never noticed before.
The way the axe blade seemed to separate the wood fibers, cutting cleanly through bonds that had held for decades. The precise moment when structural integrity failed and the tree began its fall. The clean line where his axe had severed branch from trunk. Something about these observations felt significant, though he could not articulate why.
"You're distracted," his father commented, pausing in his work. "That's dangerous with an axe in your hands."
"Sorry, Father," Chen Feng replied, refocusing on the task at hand. "Just thinking about the festival."
Chen Wei studied his son for a long moment, then nodded. "Finish this section, then head back. Your mother will need help preparing for the celebration. I'll stay and work a bit longer."
Chen Feng completed his portion of the work, stacked the cut wood for later retrieval, and began the trek back to the village. The path wound through the forest, familiar enough that he could have walked it blindfolded. About halfway home, he passed the small shrine that marked the boundary between the deep forest and the village territory. It was a simple stone structure dedicated to the Mountain Lord, the local deity that villagers believed protected them from the more dangerous beasts that dwelled in the forest's depths.
He was about to continue past when something made him stop. The shrine, which he had seen thousands of times, suddenly seemed different. Not in any way he could immediately identify, but there was a sense of wrongness that made the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
Chen Feng approached slowly, his hand instinctively moving to the small knife at his belt. As he drew closer, he realized what had changed. There was a crack in the stone, a hairline fracture that ran from the base to the top of the shrine. It had definitely not been there yesterday.
He reached out to touch the crack, and the moment his fingers made contact with the stone, pain exploded behind his eyes. Chen Feng staggered backward, his vision going white, then black, then filling with images that made no sense to his mind.
He saw the shrine not as it was, but as it would be, could be, in countless different states. Whole and broken, ancient and new, existing and not existing all at once. He saw the connections that held the stone together, invisible threads of force and structure that his eyes should not be able to perceive. And more than that, he understood instinctively how those connections could be severed.
The vision lasted only a heartbeat, but when Chen Feng came back to himself, he was on his knees in the dirt, breathing hard. His right hand was pressed against his forehead, and when he pulled it away, he saw blood on his fingers. Touching his forehead gingerly, he felt a raised area of skin, tender and hot to the touch. The shape was distinct: a symbol that felt like it had been burned into his flesh, though there was no actual wound beyond the initial bleeding.
Chen Feng pulled out the small bronze mirror he kept for checking his appearance before entering the village and angled it to see the mark. What he saw made his breath catch. The symbol was impossibly complex, a geometric pattern that seemed to shift slightly whenever he tried to focus on it directly. It resembled a circle with a vertical line through it, but there were subtle variations and additional elements that defied easy description.
More concerning than the mark's appearance was what he could now see when he looked at the world around him. The trees, the rocks, the very air itself—everything was now overlaid with faint lines and connections that he had never perceived before. He could see how things held together, and more disturbingly, he could instinctively understand how they could be taken apart.
A twig snapped behind him, and Chen Feng spun around, his hand going to his knife. A massive shape moved in the undergrowth, and his newly enhanced perception immediately identified it: a Mountain Bear, one of the few truly dangerous predators that occasionally wandered close to the village borders.
The bear was enormous, easily eight feet tall if it stood on its hind legs, with black fur and claws that could disembowel a man with a single swipe. It had apparently been drawn by the scent of blood from Chen Feng's forehead, and its small eyes fixed on him with the focused intensity of a predator that had found potential prey.
Chen Feng's mind raced. He was too far from the village to call for help, and he had no illusions about his ability to fight such a creature with only a small knife. The bear took a step forward, and Chen Feng took a corresponding step back, maintaining the distance between them.
His new vision showed him something strange. The bear was not just a mass of flesh and bone, but a complex network of connections. Muscles connected to tendons, tendons to bones, all held together by forces both physical and something else, something his old self would not have been able to perceive.
The bear charged.
Time seemed to slow as adrenaline flooded Chen Feng's system. His hand shot out instinctively, fingers forming a shape he had never learned but somehow knew. The strange mark on his forehead burned with sudden heat, and in that moment, Chen Feng understood.
He could cut connections.
His hand moved through the air in a precise gesture, and something invisible but very real extended from his fingers. It touched the connection between the bear's front legs and the ground, and severed it.
The bear's charge became a tumble as its legs suddenly failed to maintain their relationship with the earth. The massive creature crashed into the dirt, its momentum carrying it past Chen Feng in a chaotic roll of fur and confusion.
Chen Feng stood frozen, staring at his own hand in disbelief. What had he just done? How had he done it? The bear struggled to its feet, shaking its head as if trying to clear it. The animal's small eyes found Chen Feng again, but this time there was wariness mixed with its aggression.
Chen Feng made the same gesture again, more deliberately this time, and the bear's connection to its own forward momentum was severed. The creature stopped as if it had run into an invisible wall, its own force turned against it.
This was too much for the animal's limited understanding. The bear turned and fled back into the forest, crashing through undergrowth in its haste to escape this strange human who could do impossible things.
Only when the sounds of the bear's retreat had faded completely did Chen Feng allow himself to collapse against the shrine, his legs suddenly too weak to support him. His hands were shaking, and the mark on his forehead continued to burn with a heat that was uncomfortable but not quite painful.
What was he? What had he become?
The questions swirled through his mind, but he had no answers. What he did know was that his life had just changed irrevocably. The simple existence of a woodcutter's son had ended the moment that mark appeared on his forehead.
Chen Feng sat there for a long time, watching the strange lines and connections that now overlaid his vision, trying to process what had just occurred. The sun climbed higher in the sky, burning away the morning mist, but the world seemed fundamentally different now than it had been when he had woken up that morning.
Eventually, he forced himself to stand. He needed to return to the village, but first he had to decide what to tell his parents. The truth seemed impossible to explain, and he was not certain they would believe him even if he tried. Perhaps it would be better to say nothing until he understood more about what had happened to him.
He used water from his canteen to clean the blood from his face, then pulled his hair forward to hide the mark on his forehead. It was not a perfect concealment, but it would suffice if he avoided direct scrutiny.
The walk back to the village felt surreal, with his new vision showing him the underlying structure of everything he passed. He tried to suppress the ability, to return his sight to normal, but found he could only partially succeed. The connections were always there now, lurking at the edge of his perception, waiting for him to acknowledge them.
His mother was in the yard when he arrived, hanging laundry on the line. She looked up as he approached, and her expression immediately shifted to concern. "Chen Feng, you look pale. Are you feeling ill?"
"Just tired," he replied, forcing a smile. "The work was harder than usual today."
She studied him for a moment, clearly not entirely convinced, but chose not to press the issue. "Go rest inside. The festival preparations can wait until you're feeling better."
Chen Feng gratefully accepted the excuse and retreated to his small room at the back of the cottage. He sat on his bed, staring at his hands, trying to process everything that had happened.
The mark on his forehead continued to pulse with that strange heat, and when he closed his eyes, he could still see those connections, those invisible threads that held reality together. He had severed one of them, changed something fundamental about the world, even if only for a moment.
What else could he sever? What other connections existed that his normal eyes could not see? The possibilities were both terrifying and exhilarating.
Chen Feng lay back on his bed, exhaustion suddenly overwhelming him. The experience had drained him in ways he did not fully understand. As sleep began to claim him, his last conscious thought was that the autumn harvest festival in three days would likely be far more significant than his father had anticipated.
The representatives from Azure Peak Sect were coming, and Chen Feng now had something that might actually interest them. Whether that was a blessing or a curse remained to be seen.
Outside his window, the afternoon sun continued its journey across the sky, indifferent to the fact that one ordinary boy's life had just become decidedly extraordinary. In the forest, the Mountain Bear nursed its confusion and decided to avoid that particular part of the woods in the future. And deep in the Redwood Forest, in places where even experienced woodcutters did not venture, other things began to stir, drawn by the emergence of something that had not been seen in the Crimson Cloud Kingdom for a very long time.
A Void Mark had awakened, and the world would never again be quite the same.