Li Qingshan dreamed of water.
Not the gentle river that curved past Clear River Village, nor the rain that tapped patiently on broken tiles. This water was heavy, dark, pressing in from all sides. It filled his mouth, his nose, his lungs, yet somehow he did not drown.
Instead, he sank.
Deeper and deeper, through layers of cold that felt like thought itself, until the world narrowed to a single sensation pulsing at his center. A rhythm. Slow. Relentless.
His heartbeat.
Each thud echoed outward, sending ripples through the darkness. With every pulse, something tugged at him, as if invisible hands were testing the walls of his body, probing for weaknesses.
Then the pain returned.
Qingshan jerked awake with a gasp, body arching violently as if struck by lightning. His back slammed against stone, breath tearing from his chest. For a moment, he did not know where he was. The cave ceiling loomed above him, etched with ancient markings that glimmered faintly in the dim light.
Pain crawled through him like a living thing.
Not sharp, not explosive, but deep and pervasive. His bones ached as if they had been hollowed out and refilled with molten iron. His muscles felt dense, heavy, unfamiliar.
He tried to move his fingers.
They obeyed.
Slowly.
Deliberately.
As if they belonged to someone else.
Qingshan lay still, breathing shallowly, listening to the sound of his own pulse pounding in his ears. The cave was silent. Shen Yao had not returned.
"How long…" Qingshan murmured, voice hoarse.
He had no way to measure time. Hunger gnawed faintly at his stomach, distant but present. Thirst lingered at the edges of his awareness. He guessed a day had passed. Perhaps more.
He pushed himself upright inch by inch, teeth clenched against the protest of his body. When he finally sat up, a wave of dizziness washed over him, but it passed more quickly than expected.
That surprised him.
He lowered his gaze to his hands.
They looked the same. Rough palms, callused fingers, scars earned from farm tools and careless knives. And yet, when he flexed them, he felt it again.
Density.
Like the difference between wet wood and stone.
He swallowed.
"So this is Body Tempering," he whispered.
A laugh escaped him, brittle and incredulous. If this was only the first step, he could scarcely imagine what awaited beyond.
He shifted, preparing to stand, when something inside him twisted.
Not pain.
Resistance.
It felt as though a knot had tightened deep within his abdomen, just below the navel. Instinctively, he pressed a hand there.
The sensation responded.
A faint warmth bloomed beneath his palm, spreading outward in thin threads. His breath caught. He closed his eyes, focusing inward as Shen Yao had instructed.
At first, there was nothing.
Then, gradually, he perceived it.
Channels.
Narrow, uneven pathways threaded through his body, like dry riverbeds carved into stone. Some were cracked. Others ended abruptly, sealed as if collapsed long ago.
Meridians.
Qingshan's heart raced.
This was not imagination. The awareness was too precise, too vivid. He could feel where the pathways resisted, where they throbbed dully in protest at the lingering Qi Shen Yao had forced into him.
And at the center of it all lay his dantian.
Or what should have been one.
Instead of a smooth, empty basin waiting to be filled, it felt jagged, fractured, like a shattered bowl barely holding together.
Understanding struck him with quiet force.
Heaven-Scarred Roots.
So this was the flaw Shen Yao had spoken of.
Qingshan opened his eyes and laughed again, this time softer.
"Of course," he murmured. "Even my insides are broken."
There was no bitterness in the words. Only clarity.
He remembered Shen Yao's calm voice, the matter-of-fact way he had described Qingshan's condition. Narrow meridians. Sealed channels. A path that, if followed normally, would lead only to stagnation and death.
Most people, upon hearing such a verdict, would have despaired.
Qingshan felt something else instead.
Relief.
A strange, liberating certainty settled over him. If the conventional path was closed to him, then he had nothing to lose by abandoning it entirely. Expectations, comparisons, the quiet shame of inadequacy… none of it applied anymore.
He would not walk the road others walked.
He would carve his own.
The thought steadied him.
He stood.
This time, his legs held.
The second Body Tempering session nearly killed him.
Shen Yao returned without warning, appearing at the cave entrance like a shadow detaching itself from stone. Qingshan barely had time to rise before the cultivator was upon him, fingers pressing against new points, sending fresh waves of Qi tearing through his body.
The pain eclipsed the first time.
Where before his flesh had screamed, now it shattered. Qingshan felt tendons strain, bones creak, blood surge violently through newly widened channels. His vision went white, then black, then red, cycling faster than thought.
He bit down on his own sleeve to keep from screaming.
Shen Yao did not stop.
"Your body remembers now," Shen Yao said, voice cutting cleanly through the agony. "Memory is the foundation of all cultivation. Pain teaches faster than words."
Qingshan convulsed, tears streaming from the corners of his eyes without shame. He focused on breathing, on the rhythm of his heart, on the sensation of his body being torn down and rebuilt in the same instant.
Something gave.
Not physically.
Internally.
He felt it with startling clarity. A sealed meridian cracked open, just a hairline fracture at first, then wider, allowing a thin trickle of Qi to pass through.
The sensation was indescribable.
Like stretching a limb that had been bound for years. Like the first breath after near drowning. Pleasure and pain tangled together until they were indistinguishable.
Qingshan laughed around the cloth in his mouth, a raw, broken sound.
Shen Yao finally withdrew his hand.
"That is enough for today," he said. "If I continue, you will die."
Qingshan collapsed, chest heaving, body trembling uncontrollably.
"Tomorrow?" he managed.
Shen Yao regarded him, something unreadable flickering in his eyes.
"Tomorrow," he agreed.
Days blurred together.
Pain became routine.
Each morning, Shen Yao returned. Each session pushed Qingshan closer to his limits, then beyond them. His body hardened, muscles tightening, bones growing denser, blood carrying heat that lingered long after the sessions ended.
He ate little, yet hunger faded. He slept fitfully, dreams filled with shifting light and distant echoes.
Most importantly, he learned.
Not techniques. Not spells. But himself.
He learned where his body resisted and where it yielded. Which meridians responded more readily, which fought back violently. He learned that forcing Qi blindly only worsened the fractures in his dantian, while guiding it slowly, patiently, allowed it to settle without tearing him apart.
On the seventh day, Shen Yao stopped him before the session began.
"Sit," he said.
Qingshan obeyed, chest still rising and falling from anticipation alone.
"You have reached the limit of external tempering," Shen Yao said. "Continue, and your body will adapt no further without internal reinforcement."
Qingshan frowned. "Qi Condensation?"
Shen Yao nodded. "For most."
"For me," Qingshan corrected quietly.
Shen Yao's lips curved faintly. "For you, something else."
He reached into his sleeve and withdrew a small object.
A stone.
No larger than a walnut, dull gray, its surface rough and unassuming. Yet the moment Qingshan's gaze fell upon it, his meridians reacted violently, throbbing as if recognizing something both familiar and hostile.
"What is that?" Qingshan asked, wary.
"A fragment," Shen Yao said. "From the Void Sea."
Qingshan's breath caught.
He had heard the term whispered even among villagers. The Void Sea was the space between worlds, a place of death and dissolution where souls drifted aimlessly and Dao fragments floated like wreckage.
"That will kill me," Qingshan said flatly.
"Eventually," Shen Yao agreed. "Or it will remake you."
He placed the stone between them.
"Your dantian cannot hold Qi in the usual way," Shen Yao continued. "But it can anchor something else. This fragment carries a trace of unaligned Dao. Raw. Incomplete."
Qingshan stared at it, understanding dawning.
"You want me to use it as a core."
"Yes."
Silence stretched between them.
Qingshan's heart pounded. This was madness. Even established cultivators avoided Dao fragments until they had formed a stable Golden Core. To attempt such a thing now, with a shattered foundation, bordered on suicide.
And yet.
He looked inward, at the jagged basin that was his dantian. He felt the widened meridians, the stubborn resilience his body had earned through blood and endurance.
Normal cultivation was a door he could never open.
This was not a door.
It was a cliff.
He reached for the stone.
The moment his fingers closed around it, agony flared. Not physical, but existential. As if something vast had noticed him and recoiled, then surged forward in response.
Qingshan gritted his teeth.
"I'll do it," he said.
Shen Yao inclined his head. "Then remember this moment. It will be the last time you choose without consequence."
Qingshan sat, placed the fragment against his abdomen, and closed his eyes.
The world inverted.
Cold flooded him, followed by a crushing pressure that threatened to collapse his senses entirely. The fragment resisted, vibrating violently as if seeking escape. Qingshan focused inward, guiding it slowly, painstakingly, toward the fractured basin of his dantian.
It fought him.
His meridians screamed.
Blood trickled from the corners of his mouth.
Still, he pressed on.
With a soundless crack, the fragment settled.
Not smoothly.
Not peacefully.
It lodged itself within the fractures, edges biting into spiritual flesh, anchoring itself with ruthless finality.
Qingshan screamed.
Then everything went quiet.
He slumped forward, consciousness flickering.
In the darkness, something new pulsed.
Not Qi.
Not yet.
A seed.
Shen Yao watched silently as Li Qingshan crossed a boundary no teacher should ever allow a disciple to approach.
Far above the mountains, unseen clouds twisted, unsettled.
The Dao had not approved.
But it had taken note.
And somewhere in the vastness between worlds, a fragment long thought lost had found a vessel stubborn enough to endure it.