Victory, Lin Feng discovered, tasted like blood and dust.
The adrenaline that had carried him through the fight with the Sentry Shardling drained away, leaving behind the full, crushing weight of his injuries. His shoulder wasn't just broken; it felt shattered. The violent motion of swinging the stone club had undone whatever minor stabilization the Wraith-Bind had provided. Every breath sent a lance of fire through his chest. He could feel a warm, sickening wetness seeping through the bandages—fresh blood.
He collapsed to his knees beside the pile of rubble that had been his enemy, the world tilting dangerously in his shadow-sight. Black spots danced at the edges of his perception.
[Status: Health 22/100. Condition Worsening: Internal Bleeding Suspected. Pain Levels: Critical.]
[Warning: Host is approaching systemic shock. Immediate intervention required.]
"No… kidding," he rasped, the words barely audible. He fumbled for the pouch of Gloom-Moss, his fingers clumsy and cold. He shoved a handful into his mouth, swallowing it without chewing. The cool, fibrous mass did nothing for the pain, but he felt a tiny trickle of energy, a faint +0.02 to his Shadow Essence.
It was like trying to put out a forest fire with a cup of water.
He needed to move. To get back to his niche by the ruins. But his body wasn't listening. The darkness of the cavern, once a passive presence, now felt actively oppressive, squeezing in on him. The whispers, held back during the fight, returned with a vengeance, swirling around the edges of the System's dampening field.
…see? even the stones break…
…the price is always paid in flesh…
…little candle, guttering so soon…
"Shut up," he groaned, pressing his forehead against the cool, gritty floor. "Just… shut up."
The System remained silent. It had given its warning. The rest was up to him.
With a gargantuan effort that tore a sob from his throat, Lin Feng pushed himself up onto his good arm. He crawled. One agonizing knee-drag at a time, he left the shattered Shardling behind and made his way back across the cavern to his makeshift camp by the ancient blocks. The journey of twenty meters felt like crossing a continent.
He slumped against the stone, his vision swimming. The Shadow Sense was flickering, the world pulsing in and out of stark, contrasting blacks. He was dying. He knew it with a cold, simple certainty. He'd traded a quick death by Gao for a slow, painful death in the dark, with only a hungry artifact and a ghost in a strap for company.
A memory surfaced, unbidden. Not of Old Man Luo, but of a younger boy, maybe seven, crying in the dormitory after a beating. Lin Feng, maybe nine himself, had sat beside him, not knowing what to say. He'd just handed the boy a smooth, river-washed pebble he'd found in the yard. "It's a good one," he'd said. "It doesn't break." The boy had stopped crying, clutching the pebble like a treasure.
Such a small thing. A pebble of kindness. Was that all his life amounted to? One pebble, in an ocean of cruelty?
No.
The thought was a spark in the freezing oil of his despair.
He hadn't come this far, hadn't touched the forbidden, hadn't listened to the dark, just to die like a forgotten root in a crack.
He focused inward, past the pain, to the cold lotus in his dantian. It pulsed slowly, rhythmically, like a hibernating heart. It was hungry. It was always hungry.
"You want to live," he whispered to it, his voice a thread of sound. "So do I. Help me."
He didn't know if it could understand. He poured his will, his desperate, clawing desire to not go out, into the artifact. Not a command. A plea. A bargain.
The Lotus stirred.
A tendril of its deeper, ancient cold, distinct from the shadow essence he cultivated, unspooled from its core. It did not move into his meridians. It seeped directly into the flesh and bone around his shattered clavicle.
The pain exploded into a new dimension.
It was not the hot pain of injury. It was the pain of reconstruction. It felt like a thousand frozen needles were digging into the broken ends of his bone, pulling them together, stitching them with threads of absolute zero. It felt like his muscle was being woven back together by spiders made of ice. He screamed, a raw, animal sound that echoed in the cavern, but no one was there to hear it.
He blacked out.
He came to an unknown time later, shivering violently on the stone floor. He was drenched in a cold sweat that smelled faintly of ozone and decay. But the world-shattering, blinding pain was gone. In its place was a deep, pervasive ache, and a profound, soul-deep chill.
He looked at his status.
[Status: Health 41/100. Condition: Fractured Clavicle (Stabilized via Artifact Intervention). Severe Qi Depletion. Shadow Essence: 0.5/10.]
[New Status Effect: 'Lotus's Debt.']
[Description: The artifact has expended its own foundational energy to preserve the host. A debt is incurred. Repayment will be required in spiritual energy or compatible life-force. Failure to repay will result in accelerated soul erosion.]
He had traded a mortal injury for a metaphysical debt. He had bargained with the darkness inside him, and it had accepted.
He laughed then, a dry, hacking sound that held no humor. Of course there was a cost. Everything had a cost.
He sat up slowly. The movement still hurt, but it was the hurt of a heavy bruise, not of grinding bone. The Wraith-Bind's cooling pressure felt more pronounced against his skin, as if approving of the stabilization.
He looked across the cavern at the pile of Shardling rubble. His first kill. There should be… loot, right? That's what the stories said. Beasts had cores, constructs had power sources.
He forced himself to stand and walked over, his steps steadier than before. Using his good hand, he sifted through the broken stone. Most of it was inert. But in the center, where the violet eye had been, he found it.
A small, hexagonal prism, about the size of his thumb joint. It was made of a clear, dark crystal, like smoked quartz. Within it, a tiny, captured flicker of violet light pulsed weakly. It was warm to the touch, humming with a dense, orderly energy that felt different from the wild shadow essence of the cavern. It was mechanical. Intentional.
[Item Identified: 'Sentry Core Fragment (Damaged)'.]
[Grade: Low Mortal.]
[Use: Can be absorbed to replenish Shadow Essence quickly. Can be used as a catalyst for certain artifact repairs or formations. Contains residual command data from the fallen 'Silent Citadel.']
The Silent Citadel. A name. His first real clue about the ruins.
He also found, among the rubble, two slender, dagger-like shards of the same black stone, each about as long as his hand. They were sharp, unnaturally so. They had been part of the creature's claws.
[Item Identified: 'Shardling Talon' x2.]
[Use: Improvised weapon. Material can be refined with sufficient skill.]
Weapons. Crude, but weapons. He tucked the core fragment and the two talons into the cloth pouch with his remaining moss. He felt a little less helpless.
His stomach growled, a sharp, demanding reminder of his most basic need. The moss was keeping him alive, but it wasn't enough. He needed real food. The System had mentioned Blind-Cave Crickets.
He spent the next few hours in a grim, patient hunt. Using his Shadow Sense, he located their faint, skittering life-signatures in the deeper crevices near the pool. They were fast, and he was one-armed. His first attempts were pathetic failures, his hand swiping at empty air.
Finally, he used a different approach. He sat perfectly still near a crack where he'd sensed activity. He slowed his breathing, extending his Shadow Sense not as a searchlight, but as a gentle net, harmonizing with the environment as the whisper had taught him. He felt the cricket's small, simple consciousness—a bundle of instincts for hunger, shelter, and fear.
When one finally emerged, antennae twitching, he didn't grab. He coaxed. He pushed a tiny, harmless wisp of shadow essence, shaped like a smaller, slower insect, just past it. The cricket focused, intrigued. It took a cautious step towards the decoy.
Lin Feng's good hand shot out, pinning it to the stone.
He caught three that way. They were ugly, pallid things with thick carapaces. He didn't let himself think about it. He used one of the talon shards to quickly end them, then peeled back the shell. The meat underneath was white, gelatinous. He ate it raw.
It was salty. It was chewy. It was the most substantial, real food he'd had in days. A wave of simple, animal satisfaction washed over him.
[Nutritional Intake: Substantial. +5 to estimated Health recovery rate.]
As he ate the last one, licking the faint, briny juice from his fingers, he examined the Sentry Core Fragment. The System said it could replenish his essence. He was exhausted, his reserves almost empty. He needed strength.
Holding the crystal prism between his thumb and forefinger, he willed his meager shadow essence to touch it.
The core fragment reacted instantly. It grew warm, then hot. The violet light inside flared. A concentrated, pressurized stream of pure, refined shadow energy, already filtered and ready for use, surged up his arm and into his meridian.
It was too much, too fast.
[Warning: Essence Intake exceeding safe vessel capacity!] The System's alert was sharp.
The energy flooded his dantian, overfilling it. The Shadow Lotus drank greedily, but even it couldn't absorb it all at once. The excess energy spilled into his meridians, burning through them like acid. He cried out, dropping the now-dull and grey crystal. It clattered on the stone, empty.
Inside him, chaos reigned. His shadow essence pool maxed out at 10/10, then the numbers blurred as unrefined energy ran rampant. His veins stood out black against his pale skin in his shadow-sight. His teeth chattered. The whispers in the cavern rose to a deafening crescendo, breaking through the dampening field.
TOO MUCH! FOOLISH CHILD!
THE PUMP CANNOT DRINK THE OCEAN!
SPILL IT! SPILL IT OR BURST!
He had to use it. Now.
He scrambled to his feet, his body vibrating with unstable power. He looked at the stone wall beside him. He didn't form a thread or a wall. He just pointed a trembling finger and released.
A jagged bolt of condensed darkness, crackling with violet after-images from the core's energy, shot from his fingertip. It wasn't a technique. It was a desperate vomit of power.
It struck the wall with a sound like tearing cloth.
Where it hit, the solid stone didn't crack. It… dissolved. A chunk the size of his head simply ceased to be, vaporized into a fine, black dust that drifted to the floor. The edges of the hole were smooth, glassy, as if melted by incredible cold.
Lin Feng stared, panting, as the excess energy drained from his body, leaving him hollow and shaking. His essence pool settled at 8/10.
He had just obliterated solid stone.
The cost of the core had been immediate pain and a loss of control. The reward was a terrifying glimpse of raw destructive potential.
He looked at his hand, then at the smooth, perfect hole in the wall. The whispers had fallen silent, as if in awe or fear.
He had paid a debt to the Lotus with a promise of future suffering. He had paid for his meal with patience and a trick of shadow. He had paid for this power with pain and a near-disaster.
This was the rule. Nothing was free. Everything had a price.
He sat down heavily, the adrenaline of the power surge fading. The deep chill of the Lotus's Debt was a constant anchor in his soul. He was tired. So tired.
But he was alive. He was fed. He was armed. And he had just learned a critical, brutal lesson about the economy of power in his new world.
He closed his eyes, not to sleep, but to meditate. To carefully, slowly, cycle the now-stable essence in his dantian, smoothing the scorched pathways. The Wraith-Bind felt warm against his chest, a silent companion in the dark.
Somewhere in the deep passage, another set of violet eyes, older and far less dim, registered the brief, violent surge of familiar yet alien energy. A grinding hum, deep in the earth, began to power up from a sleep of millennia.
The first pebble had been dropped into the still, black pool of the ancient depths.
The ripples were beginning to spread.