To survive, you need strength. You have to become strong. To become strong, you must have talent.
These talents include awakening a bloodline, sprouting a spirit root, or at least having a small amount of affinity toward any elements.
Regrettably, I had none of these talents. And so I became a null. Which didn't mean I couldn't become strong. Every living being in this world can absorb essence filled in the air.
It's just that they must have either a bloodline to carry this essence across their body and store it inside their cells, or a spirit root which grows as it devours the essence.
People like me, without either of these, have no way to store the essence, as our breaths remove the absorbed essence with each inhale and exhale.
Only a small percentage of humans have talents. That made people try to find alternative ways to effectively utilise the essence, and eventually after countless experiments, they found a way.
Body cultivation.
Unlike essence cultivators who prioritise the growth of soul, blood, or spirit root, body cultivators forge their bodies with essence.
They choose suitable elements from the essence, train in extreme conditions with said element, and turn their bodies into an 'Elemental Body.'
They take longer than ordinary cultivators to train, and if they reach the same level, their strength is miles beyond ordinary.
However, unlike ordinary cultivation, the mortality rate of body cultivation in the Star Fall region is nearly one hundred percent.
The main reason for this is scarce resources. This was also the main reason the Broken Sky Sect expelled disciples without any talent. They simply didn't have enough resources or manpower to gather them.
So, being in the sect, people like me had no future. At the same time, if we were expelled, then we weren't bound by the sect anymore. So we were free to do anything for survival.
That included trying our luck at gathering resources for our cultivation needs independently. This was what the warden of my dormitory, perhaps the only person in the entire sect who considered me as human, told me.
He gave me two directions: one toward Broken Sky City, the city below the mountain, where I could live a normal life. It was under the protection of the sect, so I could live the rest of my life peacefully.
The experience of studying in the sect would help me land a job there easily and thus uplift my lifestyle.
The second direction was toward Star Fall, a place where monstrous abominations wandered. A place filled with endless possibilities and ways to die.
The mountain gate loomed before me, half-swallowed by mist. Beyond this gate stretched the Star Fall mountain range, farther than my eyes could reach.
The stone path outside the sect slithered through the canopy of trees, almost like the stretched tongue of a huge dragon.
Star Fall gets its name from this structure. Old myths say the mountain range is the dead body of a fallen dragon.
I took a deep breath. The sect grounds ended here. Living inside the sect was exhausting, for sure, but it protected me from the treacherous abominations wandering outside.
Now, I was about to be exposed to a world where power ruled fate.
"Are you really sure?" My warden was surprisingly a young man. He had a huge frame, half his face covered in facial hair. His dark skin glittered in the evening light, his always-smiling face now overturned with worry.
"That's a hellish space, for sure. But there lie endless possibilities. If you're lucky, you could awaken an Elemental Body. Don't you know how many people would die for that?" His once-smiling face now held anxiety.
I sighed internally. I'd already had my guard up the moment he started yapping about body cultivation and the future that awaited those who found success in that path. Any ordinary disciple with shattered dreams might jump at the chance, but I was no ordinary disciple.
Sure, knowing that a future awaited me if I took a risk was reassuring, but the risk outshined the gain. I wanted strength, sure. But that didn't mean I'd throw my life away for it.
Especially not after knowing the risks included in that gain. Moreover, he had either unintentionally or intentionally hidden something about Star Fall.
Void fractures.
A natural phenomenon where reality in a place shifts into another realm or timeline. The horrifying fact of this fracture is that the realm contains another self of it's victims who forgotten by the heavenly laws.
If one wants to escape from the fracture, they must defeat their mirror in that world. Failing to do so would interchange their roles, making them eternally forgotten by the heavenly laws.
Such people are called Lost Souls, and the beings who replace them are called Voidlings.
I had no idea what would happen if I became a Lost Soul. What frightened me the most was the thought of being stuck in one place eternally. I would rather live the rest of my life ordinarily than become unknown.
It gnawed at me badly that my warden had omitted such an important thing. Was it really his negligence or did he have hidden intentions?
Did he really think I was some illiterate girl who never read a basic wilderness survival book? And all the while, he promoted body cultivation like his future depended on it, while omitting every negative.
Sure, a body cultivator in the early stages might be overpowered compared to essence cultivators.
However, when essence cultivators start forming their domains, that's the Foundation Building stage, it reverses.
Fights involving domain masters usually turn brutal and turbulent, filled with world-destroying skills and catastrophic aftermaths.
No matter how much they train, human bodies never match natural phenomena. So, most body cultivators remain stuck at the strength of Essence Gathering until they die.
That's also the main reason the sect expelled people without talent. After all, spending a huge sum of resources on someone who would stop at Essence Gathering wasn't an economically good idea when the same resources could be used to train someone with no limits.
This man had perfectly manipulated his words, trying to imprint false hopes on someone he thought was desperate. He was suspicious.
"Fighting continuously to become stronger isn't really in my consideration. And you already said the mortality rate there is one hundred percent. I'm not a fool to throw away my life like that," I shrugged my shoulders, turning to the path leading down the Broken Sky mountain.
I could vaguely see the structure of the city in the distance. If I started walking now, I could reach it by sunset. Traveling at night, especially in a forest, wasn't safe.
"You… SARA!" I flinched. His voice was louder now. The fake pretense he had kept until now seemed to slip slightly.
He moved closer, forcing me to take a step back. In his eyes, I saw the same emotions I'd seen in the rest of the disciples.
Desperation. And above all, anger. It was my mistake to think there would be someone with kind intentions toward an orphaned girl like me.
I shook my head.
"I have to go. Until then, goodbye."
It's better we never meet again after this, I muttered internally. I didn't wait another second as I turned to walk down.