The dawn clawed its way across the heavens with slow, bloodied fingers, staining the jagged peaks of the Celestial Sword Pavilion in hues of molten gold and bruised purple. Below, the sect stirred like a great beast rousing from slumber. Disciples moved through the mist-shrouded training grounds with ritual precision, their forms cutting sharp silhouettes against the pearlescent fog - ink strokes on heaven's parchment, each movement a character in some divine scripture.
From the alchemy pavilions of Medicine Soul Peak, serpentine coils of smoke rose in languid spirals, their undersides gilded by the newborn sun while their crests remained the color of tarnished bronze. The scent carried on the frozen air - a paradoxical blend of honeyed herbs and bitter roots, of crushed petals and scorched metal. Somewhere beyond the central courtyards, the rhythmic thwack of wooden practice swords echoed like the slow heartbeat of a slumbering giant, each impact sending crows scattering from the ancient plum trees in bursts of ink-black wings.
But here, at the apex of Elder Lan's domain, time itself seemed to have frozen in reverence. The sea of clouds below lay motionless, their wispy crests sharp as knife points, an ocean of ghosts petrified mid-swell. The air was so still that individual snowflakes hung suspended like scattered stars, unmelted, untouched by the sun's creeping warmth. Each breath crystallized the instant it left one's lips - tiny fractals of ice forming in the lungs, burning the throat with their passage, before shattering soundlessly against the ground.
The mountain exhaled.
Frost crept across the blade-embedded stones in delicate, fractal patterns, each icy tendril unfolding with mathematical precision. The swords themselves stood sentinel, their edges singing silent hymns to the dawn, their scabbards fused to the living rock as though grown there. Some were ancient, their crossguards worn smooth by centuries of patient waiting; others gleamed with cruel modernity, their freshly honed edges catching the light in flashes of predatory awareness. All watched. All waited.
High above, where the twin moons still lingered like pale afterthoughts against the brightening sky, a single thread of mist unraveled from the peak's summit. It twisted in the motionless air, coiling and uncoiling like a living thing, before dissolving into nothingness. The mountain inhaled again, and the world held its breath with it.
Somewhere deep in the stone, metal sighed against metal - the sound of a blade being drawn after too long in its sheath, or perhaps finally being put to rest. The frost trembled in response, its crystalline lattice shifting almost imperceptibly, realigning itself to some unfathomable design.
The dawn deepened. The light grew teeth.
And the peak waited, silent and perfect, for what was to come.
The winding path to Elder Tao's peak exhaled its usual miasma of contradictions as Lin Feng guided Meixiu across its final threshold—where the cloying perfume of crystallized honeycomb fought against the eye-watering reek of distilled serpent venom. The open-air alchemy platforms stood in tiered formation along the mountainside, glass cabinets and stone worktables arranged with precarious precision. Shelves carved directly into the living rock bent under the weight of bubbling flasks and trembling vials, each labeled with increasingly desperate warnings in slashed crimson ink. A collection of "Absolutely Forbidden" elixirs rattled ominously on their perches, their glass prisons sweating condensation that dripped like blood tears onto the ancient stone below.
Meixiu adjusted Mr. Bunbun under her arm, the rabbit's threadbare fur already collecting a fine dusting of iridescent powder from the mountain winds. One button eye reflected the eerie glow of a nearby furnace where cobalt flames licked at a crucible, their heatless fire casting no warmth, only a cold, predatory light.
"Be careful," Lin Feng murmured, his hand lingering at the small of her back. His fingers brushed the twilight silk of her robe—once, briefly—before withdrawing.
Meixiu pouted, catching his sleeve before he could pull away fully. "What, no 'good luck'? No 'don't set the peak on fire'?" She tugged at the fabric, her lower lip jutting out in exaggerated protest.
Lin Feng exhaled through his nose, the barest flicker of amusement tightening the corner of his mouth. "You never listen to warnings anyway."
"That's not true!" She huffed, though her fingers were already straying toward a nearby rack of vials, her curiosity overriding her mock indignation. "I listen when they're interesting."
Elder Tao didn't look up from his weathered ledger where he sat beneath a crooked pine, his ink-stained fingers pausing mid-scribble. His hat, perpetually tilted to shadow his eyes, didn't so much as twitch as he spoke. "Touch nothing without permission," he said, voice dry as aged parchment. "And remember—you're here to learn alchemy, not test how quickly we can rebuild my workstations." He flipped a page with deliberate slowness. "The last disciple who tried that is still picking glass shards from his robes three years later."
Meixiu gasped, pressing a hand to her chest in theatrical offense. "I would never! Unless it was very educational!"
Lin Feng didn't argue. He simply gave her one last look—half warning, half resignation—before turning to leave.
The last thing he saw before the alchemical winds swallowed her entirely was Meixiu's sleeve, already dusted with flecks of ash, as she reached for something she definitely shouldn't. Mr. Bunbun's lone ear flopped in silent commiseration.
Somewhere among the tiered platforms, glass chimed like a death knell, followed by Meixiu's delighted whisper: "Oops."
The mountain's sigh carried Lin Feng eastward, away from the alchemy peak's perfumed chaos and back toward the sacred silence of Elder Lan's domain. With each step upward, the air shed its cloying textures—no more honey or venom, only the razor-clean bite of altitude. The raucous clatter of breaking glass faded behind him, replaced by a silence so profound it seemed to ring in his ears.
Lin Feng ascended the final stone steps to Elder Lan's domain which was at the top of Veiled Silence Peak, each footfall swallowed by the mountain's unnatural quiet. The air here had teeth—thin, razor-sharp, biting deep with every breath until his lungs ached with the effort. His exhales curled outward in wisps of silver vapor, but the courtyard ahead breathed something more ethereal—a luminous mist that shimmered like liquid moonlight, drifting across the frozen stones in languid currents before dissolving into the dawn.
The courtyard sprawled before him, an expanse of night-dark stones veined with threads of gold where the morning light caught their polished surfaces. They drank in the sun not with greed, but with quiet reverence, reflecting it back in muted flashes like distant stars winking through storm clouds. Along the edges, ancient plum trees stood sentinel, their gnarled branches cradling the last stubborn blossoms. Petals drifted down in slow, silent spirals, catching the mist's glow as they fell—each one a fleeting lantern before withering against the frost-laced stones.
Wood existed here only as punctuation—slender beams of aged cypress framing the sliding doors, their grain glowing like captured sunlight beneath layers of ice. The windows stood shuttered with rice paper so pure it seemed woven from moonlight itself, their surfaces unblemished by time or touch. Frost traced delicate patterns across every surface, not the jagged fractals of winter, but intricate lacework—as if some celestial hand had embroidered the very air with threads of frozen starlight.
Lin Feng remained at the threshold, his shadow stretching long and lean across the enchanted stones. The cold here held no malice—it was a sacred hush, the kind found in temples at the world's dawn, pressing against his skin with the gentle insistence of a master awaiting a disciple's readiness. Somewhere beyond the courtyard's far edge, where the golden mist gathered thickest around the peak's jagged spires, the air shifted—not with sound, but with presence, like the moment between one heartbeat and the next when the world holds its breath.
The petals kept falling. The mist kept dancing.
And Lin Feng waited, as still as the mountain's oldest blade, as patient as the ice that remembered spring.
Time stretched thin between heartbeats—until the golden mist itself parted in reverence like a curtain of falling silk.
Elder Lan emerged without sound, without disturbance—her bare feet meeting the ice-veined stones as if she were no more substantial than the morning light itself. Where she stepped, the frost did not crack, the mist did not stir. She left no trace, no shiver in the world to mark her passing, as though the mountain itself held its breath in reverence.
Her robes, white as the heart of a blizzard, flowed around her like water given form, the fabric whispering secrets too cold for mortal ears. The bone-white swordpin in her hair caught the dawn's glow, its edge so sharp it seemed to cut the very air around it. But it was her gaze that struck deepest—black as the space between stars, endless as the roots of the mountain, carving into Lin Feng with the precision of a blade peeling back layers of flesh to bare the soul beneath.
She did not speak. Not yet.
The silence between them stretched, taut as a drawn bowstring, before she turned—just slightly—toward the far edge of the peak. A single sweep of her sleeve, and the mist coiled obediently aside, revealing a narrow path leading to a secluded training ground.
It stood apart from the sect's grandeur, overlooking the valleys below where villages clung to the earth like scattered seeds. The ground here was simple—unadorned earth, packed hard by centuries of solitary practice. At its heart stood an ancient banyan tree, its gnarled roots twisting through the soil like the veins of some slumbering titan. Around it, a perfect circle of black marble tiles spread outward, their surfaces polished to a mirror's sheen, reflecting the sky in fractured pieces.
The rest of the training ground bore no finery. A few wooden swords lay discarded near the edges, their surfaces worn smooth by relentless use. A handful of real blades stood planted in the earth at the corners, their edges dulled not by neglect, but by the sheer weight of the mountain's qi pressing against them.
Elder Lan's voice, when it came, was the scrape of ice against stone.
"Come."
A single word, and yet it carried the weight of an avalanche.
She did not wait to see if he followed. Her steps, still soundless, carried her toward the banyan tree, where the shadows stretched long despite the rising sun.
Lin Feng exhaled, his breath curling silver in the air, and obeyed.
The training ground awaited.
The mountain watched.
And the blades, buried deep in the earth, hummed in anticipation.
Their vibration resonated through the black marble tiles as Lin Feng knelt—on stone. The banyan's shadow stretched toward him like a pointing finger.
The black marble tiles were cold beneath Lin Feng, their polished surface leeching warmth even through the layers of his robes. He sat cross-legged at the center of the circle, the ancient banyan tree casting fractured shadows across his still form. Before him, Elder Lan mirrored his posture—but where he was flesh and breath, she was something honed, something edged. Her spine did not bend; her robes did not rustle. She sat as a sword sits in its sheath: motionless, yet thrumming with silent potential.
The dawn light caught the bone-white pin in her hair, making it gleam like a sliver of ice. When she spoke, her voice was the whisper of steel drawn slowly from its scabbard.
"Baihui." She lifted one finger, pointing to the crown of her own head. "Heaven's door." Her fingertip hovered, as if testing the edge of an invisible blade. "Knock lightly."
Lin Feng exhaled, feeling the weight of her words settle into his bones. The air between them grew heavy, charged with something older than instruction—something closer to revelation.
"Shanzhong." Her hand drifted to her chest, where the heart should beat. It did not rise or fall with breath. "Balance." The word was a warning. "Or drown in your own pulse."
A wind stirred the banyan leaves above them, though the rest of the mountain remained still. Shadows danced across the marble, fleeting as sword strokes.
"Qihai." Her palm pressed low against her abdomen, where the dantian burned unseen. "The well." Her fingers curled slightly, as if drawing water from an unseen source. "Dig first. Then drink."
Lin Feng's own breath slowed, his focus narrowing to the points she named—crown, chest, core—each one a star in some celestial map only she could read.
"Yongquan." Her bare feet flexed against the marble, soles pressing into the stone as if feeling the earth's heartbeat through it. "Earth's whisper." Her eyes locked onto his, black and depthless. "Listen."
For a long moment, there was only silence. The banyan's leaves stilled. The distant murmur of the valley below faded into nothing.
Then—
"Feel the qi." Elder Lan's voice was the last stroke of the blade before the cut lands. "Nothing more."
And with that, the lesson began.
The marble beneath him hummed, the tiles resonating with some deep, buried frequency. The air thickened, not with mist, but with presence—the mountain's breath, the sky's attention, the weight of a thousand unsheathed swords waiting in the dark.
Lin Feng closed his eyes.
And for the first time, he truly listened.
What he heard was not instruction, but memory—his body recalling what his mind had never learned.
Lin Feng closed his eyes, bracing for the familiar struggle—the grueling process of forcing qi through unawakened meridians like prying open rusted gates with bare hands. He expected resistance, the painful scraping of spiritual energy against untempered pathways.
Instead—
His body recognized qi instantly.
Not as an invader, not as a stranger to be wrestled into submission—but as something returning home. His meridians lit up from within, pathways glowing like veins of molten silver beneath his skin. The qi did not flood; it glided, smooth as water down a pre-carved channel, flowing effortlessly through routes that should have been closed, blocked, untraveled.
Baihui hummed first—a soft pulse at his crown, as if Heaven's door had been left ajar for him. Then Shanzhong, steady and unwavering, balancing the current without strain. Qihai stirred next, the well of his dantian not yet filled, but waiting, its depths resonating with the faintest echo of what was to come. Yongquan grounded it all, the soles of his feet thrumming with the earth's silent approval.
No blockages. No resistance. No agonizing inch-by-inch conquest of his own body.
It was as if his meridians had been waiting for this—not sealed shut, but patient, like a sword resting in its sheath, already sharpened, already hungry.
This should not have been possible.
A flicker—subtle as a snowflake catching light—passed through Elder Lan's frost aura. The only sign of her surprise. The only sign that this, too, was beyond even her expectations.
Lin Feng did not open his eyes.
The pathways were clear.
The qi moved.
And the mountain, for the first time in centuries, listened.
What answered was not light, but its annihilation—a darkness so profound it made the dawn itself recoil.
The air in the training ground thickened, pressing down with a weight that had nothing to do with heat or cold. Lin Feng's qi unfurled from his body like smoke from a dying fire—but this was no ordinary darkness. It was void-colored, the absence of light made manifest, swallowing the dawn's glow like ink spilled across parchment. Where it pooled around him, the very air seemed to warp, heavy with anticipation—not the sharp bite of winter's chill, but the charged stillness before lightning cleaves the sky.
Lin Feng exhaled, and the black qi shuddered in response, swirling in languid coils around his arms before seeping back into his skin. His meridians thrummed with effortless circulation, the energy moving through him as naturally as blood through veins. There had been no struggle, no gradual awakening—only instantaneous mastery, as though his body had been crafted for this alone.
The black marble beneath them drank in the unnatural qi, its polished surface turning dull where the void-touched energy touched it. Even the ancient banyan tree seemed to recoil slightly, its leaves trembling without wind.
Lin Feng opened his eyes.
The void-colored qi still clung to his fingertips, tendrils of it curling like living shadows before dissipating into the air. He flexed his hand, watching as the darkness bled from his skin, leaving no trace behind.
"What next?" he asked, as if this were nothing. As if perfection were expected.
The mountain held its breath.
The answer came not in words, but in winter's touch—Elder Lan moved like a shadow given form, her presence materializing behind Lin Feng without sound, without disturbance. The air itself seemed to part for her, the golden mist recoiling from her frost-laced sleeves as she raised one pale hand. Her palm pressed flat against the space between his shoulder blades—where the heart's pulse met the spine's stillness—her touch light as snowfall but heavy with intent.
She expected chaos.
Every disciple's first circulation was a storm—qi flaring in jagged bursts, meridians straining under unfamiliar currents, the body rebelling against what it did not yet understand. She had seen veins rupture under the pressure, had watched cultivators gasp as their own energy turned against them like a blade in reverse.
What she found instead was a black river.
Lin Feng's qi moved through him with impossible precision, a dark current gliding along pathways that showed no hesitation, no imperfection. His meridians were not merely open—they were honed, their edges smooth as sword-polished stone, their depths waiting as though they had been carved centuries ago and left dormant for this moment alone. There was no turbulence. No struggle. Only the silent, seamless flow of void-colored energy, winding through his body like ink through water.
Her fingers flexed slightly against his back, testing the current—searching for any flaw, any tremor of strain.
There was none.
The mountain's breath hung suspended in the air between them. The banyan's leaves ceased their whispering. Even the faint glow of the marble tiles beneath them dimmed, as if the stone itself dared not interfere.
"Continue."
Her command was neither praise nor condemnation—only observation. A blade held at the throat of a mystery.
'How far,' her silence asked, 'will this anomaly go?'
Lin Feng exhaled, and the black river answered.
The river became a tide—a slow, inevitable unfurling that made the dawn itself seem fragile in comparison.
The black qi unfurled from Lin Feng's body in slow, sinuous spirals—not a violent eruption, but something deeper, more inevitable. Like the turning of tides or the descent of night, it spread with a quiet certainty, pooling around him in liquid shadows that drank the light without malice.
The wind shifted. Not in retreat, not in fear—but in recognition. It curled toward him, not as if pulled by force, but as though bowing to some unspoken command, its currents bending like supplicants before a sovereign. The golden mist that clung to the training ground darkened where it met his energy, not dissipating, but transforming—threads of void weaving seamlessly into the dawn's glow.
Frost bloomed outward from where Elder Lan sat, crystalline fractals spreading in perfect radial symmetry across the black marble. But this was no ordinary ice. It did not crack or splinter. It grew like living lace, each delicate strand humming with a resonance that mirrored the rhythm of Lin Feng's breath.
His qi moved deeper.
The banyan tree's leaves shivered, not in fear, but in something akin to awe. The shadows beneath its branches thickened, stretching toward him as if drawn by kinship. Even the distant murmur of the valley below seemed to hush—not silenced, but listening.
Then, as the circulation reached its peak, something shifted.
The void-colored energy did not dissipate. It did not fade. Instead, the outermost threads of it—thin as spider silk, dark as the space between stars—drifted back toward Lin Feng's body, winding around his wrists, his throat, the curve of his jaw, before seeping into his skin like water into parched earth.
And where it passed, the light dimmed. Not extinguished, not devoured—but gently refused. The air around him wavered, as if the world itself hesitated to touch him. His silhouette gained weight, gained depth, as though he stood at the threshold of something far greater than mere cultivation.
This was not corruption. Not demonic influence.
This was something older.
Something the mountain had not seen in centuries.
Lin Feng exhaled, and the last wisp of void qi settled into his dantian—not with finality, but with the quiet certainty of a promise yet to be kept.
The training ground held its breath.
The frost patterns glowed faintly, then stilled.
And Elder Lan—
Elder Lan watched.
Then—like an axe through frozen silk—laughter came.
The crisp mountain air carried a sudden ripple of sound—not from far below, but from the adjacent peak where Elder Tao's alchemy pavilions stood, slightly shorter and set apart from the austere silence of Elder Lan's domain. Meixiu's laughter cut through the stillness like a blade through silk—bright, unrestrained, a fleeting spark of warmth against the cold precision of the training ground. It was neither loud nor soft, but perfectly audible, a reminder of life unfolding just beyond the void-steeped moment.
Across the sect, the morning unfolded in unbroken rhythm. Disciples moved through sword forms in the courtyards, their wooden practice blades cutting sharp arcs through the mist. The clang of iron rang from the smithies, while kitchen apprentices shouted over bubbling cauldrons, their voices weaving through the scent of steaming rice and scorched chili oil. None paused. None sensed the shift in the mountain's breath—the quiet tremor of something ancient stirring beneath their feet.
Lin Feng remained seated on the black marble tiles, the last traces of void qi settling into his meridians like ink seeping into parchment. His expression was unreadable, but his gaze—dark as unsheathed steel—locked onto Elder Lan's without flinching.
"Did I do well, Master?"
The question hung between them, weighted. Not a plea, not uncertainty—but a challenge, deliberate as a blade laid bare for inspection.
Elder Lan studied him for a long moment, her frost-pale eyes unblinking. Then, with a flick of her wrist, she tossed a folded robe toward him. The fabric unfurled midair—a high-collared sweep of pale white-grey, its seams razor-straight, its drape flawless in its minimalism. No embroidery, no ornament—only the clean, unbroken lines of a weapon yet to be wielded.
"This one suits you better," she said, her voice as edged as winter's first frost. "At least now you look human."
Lin Feng caught the robe, the fabric cool against his fingers. The void within him stirred, but did not resist.
Elder Lan's gaze did not waver. Her expression remained carved from ice—but in the way the frost at her feet held its fractals a breath too long, in the way the air between them thickened ever so slightly—there was acknowledgment.
Not praise.
Not yet.
But something far more dangerous.
The promise of a blade being drawn for the first time.
Lin Feng rose to his feet in one fluid motion, the black marble tiles beneath him gleaming faintly as if reflecting some unseen light. Elder Lan stood before him, her presence as unyielding as the mountain itself, her frost-white robes undisturbed by even the slightest breath of wind.
He held up the new robe, its pale fabric stark against the dark void-qi still lingering at his fingertips. "Should I wear this now?" His voice was flat, devoid of hesitation or deference—simply a question posed to the air between them.
Elder Lan didn't blink. "You can."
Lin Feng nodded once, then reached for the ties of his black outer robe, the one embroidered with the phoenix emblem. The fabric slid from his shoulders with a whisper, revealing the lean, unmarred lines of his torso save for three faint marks tracing his shoulder blades—pale, finger-length scars that spoke of lessons learned but not yet explained. He pulled the new robe on with detached efficiency, the high collar settling against his throat like a second skin.
Elder Lan didn't look away. Didn't react. But the frost at her feet spread infinitesimally wider, the crystalline patterns etching themselves deeper into the stone.
Lin Feng adjusted the sleeves, then met her gaze again. "Oh," he said, tone still utterly deadpan. "I thought women wouldn't want a man changing in front of them."
Elder Lan's expression didn't so much as flicker. "You are a disciple," she said, as if that explained everything.
A beat of silence. Then, as she turned to leave, her voice cut through the air like winter's first frost: "This is only the beginning of cultivation. To understand more—to master technique—you must start from nothing." The words carried the weight of centuries, immutable as mountain stone. "One thousand laps. Then rest... for today."
Lin Feng didn't argue. Just turned toward the path that ringed the grounds, his new robes a pale ghost against the dark earth.
But as he took the first step—
The air around him shivered.
A single thread of qi, thin as spider silk, dark as the space between stars, curled from the atmosphere into his skin. Unbidden. Inevitable.
Elder Lan paused at the threshold of her courtyard.
She didn't turn. Didn't speak.
But for the first time since Lin Feng had met her, something in her stance shifted—just slightly—the line of her shoulders tightening, the tilt of her head betraying a fraction of something unreadable.
Her expression didn't change.
But the mountain felt it.
And then she was gone, the sliding door closing behind her with a sound like a blade being sheathed.
Lin Feng ran.
And as he moved, the void qi moved with him—not following, but flowing, as if it had always been part of his shadow.
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