The Broken Soul Pavilion was not a place for cultivation; it was a charnel house where the scent of medicinal herbs battled the stench of rotting flesh. Within its gloomy, damp walls, the air was perpetually thick with a sickly sweet haze—the residue of failed decoctions and volatile spirit poisons.
Hua Sui knelt before a blackened bronze cauldron, his lungs burning with every breath. For a week, he had been subjected to Old Man Qin's "cleansing." In reality, it was a slow, systematic poisoning designed to see how much the legendary Inverse Meridians could endure before collapsing.
"Drink it," a raspy voice commanded from the shadows.
Old Man Qin leaned forward, his face a map of deep wrinkles and liver spots. His eyes, milky with cataracts yet sharp with a perverse curiosity, stared at Hua Sui like a butcher evaluating a piece of meat. He handed over a stone bowl filled with a bubbling, emerald-green liquid. The surface hissed, releasing a vapor that made the stone floor turn black where it touched.
"This is the Bone-Corroding Marrow Soup," Qin wheezed, a thin trail of saliva escaping his lips. "It will burn away the impurities of your mortal birth... or it will turn your innards into slush. Either way, it will be a marvelous data point for my Blood Foundation Pill."
Hua Sui didn't hesitate. To hesitate was to be beaten. He took the bowl, his hands trembling—not from fear, but from the bone-deep cold that never left him. He tilted his head back and swallowed.
The effect was instantaneous.
It wasn't like fire; it was like swallowing a thousand shards of jagged glass coated in acid. The liquid tore through his throat, searing his esophagus before exploding in his stomach. Hua Sui collapsed, his body convulsing violently on the cold stone floor. His skin turned a mottled, bruised purple, and thick, black veins began to bulge across his forehead and neck.
Pain. Infinite, soul-shredding pain.
Inside his body, the emerald poison was a rampaging beast. It ignored the traditional pathways of Qi, seeking instead to dissolve the very marrow of his bones. In a normal cultivator, this would have been the end. Their meridians would have withered, and their heart would have stopped within seconds.
But Hua Sui's meridians were not normal.
As the poison reached the core of his being, his Inverse Meridians suddenly surged. Instead of pushing the poison out, they began to pull. Like a massive, invisible whirlpool, the inverted pathways caught the "beast" and dragged it downward, toward the center of his dantian.
Deep within that void, the tiny, grey Seed of Ruin—the manifestation of his Inverse Qi—began to spin.
It didn't just store the poison; it ground it. The violent, acidic energy was stripped of its destructive intent and refined into a pure, concentrated essence. The pain didn't vanish, but it transformed. It became a cold, heavy weight that settled into his bones, strengthening them even as it tortured them.
More, a voice whispered in the depths of his mind. It was his own voice, yet it sounded ancient, predatory. I need more.
Old Man Qin watched, his breath hitching. "Incredible... your meridians are actually devouring the toxicity. Usually, a Pill Slave lasts three days. You... you are becoming more refined with every dose."
Qin cackled, a sound like dry leaves skittering over a tombstone. "If this continues, you won't just be a slave. You'll be the perfect vessel. A living cauldron of concentrated malice!"
Days turned into a blurred eternity of agony. Hua Sui lost track of the sun and moon. He lived in a cycle of ingestion and torment. He was fed "Seven-Kill Grass," "Heart-Withered Vine," and "Rotting Spirit Dust." Each would have been lethal, yet each was swallowed by the grey vortex within him.
His body became a map of scars and chemical burns, but beneath the surface, a terrifying power was brewing. His Inverse Qi, once a thin, flickering wisp, had grown into a dense, grey fog. It was no longer just a "defect"; it was a weapon.
One evening, while Qin was busy tending to a larger furnace, Hua Sui sat in his corner, his eyes closed. He focused his will on the Grey Seed. With a sudden, violent thrum, a thread of grey energy escaped the vortex and traveled up his arm. He touched a small wooden stool beside him.
Silently, without heat or flame, the wood turned to grey ash.
Hua Sui's eyes snapped open. The coldness in his gaze was no longer just physical. It was the chill of a man who had walked through hell and found he liked the temperature.
He looked at Old Man Qin's back. The old man was powerful—a cultivator at the peak of Qi Condensation—but he was arrogant. He saw Hua Sui as a tool, not a threat.
"The years are withered," Hua Sui whispered to himself, feeling the surging power of the poisons in his blood. "But the harvest is coming."
He wasn't just surviving the poison. He was becoming it.