Before there was the Empire, before there were the Sects, there were the Heavens. The Heavens were not a place, but a rigid system of laws—a "Script" that dictated how much Qi a person could hold, how long they could live, and when they must die to feed the cycle of the gods. Everything followed the Pattern.
But every script has a margin for error.
In the deepest layer of the Primordial Forge, a remnant of a fallen Titan—a being from a time before the Heavens—refused to be erased. This remnant was not energy or matter; it was Purple Dust, a substance of pure negation. For eons, this dust drifted through the void, seeking a vessel that could carry the weight of a broken universe.
Fourteen years ago:
In the outskirts of the Eternal Lotus Sect, a child was born under a silent sky. There were no auspicious clouds, no dragon roars. Instead, for a single second, every flame in the world flickered out, and every cultivator felt a "gap" in their soul. This was the moment the Purple Dust found its host.
Yun Caos was born with a body that shouldn't exist. His bones were not made of calcium and marrow, but of that crystalline, translucent dust. To the "Pattern" of the Heavens, Yun was a virus. To the gods, he was a "Calamity."
Grand Elder Shara found him in a cradle of ash. When she touched the infant, her own high-level Qi—enough to level a mountain—was simply swallowed by the child's skin. She didn't see a monster; she saw a lonely soul that the world was already trying to delete. She hid him, fed him, and tried to teach him to "cultivate" like a normal human, hoping to mask his true nature.
But the Void cannot be masked forever. You cannot teach a black hole to be a candle.
Yun grew up feeling like an outsider in reality itself. Every time he tried to absorb Qi, he didn't feel empowered; he felt hungry. The world felt "flimsy" to him, like a painting that he could accidentally smudge if he pressed too hard.
Now, as the Decennial Evaluation approaches, the boy who has spent fourteen years trying to fit into a world of laws is about to realize that he was never meant to follow them. He was meant to rewrite them.