Lin Feng stepped from the archway onto the first floor of the Sacred Vault. The air changed instantly. The dense, slumbering power of the anteroom gave way to a thin, meager atmosphere, the spiritual energy here faint and common.
The space was a vast, open expanse of the same black marble that paved Elder Lan's courtyard. It stretched into a gloom punctuated by neat, endless rows of simple, dark wood shelves. There was no ceremony here, no reverence in the display. Items sat plainly under the soft, ambient light: piles of chipped, low-grade spirit stones that held only a faint glimmer; rows of swords with dull, unhoned edges and plain hilts; small, unadorned ceramic pots holding the most common grade of Body Tempering pills. It was a repository of basics, of beginner's tools and Outer Sect pacifiers.
He did not break stride.
His gaze, dark and analytical, swept across the room in a single, comprehensive arc. It was not a search, but an audit. He cataloged the chipped stones, the dull blades, the common pills—and dismissed them all in the same instant. They were variables with no value to his current equation.
Without a moment of hesitation, his path cutting straight through the center of the vast floor, he moved toward the distant silhouette of the staircase leading upward.
The staircase delivered him to the second floor. Here, the spiritual pressure increased, a tangible weight in the air that spoke of a higher grade of power. The simple dark wood was replaced by shelves of rich, polished oak that gleamed under the perpetual glow.
The items here held more promise. Gleaming talismans inscribed with complex characters lay on velvet cushions. Racks of mid-grade flying swords hummed faintly, their edges sharp and spirits nascent. Jade bottles, each bearing a label that promised minor breakthroughs and purified meridians, stood in neat lines.
It was a marketplace of established competence, of tools for a cultivator on a reliable path.
Lin Feng moved through this floor just as quickly. His pace did not falter. His eyes, having absorbed the entirety of the first floor in a single glance, did the same here. Gleaming talisman, humming sword, promising pill—all were assessed and categorized as insufficient. They were stepping stones, and he had no need to tread where others had already worn a path.
He was a shadow passing through a gallery of mediocrity, his focus, sharp and unyielding, aimed entirely upward.
The third floor met him with a wall of dense, heavy air. The spiritual pressure was no longer a mere presence; it was a deliberate weight, a test of one's right to be there. The shelves themselves were carved from a deep, fragrant Ironwood, their grain seeming to shift and swirl in the low light.
Here, the treasures possessed a palpable presence. Swords hummed restlessly within their scabbards, their desire to be wielded a faint song in the qi-rich atmosphere. Pieces of armor stood on pedestals, their polished surfaces gleaming with intricately embedded defensive formations. Crystalline pills rested on spirit-silk, each one a contained, pulsing heart of light.
For the first time, his relentless pace almost faltered. A longsword wreathed in a perpetual, gentle frost that crystallized the air around its stand. A set of seven throwing daggers that flickered in and out of sight, their edges bleeding into the space between moments. These were not mere tools; they were artifacts with distinct, potent identities. They made him glance for a half-second longer, a flicker of analytical interest in his obsidian eyes.
But it was not enough. The memory of the void was a higher standard, and the crushing weight of his own depletion was a more urgent master. Pushing through the growing atmospheric pressure, his body a pillar of strain, he continued his ascent to the fourth floor.
The transition to the fourth floor was not a step, but a crossing into a different realm of existence.
The spiritual pressure did not just increase; it solidified. It became a tangible weight, a sacred silence that pressed against the eardrums and settled deep in the bones. It was the pressure of accumulated history, of power deemed worthy of preservation.
But it was the sight that truly arrested him, forcing a momentary, stunned halt in his heavy, determined stride.
This was no storeroom. It was a vast, silent cathedral dedicated to the art of power itself. The floor was a single, seamless expanse of polished black marble, so flawless it reflected the scene with a mirror's perfect, dark clarity. Soaring high above, a ceiling of the same material was embedded with countless floating white orbs. They hung like a frozen constellation, their pure, cold illumination casting the entire hall in a stark, shadowless day.
The shelves themselves were architectural marvels. They were immense, towering structures of Ancient Spirit-Silverwood, a petrified wood darker than midnight and harder than any forged steel. They rose like a silent forest of monoliths, their sheer scale humbling. The air itself was filled with their faint, sacred scent—an intoxicating blend of ancient sandalwood and the sharp, clean smell of ozone after a lightning strike.
And here, the very nature of the treasures transformed. This was the domain of the Orbs of Manifestation. They rested on the shelves, each one a translucent sphere of solidified light, a self-contained universe about the size of a human head. Within their crystalline boundaries, miniaturized treasures hovered in perfect stasis. In one orb, a legendary sword, reduced to the size of a needle, danced and swirled with a contained storm of elemental fury. In another, a pill glowed with the ferocious, captive light of a miniature supernova, its energy barely contained by the orb's shimmering walls.
The system of identification was one of stark, elegant simplicity. Etched directly into the ancient silverwood beneath each orb was a small, plain plaque of polished brass. There were no lengthy histories, no boasts of legendary wielders. Just a name. And a grade. It was a place where objects were left to speak for themselves, their value inherent and unquestionable.
Ignoring the rivers of dazzling weapons and artifacts that sang silent songs of destruction, Lin Feng's gaze, sharp and single-minded, swept across the monolithic shelves. His need was specific, a deep-seated demand of his strained spirit that overrode all other curiosity. He sought the section dedicated to restoration, to mending the frayed edges of spirit and flesh.
He found it nestled between a rack of whispering staves and a case of shimmering talismans. Here, the orbs glowed not with violent potential, but with healing, nurturing light. Hues of deep gold, revitalizing green, and soft, cleansing white pulsed in a gentle, rhythmic symphony. His eyes, honed by a body screaming for replenishment, locked onto one orb in particular.
It pulsed with a vibrant, life-affirming golden light, so potent it seemed to be a tiny, captured sun. The light throbbed in time with his own strained heartbeat, a siren call to his depleted core. His eyes dropped to the plaque. The words were simple, their meaning absolute: "Supreme Spirit-Restoring Pill." It was, without question, the most potent restorative in the entire section. The solution to his immediate, grinding problem.
Without a moment's hesitation, his decision made in the space between one breath and the next, Lin Feng slapped his palm directly onto the orb's luminous surface. His intent to claim it was a force as clear and sharp as a blade.
The orb's surface did not resist. It yielded like still water, his hand passing through without a ripple. His fingers closed around the pill within. The instant they made contact, the miniature treasure expanded, unfolding to its full, glorious size in his grasp—a walnut-sized pill of solid, gleaming gold, warm to the touch and thrumming with condensed vitality.
The moment the pill was removed, its crystalline prison responded. The orb shimmered, its structure destabilizing. It dissolved from the bottom up into a silent, brilliant shower of golden motes of light. They hung in the air for a breathtaking second, a final, beautiful echo of the treasure they had contained, before winking out of existence one by one.
The space on the polished silverwood shelf was left empty. The Supreme Spirit-Restoring Pill was now his.
He did not wait. He did not savor the moment. He popped the pill into his mouth without ceremony.
It dissolved on his tongue not as a solid, but as a wave. A torrent of pure, impossibly potent life force flooded his system, a golden tide sweeping through the desolate channels of his body. The effect was not gradual; it was instantaneous and profound.
The crushing, hundred-kilogram weight that had anchored his every movement simply vanished. The stifling, gravel-like blockage in his meridians shattered, the fragments swept away by the surging current. And his Qi of Nothingness, no longer shackled, roared back to life. It was a black river flowing with renewed, terrifying vigor, circulating through him with a force that was both familiar and newly potent. As it moved, it began to passively draw the dense, slumbering ambient energy of the Vault into him, feeding the void within.
Lin Feng took a deep, full breath. It was the first unlabored breath he had drawn since the confrontation on the path. His chest expanded fully, the air cool and clean in lungs that no longer burned. The stark relief was both physical and spiritual, a return to himself so complete it was jarring.
And with the clarity of a mind no longer clouded by agony and exhaustion, a single, cold thought crystallized.
'That fucking vampire,' he thought, the icy anger resurfacing, sharp and focused. 'Wasted one of my three choices on this.'
His internal focus turned inward, towards the vast, silent power nestled within his dantian. 'The female voice I heard when I was about to destroy that creature… that was you, right?'
The response was immediate, the same smooth, ancient, feminine whisper blooming directly in his consciousness. 'It was.'
'You said there would be no side effects,' Lin Feng mentally accused, the memory of the crushing weight and the struggle to walk still fresh. 'What a lie.'
The voice answered, its tone laced with a hint of dry amusement. 'I said there would be no side effects from the regeneration. The depletion of your energy to achieve it was… inevitable. A consequence, not a side effect. There is a difference.'
'A pointless hassle,' Lin Feng concluded, dismissing the semantic argument. The result was the same.
With his energy restored to its full, terrible potential, the crushing weight replaced by the familiar, humming void, Lin Feng began a slow, deliberate patrol of the fourth floor. His dark eyes, now sharp and endlessly analytical, scanned the rivers of glowing orbs. This was no longer a search for survival, but for something far more specific.
He passed a section dedicated to devastating artifacts. One orb contained a warhammer of black iron that visibly cracked the air around it with waves of distorted gravitational force. Another held a set of nine blood-flags, from which faint, agonized whispers of soul-trapping formations seemed to leak. They were instruments of pure, unrefined power. Blunt. Effective. But they lacked any sense of artistry. They were not for him.
His gaze drifted over a collection of cultivation arts. One orb swirled with the miniature fury of a typhoon, another trembled with the contained force of an earthquake. They promised mastery over the elements, the power to command nature itself. They were impressive on a primal level, raw displays of might that would cow any normal opponent. Yet, they felt… obvious. They were the roars of a beast. He sought the silent, precise cut of a blade. They lacked the finesse, the effortless superiority he desired for the performance he had in mind.
For that was the true purpose of this search, the unspoken criteria guiding his selection. It was not about raw power. He already housed an apocalypse. It was about presentation.
A thought, clear and direct, cut through his analysis. 'Mom would find a typhoon… messy. An earthquake is just noise. I need something… cleaner.'
He moved on, his search becoming more nuanced. He dismissed a set of armor that promised impervious defense—too passive. He passed by a manual for a sword art that could summon a thousand phantoms—too chaotic. He needed a treasure or a technique that was not merely powerful, but definitive. Something that would end a conflict not with a bang, but with a silent, absolute finality that would be both terrifying and, in its own way, beautiful.
He needed something that would make his mom raise an eyebrow in genuine appreciation, a flicker of impressed surprise in her eyes before she inevitably teased him for showing off. That was the true prize he hunted for in this cathedral of power.
His systematic patrol of the glowing constellations was interrupted by a subtle pull, a shift in the periphery of his senses. His gaze was drawn away from the brilliant orbs to a dark, secluded corner of the vast hall. It was a space forgotten by the main displays, shrouded in deeper shadow.
There, lying directly on the dark wood of a bottom shelf as if casually discarded, was a book. It was not encased in an orb of light. It looked utterly mundane. Its cover was a faded, dusty crimson, and the gold leaf that had once formed its title had long since flaked away with age, leaving only ghostly impressions in the leather.
A flicker of curiosity, a break from his methodical search, compelled him. He walked over and picked it up. The leather was dry and cool to the touch. He tilted it toward the distant celestial light, squinting to make out the title. The words, barely legible, were audaciously, almost comically grand: "Monarch's Descent: The Heavenly Annihilation Art."
He flipped it open. The pages, thick and yellowed, were not filled with text, but with intricate, forceful drawings. They depicted a series of powerful, domineering stances: a fist shattering a mountain peak, a palm pressing down to suppress a raging sea. Each image was a study in overwhelming, tyrannical power. A palpable aura emanated from the pages, a pressure that spoke of crushing entire realms beneath one's heel.
Lin Feng's brow furrowed slightly. The feeling it gave him was unmistakably familiar, yet deeply unwelcome.
'This feeling...' he thought, a wave of distaste washing over him. 'It's a perfect replica of those power-fantasy stories from my old world. The kind where a heaven-defying art, suspiciously tailored for the protagonist, falls into their lap so they can effortlessly dominate everyone who ever looked at them wrong. It's a script for a boring tyrant.'
The art was undoubtedly supreme in its category of raw, destructive power. But it was brutish. There was no subtlety, no elegance, no cleverness to it. It was the antithesis of "showing off" for his mother; it was pure, unrefined intimidation, the kind of thing she would roll her eyes at.
With a faint snort of disdain, he closed the book with a soft snap. He casually tossed it back onto the shelf where he had found it. It landed with a dull thud, kicking up a small, final cloud of ancient dust before the shadows swallowed it once more.
The discarded red book had served a purpose. It had clarified his criteria, sharpening his search with the precision of a honed blade. He moved on with a clearer vision of what he did not want.
His gaze fell upon an orb containing a "Seven-Colored Phoenix Feather." It was a magnificent artifact, pulsing with a vibrant, shifting rainbow light. He could sense its function—to release dazzling, hypnotic displays of colored flame that could blind and bewilder opponents. It was undeniably flashy.
'Too gaudy,' he dismissed internally. 'Mom would just laugh.' It was the kind of spectacle that lacked substance, all show and no soul.
Further on, a jade slip within another orb promised the "Dance of a Thousand Petals." A phantom demonstration showed a graceful, flowing movement art that left a shimmering trail of glowing cherry blossoms in its wake. It was elegant, beautiful even.
'Too feminine,' he concluded without malice. It was an aesthetic, but it was not his aesthetic. It clashed with the cold, silent intensity that was his nature. He needed something that matched that inherent coolness, yet could be wielded with a devastating, artistic flair.
He found himself drawn to a section where the orbs held a sharper, more focused energy. The Sword Arts. Here, the treasures were not objects, but knowledge—patterns of motion and intent encoded in jade. His eyes scanned the plaques and the silent demonstrations within the spheres of light.
Then, one orb arrested his attention.
Inside, a miniature spectral sword moved. It was a blur of motion so concise it was like a single thought given form. It unsheathed, struck a dozen distinct points on an imaginary foe with impossible speed, and sheathed itself again. The entire sequence lasted less than a single breath. There was no wasted movement, no theatrical wind-up. It was clean, efficient, and devastatingly fast. It was the epitome of lethal economy.
His eyes dropped to the plaque. The name was as sharp and direct as the technique itself: "Untraceable Edge Method."
A cold, satisfied certainty settled in his spirit.
'Perfect,' he thought. 'Fast. Lethal. And with my Qi... I can make it beautiful.'
In his mind's eye, he could already envision it. Not the faint silver afterimage of the spectral sword, but something far more profound. He saw the technique performed with the Qi of Nothingness, leaving behind lingering afterimages of pure void—black slashes hanging in the air like cracks in reality itself, a beautiful and terrifying testament to the attack that had already landed.
Without hesitation, he placed his hand upon the orb. His intent to claim this specific art was a clear, focused command. His hand passed through the luminous surface as if it were mist. His fingers closed around the cool, smooth surface of the jade slip within.
The moment it was in his grasp, the orb shimmered and dissolved into a shower of silver motes that faded into the silent, watchful air of the vault.
The second of his three items was claimed.
With the jade slip of the "Untraceable Edge Method" secured, a sense of purpose settled over him. He had one choice remaining. His gaze swept across the vast hall, no longer scanning for combat arts, but for something… different. Something that wasn't for him.
He drifted away from the sections humming with destructive potential, moving toward an area where the orbs glowed with a softer, more intricate light. This was the domain of artifacts—tools, talismans, and curiosities whose purposes were as varied as their forms. He passed an orb containing a compass whose needle spun in seven different directions at once, and another that held a mask capable of perfectly mimicking any face it beheld. They were fascinating, but they were not what he sought.
Then, his eyes landed on it.
Nestled between a floating, ever-burning candle and a set of chimes that played a silent, soul-soothing melody, was an orb of particular elegance. Inside, suspended as if in a clear, frozen tear, was a pendant.
It was a masterpiece of the jeweler's art. The chain was a delicate, silvery strand of moon-weave silver, strong yet beautiful, seeming to capture a fragment of starlight in its weave. The pendant itself was a perfect circle of polished white gold. Set within this frame was a square-cut, deep midnight-blue star sapphire. The gem was so dark it was nearly black, a piece of the night sky given solid form. Yet, when the vault's ambient light caught it, a sharp, six-pointed star of brilliant white light gleamed from its very heart. The square sapphire was held in place by four tiny, perfectly crafted diamond claws at each corner, a final touch of exquisite craftsmanship.
His eyes dropped to the plaque. "Spatial Weave Locket." As he read the name, a stream of information flowed into his mind. The locket's function was revealed: thought-activated spatial storage. A pocket dimension contained within the star sapphire.
A rare, genuine smile touched Lin Feng's lips for a fraction of a second, a fleeting crack in his usual impassivity.
'She'll love this,' he thought, the image of Li Meixiu's face immediately springing to mind. 'She can store all her candies, her strange herbs… and play endless tricks on everyone.'
His imagination, usually so clinical, painted a vivid picture. He could see her mischievous grin as she made Elder Tao's favorite teapot vanish in the middle of a lecture. It was the perfect gift.
He reached out, his intent clear. But as his fingers neared the orb's luminous surface, it resisted. It was not a solid barrier, but a sudden, unexpected thickness, as if the light itself had congealed, testing his resolve, probing the quality of his spirit. The orb, possessing a sliver of will, sought to measure the worth of the one who would claim its treasure.
For a single, suspended moment, his hand hesitated, meeting an invisible pressure.
Then, the Qi of Nothingness within him stirred, not by his command, but by reflex. It was the barest whisper of its presence, a silent, depthless hunger.
The resistance vanished instantly. The orb's light seemed to flinch, the thickness dissolving into a sudden, yielding softness, as if the orb itself had recoiled from the touch of something it could not comprehend. His hand passed through unimpeded, his fingers closing around the cool, weightless pendant.
To Lin Feng, it merely felt like a brief, strange hesitation before his hand passed through as expected. He gave it no further thought.
The moment the pendant was in his grasp, the orb dissolved not in a shower of motes, but with a soft, almost sighing shimmer, vanishing into the air as if relieved to be free of its burden.
The third of his three items was claimed.
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