Hours passed.
The qi grew wilder than before—more erratic, more violent—but he remained patient. He compressed it, shaped it, and forced it into tighter spirals within his dantian. Every breath was a battle. Every heartbeat is a negotiation.
And just when it felt like the threshold was near—when the next sub-stage of the Enlightened Realm hovered within reach—
The qi turned. It didn't just resist. It rebelled.
It incinerated his clothes in an instant, stripping him bare as if the Ridge itself had rejected anything manmade. It cracked his bones. It tore through his flesh like molten wire, threatening to unravel his soul.
And then—something deeper stirred.
Not just qi. Not just pressure.
A presence.
It surged up from the fissure's depths, ancient and hungry, and slammed into his spirit sea like a tidal wave of knives.
Voices—no, a voice—boomed inside his mind. Not spoken, but carved into his thoughts.
"You carry it."
"The Origin Shard from the upper realm."
"Give it to me."
"I will unmake you and make it mine."
Jalen's knees buckled. Blood poured from his nose and ears. His spirit sea fractured under the weight of it—like a mortal mind trying to hold the sky.
Whatever was down there… It couldn't rise. But it could reach. And it wanted him.
No—
It wanted the shard. The origin shard.
Jalen clenched his teeth, blood spilling from his lips. He tried to hold it back—to stop the energy from entering deeper—but it was out of his control. The qi had tasted him, and now it wanted more.
His scream tore through the ridge.
It wasn't human.
It was raw, primal, the sound of a body being devoured from the inside out.
Even Ridge, watching from afar, felt his eardrums throb. His breath caught. His body shuddered from the sheer intensity of it—the way the qi had twisted, warped, and become something monstrous.
It wasn't just dangerous anymore. It was predatory.
What a tragedy, Ridge thought. Such a rare talent—gone before he even had the chance to bloom.
Then something happened.
Jalen's chest lit up.
A pulse of white light—sharp, cold, and ancient—flared beneath his skin.
It was the spirit shard, or rather, the origin shard.
It drank the qi like a starving beast, pulling it away from Jalen's shattered meridians and into itself. The flow slowed. Regulated. For a moment, Jalen could breathe again.
But the ridge wasn't done.
"You will not escape from me." The voice roared.
The qi grew more violent, more desperate. It tried to drag him downward—toward the core, where it held the advantage. Where it could finish what it started.
The origin shard responded in kind.
It lashed out, wild and furious, severing the qi's grip on Jalen with a force that cracked the stone beneath him. The backlash hurled his broken body across the chamber, slamming him into the far wall with a sickening crunch.
But the qi he'd already absorbed was still inside him.
And it was tearing him apart.
His screams returned—endless, ragged, inhuman—until his body finally gave out. He collapsed, unconscious, blood pooling beneath him.
Ridge moved.
He stepped from the shadows, boots silent on the stone, eyes locked on the boy's crumpled form.
If he's dead, there's no point watching him any longer. I'll report what I saw and be done with it.
He took a step closer.
And the world pushed back.
A wave of energy burst from Jalen's body—raw, unfiltered, and strong enough to match Ridge's own cultivation. It slammed into him like a wall, forcing him back three paces before he could steady himself.
Ridge's eyes widened. He had only just confirmed the boy was at the early stage of the Enlightened Realm. And now—now he stood at its peak. In a single night. That wasn't progress. That was a violation of cultivation law.
Most cultivators spent decades—sometimes a full century—just moving from one sub-stage to the next. But this boy had crossed two in a single night without destroying his dantian or dying.
What kind of monster is this kid?
And then, a darker thought crept in—one that made Ridge's skin crawl.
If he's this strong at fifteen… what will he be at fifty?
__
Across the region, cultivators stirred. Clans and sects paused mid-ritual, mid-meal, mid-breath. They felt it—not just the surge of qi, but the wrongness of it. Too fast. Too pure. Too violent.
Most assumed the worst.
"Someone's trying to break through at the Kanto Ridge?"
"Fool. That place devours cultivators."
"Another idiot feeding the soil."
They didn't know the truth.
They didn't know the boy who had walked into the Ridge wasn't trying to survive it.
He was using it.
The Ridge had tried to devour him.
But Jalen didn't just survive.
He left his mark—
And the mountain would remember.
—
Beneath the ridge, far below the fissure's reach, something stirred.
A sliver of will. A fragment of hunger.
The voice returned—not in words, but in a whisper that brushed against the edge of Jalen's unconscious mind.
"You are marked."
"I will be free one day, and when I am, I will find you and devour you."
On Jalen's chest, just above his heart, the skin shimmered faintly—etched with a red X sigil, pulsing once before fading from sight.