The morning gong echoed through the Verdant Mountain Sect, its sonorous tone vibrating through the mist-shrouded peaks. Disciples in grey and green robes streamed from their dormitories, their steps light and energetic, their auras buzzing with the nascent power of the first realm.
All except for one.
Li Yao stretched on his simple wooden bed, yawning widely. "Another day, another chance to... well, exist very, very slowly," he murmured to himself, a wry smile touching his lips. He moved with a deliberate, almost lazy grace, folding his blanket with a precision that belied his lack of cultivation speed.
By the time he arrived at the Cliffside Training Ground, the other disciples were already deep into their forms. Fists cut through the air with sharp cracks, feet stamped on the stone, sending tiny tremors through the ground. The air itself hummed with their concentrated efforts to harmonize their bodies with the natural rhythm, to build their Mortal Foundation.
"Ah, Junior Brother Li Yao! So diligent, arriving just as the sun fully kisses the peaks," a mocking voice called out. It was Zhang Fan, a boy with a brash aura and the Ember Talent that allowed him to already feel the faint cosmic currents. He was firmly in the Energy Perception Realm.
Li Yao found his usual spot at the very edge of the cliff, overlooking a sea of clouds. "Brother Zhang, if cultivation is about aligning with nature, then surely arriving when my body is fully awake is the most natural thing of all," he replied, his tone calm and utterly sincere, which seemed to infuriate Zhang Fan even more.
"Your body is always 'fully awake' to sleeping," Zhang Fan shot back, earning a few chuckles from his friends.
Li Yao simply smiled and began his own routine. His movements were fluid and exact, but they lacked the explosive power and resonant frequency of the others. He was a Dust Talent. The lowest of the low. He couldn't sense energy, let alone store it. For three years, he had been stuck at the peak of the first realm, unable to take that crucial step into Energy Perception.
His master, Elder Guo, a kind but weary man, had all but given up. "Some are meant to be mighty oaks, Li Yao," he'd said gently. "Others are the moss upon the stone. Both have their place in the world."
Li Yao appreciated the sentiment, but internally, he disagreed. He wasn't moss. He was... nothing. A void. And he had come to realize that a void, by its very nature, has no limits. It was a theory he kept to himself, knowing it would only invite more ridicule.
As he moved through the forms, he focused not on forcing his body to resonate, but on feeling the absolute stillness between his heartbeats, the emptiness in his lungs after an exhale. It was a practice born of frustration that had slowly become his path.
The day's training was interrupted by a commotion at the main square. An elder from the Celestial River Sect had arrived, his blue robes shimmering with watery light. He was flanked by disciples whose auras felt like gentle, flowing streams.
"Disciples of Verdant Mountain!" the elder's voice boomed, amplified by his energy. "The biennial Intersect Tournament will be held in three months' time at the Nexus Peak in the Central Continent. All sects may send their most promising talents below the Core Tempering Realm. The prizes include Spirit Crystals, Goldenleaf Herbs, and even a chance to meditate within the Primordial Convergence Sect's Grand Formation Array!"
A wave of excitement swept through the disciples. Spirit Crystals! A single one could shave months off their cultivation. For Li Yao, it was a distant dream, like a fish dreaming of flight.
Zhang Fan puffed out his chest. "This is my chance! With a Spirit Crystal, I could break through to Essence Refinement!"
Later, as Li Yao performed his chore of sweeping the fallen leaves from the Ancestral Prayer Pavilion—a task always given to the least promising disciples—he overheard Elder Guo speaking with the sect leader.
"...Zhang Fan shows promise. We will send him and Liu Mei," Elder Guo said.
"And the third spot?" the Sect Leader's voice was deep.
"A waste. No one else is ready. That Li Yao... still a Dust Talent after all this time. It's a pity. He has the mind of a sage but the vessel of a mortal."
Li Yao's hand tightened on the broom handle for a fraction of a second before he relaxed. It was nothing he hadn't heard before. He finished his sweeping and, as was his habit, sat in the center of the empty pavilion to meditate.
This was his secret. While others sought to fill themselves with energy, he sought to become emptier. He imagined his body not as a vessel to be filled, but as a boundary to be dissolved. He breathed in, and on the exhale, he tried to let go of not just air, but the very sense of self.
Tonight, something was different.
As he sank deeper into that self-imposed void, a strange sensation prickled at the edge of his consciousness. It wasn't energy. It was the absence of energy. A profound silence that was deeper than quiet, a stillness that made the stone of the pavilion seem to vibrate with frantic energy by comparison.
His eyes snapped open. The world looked... normal. But he felt different. Lighter. As if a weight he'd carried since birth had been slightly lifted.
He stood and walked to the back of the pavilion, to a section of the wall that was always shrouded in shadow. He'd never paid it any mind, but tonight, that patch of darkness seemed... substantive. Hungry.
Driven by an impulse he didn't understand, Li Yao reached out his hand.
His fingers did not meet cold stone. They passed through the shadow as if it were a curtain of cold smoke. A jolt, not of electricity, but of absolute nullity, shot up his arm.
He yanked his hand back, his heart hammering against his ribs for the first time in years. He stared at the wall. It was just a wall again.
But in his mind, a single, silent character had etched itself, glowing with the light of dead stars and extinguished suns.
空.
Kong. Empty. Void.
And below it, a stream of impossible text began to unfold, a scripture written not for the cultivation of essence, but for the embrace of nothingness.
A slow, genuine smile spread across Li Yao's face. He looked at the ordinary wall and then down at his own, seemingly ordinary hands.
"Well," he whispered into the silent night. "It seems being nothing has its advantages."
The Void Scripture had chosen its heir. The path of a transcendent mortal, born from dust, was about to begin. And Li Yao, the calm, funny, and eternally patient Dust-Talent disciple, was finally ready to start his cultivation.