The single drop of void essence sat in Li Yao's dantian, a nexus of profound stillness. It did not pulse with power like the cores described in the sect's scrolls. It was more like a bottomless well, and the world was a constant, gentle rain falling into it.
His senses were irrevocably altered. Where before he was deaf to energy, he was now attuned to its absence. He could feel the "holes" in the world—the quiet spaces between breaths of wind, the silent moments between heartbeats in the disciples around him, the pockets of inert space within the supposedly solid stone of the mountain.
This new perception made his daily life both easier and more complicated.
During morning drills, while others strained to harmonize, Li Yao simply allowed the forceful, resonant energies of their movements to pass through the void within him. He became impossibly difficult to unbalance. When Zhang Fan, still smarting from the pillar incident, "accidentally" shoulder-checked him during a sparring form, the result was not Li Yao stumbling, but Zhang Fan lurching forward as if he'd tried to shove a shadow, his own momentum betraying him.
"Watch your step, Brother Zhang," Li Yao said, his voice calm as he continued his form without a single break in rhythm. "The ground can be treacherous."
Zhang Fan glared, shaking his numb arm. "What trick are you playing, Dust-Talent?"
"The only trick I know is breathing," Li Yao replied truthfully. It just so happened his breathing was now an exercise in controlled annihilation.
The real test came during his chore in the Ancestral Prayer Pavilion. Elder Guo had taken to watching him from a distance, his expression a mixture of confusion and dawning curiosity. Today, he approached directly.
"Li Yao."
"Elder." Li Yao paused his sweeping and bowed.
"The pillar in the Stone Forest. It was not hollow." Elder Guo's voice was low, leaving no room for denial. "The Earth energy within it was completely erased. Not dispersed. Erased. Such a thing is not a technique of the Mortal Foundation Realm. Explain."
Li Yao met the Elder's gaze, his own eyes deep and placid. He had anticipated this. A lie would be detected, and the truth was impossible. So, he would offer a different kind of truth.
"I have been meditating on the nature of emptiness, Elder," he began, choosing his words with the care of a scholar arranging rare tiles. "The scrolls say our bodies are vessels. But what is a vessel but a shaped emptiness? A bowl is useful not for its clay, but for the space it contains."
Elder Guo's brow furrowed. "Philosophy is for retired masters, boy. Cultivation is about substance, about filling the vessel with power."
"Perhaps," Li Yao conceded mildly. "But I found that when I stopped trying to fill my vessel, and instead focused on perfecting its emptiness... things began to flow in. Not as I expected. Not the vibrant energy of the mountain. But something else. Something quieter."
He raised his hand, not in a fist, but with his palm open and relaxed. He focused on the tiny drop of void essence in his dantian and, following the intuitive guidance of the Void Scripture, he inverted its function for a single, fleeting moment. Instead of drawing things in, he allowed a whisper of its nullifying nature to seep into his palm.
He did not push. He did not strike. He simply placed his palm against the massive stone doorframe of the pavilion.
There was no sound of cracking. No visible damage. But where his palm made contact, the stone lost its luster. The faint, inherent spiritual sheen that all things in a cultivation sect possessed—a residue of ambient energy—simply vanished, leaving a handprint of perfectly mundane, dead stone.
Elder Guo stared, his jaw slightly slack. He stepped forward and ran his fingers over the patch. The spiritual energy was not just gone; it was as if it had never been there. It was a void on a microscopic level.
"This..." the Elder whispered, his voice full of awe and a tinge of fear. "This is not of the Earth Law. This is not of any law I know." He looked at Li Yao as if seeing him for the first time. "What have you become, disciple?"
"I am still Li Yao," he said, lowering his hand. "I am just... a better vessel."
The Elder was silent for a long time, the weight of this discovery pressing on him. A disciple who could erase energy, however faintly, was unprecedented. It was a talent that could be a supreme treasure or a catastrophic danger.
"Speak of this to no one," Elder Guo finally commanded, his voice grave. "Not a word. Continue your duties. Continue your... meditation. I will observe."
"As you wish, Elder."
As the Elder walked away, his steps heavy with thought, Li Yao returned to his sweeping. The encounter had gone as well as he could have hoped. He had revealed just enough to earn wary protection instead of immediate suspicion or dissection.
That night, he delved deeper into the Void Scripture. The text in his mind had shifted, presenting a new passage.
The Void Scripture: Second Verse – The Unseen Ripple.
As a stone cast into a still pond creates ripples unseen from the shore, so does the void within create disturbances in the laws without. To see the ripple is to see the law's true shape. To become the ripple is to move without moving.
Li Yao understood. His nullification was a "ripple" in the fabric of energy. By creating a point of nothingness, he was revealing the structure of the something around it. To comprehend a law, he didn't need to resonate with it; he needed to see how it deformed around the void he embodied.
He looked out at the Verdant Mountain Sect, at the disciples training under the moonlight, their auras like flickering candles in the vast darkness of his new perception.
He was no longer a Dust Talent left behind. He was the quiet, patient void, and the entire world of cultivation was just a pattern of ripples on his surface. The tournament, the sects, the laws—they were all beginning to look like interesting things he might one day choose to contain.
A slow smile spread across his face. It was going to be very entertaining to be nothing at all.