The moment Xiao Li pressed his palms to the black stone, the world shifted.
Not outside. Not the chamber walls. Not the torches or the dust that danced faintly in their light. No—the shift was inside him. Deep within, where his meridians should have flowed with Qi, something new was stirring. Something absent.
Pain lanced through his limbs, sharp and unrelenting. His muscles trembled, his chest burned, and the breath he drew felt thin, as if the very air was resisting him. Every cultivator had been taught to cherish their meridians. Every technique depended on them. And yet, here they collapsed, refusing his command.
Xiao Li gritted his teeth, pressing harder against the black stone. He would not falter. Not now. Not ever.
A strange warmth spread through his body, not Qi, not heat—an absence that filled him like water filling an empty vessel. Channels formed in places where no pathways had existed before. Lines of void traced through his veins, silent, precise, invisible.
He had expected pain to break him. But instead, with each strike, with each pulse of resistance, he felt clarity.
The world does not recognize me.
The sect cannot measure me.
Heaven cannot see me.
And that clarity brought power.
The chamber responded. The broken inscriptions etched into the stone flickered faintly, acknowledging him. A hair of dust lifted from the platform, hovering unnaturally. Shadows bent slightly around his form. Every formation line throbbed in anticipation.
Xiao Li's hands clenched the stone. His body shivered violently, then stilled. The pain subsided into a quiet hum that resonated within his bones.
He had crossed the first threshold. Not through strength, not through talent, not through cultivation as the world measured it. He had stepped into something else entirely.
Void.
He had begun to cultivate the absence between things, and the world itself had begun to bend around him.
The realization struck him like lightning. He was no longer a servant. He was not a disciple. He was… something entirely unrecorded.
And the world had no idea what he would become.
End of Chapter 6