The morning air in the lower formation chamber was heavier than usual. Mist clung stubbornly to the stone floor, curling around broken inscriptions like living smoke. Xiao Li knelt at the center of the cracked platform, palms pressed firmly against the black stone.
The void inside him pulsed with a rhythm that was no longer faint. It was alive, insistent, and responsive. Each beat aligned him closer to the chamber, closer to the platform, closer to a power the world had never recorded.
He tried to draw Qi into himself, as all cultivators were taught, but the meridians he had once relied upon were gone, replaced by invisible channels of absence. Every attempt to force energy failed, and yet he did not falter. He had already understood: this was not cultivation by the rules. This was cultivation by the unmeasurable.
A faint ripple passed through the air. Tools on the platform quivered as though sensing him, then fell still. Dust hovered unnaturally, refusing to settle. Shadows bent around his body, subtly shifting without reason. Even the walls seemed to hesitate in their solidity.
Xiao Li exhaled slowly, letting the silence consume him. He did not see the power with his eyes. He felt it in the spaces between breaths, in the void between stone and air, in the hollow places the world pretended did not exist.
He placed a hand upon the black stone again. The chamber pulsed, almost imperceptibly, like a heartbeat too faint for mortal ears.
I exist.
The thought was not merely conscious. It resonated through his bones, his blood, his very presence. The void answered him, and the response was overwhelming yet gentle—a perfect alignment that did not burn, did not strike, did not obey. It simply was.
A tremor ran through the platform. The inscriptions etched into the stone flickered faintly, acknowledging him. He could sense them, not by sight, not by understanding, but by resonance. Every broken line, every lost mark responded as if waking from a long slumber.
Xiao Li's chest heaved. His body was aligned, his mind sharp, and for the first time, he did not feel powerless.
He had awakened to something the world could not name.
He had become the void itself.
And far above, beyond the sight of sects, disciples, and even the eyes of Heaven, a record flickered and hesitated. Something in the cosmic ledger recognized an anomaly.
It would not forget him.
End of Chapter 7