Chapter 1 – The Collapsing Mine
The Spirit Iron Mine was a place where hope went to die.
Cold air drifted through the narrow tunnels, thick with dust and the scent of damp stone. Dim spirit lamps flickered weakly along the walls, casting long shadows that trembled like frightened ghosts.
Outer disciples swung their pickaxes in silence.
Among them stood Arin Vale.
His movements were steady. Measured. Calm.
Not fast enough to attract attention.
Not slow enough to invite punishment.
Average.
That was how the sect saw him.
An outer disciple with mediocre talent and no background. Someone who would spend his life digging ore until his body broke or his spirit did.
A sharp voice cut through the tunnel.
"Arin! That tunnel section is unstable. Go reinforce it."
It was Darius Holt — the loudest among the outer disciples and the most eager to show dominance.
Several disciples exchanged glances.
Everyone knew that tunnel had unstable spiritual pressure. Sending someone there alone was practically a death sentence.
Arin met Darius's gaze briefly.
No anger.
No protest.
Just observation.
"Understood," Arin replied calmly.
He took a spirit lamp and walked toward the deeper passage.
Behind him, faint chuckles echoed.
—
The deeper tunnels were suffocatingly quiet.
Cracks webbed across the stone walls. Spirit iron veins pulsed faintly like dying embers. The air here felt heavier, charged with unstable qi.
Arin placed his palm against the wall.
The vibration was wrong.
He could feel it — a subtle trembling beneath the rock. The pressure buildup wasn't natural.
This tunnel was going to collapse.
He should leave.
Instead, his eyes caught something unusual.
Buried between fractured stones, something faintly shimmered.
A glow.
Soft. Pale. Almost like a dying star.
Arin crouched down and brushed away the dust.
It was a shard.
Small. Irregular. Yet impossibly smooth.
And it pulsed.
The moment his fingers touched it—
The world exploded.
—
A deafening roar tore through the mine.
The ground shattered.
The ceiling caved in.
Screams echoed for a split second before being swallowed by crushing stone.
Darkness.
Total darkness.
Arin felt the air ripped from his lungs as rocks slammed into his body. Pain surged through him — sharp, merciless.
Then—
Silence.
…
He should have been dead.
Yet consciousness lingered.
Arin opened his eyes.
But he was no longer in the mine.
He stood beneath an endless sky.
Cracked.
The heavens above were fractured like broken glass. The land beneath his feet stretched infinitely in all directions — barren, dry, lifeless.
No mountains.
No rivers.
No wind.
Just emptiness.
At the center of the sky floated the shard.
It shone brighter now, suspended in the void like a newborn star.
Arin looked down at his hands.
They were transparent.
This wasn't his body.
Realization dawned slowly.
This… was inside him.
His dantian.
But it was impossible.
A dantian could store qi — not… a world.
He walked forward.
The ground felt real.
Solid.
Endless.
The shard pulsed again.
A faint tremor spread across the barren land.
A crack formed in the sky.
Then another.
Then—
A single speck of light ignited in the darkness.
A star.
Arin's heart trembled.
Not from fear.
From understanding.
This was not an illusion.
This was not a dream.
This was a world.
And it was empty.
Waiting.
His consciousness began to fade, pulled back toward reality.
Before everything dissolved, Arin whispered into the silent expanse:
"If this is a world…"
His eyes hardened.
"…then I will cultivate it."
—
In the suffocating darkness of the collapsed mine, beneath layers of stone and dust—
Arin Vale's broken body lay motionless.
And deep within his dantian…
A single star burned.
Unseen.
Unnoticed.
But alive.