The dawn's bloody grip had softened into a morning of polished clarity. Sunlight, no longer clawing, now fell in broad, gentle shafts through the ancient pines that lined the secluded path leading away from Veiled Silence Peak. It was a road less traveled, paved with stones worn smooth by centuries of solitary footsteps, winding downward from the austere heights of Elder Lan's domain toward the sect's deeper, guarded heart.
Here, the profound silence of the peak gave way to the quiet murmur of a waking world. The air carried the clean scent of damp earth and pine resin, and the only sounds were the crunch of gravel underfoot and the distant, melodic call of a mountain thrush. Dust motes, stirred to life by his passage, danced in the sunbeams like golden spirits.
Lin Feng moved with his customary, unhurried grace, a pale grey ghost in the dappled light. His robes, the high collar a seamless extension of his neck, seemed to absorb the ambient glow, making him a figure of muted luminescence against the deep greens and browns of the forest.
In his hand, he held the key to his next destination.
It was a token of cold, flawless jade, no larger than his palm. Its surface was unnervingly smooth, devoid of any carving or insignia, as if its purpose had been refined into it until all ornamentation was stripped away. It felt less like an object and more like a concentration of intent, a sliver of Elder Lan's will given physical form. The cold of it was not the chill of mountain air, but a deeper, more profound cold—the temperature of absolute stillness.
His thumb passed over its surface once, twice—a slow, repetitive motion. The jade did not warm to his touch. It remained implacable, a silent question mark.
His thoughts, sharp and untroubled by the cosmic dread of the previous hour, turned to the practical. The Emperor, the Codex, the four blood-scrawled warnings—these were distant, abstract storms on a horizon he had not yet chosen to cross. The Sacred Vault, however, was an immediate, tangible problem.
'What should I even get from the vault?'
The question surfaced in his mind with clinical simplicity. His brow furrowed, a faint, almost imperceptible line of consideration. A sword? His own void-colored qi was a more potent weapon than any forged metal. A technique? Elder Lan's silent lessons were scriptures enough. A treasure to bolster his cultivation? The very idea felt redundant, like offering a single candle to a starless night.
The options were a list of variables with no clear optimal solution. His mind, a blade honed for a single purpose, dismissed the paralysis of choice.
'Whatever,' he concluded, the internal verdict final. 'I'll decide when I see what's there.'
He closed his fingers around the jade token, its cold bite a welcome anchor to the present, before tucking it securely into an inner fold of his robe. The abstract problem of the Vault was shelved, its variables left to await more complete analysis.
'Let's focus on this first.'
His focus, sharp and absolute, turned inward. The path ahead was straight and empty, the morning stillness a perfect laboratory. He extended his right palm, willing the strange, dark river within him to obey a specific shape—a blade, sharp and defined. The air above his palm shivered. A sliver of absolute darkness, the color of a forgotten memory, flickered into being. It held the general form of a dagger for a heartbeat, its edges wavering like heat haze, before it destabilized, collapsing in on itself with a soft, air-swallowing sigh. It was not a failure, but a calibration. The Qi resisted a rigid form.
Undeterred, he shifted his intent. He sought not to cut, but to silence. He envisioned a sphere of nothingness, a bubble where sound ceased to be. He focused on the space a few feet ahead, where the thrush's song was most clear. The air thickened, darkened for a moment into a faint, whispering opacity. The bird's melody became muffled, distant, as if heard from the bottom of a deep well. It lasted for a single second before the sphere ruptured, the sound rushing back in with unnatural clarity. The attempt was crude, inefficient.
A more complex variable presented itself: translocation. He fixed his gaze on a point a single foot to his left, envisioning his body displacing the air there. He willed the void to fold the space between. His form shimmered, a mirage under a desert sun, the edges of his silhouette blurring into a faint, black static. For a nanosecond, he felt a profound disorientation, a lurch in the fabric of his being. But the mountain held him fast. His boots remained firmly planted on the worn stone path, the attempt rejected by reality itself. Another parameter defined.
Finally, his gaze fell upon a single, crisply fallen leaf, its vibrant orange a stark contrast against the grey stone. The ambition was smaller, the target insignificant. He did not will it to burn, or to rot. He simply focused on the concept of its existence, and willed that concept to be negated. There was no sound, no flash of light. A wisp of black flame, visible only in the periphery of his vision, ignited in the space the leaf occupied. It did not curl or crumble. It did not turn to ash. It simply ceased. Where it had been, there was now only a minute pinch of grey, inert dust, devoid of color, memory, or substance.
Lin Feng observed the result, his expression unchanging. He had not succeeded in his initial attempts at control, but he had begun to map the boundaries of the anomaly he housed. He walked on, leaving the pinch of dust to be scattered by the next breeze.
A sudden, vivid memory surfaced, unbidden and pristine: the flawless, instantaneous healing of his body after his breakthrough, the scars and strains simply ceasing to be. It was another facet of the nothingness, a passive application of its principle. A new variable for testing presented itself.
'Let's check the limits.'
The thought was a clinical directive. His face was a mask of utter emotionlessness as he raised his left hand, his right index finger beginning to glow with a concentrated point of void-darkness. He contemplated tracing a shallow, precise line along his own forearm—a minor wound to quantify the speed and mechanism of his body's negation of injury.
His gaze lifted from his arm, the experiment aborted before it began.
He stopped.
A figure stood ahead, where the path curved around the gnarled trunk of an ancient, lightning-scarred pine. It was leaning against it with a casual, almost insolent grace, as if woven into the very bark and shadow.
The being was a study in impossible contrasts. Hair of a shock of stark, snow-white fell over a brow pale as polished marble. Eyes, vivid and burning with a deep, sanguine crimson, stood out like twin wounds in the serene morning light. They held an ancient, predatory stillness that seemed to drink the warmth from the world.
But it was the attire that marked the figure as truly alien. Sleek, tailored clothes of a profound, light-absorbing black, constructed from fabrics that had no place in the cultivation world—no silk, no linen, no embroidered patterns. The cut was severe and unnatural, hugging a lean frame, its lines so clean they seemed to defy the very air. It was an anachronism given flesh, a splash of stark, otherworldly sharpness against the organic beauty of the forest.
A vampire.
Lin Feng's mind, sharpened to a razor's edge, had barely registered the profound incongruity of the being's appearance when the world stuttered.
There was no blur of motion, no displacement of air. The figure simply ceased to be by the tree and solidified directly before him, a breath away. The distance between them was annihilated in a single, silent heartbeat. The being now stood almost of a height with Lin Feng, its proximity an intimate violation of space. An aura pressed down—not the sacred weight of an Elder, but something colder, sharper, a palpable force of ancient blood and predatory grace that unmistakably eclipsed Lin Feng's own nascent power.
Crimson eyes bored into his, the scent of frost and old copper clinging to the air between them.
"Oh," the vampire purred, its voice a silken, predatory sound that vibrated in the stillness. "So you're the human who awakened a power that shouldn't be allowed here."
Lin Feng's face remained a blank slate of pale, unflinching calm. He did not step back. He did not tense. His obsidian eyes met the burning crimson without a flicker of alarm.
His tone was flat, devoid of curiosity or fear, a simple demand for the next logical parameter.
"And?" he asked. "What are you going to do?"
A single, minute twitch tugged at the corner of the vampire's crimson eye, the only sign of its irritation at Lin Feng's glacial indifference.
"Of course," the being hissed, the purr replaced by a blade's edge. "To kill you. To unmake you. I have crossed the gulf between distant realms for this singular purpose: to finish the human who has awakened a power that defies the natural order." A cruel, languid smile played upon its lips, a predator savoring the certainty of its hunt. "And for this… I have come armed with an artifact that veils my presence. For the next few hours, no one in this pathetic sect will sense a thing. So… it is just you and me."
It leaned in slightly, the scent of old frost and blood intensifying. "So, tell me. How should I end you? Or…" it mocked, its voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "…are you going to waste your final moments crying for a help that will not come?"
A faint, almost imperceptible smirk touched Lin Feng's lips. It was not an expression of mirth, but of cold, clinical satisfaction.
'Ah. A perfect subject to test my new ability.'
There was no gathering of energy, no shouted technique, no wasted motion. In the space between one heartbeat and the next, Lin Feng's right arm underwent a silent, terrifying transformation. From his fingertips to his elbow, his flesh and bone were overwritten, becoming a blade of pure, absolute blackness. It was not a weapon he held; it was his limb itself, honed into an extension of the void, its edge a sharpened line of non-existence.
He did not lunge. He simply slashed, a motion as efficient and natural as breathing.
The vampire, supremely confident in its speed and power, was caught completely off-guard by the utter lack of prelude. The void-blade passed through the air—and through the sleek, black fabric over its chest. There was no sound of tearing cloth, no spray of blood. Where the edge touched, the fabric and the flesh beneath simply ceased to be, erased in a clean, narrow line.
A wound appeared, half an inch deep, running diagonally across the vampire's torso. It did not bleed in the conventional sense; the edges of the cut were seared black, not with heat, but with the absolute absence of it. For a moment, the wound remained, a stark, hollow gash, before the vampire's innate regenerative power surged. The flesh began to knit, but it was sluggish, laborious, as if it had to fight to reclaim reality from the nothingness Lin Feng had imposed.
The vampire looked down at the wound, then back at Lin Feng, its crimson eyes wide with a shock that rapidly curdled into incandescent fury.
Lin Feng's arm returned to its normal state, the void-blade vanishing as silently as it had appeared. His expression was once again a blank slate, but his words, when they came, were laced with a flat, dismissive contempt that cut deeper than any blade.
"Why would I wait for someone?" he asked, his tone devoid of all emotion. "Let's finish it already, you fucking loser."
The vampire's face, a mask of ancient arrogance, contorted into a rictus of pure, unadulterated rage. The insult, so casually and contemptuously delivered, had struck a nerve far deeper than the void-scar upon its chest. "You—!"
The word was a curse, a promise of annihilation.
In the space of a single, suspended heartbeat, the world dissolved.
There was no warning, no gathering of power that Lin Feng's senses could perceive. The serene morning path was suddenly replaced by a blur of impossible motion. Lin Feng felt nothing—no impact, no pain. He saw only a flash of crimson eyes and a silver streak that fractured his vision into a thousand splintered shards. His consciousness, sharp and analytical until the very last moment, was scattered into fragments of pure, disorienting sensation.
Then, silence.
Where he had stood, his body was no more. It had been cleanly, precisely dissected into hundreds of pieces—neat cubes and geometric segments of flesh, bone, and pale grey silk—scattered across the worn stone path like a grisly offering. Not a single drop of blood marred the scene; each cut was instantly cauterized by the sheer, overwhelming speed and force of the attack.
The vampire turned its back on the carnage, the motion fluid and final. It brushed a non-existent speck of dust from its sleek, black sleeve with an air of profound boredom.
"If you had kept your mouth shut from the foul words," it mused, its voice once again a smooth, predatory purr, devoid of all prior anger, "you would have had some more time to live. But…" It glanced over its shoulder at the scattered remains, a flicker of disdain in its crimson gaze. "…you did not value your life."
With that, it began to walk away, the oppressive weight of its aura receding, its task seemingly complete.
The vampire's foot had not yet completed its step when a voice, cool and analytical, rang out, stripping the triumph from the air.
"FASCINATING."
The being froze, its spine locking. Its head whipped around, sanguine eyes flaring with a light of pure, undiluted disbelief. The voice had not come from the ether, but from the very center of the carnage it had so meticulously created.
There, upon the sun-dappled stone path, lay the scattered segments of Lin Feng's form. And there, amidst a tattered piece of pale grey robe and a fragment of pale flesh, a single, disembodied pair of lips moved.
"Your attack was rather fast and powerful," the lips spoke, the tone utterly flat. "I wouldn't have even felt something before dying. Only 'if' I was a normal human." A pause, heavy with unspoken implication. "And... it hurts like hell now."
As the final syllable faded, the scattered pieces of Lin Feng's body began to change. They did not bleed or decay. Instead, they darkened, losing all color and substance, transforming into a fine, black-grey powder, like the ashes of a long-dead star. This dust then stirred as if breathed to life by a silent command, swirling into a vortex of absolute darkness.
From the ground upward, the cloud of dust coalesced. Ankles formed from the swirling void-ash, then calves, then knees, the substance knitting together not like healing flesh, but like a forgotten memory being forcefully recalled into reality. In the span of a few silent heartbeats, the cloud solidified, the particles fusing into the whole and unblemished form of Lin Feng. He stood precisely as before, his robes untouched, his face a mask of calm assessment. It was not a matter of healing wounds, but of a body that had been utterly unmade now declaring itself remade.
The vampire stumbled back, a choked sound tearing from its throat. The supreme arrogance that had cloaked it shattered, replaced by a mask of pure, unadulterated terror. Its crimson eyes were wide, fixed on the perfectly reconstituted form before it.
"This!" it gasped, the word a ragged breath. "This is not regeneration! Not even the eldest of my kind can reconstitute from such dissolution! It defies the laws of flesh, of spirit, of reality itself!" Its voice rose into a hysterical shriek. "This is not humanly possible! You are not human! What are you?!"
Lin Feng, now fully formed, paid the creature's meltdown no immediate mind. He looked down at his own hand, flexing the fingers, observing the flawless skin and unbroken nails. His robes, once torn and stained, were now pristine, the pale grey fabric restored not as if repaired, but as if the very concept of their damage had been negated. A thought, cold and pragmatic, surfaced in the wake of the searing pain that was only now fading.
'This was a very huge gamble,' he assessed, the memory of his mother's potential worry a sharper sting than the phantom pain of dismemberment. 'If I hadn't regenerated perfectly… I would have gotten scolded. Or worse.'
His gaze then lifted, and his expression hardened, the clinical analysis giving way to a cold, simmering anger. This creature had forced his hand, had made him test a power he did not yet understand, all for the sake of its own petty mission.
As his fury crystallized, a silent, profound shift occurred within him. The world seemed to slow, the vampire's panicked cries fading into a distant hum. In that absolute internal silence, a thought, entirely his own yet tinged with a new curiosity, formed.
'Hmm. This regeneration is kinda too good. Hope there's no bad side effects.'
The answer did not come as a sound, but as a knowing that bloomed directly in his consciousness, a voice that was both alien and intimately familiar—a feminine whisper that was the echo of the void itself. It was smooth, ancient, and carried an air of supreme, almost bored confidence.
'Of course it is good,' the voice purred within his mind. 'Did you believe a simple reassembly of flesh would satisfy me? I require the best. There are no side effects.' A pause, laden with a terrifying finality. 'Because… we are one.'
The connection severed as suddenly as it had formed. The feminine whisper—'we are one'—faded into the depths of his spirit, leaving behind not an echo, but a settled, terrifying truth. There was no room for doubt or question. It was a fact as fundamental as his own heartbeat.
Lin Feng's eyes, now burning with the silent, black flames of the Qi of Nothingness, locked onto the terrified vampire. His cold anger, now fused with this new, intimate understanding of the power he wielded, became a force of absolute, chilling focus. The air around him grew heavy, the light dimming as if being drawn into the twin voids of his gaze.
He began to walk forward. There was no rush, no aggression in his stride, only the inevitable advance of a natural law. The vampire, its mind broken by the impossibility it had witnessed, could only stumble backward, its crimson eyes wide with a horror that had stripped it of all will to fight. It hit the gnarled root of the ancient pine, its body trembling, a pathetic creature cornered by the void it had sought to extinguish.
Lin Feng knelt before it, his movement fluid and devoid of malice. It was a functional motion, like a scholar reaching for a text. He placed his palm flat against the being's chest, directly over the core of its unnatural life force.
"Shh," Lin Feng murmured, his voice a deadly whisper that held neither pity nor rage, only a final, quiet command. "You don't need to know. Just be gone."
But this time, his intent was not negation. It was consumption.
Where their bodies met, a profound devouring began. The vampire's form convulsed, a silent scream trapped in its desiccating throat. The vivid crimson bled from its eyes, the stark white of its hair turned brittle and grey. Its life force—an ancient, cold power—was not erased, but violently siphoned, pulled into the infinite hunger within Lin Feng's palm. The body withered in an instant, skin pulling taut over bone, then crumbling inward until it was nothing but a hollow sculpture of ash.
A faint breeze stirred, a natural breath of the mountain morning. It brushed against the kneeling figure of Lin Feng and the statue of dust before him. The vampire's remains dissolved into the same black-grey powder that had once been Lin Feng's own body, and the wind scattered it into nothingness, carrying it away through the sunbeams and into the forest.
No evidence remained. No blood, no body, no lingering aura. Only Lin Feng, kneeling on the quiet path, his hand still extended where a being from another world had ceased to be.
Lin Feng rose to his feet, the last of the black-grey dust swept from his robes by the mountain breeze. The silence felt different now, no longer serene but charged with a secret knowledge. His mind, ever-processing, began its analysis.
'From another realm…' The vampire's earlier, arrogant boast echoed in his memory, now carrying a weight it hadn't in the moment. The being's initial speed had been transcendent, its aura palpably denser and sharper than his own—a clear cut above any disciple he had yet encountered in the sect.
Yet it possessed only a fraction of the terrifying, mountain-crushing pressure of an Elder like Feng, let alone the absolute zero silence of Elder Lan. It was a power tier he had not yet encountered, a clear and dangerous benchmark. Its ability to move unseen and the nature of its artifact spoke of abilities and resources beyond the conventional understanding of this world. The universe, it seemed, was far wider and more dangerous than the Celestial Sword Pavilion let on.
It was then that a subtle shift in the air, a faint rustle of silk and the soft crunch of a misplaced footfall, pricked at his senses. His head turned, his obsidian eyes sweeping over his shoulder with predatory stillness.
There, a short distance down the path, stood three figures. In the lead was Feng Yan, her flamboyant silk robes of crimson and gold a vibrant splash against the forest's muted palette. Her red-gold hair seemed to capture the morning sun, and a wide, casually curious grin was already playing on her lips. She offered a lazy, two-fingered wave. Flanking her were two other female disciples, their expressions a complex blend of mild curiosity, a distinct wariness born from witnessing his monstrous public breakthrough, and a faint, flustered awareness stirred by his sharp, cold features.
Lin Feng's own expression smoothed back into its default state of neutral impassivity. He walked toward them, his steps measured and silent on the stone path. He stopped before Feng Yan, his gaze briefly flicking to her companions before settling back on her.
"Did you see what happened?" he asked, his tone flat, a simple probe for information.
Feng Yan's head tilted, her grin softening into a look of genuine confusion. "See what?" she asked, her voice light and melodic. "We were just coming up the path to see you. But you were just… standing there. For many minutes, completely still. We thought you were in some deep meditation or contemplating the secrets of the heavens." The two disciples beside her nodded in earnest agreement, their faces open and guileless.
Lin Feng's eyes scanned their features, searching for the slightest flicker of deception. He found none. Their confusion seemed authentic, their memories untainted by the horror that had just unfolded.
Seeing his intense scrutiny, Feng Yan's expression melted back into a teasing, flirty grin. She took a half-step closer, her eyes sparkling. "Or…" she drawled, her voice dropping to a conspiratorial whisper, "…did you just want a reason to talk to me? You could have just said hello, you know."
Lin Feng let out a soft, dismissive scoff through his nose and turned away, his gaze drifting back to the now-empty spot where the vampire had met its end.
'If I hadn't absorbed the vampire's energy…' he thought, feeling the faint, foreign chill of it still settled deep within his dantian, a trophy of the encounter, '…I would have thought it was a dream or something.'
The evidence was gone, the witnesses were blind, and the power was his alone. The secret of the void, and the threats from beyond, remained his to bear.
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