Chapter 2: The Awakening Ember
The moon rose over Black Ash Ridge, silver light brushing the ruined entrance of the collapsed shaft. A lone figure staggered into view—covered in dust, limbs torn, but his gaze burned.
Lin Sheng was alive.
He collapsed beside a dead tree, chest heaving. No overseers watched. No fellow slaves dared approach. They'd all heard what happened—a boy crushed by the mountain, now walking as though death itself had failed.
He was not the same.
A mark—woven like flame and rune—dimmed on his chest before fading into his flesh. Though faint, it had altered him. Inside his soul, a small ember flickered—calm, silent, and eternal.
> "Is this… cultivation?" Lin Sheng murmured.
No manuals. No teacher. Yet something had changed. He could feel the world's pulse—faint spiritual strands flowing from rock and air, feeding the ember within.
He had entered the Body Refining Realm.
---
The next morning, Overseer Duan Zhen rode through camp astride a scaled beast, his voice sharp with disbelief. "Who pulled that corpse out of the sixth shaft?!"
No one answered.
Then he saw Lin Sheng, standing silently beside the tool racks—alive.
Duan Zhen's eyes narrowed. "You survived?"
Lin Sheng said nothing.
Duan's whip lashed out—but this time, Lin Sheng didn't flinch. The blow struck, but his feet held. His body, though lean, had begun to harden. Bones stronger. Muscles reborn. He didn't know how—but the pain no longer buried him.
The other slaves watched in silence. One old man muttered to another:
> "Curseborn… came back from death."
"He walks with demon fire now," came the reply.
Whispers began.
Fear follows those who return from the grave.
---
That night, Lin Sheng sat alone near the Ash Spring—a tiny pool hidden behind crags near the camp's edge. Ru Min had followed him, quiet as always. She handed him half a burned yam, likely stolen from the guard kitchen.
He nodded in thanks.
Then, something stirred in the water. The ember in his chest flickered.
A ripple... then a flash of silver light shot up from the spring, striking his forehead.
> "A memory? A spirit? A seal?"
Visions filled his mind—a golden gate in a land of red skies. A flame that whispered his true name. A throne of glass melting into ash.
And a voice—his own, older and filled with sorrow:
> "You will awaken. But only in death shall you begin."
---
He jerked awake.
It was not a dream.
His body pulsed again. A second stream of energy flowed into him—not just from the earth, but from his bones. Ancient, buried traces.
> "I carry something… from before. From before I was born?"
The ember had grown. His flesh was repairing faster. His breath smoother. He had entered Qi Awakening—not through pills or scrolls, but by death and instinct.
---
The next morning, Lin Sheng returned to the quarry. He worked. He endured. And he grew.
Behind every strike of his pick was a silent refinement of his body. Behind every breath, a thread of energy drawn from earth and spring. He was forging his way alone—a path no one taught him.
But not unseen.
---
In the distance, atop a crag, a figure cloaked in white silk watched the boy with strange eyes.
She was Mu Yanyu, daughter of the Mu Clan, emissary of the Lunar Frost Pavilion, traveling through the Mountain Kingdom to inspect labor stocks for frost jade mines.
Her gaze lingered on Lin Sheng—not because of strength, but silence.
> "That boy… carries a coldness older than ice."
She turned to her guard, Elder Feng Jiu, and whispered, "Mark him. Quietly."
---
Thus begins the true path. Not of talent, but of fate twisted by fire and time