After a long rest, Yue Zihan finally rose and walked to the edge of the crimson pool. The air hummed faintly, the vibration sinking into his bones. His father's words echoed in his mind:
"A fragment of Chaotic Qi lies sealed here the first breath of existence. Treat it with reverence. Even a wisp could remake or destroy a world."
Zihan had never truly understood those words. He only knew that this air was different thicker, alive.
He gazed into the boiling spring, watching the red currents swirl like living flame and flowing ice. The sensation on his skin was indescribable warmth and frost intertwined, cutting and caressing in the same breath.
He had expected the pool to burn, to boil him alive. Instead, when he stepped in, it embraced him with unsettling neutrality neither hot nor cold, as if temperature itself had lost meaning.
For a moment, he wondered if this was what the world felt like before Heaven and Earth were born.
Taking a small breath, he waded deeper. The liquid thickened with every step, the resistance growing as though reality itself was trying to stop him.
His body was almost fully submerged into the pool by that time.
In the center, he saw a faintly glowing fixture a crystalline vortex that beat like a heartbeat.
"That must be the seal Father mentioned," he thought. "The resting place of Chaotic Qi."
His small hands trembled as he reached forward. The moment his fingertips brushed the vortex..
Whoosh!
A tremendous force yanked him forward. The world shattered into blinding light and endless darkness all at once.
He fell.
No
he floated.
When Yue Zihan opened his eyes, he was standing in a vast cavern that should not exist. The air was utterly still, yet it roared within his mind.
A mist of contradictions filled the space ;black, but luminous; silent, but echoing with every sound ever spoken. The mist shimmered like galaxies collapsing and being reborn in eternal rhythm. Crimson bled into silver; silver dissolved into shadow. It was as though he stood inside the breath of creation itself where all things were both being and non-being. He could not describe the wonder he was witnessing.
Zihan's heart pounded. His body quivered from a fear too primal to name. It was a subconscious reaction that he could not put a finger on.
He tried to move and the world moved with him. Every motion rippled through the mist like waves through reality. His own thoughts echoed back to him, distorted and multiplied until he could not tell which were his. He was sinking and he could not find the light despite his struggles.
Then something touched him.
He froze.
There was no hand, no form just a sensation, vast and cold, brushing against his soul. A whisper that wasn't sound crept into his consciousness forcing it's way :
"You carry… my fragment."
The voice was ancient older than time itself, carrying the weight of countless cycles of birth and destruction.
Zihan's mind almost collapsed. His knees buckled, and before he could utter a sound, the world inverted the colors collapsed, the mist recoiled, and everything vanished.
He gasped awake.
The pool bubbled softly around him, the fixture still pulsing faintly in the center. For a moment, he wondered if it had all been an illusion.
Yet something inside him had changed. His body felt lighter, but his heart throbbed with unbearable heaviness as though a seed had been planted deep within his soul.
He sat cross-legged beside the glowing fixture, closed his eyes, and began to cultivate as instinct guided him.
The pool shuddered in response.
Ripples turned into waves.
Waves became tendrils of red light that twined around his body.
Then, like a beast recognizing its master, the entire spring rose enveloping him completely.
From within the blood-colored cocoon, faint runes began to appear, flickering across his skin like burning stars.
The forging had truly begun.
And deep within the chaos, something ancient stirred.