The days stretched like shadows around the boy named Lei, growing ever longer and colder within the walls of a home that had ceased to acknowledge his existence. The sun glittered outside, casting golden hues over the village of Lian'yu, but those rays never seemed to reach into the darkness shrouding his world. With eyes closed forever, his world was painted in memories of silence and isolation.While other children roamed freely, learning the sacred arts that wove magic and martial prowess into a brilliant tapestry of power, Lei remained confined. His family's voices, once faint but now cold and sharp, carved deep furrows into his young heart."You're a shadow, no more.""Better to be invisible to us than a weakness in the clan."These words were spoken by lips that should have cradled and protected, but instead conspired to imprison him deeper in loneliness. The lessons of cultivation, the rituals of mana, the sounds of battles and celebrations—all these came from which Lei was barred.Yet, even in the absence of sight and love, the spark within him refused to be extinguished.The Gift of SilenceIt was during one of the endless nights, when the wind howled like a restless spirit through the village, that Lei found himself wandering beyond the familiar walls of his home. Guided by intuition alone, he moved with a strange grace, avoiding the gnarled roots and hidden stones on the path leading to the outskirts.In a clearing bathed in the faint light of distant stars, Lei paused. The night air hummed lightly—the subtle heartbeat of mana flowing beneath the surface of the world.He reached out, fingers trembling, feeling tendrils of power brushing against his skin like shimmering threads of silk. It called to him—not with the blazing fire of the seen but with the quiet strength of the unseen."Invisible, but not empty," Lei whispered into the dark.The sensation wrapped around him, a faint glow pulsing within the void of his mind. At that moment, blindness ceased to be a curse. It was a veil hiding a hidden path—one forged in silence, time, and space.
A Forbidden Discovery
Back in his room, Lei sat cross-legged on the wooden floor, the cloak of quietness pressing in. He carefully wrapped the ancient cloth from his birth tightly around his eyes—the blindness that everyone saw was physical, but there was a different form, a hidden veiling that few could comprehend.Closing his fists, he focused inward, tuning his mind's eye to the rhythm of the universe. Slowly, the darkness inside him cracked and shimmered.He had heard stories of the Mana Circuit — an intricate, ethereal network linking body and soul. But his own was fractured, shattered by the cruel hand of fate at birth. Despite this, a faint pulse echoed in the recesses of his being, a fragile but defiant beat."The Void is not absence," his voice barely above a whisper. "It is potential."With concentrated will, a ripple of power thrummed at his fingertips—a tingling sensation, as if the fabric of space itself was beginning to respond.The moment stretched into eternity.Then suddenly, a brief vision flashed before him: a swirling black vortex surrounded by radiant stars, the endless expanse of the cosmos where time distorted and folded. From that vision, echoes of a voice resonated, ancient and commanding:"You are the Blind God. Born without sight, yet destined to see beyond the horizons of mortals."Breathless, Lei collapsed back, his heart racing with the knowledge that the very void that should have been his prison was instead the cradle of his awakening.The World Beyond SightDays passed, and Lei remained withdrawn, yet his secret power grew quietly. He learned to sense the flow of space and time around him—small tremors, shifts in the wind, ripples in the invisible threads of destiny.At the village courtyard, warriors sparred under the approving eyes of their masters. Their movements were precise, steeped in years of practice and hard-earned mastery. Lei listened from afar, memorizing the rhythm of their strikes, sensing the energies they wielded but never allowed to touch.Yet, sometimes, the invisible barrier between them seemed to waver, as if the realm beyond his blindness was reaching toward the physical world he could not see.One afternoon, as the sun dipped below the horizon, Lei's keen senses detected something unusual—a fissure in the flow of mana near the village outskirts. His heart urged him forward.Crawling past twisted roots and broken branches, he reached a small, hidden cavern bathed in a shimmering glow. Inside, ancient runes pulsed faintly across the walls, inscribed with symbols unseen for centuries.This place—ancient, forgotten—held a secret. A power not bound by traditional mana circuits or martial art forms, but rooted in the fundamental forces of space and time.Tentatively, Lei placed his hand against the glowing wall, and the cavern responded—walls flickering in and out of existence, space bending like liquid light. For a moment, he felt as though he was suspended between worlds, alive yet beyond life.Could this be the source of the power glimpsed in his visions? The key to defying the cruel limits imposed on him?Shadows in the DistanceUnbeknownst to Lei, however, eyes watched from the darkness. Hidden among the ancient trees, a figure cloaked in midnight black observed silently, his expression unreadable behind a mask of mystery.The village's secrets were not as safe as they seemed.The stranger had heard whispers of the "Blind God" and his growing power. Many sought to control or destroy what they did not understand. The balance of fate was fragile, and Lei's awakening threatened to tip the scales.A slow smile curved the stranger's lips as he stepped back into the shadows. The game of gods and mortals had just begun.
The First Light of Destiny
Back beneath the star-filled sky, Lei returned home, the cloth still wrapped tightly as if a shield and a promise. He knew the path before him was perilous—marked by neglect, danger, and the unknown.But for the first time, he felt hope.He was not just a blind boy cast aside. He was the harbinger of something greater—a power forged in the void and tempered by the eternal horizon.Closing his eyes, he whispered one final vow to the night:"I will see. Not with flesh and blood, but with the power that no eye can behold. I will rise, not as a shadow, but as the Blind God."The journey had begun.