The incident in the dueling circle sent ripples far beyond Li Yao's expectations. He was no longer just the pitied Dust-Talent disciple; he was an enigma. Whispers followed him—"void-walker," "energy-ghost," "Elder Guo's secret project." He maintained his calm demeanor, his wry humor now seen as the cryptic musings of a hidden master rather than the coping mechanism of a failure.
This new status had a price. The wary protection Elder Guo offered was not unconditional. Three days after the duel, the Elder summoned him to his private meditation chamber, a small cave behind a waterfall where the sound of crashing water masked all conversation.
"Li Yao," Elder Guo began, his back to him as he watched the torrent. "Your... method. It consumes nothing. It leaves no residue. This defies the fundamental laws of energy conservation taught by the Eight Ancestor Clans."
"It does not consume, Elder," Li Yao corrected gently. "It simply... redefines the container."
"Semantics!" Elder Guo turned, his expression severe. "What happens to the energy? Zhang Fan's fiery essence, the Earth spike... it didn't vanish from the world. So where did it go?"
Li Yao was silent for a moment. This was the core of the Void Scripture's danger. "I am the container, Elder. And the container is deeper than it appears. The energy is not gone. It is... elsewhere. Within the void."
"Within you?" Elder Guo's eyes widened. "You contain a Master's worth of violent energy within your Mortal Foundation vessel? That should have torn you apart!"
"Not within me, precisely," Li Yao struggled to explain the sensation. "The void is not a place inside my dantian. It is my dantian. The energy is... placated. Neutralized. It becomes part of the nothing." He decided a demonstration was safer than an explanation. He focused and extended a hand. "The energy from Zhang Fan's final strike. A fragment of it."
He willed the void to relinquish a minuscule, utterly inert speck of what it had absorbed. On his palm, a single grain of grey, lifeless dust appeared. It held no energy, no heat, no spiritual signature. It was the ultimate ash, the final state of dissipated power.
Elder Guo picked it up, his fingers trembling. "It's... dead. Truly dead. This is not ash. This is the concept of ash." He looked at Li Yao with something akin to terror. "You are not cultivating, boy. You are un-creating."
"The scripture says to build a foundation deeper than the abyss," Li Yao quoted softly.
"And what lies at the bottom of this abyss of yours?" the Elder whispered.
"Freedom," Li Yao answered, and for the first time, his calm voice held a note of absolute, unshakable conviction.
The Elder sank onto a stone bench. "I cannot teach you. I dare not stop you. The path you walk is one I cannot see." He made a decision. "You will no longer attend group training. You will be listed as undergoing secluded meditation. You will remain here, in this chamber, when you are not performing your duties. We must understand this... and we must hide it from the Sect Leader and the others until we do."
Li Yao bowed. "Thank you, Elder."
His world shrank to the Prayer Pavilion, the waterfall cave, and his small room. The isolation was a blessing. In the cave, he could practice without prying eyes. He focused on the "Unseen Ripple," learning to project his nullifying field further from his body. He could now extend it a few inches from his skin, creating a bubble of dead space where energy techniques faltered and died.
He also discovered a limitation. The void was passive. It could negate what came to it, but it could not actively reach out and erase something from a distance. To nullify, he had to be the point of contact, the epicenter of the ripple.
His progress in the conventional realms was non-existent. He had skipped Energy Perception entirely and had a form of essence that was the opposite of the vibrant, life-giving energy of the Essence Refinement Realm. According to the sect's measuring stones, he was still a peak Mortal Foundation cultivator.
But according to the Void Scripture, he was advancing along a different axis entirely. The single drop of void essence began to rotate slowly, not gathering energy, but deepening its gravitational pull on the concept of "nothing." He named this nascent stage the Empty Pulse Realm, a parallel path to the established mortal stages.
One evening, while sweeping the Pavilion, he felt a new "ripple." It wasn't from an attack, but from the pavilion itself. A faint, ancient, and deeply hidden resonance, buried under layers of stone and time. It was a law, not of Earth, but of Memory. A fragment of spiritual imprint left by the ancestors.
He knelt, placing his hand on the central flagstone. He didn't try to absorb its energy. He let his void essence resonate with the silence within the memory, with the emptiness left behind by the long-departed.
A ghost of a vision flickered in his mind: an old man, not Elder Guo, with eyes that held the patience of mountains, etching a formation into the stone with his bare finger. The formation was one of forgetting, of protection through obscurity.
The vision vanished, but the understanding remained. This pavilion wasn't just for prayer; it was a seal. It was hiding something beneath it, using a Law of Oblivion to make the world forget what was there.
Li Yao looked around the empty, moonlit pavilion with new eyes. His void talent wasn't just for combat. It was a key. It could resonate with the hidden, the forgotten, the empty spaces in the world's memory.
He smiled. It seemed his duties had just become much more interesting. The Verdant Mountain Sect was built on secrets, and he was uniquely qualified to listen to the silence they created. The tournament was one goal, but this... this was a mystery that spoke directly to his nature.