Chapter 4: The Unseen Furnace
The barracks door did not burst open with Overseer Bo's usual brutality. It creaked, and a strange, prickling silence fell. The Debt-Slaves froze in their shivering lines, instincts honed by cruelty sensing a change in the air.
Two men entered. Not overseers. Inner sect disciples.
Their robes were a deep, forest green, edged with silver thread that seemed to drink the dim light. They moved with an unconscious grace, their faces smooth and unreadable, eyes like chips of polished jade scanning the room. The very air grew heavier, denser with their restrained spiritual pressure. One held a crystalline orb that hummed with a soft, white light.
Xiao Feng's heart turned to ice in his chest. The Heavenly Brand. They can sense it.
He kept his head down, his breathing shallow, forcing every ounce of will into the fragment's cold energy, willing it to lie dormant, to seem like nothing but the "Shattered Mortal Dust" it was supposed to be. The Lichtenberg figures on his skin, now faint silver tracings, felt like screaming beacons.
The disciple with the orb raised it. The hum intensified, becoming a needle in the teeth. He swept it slowly across the line of slaves. The orb's light remained steady, white.
"You," the other disciple said, his voice devoid of inflection. He pointed not at Xiao Feng, but at the boy next to him—Liang, a quiet kid with a perpetual cough. "Step forward."
Liang flinched, eyes wide with terror. He shuffled forward. The disciple placed a hand on his head. A pulse of gentle, invasive energy washed over Liang, who shuddered.
"Nothing. Base is impure, but natural." The disciple released him, and Liang stumbled back, gasping.
They continued down the line. Each slave was examined with a touch, a probe. The orb-hum was a constant torture. Xiao Feng's dantian churned. The captured lightning within it sparked, rebellious. The cold energy coiled tighter, a serpent hiding in a hole.
Don't move. Don't breathe. Be dust.
The disciple with the probing hand stood before him. Xiao Feng stared at the man's embroidered hem, the silver threads forming a coiled dragon. He could smell sandalwood and something metallic.
A hand, cool and dry, settled on his crown.
The invasion was immediate. It was not a search for power, but for anomaly. The disciple's spiritual sense was a scalpel of pure order, seeking discord, a break in the pattern. It slid over his pathetic Qi Gathering stage three—now a chaotic mix of his original dust, grave-miasma, and lightning—and for a terrifying second, it paused.
Xiao Feng felt the probe touch the edges of the foreign energy. The lightning sparked. The cold void stirred.
The disciple's eyebrows twitched, almost imperceptibly. He pushed deeper.
Panic, pure and primal, erupted in Xiao Feng. He was going to be dissected like that fugitive in his vision. They would tear him open and study the error.
And in that panic, he did the only thing he could. He didn't fight the probe. He fed it.
He focused on the most familiar, most pathetic part of his being—the three years of humiliation. The taste of mud. The sound of Overseer Bo's laughter. The hollow ache in his gut every night. He wrapped this bitter, shameful emotion around the core of his power and offered it to the probing sense.
It wasn't resistance. It was a presentation. Look, his soul seemed to whimper. See? Nothing here but weakness and shame. The dust of a broken thing. Is that not what you expect?
The inner disciple's lips tightened in faint distaste. The invasive sense withdrew, brushing off the offered emotional filth like a man wiping his hand on his robe. He looked at his companion with the orb, who gave a minute shake of his head. The orb's light had not changed.
"Waste Dust root. Qi is chaotic and weak, but within baseline parameters for prolonged malnutrition and spiritual contamination," the probing disciple announced, his tone bored. "No trace of foreign lightning affinity or high-grade anomaly."
He removed his hand. Xiao Feng didn't sag in relief. He remained perfectly still, a statue of misery.
The two disciples finished their sweep, finding nothing. As they turned to leave, the one with the orb spoke, his voice carrying to the cowering Overseer Bo in the doorway. "The intruder was proficient. He disabled two outer disciples with a crude but potent mixed-energy attack. He is not among these… assets. Search the perimeter forests. He may have fled the sect."
The door closed behind them. The oppressive pressure vanished.
For a long moment, no one moved. Then Overseer Bo's face, pale with fear from the inner sect attention, flushed a vengeful red. He needed to reassert dominance.
"You heard them! Lazy worms, taking up the masters' time! Double duties today! No rations until the west field is cleared!"
The day that followed was a blur of agonizing labor under a hateful sun. But for Xiao Feng, it was a strange, internal triumph. He had hidden in plain sight. He had weaponized his own humiliation as a shield. The lesson was profound and sickening: in this world, being seen as utterly worthless was its own kind of power.
That night, aching in every limb, he waited for the deep, snores of the barracks. Only then did he pull out the stolen pouch.
Five low-grade spirit stones. A basic Qi-Restoration pill. The disciple token.
The stones were the key. Spirit stones were the currency of cultivation, pure energy waiting to be absorbed. For a normal disciple, they were supplements. For him, they were a test.
He took one, a rough, milky-white crystal about the size of his thumbnail. He held it in his palm, over the hidden fragment. He focused not on absorbing its energy gently, but on the fragment's hunger. He thought of the lightning it had consumed. He projected want.
The fragment stirred. A single, hair-thin tendril of that amethyst darkness extended from his palm, piercing the spirit stone without breaking its surface.
It was not absorption. It was drainage. The vibrant, milky-white light of the stone fogged, then greyed, then turned to dull, dead chalk in seconds. A cold, clean stream of energy—purified, stripped of any elemental affinity—flowed into his meridians. It was efficient, total, and left no waste.
He felt a slight replenishment. A trickle. It was… underwhelming. The stone's energy was too orderly, too passive. It was bland nourishment. The fragment clearly preferred its tribulations spiced with pain and chaos.
He swallowed the Qi-Restoration pill. It was the same. A mild, healing warmth spread through him, soothing his aches. The fragment processed it without interest, like eating plain rice.
He looked at the remaining four stones. An idea, dangerous and compelling, took root.
What if he didn't use them for energy? What if he used them as bait?
The next day, during the mind-numbing work of hauling slag from the sect's refinery, he put his plan into motion. He waited for a moment when Bo's back was turned, then deliberately stumbled, dropping his heavy cart. A single spirit stone, carefully palmed, slipped from his grip and rolled into a fissure in the ground near the refinery's outer vent.
The vent pulsed with a hellish, rhythmic heat. It was where they dumped the unstable, excess energy from failed alchemy and low-grade weapon forging—a stream of corrosive fire-Qi and metallic poison. It was a constant, low-grade environmental hazard. A tribulation for the very air.
He finished his shift, his mind fixed on the fissure.
That night, he returned. The area was deserted, the refinery quiet. The vent glowed a sullen orange, belching gouts of toxic, heated air. He found the fissure. The spirit stone was still there, but it was no longer milky-white. It had been baked, its structure stressed by the violent, impure energy. It glowed with a faint, sickly red light, its internal energy agitated, corrupted.
TARGET ANALYZED: LOW-GRADE ELEMENTAL TRIBULATION (FIRE/METAL). CONTAINMENT VESSEL: STRESSED SPIRIT STONE. ASSIMILATE?
His breath caught. It had worked. He had created a minor, contained catastrophe.
Yes.
He reached for the stone. The heat coming off it was intense, but the fragment's tendril shot out greedily. This time, the process was not a clean drain. It was a struggle. The corrupted fire-metal energy fought back, hot and sharp. He felt a burning sensation crawl up his arm. But the cold, devouring void of the fragment was relentless. It ground the chaotic energy down, extracted its essence, and discarded the poisonous dross as a thin, metallic-smelling smoke from his pores.
The energy that entered him was not pure. It was fierce and tinged with a destructive intent. It didn't just replenish his Qi; it tempered it. His dantian felt hotter, sharper. The lightning within crackled in response, as if recognizing a kindred violent spirit.
It was a meager gain, but the principle was world-shaking. He could process impure, dangerous energy that would harm or cripple others. He could turn poison into progress.
For the next week, this became his secret cultivation. By day, he was Xiao Feng, the worthless Dust-Boy, enduring slaps and insults, his emotional reservoir quietly filling with fresh, bitter fuel. By night, he was a ghost, using his stolen spirit stones as traps, luring and consuming the sect's discarded energies: the damp, rotting wood-Qi from the compost pits; the fragmented, dissonant sound-Qi from the cracked training gongs; the sluggish, depressive water-Qi from the stagnant punishment ponds.
He didn't make massive breakthroughs. He inched forward. His Qi grew stranger, more adaptable, a chimeric blend of countless minor tribulations. His body grew tougher, resistant to extremes. The silver tracings on his skin faded completely, woven into his new foundation.
He was building himself in the unseen furnace of the sect's waste.
The calm could not last. He was running out of stones. The danger of nightly excursions grew. And the memory of the inner disciples' search was a constant chill down his spine.
The break came from an unexpected direction. Overseer Bo, during a particularly vicious tirade, spat out a new punishment. "You! Dust-Boy! The inner sect' Beast Pits need cleaning. The Refuse Chute is clogged. You have until dawn. If a single Blood-Muck Rat gets loose because of you, I'll feed you to the Storm-Tusked Boars myself!"
The Beast Pits. A place of constant, violent life and death. Of primal fury, fear, and potent biological waste.
The Refuse Chute. A conduit for it all.
Xiao Feng bowed his head, the picture of submissive dread.
Inside, the fragment purred with anticipation.
NEW DIRECTIVE: LOCATE HIGH-DENSITY BIOLOGICAL TRIBULATION SOURCE. PROBABILITY OF MAJOR GAIN: HIGH. PROBABILITY OF MAJOR DISMEMBERMENT: ALSO HIGH.
He was no longer afraid of probability. He was its student.
As he was marched towards the roaring, stinking darkness of the Beast Pits, Xiao Feng's mind was not on the danger, but on the potential. He saw not a punishment, but a banquet.
He had learned to eat lightning. He had learned to drink poison.
Now, he would learn to swallow the raw, screaming essence of life and death itself. The furnace within him burned cold and hungry, ready for its next, terrible meal.