The Qingyun Mountains did not merely exist; they dominated.
They rose in jagged, violet-hued layers, ancient granite peaks pressing against the vault of heaven like the spines of colossal, slumbering beasts. Their silhouettes cut into the sky with brutal finality, as if the land itself had once rebelled against the heavens and been frozen mid-strike. Even clouds dared not drift freely here. They clung to the mountains' waists in endless coils, thick and luminous, as though fearful of ascending any higher.
For millennia, these mountains had breathed.
They inhaled the essence of the stars at night, drawing down faint astral remnants through invisible veins of stone. By day, they exhaled that same power as silvery mist—dense, spiritual, alive. It rolled endlessly along cliffs and valleys, seeping into soil, bark, and bone alike.
This mist did more than obscure the view.
It concealed jagged stone paths known only to elders and fools. It swallowed forgotten ruins—broken sect halls, shattered formations, burial grounds of cultivators whose names had been erased by time. And nestled within its embrace lay the Qingyun Sect itself—a sprawling complex of pagodas, courtyards, spirit fields, and training plazas.
The sect believed itself eternal.
As eternal as the stone beneath it.
At the exact moment the sun's first sliver cut through the eastern horizon—
The Morning Bell rang.
It was not a mere sound.
It was an event.
Forged from mountain-heart iron mined from the deepest vein of the Inner Peaks, the bell was older than the current sect records. Ancient runes of resonance spiraled across its surface, half-eroded, half-awakened. When struck, it did not simply vibrate the air—it carried intent.
Its toll rolled down from the Inner Peaks in heavy, inexorable waves.
It passed through the towering halls of the Core Disciples, through the training platforms of the Inner Sect, and finally swept across the Outer Courtyards like a judgment passed without appeal. It rattled thatched roofs. It vibrated through wooden beams. It sank into marrow and bone, into the cells of ancient pines rooted along the cliffs.
To the Qingyun Sect, this sound was order.
It was the heartbeat of discipline.
It was the Heaven's Voice.
A reminder that to cultivate was to obey structure, hierarchy, and visibility. That progress was measured in brilliance, in pressure, in how loudly one's existence could announce itself to the world.
To cultivate was to be loud.
To be seen.
To be acknowledged.
As the bell's echoes faded into the mountains, the sect erupted into a different kind of noise.
Thousands of wooden doors creaked open simultaneously.
Figures poured out in ash-gray robes, their movements sharp and hurried, expressions taut with anticipation or anxiety. These were the Outer Disciples—the lowest rung of Qingyun's hierarchy. The hungry. The desperate. The ones still fighting for the right to remain.
They moved like ants from a disturbed nest, streaming toward the Training Plazas in uneven currents.
The air began to hum.
Some disciples circulated Qi openly as they ran, creating visible shimmers around their bodies. Spiritual energy was dragged from the atmosphere into forcibly opened meridians, refined through brute repetition and willpower. The process was violent—inefficient, but effective enough to impress instructors.
Others shouted cultivation mantras aloud.
Each syllable struck the air like a hammer blow, filled with desire and strain. They believed volume equaled conviction, that heaven could be commanded if one shouted loudly enough for it to hear.
Qi surged.
To the eyes of a master, the Qingyun Sect resembled a roaring furnace of spiritual friction. Countless wills clashed and overlapped, ambition grinding against ambition. It was a cacophony of Seizing and Refining, of pressure and intent layered upon one another until the air itself felt strained.
It was beautiful.
It was powerful.
And to Lin Chen—
It was deafening.
Behind the bustling outer courtyards, past crumbling stone walls where ancient masonry surrendered inch by inch to the encroaching forest, stood the Abandoned Herb Pavilion.
No signs marked its presence.
No paths led to it anymore.
It was a skeleton of wood and stone.
Its roof had surrendered to gravity years ago, leaving the interior exposed to rain, snow, and starlight. One wall leaned inward at a precarious angle, held upright only by thick, gnarled trunks of creeping spirit-vines whose leaves glimmered faintly with absorbed Qi.
Inside, the air smelled of wet earth.
And of something burned.
The ghost of phosphorus lingered faintly, woven into the stone itself. Shattered alchemy furnaces lay scattered across the floor like blackened skulls—twisted remnants of a catastrophic explosion that had once rocked this pavilion.
Two alchemists had died that day.
Their names were no longer spoken.
Afterward, the elders sealed the site, declared it cursed, and quietly erased it from the sect's active records.
No elders came here to lecture.
No disciples came here to spar.
No formations protected it.
It was a place of abandonment.
A place of failure.
Lin Chen sat at its center.
Seventeen years old.
He did not look remarkable.
His robe was gray, patched and re-patched, the fabric worn so thin at the elbows and knees that light nearly passed through it. The sect emblem had faded to near invisibility, as if even ink refused to cling to him.
He sat cross-legged on bare, cracked stone.
Spine straight.
Hands resting loosely on his knees.
His posture was neither rigid nor relaxed—it simply was.
His breathing was the only sound in the pavilion.
In.
Hold.
Out.
The pause between breaths was unnatural.
Too long.
So long that the world itself seemed to hesitate with him, as though time were unsure whether to proceed. In that hollow space, even his heartbeat softened, stretching thin like a thread pulled too far.
Outside, on the main plazas, disciples were seizing Qi like starving beasts—dragging it into their meridians like fishermen hauling heavy nets from a raging sea.
Lin Chen did the opposite.
He listened.
To him, Qi was not prey.
It was not a resource.
It was the breath of the world.
As the morning sun warmed the broken stones of the pavilion, spiritual energy brushed against his skin like a hesitant tide testing unfamiliar shore. He did not grab it. He did not command it.
He allowed it.
His pores opened naturally, without intent, without force. Qi seeped inward, settling into flesh and bone the way dust settled onto a long-abandoned table.
Inside him, something stirred.
A thread.
It was not the roaring river of golden energy described in the Qingyun Heart Sutra. It did not blaze. It did not shine. It did not announce itself.
It was thin.
Colorless.
Utterly silent.
It did not travel through the twelve standard meridians that elders obsessively mapped and measured. Instead, it slipped through the Gaps—microscopic spaces ignored by conventional cultivation.
Between bone and marrow.
Between muscle and skin.
Between breath and heartbeat.
It followed a path that felt… primordial.
Older than techniques.
Older than sects.
Older than the idea that Qi had to be controlled at all.
As the thread moved, Lin Chen's body did not glow.
No shockwave erupted.
Instead, his muscles tightened subtly. His bones grew heavier, denser. His presence thinned, as though the world had slightly less to hold onto.
Qi Condensation.
Second Layer.
He had reached it.
In any other disciple, this breakthrough would have caused a rush of wind, a flash of light, or at least a surge of pressure noticeable to others.
For Lin Chen, the only sign was a single drop of sweat forming at his temple—
And evaporating before it touched the stone.
The silence shattered.
Crunch.
Boots on gravel.
"So you really are hiding in this tomb."
Lin Chen did not startle.
He allowed his awareness to drift back from the Gaps within his body, gathering smoothly behind his eyes. He rose to his feet in one continuous motion and turned toward the entrance.
Three disciples stood framed in the broken doorway.
Their robes were pristine.
Their silk belts were embroidered with the symbols of the Sun-Gathering Hall—an outer-sect faction favored by certain elders. Minor talismans hung at their waists, glinting faintly with stored Qi.
The leader was tall, broad-shouldered.
Wei Kang.
Fourth Layer of Qi Condensation.
His Qi rolled around him in uneven, aggressive waves, deliberately uncontrolled. It pressed outward like a challenge, announcing his strength to anyone within twenty paces.
He wanted to be felt.
"The morning bell rang two hours ago, Lin Chen," Wei Kang sneered, stepping over a fragment of broken cauldron. "Elder Han is teaching the Flowing Cloud Palm today."
His gaze swept the pavilion in open disdain.
"But I suppose a trash root like you prefers to sit in the dirt and pretend he's a master."
Lin Chen bowed.
It was shallow.
Polite.
"I was merely reflecting on the herb cycles," he said.
"Reflecting?" The disciple to Wei Kang's left burst out laughing. "Look at him. Second Layer. Barely. I've seen house cats with more spiritual pressure."
Wei Kang walked closer.
His boots ground the remains of a rare medicinal root into dust.
He stopped inches from Lin Chen.
The air between them hummed with poorly controlled energy—static, prickly, arrogant.
"You're a stain on the sect's reputation," Wei Kang hissed. "People see you carrying water and think Qingyun has become a charity."
He leaned in slightly.
"Move."
As he brushed past, Wei Kang slammed his shoulder into Lin Chen's chest.
It wasn't just physical.
A sharp, needle-like pulse of Qi surged forward—precise, malicious. It was intended to rupture Lin Chen's internal circulation, to leave him gasping and coughing blood on the stone floor.
The pulse hit.
And vanished.
As if swallowed by a deep, dark well.
Lin Chen staggered back three steps. His face went pale. Pain flared briefly—
Then was gone.
His breathing never broke rhythm.
"I'll leave," Lin Chen said quietly.
His voice held no anger.
No resentment.
Wei Kang paused.
He frowned, glancing at his own shoulder, then back at Lin Chen. He had expected screaming. Broken ribs. Satisfaction.
Seeing only a submissive youth, he snorted.
"Useless trash. Don't let me see you at the refectory today."
"You don't deserve the rice."
They left, their laughter echoing through the trees—loud, discordant, a scar carved into the morning.
Lin Chen waited.
Until the footsteps faded.
Until the last vibration died into the soil.
Until even the birds returned to the eaves of the pavilion.
He looked down at his chest.
A bruise was forming—purple, ugly.
Inside, the Silent Thread was already moving, folding the trauma into stillness.
Absorbing it.
Accepting it.
Enduring it.