"One last soul. You belong to the King. Your essence is mine."
The words didn't come from a throat. They vibrated through the clotted ink of the smoke, a physical rot that smelled of wet ash and old graves. It slithered toward Lei Ze.
He didn't move. He didn't scramble or raise a hand. He just let go. His fingers stayed locked in the cold fabric of his mother's tunic, knees sinking into the mud. The world had ended when her breathing stopped. If the darkness wanted the rest of him, he wouldn't fight it.
A pillar of gold tore through the rain. It slammed into the obsidian murk with the weight of a falling mountain, halting the advance in a spray of sparks.
Lei Ze's neck creaked as he turned his head. Grit and rainwater lashed his skin, kicked up by the pressure.
A monk stood behind him. He looked like he'd been carved from temple stone. One palm thrust forward toward the smoke, the other tucked against his chest in a vertical salute.
The smoke recoiled. It hissed like steam escaping a pipe, drifting back. Inside the roiling cloud, the stolen breaths of a hundred villagers sounded like a collective, panicked wheeze.
The monk didn't wait.
"Buddha's Shadow Clone," he barked. The voice had a metallic edge that cut through the thunder.
His fingers blurred. He wove jagged signs in the air, and four golden echoes of himself flickered into existence. They surrounded the mass, faces set in divine indifference.
"By the power of the Saha realm, Extract!"
Luminous cords of amber light lashed out from the palms of the monk and his projections. They pierced the smoke, anchoring it. The entity let out a sound that defied description—agonized groans, sharp barks of hatred, the hollow wail of the grieving.
The monk ground his teeth, shoving his palms forward to intensify the heat. He meant to incinerate the rot, but the air turned heavy and stagnant.
With a violent, wet pop, the smoke exploded. It didn't dissipate. It transformed into a thick, violet-tinged fog that saturated the village in seconds.
"Poison?" the monk muttered.
He and his clones shifted their weight, tightening the perimeter. They adjusted their stance, hands moving in unison to reform the barrier. The golden light flared one last time, a sunburst at the center of the violet haze. With a final, muffled thud, the mass detonated. The vapor hung for a heartbeat before the rain began to wash it away, leaving nothing but a faint, bitter metallic taste on the tongue.
The monk exhaled and lowered his hands.
The four golden echoes dissolved. He reached into his sleeve, pulled out a flickering talisman, and walked toward Lei Ze. The boy was face-down in the mud.
The gas had been fast. Lei Ze's skin was already taking on a grey, sickly hue. His lungs labored, pulling in the toxic air with a ragged, wet sound.
The monk scooped him up. He moved with a grim efficiency, trekking toward a small temple at the edge of the butchered village. He laid Lei Ze down beneath the sprawling roots of an ancient tree and knelt.
"This child... he is a vessel for calamity," the monk murmured. "Hatred and sorrow have already begun to scab over."
The boy's forehead was burning. The monk could feel the oily residue of dark energy pulsing just beneath the skin. He pressed two fingers against the boy's brow. A stabilizing pulse of Qi flowed from his fingertip.
"The path ahead will either forge him or break him. I fear the man he will choose to become when the darkness calls again."
The monk reached into a leather pouch and pulled out a heavy, dark sphere—a Relic Bead. He pried the boy's jaw open and slid the bead inside.
A shockwave of yellow light erupted from Lei Ze's chest. It hit the monk like a physical blow, sending dead leaves swirling. The boy's hair flared with an incandescent glow for several seconds before dying back down. His breathing leveled out.
"Anger. Revenge," the monk said. He stood up, joints popping, and walked toward the temple without looking back.
The village was a tomb. No crickets sang. No birds took flight. Just the steady, rhythmic drip of water hitting stones.
"Amitabha."
The sun dragged itself over the horizon the next morning. Lei Ze was the only thing moving.
"Hahaha, you are mine! You possess a dark energy," a voice rasped in the back of his skull, oily and tempting. "Whatever you do, take the crooked path. The 'good' way is a slow death by the weight of Karma."
The voice vanished, but the nightmare stayed.
He saw the village again. The bodies piled like cordwood. He saw himself kneeling over his mother, fingers stained red. The scene twisted. A man with a face like a storm cloud stood on a cliff, holding a staff of captured lightning. Then, a final flash: a world in flames. Legions of beasts tearing through screaming mortals. At the center of the carnage sat a man of terrifying calm atop a mountain-sized creature, a silent laugh shaking his shoulders.
Lei Ze woke with a violent jolt.
"Mom!"
He scrambled up, coordination shot. He was an orphan in a graveyard. He ran toward the center of the village, eyes darting across the ground.
The bodies were gone. No villagers, no mother—only dark, crusty stains on the earth where the life had leaked out.
"Mom... Mom..." he croaked. His voice cracked. The silence was the loudest thing he had ever heard. "Why did you leave me?"
He collapsed, sobs racking his small frame, until a heavy, warm hand settled on his shoulder.
"Young one, stay your heart," a steady voice said. "In this life, greatness is often the twin of loss. If you choose the right path, this pain will become your steel."
Lei Ze spun around, body coiling like a spring. He had forgotten the stranger. Looking at the monk now, a jagged thought pierced through his grief: This man was there. He has power. Why is everyone else dead?
He balled his fists. "Who are you?"
"My name is Jìng Xū."
Lei Ze's jaw was tight enough to crack a tooth. "You killed them. You killed my mother!"
Jìng Xū didn't react. He rolled a talisman between his thumb and forefinger and turned toward the northern face of the mountain. He paused, looking back.
"Follow me."
Lei Ze trailed after him, steps heavy with resentment. Every fiber of his being wanted to strike out, to make this quiet man bleed.
"Why did you slaughter them?" Lei Ze's voice was a strained hiss. "Why did you take her?"
Jìng Xū stopped. He tilted his head back, watching the sun filter through the canopy.
"Young man, I did not take your mother's life. Death did."
Lei Ze searched the monk's face for a smirk, a lie. He found only a vast, hollow sadness.
"And why should I believe you?"
Jìng Xū resumed walking toward a narrow fissure in the rock hidden by hanging vines.
"I do not require your belief. I only require your attention."
Lei Ze followed him into the dark. He had lived here seven years and never knew this opening existed.
"What is this place?"
They emerged into a small chamber carved into the mountain. Candles flickered on stone ledges. Jìng Xū pressed his palms together and bowed to a simple altar.
"This is my dwelling."
Lei Ze looked at the immaculate floor, the lack of furniture. "Elder Jìng Xū, how long have you been hiding in here?"
Jìng Xū pointed two fingers toward a hearth. A ripple of energy skipped through the air, igniting the remaining candles.
"Roughly a thousand years."
Lei Ze's breath hitched. A thousand years? That was the stuff of legends.
Jìng Xū didn't explain. He crossed his legs and sank onto the stone floor. As he entered a meditative state, a wave of spiritual pressure rolled off him. It hit Lei Ze like a physical wall. The air in the cave suddenly felt thick.
"How?" the boy whispered.
"By refining the bone and purging the marrow over centuries," Jìng Xū replied. "By committing every heartbeat to the path of the Dao."
Lei Ze scrambled closer, dropping to his knees. "What is it? This Dao?"
"The Way," Jìng Xū said. "The fundamental law that dictates why the stars hang and why the water flows. To follow the Dao is to stop being a leaf blown by the wind and to become the wind itself."
A desperate, hungry fire lit up in Lei Ze's chest. "Can I do it? Can I become a cultivator like you?"
Jìng Xū inhaled. "You seek power in the Heavens, the Earth, the Shadow, and the Hand. But hear me: the strongest house is not built of stone or wood. It is defined by the empty space within."
He paused.
"Cultivation is not the act of gaining strength. It is the brutal process of shedding weakness. Every stream of Qi must pass through a vessel that is pure. Your true measure will not be the force of your strike, but the stillness of your heart when the world around you is screaming."
Lei Ze sat down, mimicking the monk's position. His body was tense, vibrating.
"You are a vessel for many paths, but the choice is your own. The road ahead of you is paved with jagged glass, boy."
Lei Ze didn't care about the glass. He wanted the power to ensure he was never the one left kneeling in the mud again.
"Elder Jìng Xū," Lei Ze pleaded, "please. Teach me."
Jìng Xū slowly shook his head. "I cannot be your master."
"But Elder—"
"But I know the place where your path begins."
A spark of raw hope flashed in Lei Ze's eyes.
"Thank you, Elder!"
Jìng Xū held out a hand, palm up. Lei Ze placed his own small, dirty hand above it. A soft, golden glow began to spiral around their wrists.
"Feel the Qi," Jìng Xū instructed. "It is in the air, in the stone, in your very breath. Pull it in. Slowly. Sink into the silence of your own mind. Look for your Core."
Lei Ze closed his eyes.
The cave vanished. He felt as though he were standing on a vast, midnight-blue ocean. The water was perfectly still. High above, a single golden sun burned—the Relic Bead.
"Absorb," the monk's voice echoed.
Lei Ze reached out with his mind. He gripped the golden light and pulled.
The energy flooded into him, a searing heat that raced through his veins and hammered against his meridians. His body felt as though it were being pulled apart and stitched back together with threads of fire.
As the initial stage of Body Refinement took hold, he felt the grime of his past self wash away, replaced by a clarity so sharp it hurt.
He opened his eyes, and for the first time, he saw the world not as a graveyard, but as a battlefield.