The silence in the Lin Clan’s ancestral hall was a living thing, thick and suffocating.The ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones sat in their showy red box on the central offering table, an obscene altar to their humiliation. The ancestral tablets of past Lin heroes looked down from their shelves, their inscribed names seeming to weep silent judgment. A single, guttering spirit-lamp cast long, dancing shadows that made the hall feel cavernous and haunted.Lin Zhan stood before the tablets, his back to his son. The patriarch’s shoulders, once broad enough to carry a clan’s hopes, were hunched as if under a physical weight. The tremors Lin Feng had felt during their shameful walk home were now violent, visible shudders that wracked his entire frame. A wet, rasping cough tore from his throat, and he brought a cloth to his lips. When he pulled it away, even in the dim light, Lin Feng could see the dark, ugly stain.“Father—” Lin Feng started, taking a step forward, his own misery momentarily eclip

The fall was an eternity of roaring wind and disorienting, pitch-black terror.Lin Feng tumbled through the void, the world he knew ripped away. The last sight; his uncle’s venomous triumph, the flickering lights of the compound, had vanished, replaced by a swallowing darkness so absolute it felt physical. The cold was not the clean chill of Frost Desire, but a deep, invasive, marrow-numbing freeze that seemed to originate from the chasm itself. It was the cold of forgotten things, of ages buried under mountains of silence.He braced for the impact. For the shattering of bone on unyielding stone, the brief, bright flare of pain, and then nothing.It never came.Instead, he plunged into liquid.It was thick, sticky, and warm, a shocking, almost blasphemous contrast to the freezing air. It swallowed him with a soft, heavy embrace, muffling the roar of the wind instantly. He sank, disoriented, the momentum of the fall driving him deep. For a panicked moment, he flailed, instinct screamin

The forest at the base of the Lin Clan walls was a realm of deep shadows and whispering leaves. To Lin Feng’s new senses, it was a cacophony of life-force. He could feel the slow, green pulse of the ancient oaks, the skittering, quick-burning sparks of insects and small mammals, the cool, deep trickle of an underground stream. Before, this would have been just darkness and sound. Now, it was a landscape painted in energy, and he was a hungry ghost standing at its edge.He leaned against the rough bark of a towering ironwood tree, its energy signature stable and dense. The torn, blood-stained robes felt like a dead skin he needed to shed. The physical wounds were closed, but the memory of the fall, the annihilation, the rebirth, they thrummed through him like a second heartbeat. The Chaos Dantian spun slowly in his core, a quiet, potent vortex. It was no longer starving, fed by the dragon’s blood and the mountain’s essence, but it was… watchful. As if waiting for his command to feast a

The Blackroot Woods lived up to their name. Ancient trees with bark the color of charcoal clawed at a sky choked by a permanent, dripping canopy. Thick roots snaked across the spongy, black earth, ready to trip the unwary. The air was heavy with the scent of decay and the fertile, aggressive life that fed on it. For Lin Feng, stepping into this gloom was like entering a pressurized room of wild, untamed energy.Here, the life-forces weren't the gentle green pulses of the outer forest. They were sharp, hungry, and territorial. He could feel the cold, skittering aura of venomous insects in the mulch, the slow, grinding consciousness of the trees themselves, and the hot, predatory sparks of the spirit beasts that called this place home. His Chaos Dantian reacted to the onslaught of stimuli not with fear, but with a low, eager hum. The vortex spun a fraction faster, as if tasting the air.He was not here to hide. He was here to hunt.His target was the Iron-Hide Boar, a low-level spirit b

The Muddy Leaf Road was less a road and more a memory of one, a stubborn dirt track carved between the Blackroot Woods and the churning, silt-heavy river that gave it its name. It was the back route into Verdant Cloud City, used by merchants who valued discretion over speed, or those carrying goods that wouldn't bear too much official scrutiny. Tonight, it was a ribbon of moon-washed mud and shadows, perfect for an ambush.Lin Feng waited.He was above fifteen feet up in the skeletal branches of a lightning-struck oak that leaned over the track, his form a deeper patch of darkness against the night sky. The hooded cloak was gone, replaced by dark, close-fitting clothes he'd taken from a clothesline in a silent, river-side hamlet hours earlier. Frost Desire was a cold, comforting weight against his back, but he hoped he wouldn't need it. Tonight was about testing his new power against cultivators, not just beasts. About feeding the vortex with something more refined than boar essence.