Ashes To The Peak

Chapter 5: The Hollow Vessel(2).

As the former Holy Son, a supreme genius once favored by the very heavens, perceiving the ambient Aether Qi of the world was a fundamental instinct. To Belmoth Cross, sensing Qi was supposed to be as natural and effortless as breathing.

He channeled his focus inward, sinking into the dark expanse of his consciousness, reaching out toward the atmosphere around him.

Seconds ticked by.

What should have taken a fraction of an instant dragged on. Ten seconds... thirty seconds... a minute...

Zareth frowned within his mind, digging deeper, reaching out with every shred of his refined soul perception.

An hour passed in complete, motionless silence.

...Nothing.

Not a single flicker of energy.

Not a solitary trace of ambient Aether Qi made contact with his senses. The surrounding atmosphere felt entirely hollow, dead, and desolate, like a fish trying to swim through a desert of dry sand.

Zareth's eyes snapped open in sheer disbelief.

"What... what is going on here?!"

A wave of shock washed over him. He sat within the dark expanse of his consciousness, utterly stunned by the realization that he could not perceive even a trace of the world's ambient Aether Qi.

"What is happening to me?!" Zareth thought, panic rising in his chest. "Is this body really that useless?! Is its physical composition so thoroughly wrecked that it cannot even register the energy of the world?! How am I supposed to cultivate? How am I supposed to recover?!"

"No... I will try again!" he muttered stubbornly through gritted teeth.

He closed his eyes once more, shutting out all external noise, and drove his awareness deeper into his consciousness. He focused with frantic, unyielding intensity, pushing his soul perception to its absolute limits.

He tried... and he failed.

He tried again... and failed again.

Over and over, his attempts met a wall of absolute void. The shock within his heart deepened with every passing moment.

For a man who had once been able to manipulate the vast, surging spiritual currents of the world with a simple breath, spending hours attempting to perceive even a microscopic trace of Aether Qi, and coming up completely empty, was a harrowing experience.

Hours bled away. From the early morning light to the golden hues of sunset, Zareth remained in his bed, locked in a desperate, relentless struggle against his own crippled vessel. As the light in the room faded into twilight, his efforts turned from focused discipline into a frantic, chaotic attempt.

For the first time in his entire memory, Belmoth Cross felt a cold, crushing sense of absolute hopelessness.

He, who had been hailed as the greatest genius among his peers, a prodigy capable of standing above elders, was now completely incapable of perceiving the world's ambient Aether Qi.

Thud!!!

The sudden, violent slamming of the makeshift wooden door shattered his concentration. Zareth’s eyes snapped open, his gaze shifting toward the entrance. A large, hulking shadow stepped into the room. It was the thug.

"Hey kid! You know what time it is?" the man called out loudly, holding a wooden bowl that emitted a greasy, unappetizing steam. "I brought you some food."

"I will never get used to this brute," Zareth thought bitterly, his jaw tightening as he stared at the man."For some reason, I truly cannot stand his presence."

From the memories left behind by the original owner of this body, Zareth knew this thug was named Gao, a low-ranking, brutish member of the Red Panda Gang.

Gao had been assigned the miserable task of tending to the sickly boy, ensuring he didn't die before his debts were settled.  At the same time, Gao served as a warden, keeping a sharp eye on the shack to ensure the valuable young asset didn't attempt to escape.

Without a word, Zareth allowed Gao to prop him up slightly and shove the lukewarm, bland food into his mouth. He swallowed the slop in silence, enduring the thug's obnoxious presence until the bowl was empty.

Having finished his duty, Gao wiped his greasy mouth with the back of his hand and turned toward the door, his lips twisting into his perpetual, arrogant snarl.

"Recover already, you hear me?" Gao grumbled, pausing near the threshold. "The boss has been complaining about your delay every single day, and I am damn sick and tired of feeding you like a helpless babe."

With a loud huff, Gao shoved open the door, stepped out into the dark alleyway, and slammed the heavy wooden frame shut behind him.

The sharp impact of the door sent a violent gust of wind sweeping through the cramped room.

The sudden draft blew directly across the makeshift table, which Gao had crudely repaired with scraps of wood and rusty nails, and instantly snuffed out the tiny, flickering flame atop the lone candle resting there.

The room plunged into absolute, pitch-black darkness.

!!!

Yet, in that exact moment of shadow, as the tiny wisp of smoke rose from the extinguished candle, a sudden spark ignited deep within Zareth's soul.

A famous, proverb from his past life echoed in his mind:

"If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid."

That night, the shabby abode was shrouded in absolute darkness after the little candle resting upon the makeshift table was snuffed out. It was in this complete blackness that Zareth experienced an extraordinary epiphany, coming directly on the heels of the agonizing hours he had spent trying his absolute best to cultivate, only to feel nothing at all.

As he lay flat on his back upon the hard wooden bed, a deep, heavy silence enveloped the room. The only sound remaining in the world was the ambient noise bleeding in from the dark alleys outside.

It was during these quiet hours, his eyes tightly closed, that Zareth realized something fundamental about the vessel he now inhabited.

The physical perception of this fragile body was almost impossible to comprehend without a single ounce of Qi flowing through its meridians. He only truly noticed it now as he lay motionless in the pitch-black room.

For the past several weeks, he had spent his nights weeping and drowning in sorrow over his tragic betrayal, but tonight, he approached his reality with a cold, analytical clarity.

He realized that his ears were picking up distant sounds from outside with unbelievable accuracy: muffled whispers behind thin walls, distant laughter, quiet, secret conversations, and aggressive fights breaking out dozens of meters away from his secluded shack.

A normal human might hear faint echoes of these noises, but for Zareth, he could instantly tell that the absolute accuracy and efficiency of his hearing operated on a specialized, almost supernatural level.

At this point, he understood two very important things.

First, he realized precisely why the original Zareth Crow had been so exceptionally good at gathering intelligence for the Red Panda Gang.

Second, he grasped the fatal flaw of this physical trait: for an ordinary person possessing such hyper-acute hearing, cultivating would be a nightmare. The moment they closed their eyes and tried to enter the inner void, the surrounding noise would flood into their mind like a dam breaking, drawn inward as if attracted by a magnet, replacing peaceful meditation with a deafening storm of chaos.

However, such a handicap meant nothing to Belmoth Cross. As an experienced master of the higher realms, shutting out external noise was as simple as closing a door. The realization was merely a fascinating observation regarding his new physical shell.