Cultivator of the Shattered Heavens

The wind whispered in pain through the cracks of the dark stone.

Lin Feng took a deep breath, and every inhalation felt like a dull knife stabbing his lungs. The air in the Spirit Fractured Mine was thick with "Spirit Dust" — particles of energy eroded from the damaged spirit stone veins, toxic to anyone without basic cultivation. For mining slaves like him, each day was a slow race towards death.

His hands, wrapped in tattered cloth hardened by a mixture of sweat and blood, clawed at the blackish stone surface. The old iron hammer in his grip felt heavy as a mountain. Thud. Thud. Thud. The monotonous, despairing rhythm echoed in the narrow tunnel, lit only by the faint glow of "Glow Moss" growing on the ceiling.

"Faster, you maggots! The overseer wants ten carts filled by sunset!"

The shout of Overseer Gao, his voice hoarse and full of malice, cut through the air. His whip cracked near the head of an old slave next to Lin Feng, leaving a red streak on his gaunt back. The old slave staggered but made no sound, his eyes already hollow, his soul eroded years ago.

Lin Feng swung the hammer with his remaining strength. His sixteen-year-old body was thinner and more fragile than it should have been. His ribs were visible beneath pale, grimy skin. Yet, behind his dull brown eyes, an ember had not fully died. An ember of the will to live.

Three years, he thought, shoveling broken rock into a rickety wooden cart. Three years since they took him from the village. For a father's debt that never existed.

He remembered his mother's weeping face, his father's bound hands, and the cold stares of the debt collectors from the "Black Viper Gang". A debt of five spirit stones for his sick younger sister's medicine. His sister's death had been inevitable. And Lin Feng, his weak body deemed useless for any other work, was sold to this mine for three spirit stones.

"You! Lin Feng!"

The voice was right at his ear. Lin Feng froze. Overseer Gao stood before him, his rat-like face sneering. The stench of cheap liquor and foul sweat accompanied him.

"The cart is barely half full. Are you trying to slack off, hoping for an early death?" His whip pointed at Lin Feng's cart, which was indeed the emptiest.

"Overseer, the rock in this sector... is very hard. The spirit stone vein is exhausted," Lin Feng said hoarsely, trying to bow low. Defiance only invited more pain.

"Hard? Or you're just weak?" Gao raised his whip. "Maybe you need some... motivation!"

The whip lashed out with a hiss. Lin Feng instinctively raised his arm to protect his face. His thin skin tore, a sharp, burning pain spreading. He bit his lip until it bled to stifle a scream.

"Work! Until your hands bleed and your bones break!" Gao yelled before walking away, leaving Lin Feng trembling, blood dripping from his wound.

His blood fell to the ground, absorbed by the grey dust. Lin Feng pressed his wound with his tattered cloth, his vision swimming. He felt dizzy, the poison of the Spirit Dust and exhaustion attacking him together. In that moment of weakness, his eyes locked onto the stone before him.

The stone was ordinary grey, but there was a fine crack on its surface, emitting an extremely faint greenish light. A dying spirit vein. He had heard from the old slaves that this mine was once rich, but over-exploited by its owner sect, the "Verdant Vine Sect", leaving only toxic remnants.

Suddenly, a strange vibration was felt under his feet.

A rumble...

Not an ordinary rumble. It came from deep within the earth, a deep, threatening tremor. All the slaves in the tunnel stopped, their gazes full of fear.

"Earthquake?" someone whispered.

"No," said the old slave next to Lin Feng in a trembling voice, his eyes wide. "It's... the Fracture. It's unstable today."

"The Celestial Fracture." The name was uttered with fear and awe. Lin Feng had only heard rumors. It was said the heavens above this world shattered centuries ago in a war of gods. The fragments fell to earth, creating areas of anomalous energy like this mine. "Spirit Fractured" meant a place where the laws of nature themselves were cracked.

The tremor grew stronger. The wooden cart creaked, small stones fell from the ceiling.

"RUN! GET OUT!" Overseer Gao suddenly screamed, his face deathly pale. He was the first to turn and run toward the tunnel mouth.

Chaos erupted. Half-dead slaves scrambled, trampling each other, screaming in terror. Lin Feng staggered, trying to follow. But his weak, dizzy body made him stumble. He fell, his face hitting the dusty ground.

Boom!

A sound like shattering giant glass echoed from deep within the mine. An invisible shockwave of energy hit everyone in the tunnel. Lin Feng felt his chest being struck by a sledgehammer. He was thrown against a wall, seeing stars.

Then, purple light.

The light flooded the tunnel, coming from the same direction as the explosion. Not a warm light, but cold, alien, full of swirling energy particles like a miniature nebula. Lin Feng, half-conscious, saw it. Beautiful and terrifying.

"Falling star... from the Fracture..." mumbled the old slave before a large chunk of rock fell on him, silencing him forever.

Lin Feng tried to crawl. His right leg hurt terribly, probably broken. Amidst the chaos, his gaze was drawn to the source of the purple light. There was something there, at the end of the collapsed tunnel. A stone the size of a fist, deep purple with a light pattern like cracks within it, hovered half a meter above the ground, emitting energy that made the air vibrate.

Heaven's Core Shard.

The words appeared in his mind as if they had always been there.

Suddenly, the purple stone moved. As if possessing a will of its own, it shot through the air, avoiding falling debris, heading straight for Lin Feng.

"No—!" Lin Feng only managed a half-hearted shout before the stone struck him right in the chest.

Yet, there was no physical impact. The stone was like a ghost, merging into his body.

Unimaginable pain seized him. Not physical pain, but existential pain. As if every cell, every thought, every memory was being disassembled and reassembled. He saw—no, felt—fragments of the shattered heavens, the distorted laws of nature, a chaotic and majestic flow of energy.

Amidst that storm of pain, there was a point of calm. An "eye" at the center of the storm. Lin Feng's consciousness was pushed toward that point. And from there, he saw.

He saw his own body from within. He saw the dying flow of energy, the blocked meridian points, the Spirit Dust poison like black mist in his lungs. He saw it not as a vague image, but as a detailed three-dimensional diagram, with every component labeled by an intuitive understanding: [Meridian Lung - 87% Blocked], [Spirit Dust Toxin - Concentration 0.3 units], [Life Force - 12% and declining].

This... what is this?

Before he could understand, his consciousness was carried outward. He "saw" Overseer Gao running, and above his body, a similar, more complex diagram appeared: [Cultivation Base: Qi Refinement Stage 3], [Technique: Basic Earth Qi Art - Flawed, Efficiency 34%], [Injury: Old wound on left knee, reduces mobility by 15%].

He saw a stone on the ground, and its crystal structure unfolded in his mind: [Composition: 60% Silica, 25% Iron Ore, 5% Faded Spirit Energy...], [Structural Weakness: Points A, B, C along fracture lines].

The world around him was no longer made of solid objects. It was a collection of blueprints, of interconnected systems, of laws that could be observed and... deconstructed.

Deconstruction.

That word became the core of everything he was experiencing.

Lin Feng's consciousness centered back into his own body. The energy storm within him began to subside. The pain transformed into a strange sensation, as if his entire body was filled with a subtle electric current. He opened his eyes—his physical eyes.

The world looked different. Colors were more vivid. He could see dust particles dancing in the air, could hear the heartbeat of a wounded slave several meters away. And when he looked at the partially collapsed stone wall, he didn't just see rock. He saw a network of cracks, pressure points, weak lines of force.

A point of weakness, whispered his mind. Strike here, and that entire section will collapse with minimal effort.

"Lin Feng! You're still alive?"

The voice broke his concentration. It was Chen, a slave his age who sometimes shared his water ration. Chen ran over, his face covered in dust and fear. "Quick, we have to get out! This whole sector could collapse any moment!"

Lin Feng nodded, trying to get up. His right leg still hurt, but as he focused on it, a diagram [Tibia - Hairline Fracture, Minor Tissue Damage] appeared in his mind. He instinctively channeled a bit of the strange energy now filling his body—the energy from the purple stone—to that area. Not to heal, but to support, to stabilize. The pain lessened drastically, enough for him to stand, albeit limping.

"You... you can stand?" Chen asked, astonished.

"I can," Lin Feng said, his voice deeper and calmer than he expected. He glanced at his iron hammer lying on the ground. Its diagram appeared: [Wrought Iron, Low Quality, Stress Fracture near handle - 82% chance of breaking on next heavy impact].

He discarded it. Instead, he picked up a long, sharp stone shard from the ground. [Obsidian-like Shard, Sharp Edge, Brittle but sufficient].

"Follow me," Lin Feng said, not asking, but stating. His new eyes scanned the tunnel surroundings. He could see the airflow, could see vibrations in the ground indicating which parts were stable. "I know a way."

Chen, having no other choice, followed him. Lin Feng did not head for the main tunnel mouth, now clogged with debris and likely guarded by panicked overseers. Instead, he headed for a side wall, to an area that seemed solid.

"Here? But it's a dead end!" Chen protested.

Lin Feng raised his sharp stone shard. His eyes fixed on a point on the wall, about chest height. There, the diagram showed a high concentration of micro-cracks, spreading like a spider's web into the rock structure. [Structural Integrity: Critically Low. Applied force of approx. 50 jin will cause cascading failure.]

"Stand back. And cover your ears," Lin Feng said.

He took a breath. The strange energy in his body—a mix of his remaining life force and the energy from the Heaven's Core Shard—flowed through his arm into the stone shard. He knew no technique. He simply focused that energy on the point he saw, and stabbed.

Crack!

The sound was small. But to Lin Feng, it was like a trigger. He saw the lines of failure rapidly propagating through the rock in his mind. He pulled Chen back.

BRRROOOMMM!

A large section of the wall collapsed inward, not outward, revealing a dark hole. Not a man-made tunnel, but a natural fissure in the bedrock, likely formed when the mine was first dug.

Cold and relatively fresh air—free of Spirit Dust—blew from the fissure.

"How did you...?" Chen gaped.

"Lucky guess," Lin Feng said shortly. He couldn't explain. Not yet. "Come on. This is the way out."

Before entering, he glanced back once more at the chaos in the mine tunnel, at the corpse of the old slave, at the slave life he had just left behind. In his chest, where the purple stone had entered, he felt a warmth, like a small sun pulsing in rhythm with his heartbeat.

He was no longer Lin Feng, the sickly slave. He was something else. Something with eyes that could see into the heart of the world.

He was the Cultivator of the Shattered Heavens.

And his journey had only just begun.