THE BOY THEY CALLED A JINX BECAME THE SUPREME CULTIVATOR

3 - ANOMALY I

The wind roared past his ears, drowning out the lingering echoes of Mo Wudi's laughter as the cliff face rapidly disappeared into the dark.

He fell through the freezing night air with his eyes wide open, watching the jagged silhouette of Lingyun Cliff shrink against the starry sky above him.

Gravity yanked him downward toward the churning black expanse of the Forbidden Demon Ocean with terrifying speed.

Every disciple of the Azure Dragon Hall knew the horrifying stories about these cursed waters that bordered the edge of their territory.

The elders claimed the ocean was a vat of living acid that stripped skin from bone in a matter of seconds, erasing any trace of life.

He braced himself for the burning agony of dissolution as the dark waves rushed up to swallow his broken body.

The impact hit him like a solid wall of bedrock rather than a yielding body of liquid.

A sickening crack echoed through his right shoulder as the blunt force of the water shattered his collarbone upon entry.

The freezing current instantly dragged him under the surface, tumbling him through a chaotic swirl of bubbles and pitch-black depths.

He could not hold his breath because the paralyzing drug still locked his lungs in a rigid, useless state.

He waited for the acidic water to eat through his clothes and begin melting his flesh from the outside in.

Instead, the ocean simply felt unbelievably heavy and piercingly cold against his exposed skin.

A thick ribbon of his own blood drifted upward from the gaping wound in his chest, curling gracefully into the dark tide.

The moment that crimson trail mixed with the black water, the surrounding ocean seemed to shudder around him in response.

It was not the random churning of a surface storm, but a deliberate, almost conscious contraction of the deep waters.

The fluid pressing against his skin suddenly thickened, shifting from a chaotic liquid into a dense, gelatinous pressure.

The water wrapped tightly around his broken body, sealing the freezing temperatures away and binding his shattered collarbone firmly in place.

He found himself suspended within a dark, pressurized cocoon that felt unnervingly alive as it cradled him.

The demonic ocean was not trying to dissolve him as it did to everything else that fell from the sky.

It was actively pulling him down into the abyss, guiding him away from the turbulent surface.

The descent was terrifyingly fast, carrying him deeper into a sunless trench where the sheer weight of the water above should have instantly crushed his skull.

The protective cocoon pushed back against the encroaching atmospheric pressure, maintaining just enough equilibrium to keep his internal organs from rupturing.

A heavy ambient energy seeped through the membrane of the cocoon, filtering microscopic amounts of breathable oxygen directly through his pores to keep his brain functioning.

The paralysis from the sect toxin finally began to recede, leaving his nerve endings raw and highly sensitive to the encroaching chill.

With the numbness fading, the true horror of his empty core crashed over him like a second devastating wave.

It did not just hurt like a standard flesh wound or a severed artery bleeding out into the dark.

It felt as though an essential beating organ had been scooped out of his chest, leaving a gaping cavity in his very soul.

Phantom pains flared through his severed meridians, sending ghost-spasms of non-existent Indigo Qi sparking through his nervous system.

His body desperately tried to circulate energy that was no longer there, resulting in a suffocating hollow ache that made him want to vomit.

He drifted in and out of consciousness as the cocoon plunged deeper into the lightless void, losing all sense of time and direction.

As the cocoon sank deeper, the faint moonlight penetrating the upper layers of the ocean vanished entirely.

He passed through a twilight zone where strange bioluminescent creatures darted away from his descending form in a panic.

Glowing jellyfish with trailing venomous tentacles bounced harmlessly off the pressurized barrier surrounding him.

He watched them pulse with eerie neon colors, serving as the only sources of light in a world rapidly turning to black.

The water temperature plummeted rapidly outside the cocoon, forming tiny ice crystals on the exterior of his barrier.

He could feel the chill seeping through the membrane, biting at his exposed toes and fingers as the depth increased.

His breath plumed in the small pocket of air filtering into his enclosure, clouding his vision slightly.

He wondered what ancient power was keeping him alive in a place designed by nature to kill everything it touched.

The legends never mentioned the ocean taking prisoners or weaving protective spells around fallen cultivators.

It was always described as a hungry beast that consumed Qi and flesh without any prejudice or mercy.

Yet here he was, sinking into the belly of the beast, cradled safely by the very waters that should have melted his bones to dust.

Perhaps the ocean recognized the emptiness inside him, or perhaps it saw a kindred spirit in a boy who had just been hollowed out and discarded by the world above.

The sensory deprivation of the pitch-black water soon began to play cruel tricks on his fracturing mind.

A faint golden light flickered in the darkness ahead of him, taking the shape of the grand lanterns hanging in the Azure Dragon Hall.

He blinked, trying to clear the vision, but the solid wooden floor of the sect courtyard materialized beneath his floating feet.

"You are late for morning practice again, Zhentian," a familiar, stern voice echoed through the heavy water.

Elder Bai stood in the hallucinated courtyard with his hands clasped behind his back, looking down at him with that usual mixture of pity and expectation.

Zhentian tried to speak, but the water in his throat turned his words into a silent stream of bubbles escaping his lips.

"I gave you a roof and a bed when you had nothing," the phantom of Elder Bai continued, his face blurring slightly at the edges.

"You gave me a debt I could never repay," Zhentian finally managed to wheeze out, the sound vibrating strangely within the water cocoon.

The hallucination shifted rapidly, the lanterns turning a sickly shade of green as Mo Wudi stepped out from behind his father.

Mo Wudi wore the exact same manic sneer he had on the cliff, tossing the glowing Indigo Spirit Root between his hands like a cheap toy.

"He is right, you know," the phantom of Mo Wudi mocked, stepping closer to where Zhentian hovered in the dark.

"You were always a stray dog begging for scraps from a family that never truly wanted you."

Zhentian clenched his uninjured hand into a fist, the pain in his chest flaring up as he tried to summon Qi to strike the illusion.

Nothing happened, leaving him helpless as the phantom laughed at his pathetic attempt to fight back.

"Look at you," Mo Wudi said, tracing a finger over the glowing root in his hands.

"You have no foundation, no family, and now you have no future left to fight for."

"I am still breathing," Zhentian replied, his voice rough and laced with a cold, sharp edge.