THE BOY THEY CALLED A JINX BECAME THE SUPREME CULTIVATOR

5 - ABYSSAL I

Ye Canghai delivered the warning with a casual indifference that made the freezing ocean currents feel warm by comparison.

Zhentian glared at the old man sitting on the throne of leviathan skulls, refusing to let his vision blur.

He pushed his uninjured hand deeper into the thick mud, forcing his trembling muscles to support his weight.

His right shoulder slumped at a sickening angle, the shattered collarbone grinding against itself with every microscopic shift.

"I told you," Zhentian ground out through clenched teeth, tasting fresh blood on his tongue.

"I am not going to die in the dirt."

He managed to lift his chest another inch off the seabed, aiming to drag his knees beneath his body.

The moment he shifted his center of gravity, a blinding flash of agony ripped through his hollowed torso.

The stab wound Mo Wudi had left behind was not just a puncture in his flesh.

It was a gaping, ragged tear that led directly into the empty space where his cultivation foundation used to reside.

His arm buckled instantly under the sudden wave of dizziness.

Zhentian collapsed face-first into the freezing muck, the impact driving the breath from his lungs in a rush of silver bubbles.

He lay there gasping, the bitter cold of the abyssal trench seeping into his bones and draining the last reserves of his strength.

The faint blue glow emanating from Ye Canghai illuminated the cloud of dark blood drifting up from Zhentian’s chest.

"Stubbornness is a luxury for those who still have blood in their veins," the old man observed quietly.

Ye Canghai did not move from his morbid throne, simply returning his attention to the slow, rhythmic scraping of the whetstone against his weapon.

"Do you have a coagulation pill?" Zhentian whispered into the mud, the cold numbing his lips.

"This is a graveyard, boy," Ye Canghai replied, not even bothering to look up from his work.

"Do I look like a sect apothecary keeping a stash of sweet-tasting remedies for careless disciples?"

"You look like a man who prefers quiet," Zhentian shot back, forcing his head up to meet the old man's gaze.

"If I bleed to death right here, my rotting corpse is going to attract every bottom-feeder in this trench to your doorstep."

Ye Canghai chuckled, a dry and rattling sound that carried effortlessly through the heavy water.

"The scavengers will strip your bones clean in a matter of minutes," Ye Canghai noted, blowing a speck of dust from his blade.

"They are very efficient cleaners, so you hardly pose an inconvenience to my peace."

Zhentian gritted his teeth, realizing the scarred stranger truly intended to sit there and watch him bleed out.

There would be no last-minute rescue, no sudden act of mercy from a hidden master, and no miraculous healing array.

If he wanted to survive the next ten minutes, he was going to have to fix his failing body himself.

He closed his eyes and forced his erratic breathing to slow down, falling back on the foundational training he had learned years ago.

Before a cultivator could summon a weapon or cast a technique, they had to know how to seal their own wounds using internal Qi.

It was a basic survival skill taught to every child who entered the Azure Dragon Hall.

All he needed to do was tap into his core, pull a thread of energy into his severed meridians, and force the torn blood vessels to stitch themselves shut.

Zhentian turned his focus inward, bypassing the blinding pain of his broken collarbone and the freezing temperatures gnawing at his skin.

He reached into the center of his chest, instinctively searching for the familiar, roaring river of his peerless Indigo Spirit Root.

He found nothing but a vast, suffocating emptiness.

The hollow void echoed with the phantom pains of the violent extraction, reminding him of Mo Wudi’s bloodstained hands.

Panic flickered at the edges of his mind, but he shoved it aside and pushed his awareness deeper into the damaged pathways of his core.

The demonic ocean had wrapped him in a pressurized cocoon during his descent, preventing the acidic waters from melting his flesh.

It had also done something else while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

As he probed the ragged edges of his shattered core, he felt a strange, sluggish pulse hiding deep within the ruined tissue.

The living waters had attempted to patch the gaping hole Mo Wudi left behind.

Zhentian seized that faint pulse of energy, desperately trying to drag it upward toward his bleeding chest wound.

The backlash hit him like a warhammer swinging directly into his sternum.

He arched his back, a silent scream tearing its way up his throat as the foreign energy scraped through his broken meridians.

It was not the smooth, blindingly fast current of his former Indigo Qi.

This energy was thick, heavy, and agonizingly slow, feeling like jagged glass dragging through his veins.

He forced his eyes open, staring at the mud beneath his face as a sudden, sickening realization washed over him.

He recognized the exact texture and color of the sluggish energy moving through his system.

It was a Yellow Spirit Root.

The ancient ocean had not given him a miraculous blessing or forged a new divine foundation in his chest.

It had simply gathered the lowest, most pathetic scraps of ambient energy available and shoved them into his wounds to keep his organs from shutting down.

He possessed a fractured, dormant Yellow Root.

In the rigid hierarchy of the cultivation world, the Yellow Root was the absolute bottom of the barrel.

It was the talent level of the unwashed mortals who swept the courtyards and scrubbed the latrines of the Azure Dragon Hall.

Cultivators with a Yellow Root could barely absorb enough ambient Qi to light a candle, let alone refine their bodies for martial combat.

They were destined to live short, irrelevant lives, forever trapped beneath the boots of the strong.

Zhentian stared into the dark abyss, the crushing weight of his new reality hitting him harder than the fall from Lingyun Cliff.

He was a cripple.

He had gone from being the peerless genius destined to rule the Eastern Continent to a piece of trash lying in the mud.

Mo Wudi had not just stolen his power; the older boy had permanently severed his destiny.

"You look like you just realized a terrible truth," Ye Canghai remarked, his voice cutting through the heavy silence.

Zhentian did not answer, his hands curling into tight fists as a dark, venomous bitterness swelled in his chest.

He tried to force the pathetic yellow Qi to move faster, stubbornly demanding the sluggish energy to seal the massive wound.

The fragile, fractured root could not handle the sudden demand.

A sharp, audible pop echoed from his chest as the strained meridians violently snapped under the pressure.

The backlash ripped the stab wound wider open, tearing through the hastily coagulated blood and exposing raw tissue to the freezing water.