THE VOID THRONE

CHAPTER 10

Old Madam Chen told him about it over dinner.

She set down a slightly larger portion than usual — he noticed that immediately, because she never gave him more without a reason — and looked at him with her narrow, calculating eyes.

"You're going to the capital," she said.

Wei Liang paused. "Am I?"

"Sect Leader's announcing it tomorrow. Youth Summit. Big national cultivation competition. Three nations competing. You're named in the official invitation letter personally." She kept watching his face. "You're not surprised."

"I'm a little surprised."

She studied him. "You're different than you were six months ago."

"I sleep better now."

A long pause. She turned to go.

Then stopped.

"There's a boy at the capital," she said, the same way she'd say the good soap is on the second shelf — like obvious information anyone would already have. "Works the registration tables at the Imperial Bureau of Cultivation. Name is Pei. If you ever need to know something that doesn't appear in any official record — he's who you find. Tell him Old Chen sent you."

She walked away.

Wei Liang sat with his larger portion of food and thought about a woman who had worked the same kitchen for forty years and somehow knew an information contact at the Imperial Bureau of Cultivation.

He filed it away. Carefully. Next to all the other things he was collecting.

Not yet, he told himself. Not ready for that one yet.

He ate his food. It was better than usual.

The Sect Leader announced the Summit team on Wednesday.

Zhao Peng. Lin Fei. Han Ru. Wei Liang.

The Academy's reaction went through all its predictable stages. Disbelief. Resentment. The particular quietness of people who have complained to someone in authority and been told no. Two Senior Brothers went to the Sect Leader. They came back looking like they'd bitten into something hard. Elder Tian posted the announcement and closed her office door.

Under the four names, the Sect Leader had written one line:

The letter named Wei Liang specifically. He goes.

Wei Liang saw it while sweeping past. Read his name. Read it again.

Kept sweeping.

Two weeks before departure. Late at night. Deep in a new Void Breathing variation.

The breakthrough came without warning.

One moment — sitting quietly, the Void Qi in its usual steady current. The next — something inside him broke open like a door kicked inward from the other side, and the energy doubled.

Not gradually. Not slowly. Doubled, instantly and completely.

A second channel — one he hadn't known existed — tore open inside him and suddenly the Void Qi was flowing through twice the space it had before. Twice as wide. Twice as strong. Twice as cold.

The cold hit him first. A wave of it rushing through new pathways that had never carried anything before. His back snapped straight. His hands hit the floor without him deciding to put them there. He could see his own breath in the room.

Then the room reacted.

Every candle went out. Not one at a time — all at once, all the candles in his room and every candle in the corridor outside, snuffed as though an invisible hand had passed over them. The wooden frame of his bed groaned like something waking up. Outside, the birds in the pine tree — every single one of them — launched themselves into the night sky in a sudden, startled rush, wings beating hard, filling the quiet with noise for three full seconds before fading into the dark.

Then silence.

Total and ringing.

Wei Liang knelt on his mat with his hands on the cold floor and his breath coming fast and the whole world feeling like a bell that had just been struck and was still humming.

Fourth Layer, the System said, after what felt like a very long time. It said it quietly. Like the moment was too big for a lot of words. You made it.

Wei Liang pressed his forehead down to the mat.

He stayed like that for a long time.

Not for anyone watching. There was no one watching. He stayed like that because his body needed to do something with what he was feeling and this was the thing it chose — to go down, all the way down, and stay there for a moment, and let the bigness of it just be big.

Then he sat up.

"What's the gift?" he said.

Sword Soul Cultivation, the System said. A technique that hasn't been practised in this region in over a thousand years. Ready to hear about it?

"Yes."

Then read this first.

The scripture appeared — pages of golden light, line after line of words and diagrams. And at the very top, before anything else:

For those who cut through that which should not be cut.

Wei Liang read that line. Read it again. Three times. There was a second meaning underneath it that he couldn't quite reach — like a word you know but can't remember, right at the tip of your tongue.

What do you think it means? the System asked.

Wei Liang thought about it seriously. "Things that were decided," he said slowly. "Things that were supposed to be permanent and unquestionable. Like — the grey stone. Zero roots means nothing. That was supposed to be final." He paused. "Uncut."

The System was quiet for a moment.

I really did find the right person, it said. And there was something in the way it said it — something quieter and older and heavier than its usual friendly tone. Like those words meant more than they appeared to.

Read the full scripture, it said. I'll be here.

Wei Liang read until sunrise.