The Forsaken Disciple: Rise of the Immortal Emperor

Chapter 3: The Forgotten Immortal (Part I)

Darkness pressed against Chen from every direction.

It was not the darkness of night, nor the soft emptiness that waited behind closed eyes. This darkness felt older than either of those things, deeper than shadow, as though he had drifted into a place where light had never been born.

His consciousness moved through the endless void like a leaf carried by an invisible current. He did not feel himself falling. No wind brushed against his skin.

No sound reached him except the slow, steady rhythm of his own heartbeat, which seemed unnaturally loud in the vast silence.

Am I... dead?

The thought rose instinctively.

The last thing he remembered was collapsing beside the ruined statue after the broken jade dissolved into golden light and vanished into his body. After that, there had only been pain, a whisper in his mind, and then nothing.

Had Zhao Feng returned while he lay helpless?

Had the strange power hidden inside the pendant consumed him?

He tried to move. Nothing happened. His body refused to answer him, as if flesh and bone no longer existed and only thought remained. A faint unease spread through him.

For years, Chen had accepted the possibility that he might one day die without anyone noticing. A disciple who could not cultivate was not the sort of person people remembered after death. He had made peace with that long ago, or at least he had believed he had.

Yet now, suspended in this endless emptiness, he discovered something he had never expected. He was not afraid of dying. He was afraid of dying before he learned the truth.

Why had the pendant chosen him?

Why had that ancient voice called him a descendant?

And who were they?

The questions gnawed at him with quiet cruelty, circling his mind again and again like wolves that refused to leave. Then, in the far distance, a single point of light appeared.

It was tiny, no larger than a firefly, and yet it shone with such clarity that it immediately drew his eye. It pulsed once. The darkness around it rippled. Then a second light appeared, and a third, and then a thousand more.

In the span of a single heartbeat, the empty void transformed into an endless sea of stars that stretched farther than Chen could comprehend.

Their radiance washed over him from every direction until he could no longer tell where the darkness ended and the heavens began.

He drew in a sharp breath. The stars were not above him. They surrounded him.

Some burned with azure fire, bright and cold as immortal flame. Others glowed crimson, violet, silver, or a dazzling gold that looked almost alive.

Rivers of starlight flowed through the void in vast shimmering currents, weaving across the heavens like celestial dragons crossing an unseen sea.

Chen had never imagined such beauty could exist. For a moment, the sight robbed him of every thought. Then the stars began to move.

At first, their motion was slow and almost graceful, as though the entire cosmos had begun to turn in silent reverence. Gradually, Chen realized they were revolving around a single point somewhere ahead.

He lifted his gaze toward it. The moment he saw what stood at the center of that celestial expanse, his pupils contracted. A palace floated in the heart of the cosmos.

It was so vast that mountains would have looked insignificant beneath its shadow. Its foundations rested on nothing at all, suspended among the stars as if the heavens themselves had been shaped around its existence.

Ancient jade pillars rose into the endless sky. Golden bridges linked floating terraces of crystal. Vast dragons formed from pure spiritual light coiled around towering spires before dissolving into clouds of silver mist.

Every inch of the structure radiated an indescribable presence. It was not oppressive. It was majestic. The palace did not feel like a mere building. It felt alive. Without realizing it, Chen took a step forward.

The stars beneath his feet shimmered. A bridge of light unfolded before him.

He stopped in surprise, but the luminous path remained, stretching all the way to the palace gates as though it had been waiting for his arrival.

His heartbeat quickened. Step by step, he began to walk. The bridge carried him through a silence so complete that it seemed sacred.

No voices echoed across the heavens. No guards stood watch over the impossible palace. No servants moved through its halls. He heard only a distant, mournful wind drifting through stone corridors older than memory.

By the time he reached the towering gates, he realized they were already open. It was not the sort of opening that suggested neglect. It felt deliberate, as though someone had expected him.

Chen hesitated at the threshold, then called out cautiously, “Hello?”

His voice echoed through the vastness and vanished. No answer came. After only a moment’s hesitation, he stepped inside. The palace seemed endless.

Its corridors stretched so far into the distance that they faded into shadow and starlight. Murals lined the walls on both sides, each one carved with such detail that it appeared almost alive.

The scenes they depicted were unlike anything Chen had ever seen in the mortal world. One mural showed a lone cultivator splitting an ocean in half with a single stroke of his sword.

Another depicted countless immortals kneeling before a throne that remained shrouded in blinding radiance.

A third showed stars falling like rain over a battlefield littered with the corpses of dragons and phoenixes. The more Chen looked, the more uneasy he became.