The Azure Cloud Province was not a place that rewarded resilience; it only prolonged the suffering of those who refused to die.
By the afternoon of his fourth day wandering the frozen expanse, Shang Jue was no longer walking. He was dragging his failing body through knee-deep snow, leaving a gruesome trail of red behind him. The frostbite had turned his toes black and unfeeling, while the skin of his bare feet had split open, bleeding sluggishly into the ice.
Hunger was no longer a sharp pain in his stomach; it had evolved into a hollow, gnawing void that seemed to consume his very organs from the inside out. His vision swam with gray spots. The rusted iron axe head in his right hand felt as heavy as a mountain, his fingers locked around it in a frozen, rigor-mortis grip.
He was twelve years old. His body had been pushed past the absolute limits of mortal endurance three days ago. Only the terrifying, black inferno of his severed heart kept his legs moving. /will not die in the dirt. I will not die a mortal.
The wind began to howl, sweeping sheets of blinding white snow across the plains. A blizzard was descending.
Shang Jue stopped, leaning his weight against a jagged outcrop of dark stone. His breath plumed faintly in the freezing air. He needed to find prey, or he needed to find shelter, but the whiteout conditions were rapidly erasing the world around him.
Suddenly, the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end.
The wind shifted, and with it came a scent that cut through the sterile smell of snow. It was a foul, metallic stench-the smell of rotting meat, wet fur, and dried blood.
A low, vibrating growl reverberated through the veil of the blizzard. It was not the normal, high-pitched howl of a common timber wolf. This sound was impossibly deep, resonating in Shang Jue's chest cavity. It carried a faint, suffocating heaviness that made his lungs violently constrict.
From the swirling white mist, a massive silhouette emerged.
Shang Jue's dark eyes narrowed. It was a Frost-Tooth Direwolf, but its size was deeply unnatural. It stood as tall as a full-grown tiger, its matted fur a dirty, blood-stained white that blended perfectly with the storm. But its most terrifying features were its eyes-they glowed with a sickly, pale blue luminescence, and faint wisps of freezing mist drifted from its massive, razor-sharp jaws.
This was no ordinary wild animal. This was a beast that had passively absorbed the thin, ambient Spiritual Qi of the wilderness over years, evolving past its mortal limits to become a low-level Demonic Beast. To a cultivator in the early stages of Qi Condensation, it was a minor nuisance. To a starved, half-frozen
mortal boy, it was an inescapable executioner.
The beast locked its glowing blue eyes onto Shang Jue. It did not roar or posture. It simply lowered its massive head, its muscles coiling beneath its thick hide like steel springs. It saw no threat in the tiny, shivering human. It saw only a desperate, easy meal to sustain it through the blizzard.
Shang Jue did not run. His frozen legs could not outrun a common hound, let alone a beast empowered by the ambient energy of the world.
He pushed himself away from the rock, widening his stance. He raised the heavy, jagged axe head with both trembling hands, pointing the rusted iron toward the monster. His dark eyes, devoid of any child-like panic, locked onto the glowing blue gaze of the direwolf. There was no terror in the boy's face. There was only a cold, cornered brutality.
The direwolf lunged.
It moved with a terrifying, unnatural speed, a blur of white fur and snapping jaws that defied the heavy snow. Shang Jue tried to throw his body to the side, but his frozen muscles refused to obey in time.
The beast's massive paw struck his left shoulder like a falling boulder.
A sickening CRACK echoed loudly over the howling wind. Shang Jue's collarbone splintered instantly. The sheer kinetic force lifted his small body off the ground, sending him flying backward. He crashed violently into a snowdrift, the air violently expelled from his lungs.
Pain, sharp and blinding, exploded through his upper body. Before he could even draw a breath to scream, the immense weight of the beast was upon him.
The direwolf pinned him to the frozen earth, its massive jaws opening wide to snap the boy's neck in half. The sickening, rotting stench of its breath washed over Shang Jue's face, and hot saliva dripped onto his cheek.
In that fraction of a second, relying entirely on raw, animalistic survival instinct, Shang Jue thrust his right arm upward, jamming the rusted iron axe head horizontally between the beast's descending jaws.
CLANG!
The direwolf's massive fangs clamped down violently on the rusted iron. The sheer force of the bite sent agonizing, bone-rattling shockwaves down Shang Jue's arm. The beast snarled, its glowing blue eyes burning with fury as it tried to crush the metal and the boy beneath it. Its razor-sharp claws dug into Shang Jue's chest, shredding his coarse tunic and slicing deep, bloody grooves into his flesh.
Shang Jue let out a raw, guttural scream. He pushed against the axe head with every ounce of his fading strength, his muscles tearing under the strain, keeping the snapping fangs a mere inch from his throat. Hot blood from his lacerated chest soaked into the snow beneath him, melting the ice.
He was dying. The cold, the starvation, and now the massive blood loss were rapidly shutting down his mortal vessel. His vision began to tunnel, the edges turning a suffocating black. The crushing weight of the Demonic Beast was simply too much for a human frame to endure.
Is this it? A voice echoed in the fading recesses of his mind. Killed by an arrogant immortal's stray strike, and now eaten by a wild dog in the dirt? Is this the end of the vow?
Beneath his torn, blood-soaked tunic, The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth suddenly grew searingly hot against his skin. It burned like a brand against his chest, a silent, resonant command echoing directly into his soul.
He had reached the absolute brink. The threshold between life and death.
Shang Jue's dimming mind violently flashed back to the glowing silver text he had read in the crevice:
"Do not knock on the door of the meridians. Shatter them. Draw the chaotic breath of the world directly into the flesh. Let it tear you apart... Only a will heavier than the heavens can survive the First Breath of the Abyss."
Shang Jue was suffocating under the beast. He had no air. He had no physical strength left to fight.
But as the world faded to black, a terrifying, defiant madness overtook his severed heart. If he was going to die, he would not die a weak, suffocating ant. He would not die a mortal.
He stopped trying to push the beast away. He stopped trying to breathe the thin, freezing air.
Instead, he closed his eyes, completely surrendering his physical defense. He focused his mind entirely on the terrifying, chaotic energy radiating from the demonic beast above him, and the bitter, freezing essence of the winter storm swirling around them.
He didn't gently try to perceive the Spiritual Qi. In an act of absolute, suicidal desperation, he opened the floodgates of his mortal body and forcefully dragged the violent energy of the world inward.
The world did not simply change; it exploded.
In the moment Shang Jue surrendered his mortal defense and opened the gates of his soul, he did not find the serene "Spiritual Qi" described in common legends. He found a tidal wave of jagged, freezing glass.
The ambient energy of the storm-the raw, unrefined essence of the winter and the chaotic, predatory aura radiating from the Frost-Tooth Direwolf-slammed into his chest like a falling star. For a normal human, this would have resulted in instantaneous cellular collapse. Their closed, fragile meridians would have turned to steam, leaving nothing but a red mist in the snow.
But Shang Jue's interior was anchored by a Will that had already died and been reborn in the fires of vengeance.
BOOM!
A sound like cracking glaciers echoed inside his skull. The icy Qi tore into his skin, bypassing his pores and ripping directly into his flesh. Shang Jue's eyes snapped open, his pupils dilating until his eyes were two orbs of absolute, midnight black. He let out a horrific, blood-curdling roar as the violent energy hammered against his blocked meridians.
He did not knock. He did not plead. He used the Qi as a battering ram.
One by one, the natural locks of his mortal vessel were blasted open. It was the most excruciating agony a sentient being could endure-far worse than the direwolf's claws. It felt as though his veins were being flayed from his muscles and replaced with white-hot iron wires.
The Qi carved a path through his body by sheer, brutal force, turning his stagnant blood into a raging torrent. It spiraled through his broken collarbone, the energy forcefully knitting the bone fragments back together in a crude, violent restoration.
Finally, the chaotic flood reached his center. It crashed into his empty Dantian, swirling with such ferocity that it threatened to burst his abdomen.
First Stage of Qi Condensation: The Gathering of Breath.
He had achieved it. Not through years of meditation or the guidance of a Master, but through a brutal, forceful violation of the laws of the Heavens.
The sudden, explosive eruption of energy from the "food" beneath it sent a shockwave of spiritual pressure outward. The Frost-Tooth Direwolf, sensing the terrifying, unnatural shift in the boy's aura, instinctively recoiled. Its glowing blue eyes widened in animalistic shock, its jaws loosening on the rusted axe head for a single, fatal heartbeat.
That was the only window Shang Jue needed.
With a snarl that sounded more like a demon than a boy, Shang Jue channeled the raw, unrefined Qi from his newly formed Dantian directly into his right arm. The muscles beneath his skin visibly bulged, the skin cracking and bleeding under the unaccustomed pressure.
He gripped the rusted iron axe head, his fingers no longer trembling but locked with the strength of a vice. He didn't just push; he struck.
He drove the jagged metal wedge upward with a strength that defied his small frame. Empowered by the violent Qi of the Abyss, the rusted iron tore through the direwolf's thick, winter hide as if it were wet parchment.
The axe head sank deep into the soft, vulnerable underside of the beast's throat. Shang Jue twisted the metal, severing the windpipe and tearing through the major arteries in a single, brutal motion.
A geyser of boiling hot, dark blood erupted from the wound, showering Shang Jue in a grotesque, steaming baptism. The massive direwolf let out a gargled, choking whine. It tried to claw at him one last time, but its strength was failing. Its heavy paws struck the frozen earth weakly, its glowing blue eyes flickering and then going dark.
The beast collapsed. Its massive, dead weight slumped onto Shang Jue, its hot blood melting the snow around them into a crimson slush.
Shang Jue lay beneath the carcass, his chest heaving. Every breath pulled in the freezing air, but it no longer burned. The small, violent vortex in his Dantian was spinning steadily, filtering the cold and pumping a thin, constant stream of warmth through his repaired meridians.
He reached up with a blood-slicked hand and pushed the heavy body of the predator off him. He stood up slowly, his movements no longer stiff or fragile. He was covered from head to toe in the gore of the beast, his torn tunic revealing the deep, jagged scars on his chest that were already beginning to seal.
He looked down at the dead direwolf, then at his own hands. He could feel it-the thrumming, dark heartbeat of the world's energy flowing within him.
He had survived. He had ascended.
Shang Jue reached into the snow and retrieved the rusted axe head, wiping the wolf's blood onto his leg. He looked toward the horizon, where the blizzard was beginning to thin. For the first time since the burial, a cold, predatory smile touched his lips.
He was no longer the prey.
The storm began to break, leaving behind a world painted entirely in white and red.
Shang Jue stood amidst the carnage, the violent thrum of his newly opened meridians singing a dark, intoxicating melody in his ears. The First Stage of Qi Condensation had granted him strength he had never known, but the euphoria of the breakthrough was fleeting.
A sharp, agonizing cramp twisted his stomach, forcing him to his knees.
He had broken through the mortal boundary, but he was far from shedding his mortal coil. Cultivators in the Earthly Transcendence realm could survive on the Essence of Heaven and Earth alone, abstaining from mundane food. But Shang Jue was merely at the starting line. His Dantian was a shallow puddle of energy, and his physical body was still starving, heavily traumatized, and desperately requiring raw sustenance to fuel the fiery furnace of his new metabolism.
He looked down at the massive corpse of the Frost-Tooth Direwolf. To a mortal, it was a terrifying monster. To Shang Jue, it was a mountain of resources.
Grasping the rusted iron axe head tightly, he crawled toward the beast's underbelly. He did not have the luxury of a fire, nor the patience to build one in the damp snow. Survival in the Abyss demanded savagery.
He drove the rusted iron into the wolf's chest cavity, using his enhanced strength to carve through the thick muscles and tough hide. He tore out chunks of the hot, raw meat. He didn't chew; he simply swallowed, letting the primal hunger take over. The meat was tough, stringy, and tasted of copper and wild fear, but to a boy who had survived on watery gruel, it was the nectar of the gods.
As the bloody meat hit his stomach, his newly awakened Dantian reacted instinctively. The small, swirling vortex of gray Qi flared, acting like a metaphysical millstone. It ground down the dense, Qi-infused meat of the Demonic Beast, extracting the residual energy and rushing it directly into his bloodstream to repair his torn muscles and fractured collarbone.
As he carved deeper into the beast's chest, nearing the heart, the jagged edge of his iron axe struck something hard. It did not sound like bone. It produced a sharp, resonant clink.
Shang Jue paused, wiping the blood from his eyes. He dug his fingers into the gore and pulled the object free.
It was a crystalline sphere, roughly the size of a walnut. It glowed with a faint, mesmerizing pale blue luminescence, radiating a biting chill that immediately frosted the blood on his hand.
A Beast Core.
It was the concentrated essence of the direwolf's years of passive cultivation-the very source of its demonic power. In the prosperous central plains, a low-level core like this would be traded for a few low-grade spirit stones, used by alchemists to brew minor frost-resistance pills.
But out here in the destitute wasteland, it was an absolute treasure.
Beneath his ruined tunic, The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth pulsed with a sudden, greedy heat. The silver text flashed across his mind's eye once more: 'The path of Absolute Plunder. Do not beg the heavens. Seize it.'
Orthodox cultivators would take months to slowly and carefully absorb a Beast Core, meditating in quiet chambers, filtering out the chaotic, bestial intent locked within the crystal to avoid damaging their Dao foundation.
Shang Jue did not have months. He had the cold dirt and a severed heart.
He sat cross-legged in the blood-stained snow. He placed the freezing Beast Core in the palm of his right hand and closed his eyes. He did not attempt to filter the energy. He fully embraced the violent decree of the ancient manual.
He mentally seized the vortex in his Dantian and forcefully reversed its flow, turning it from a gentle filter into a ravenous black hole.
Devour.
The pale blue crystal in his hand trembled violently. The cold Qi within it shrieked, resisting the pull, but Shang Jue's terrifying willpower crushed the remnant beast intent like a hammer striking glass. A thick stream of visible, icy blue vapor erupted from the core, spiraling up his arm and plunging directly into his chest. Agony returned, but this time, Shang Jue welcomed it. The icy energy flooded his meridians, expanding them, reinforcing the pathways that had been violently torn open earlier. His Dantian expanded, the gray vortex absorbing the blue light, growing denser, spinning faster, and solidifying his unstable foundation.
In mere minutes, the walnut-sized crystal cracked and turned into a pile of dull, gray ash in his palm.
Shang Jue exhaled, a long stream of frost shooting from his lips. He opened his eyes. The whites of his eyes momentarily flashed with a pale blue light before settling back into the dark, abyssal black.
His cultivation had not just stabilized; he had pushed his First Stage of Qi Condensation to its absolute peak. His senses were terrifyingly sharp. He could hear the snowflakes landing on the rocks fifty yards away. He could feel the microscopic shifts in the wind.
He stood up. The boy who had shivered in the crevice was gone.
Taking the rusted axe head, Shang Jue spent the next hour meticulously skinning the massive direwolf. He draped the heavy, blood-stained white fur over his frail shoulders, using his father's
frayed hemp rope to tie it securely around his waist. The thick hide immediately trapped his body heat, shielding him completely from the winter gale.
Draped in the mantle of the beast he had slaughtered, armed with a rusted piece of iron, and carrying the most heretical scripture the heavens had ever seen, Shang Jue turned his gaze toward the horizon.
The sun was finally breaking through the clouds, casting long, golden rays across the frozen plains of the Azure Cloud Province.
It was a new dawn.
"The Heavenly Sword Pavilion," Shang Jue whispered to the wind, his voice steady and cold.
"Wait for me."
Leaving the stripped bones of the direwolf behind, the
mortal-turned-demon began his long march out of the wasteland, taking his first true step into the vast, treacherous world of mortal-turned-demon began his long march out of the wasteland, taking his first true step into the vast, treacherous world of Cultivation.
....
.......
.........
The Azure Cloud Province was vast, a seemingly endless ocean of jagged ice and dead earth.
Yet, to Shang Jue, the world had fundamentally changed. It was no longer a lifeless void; it was a canvas painted with the invisible currents of the Great Dao.
As he trekked across the frozen tundra, the heavy direwolf pelt shielding him from the biting wind, his newly awakened Dantian hummed like a restless engine.
His senses, sharpened by the First Stage of Qi Condensation, picked up details that mortal eyes would forever miss.
Near the base of a frosted boulder, his gaze locked onto a small patch of vegetation. It was a cluster of pale, translucent grass that seemed to defy the killing frost. To a normal woodcutter, it was just weeds. But Shang Jue could see it. A faint, swirling aura of cool, white energy hovered over the blades.
The plant was naturally passively drawing in the ambient Spiritual Qi of the winter.
Guided by the primal instincts awakened by The Genesis of the Ultimate Truth, he knelt and plucked a handful. He brought the grass to his nose. It smelled sharp, like pure ozone and mint.
He didn't hesitate. He chewed a stalk and swallowed.
Instantly, a burst of icy, pure energy exploded in his stomach. It was far less violent than the Beast Core, acting more like a soothing, cold stream. The vortex in his Dantian greedily absorbed it. Shang Jue closed his eyes, experimenting with his newfound control.
Instead of letting the Dantian hoard the energy, he forcefully pushed the Qi outward, directing it toward the deep, agonizing lacerations the first direwolf had carved into his chest.
He watched in morbid fascination as the cold Qi rushed into the torn tissue. The bleeding, which had only been slowed by his initial breakthrough, stopped completely. The raw flesh hissed slightly as the Qi accelerated the cellular regeneration, sealing the deepest parts of the wounds and forming thick, dark scabs in a matter of minutes.
It was a crude, brutal form of self-healing, utilizing the Frost-Marrow Weed as fuel, but it worked. He gathered every remaining stalk of the spirit grass, tying them securely to his waist with his hemp rope. They were a lifeline.
He stood, ready to continue his march, but the wind abruptly died. The eerie silence that followed was heavier than the blizzard. The scent hit him a second later. It was thick, suffocating, and
reeked of rotting meat and vengeance. From over the crest of a nearby snow dune, they appeared. Not
one. Not two. But a pack of six Frost-Tooth Direwolves. And standing behind them, dwarfing them entirely, was the Alpha.
The Alpha was a mid-level Demonic Beast, the size of a small hut.
Its fur was heavily streaked with silver, and its pale blue eyes burned with a terrifying, calculated malice. It did not look at Shang Jue with mere hunger; it looked at him with profound hatred.
The wind had carried the scent of its slaughtered kin, and the heavy, blood-soaked pelt Shang Jue wore was an absolute declaration of war.
A collective, bone-rattling growl shook the snow from the rocks. Shang Jue did not flinch. He dropped his stance, tightly gripping the rusted iron axe head. He was vastly outnumbered, and the Alpha's aura was suffocating, pressing down on him like a physical weight.
But the severed heart in his chest did not know fear. It only knew the slaughter.
"Come," Shang Jue whispered, his dark eyes turning into abyssal voids.
The pack surged forward like an avalanche of teeth and claws.
The first wolf lunged for his throat.
Shang Jue pivoted, his movements no longer hindered by a mortal frame but propelled by
the explosive force of Qi. He sidestepped the snapping jaws and drove the rusted iron deep into the beast's ribs, twisting the metal until he felt the heart rupture.
He ripped the weapon free just as two more wolves hit him from the sides. Claws tore through his tunic, slicing shallowly into his arms and thighs. He ignored the pain. The chaotic Qi of the Abyss demanded violence. He threw a devastating punch imbued with pure Qi into the snout of the wolf on his left, shattering its skull with
a sickening crunch.
Blood sprayed across the pristine snow, painting the battlefield in
crimson. But the rusted iron was too short, and his attacks, while powerful,
were bottlenecked. He could feel the Qi surging in his Dantian, but it struggled to flow fast enough down his right arm to keep up with his killing intent. The mortal meridians in his arm were still too narrow, restricting his power.
The Alpha roared, a sound that sent a shockwave of condensed air hurtling toward Shang Jue. The boy crossed his arms to block, but the sheer force threw him back ten feet, his boots skidding across the ice.
The Alpha didn't wait. It charged, moving faster than the wind, its massive jaws opening to swallow him whole.
I need more power! Shang Jue's mind screamed. Shatter the gates! In the split second before the Alpha's fangs reached him, Shang
Jue did something completely insane. He didn't focus on dodging. Instead, he drew upon every ounce of chaotic Qi in his Dantian and rammed it violently into the blocked Taiyin meridian channel of his right arm.
CRACK!
An agonizing pop echoed loudly inside his own body. He had forcefully blasted open a major meridian pathway in the middle of a life-and-death struggle. The pain was blinding, but the result was instantaneous.
Qi flooded down his right arm like a dam breaking. The rusted iron axe head in his hand didn't just gleam; it began to emit a faint, deadly hum, surrounded by a swirling aura of gray, chaotic energy. The Alpha's jaws clamped down.
With a feral roar, Shang Jue thrust his right arm forward, meeting the beast's charge head-on. The Qi-infused iron tore through the Alpha's lower jaw, driving straight upward through the roof of its mouth and directly into its brain cavity.
The massive Demonic Beast froze. The light in its pale blue eyes shattered. Its immense momentum carried it forward, crashing heavily onto Shang Jue and burying him under a mountain of fur and muscle.
Seeing their Alpha instantly slain by the tiny human, the remaining three direwolves halted. Their predatory rage evaporated, replaced by primal terror. They whimpered, tucked their tails, and scattered
into the frozen wasteland.
Silence returned to the tundra, broken only by the heavy panting of the boy beneath the corpse.
Shang Jue violently shoved the massive Alpha off his bruised body. He stood up, trembling with exhaustion, his right arm radiating a burning, agonizing heat from the forcefully opened meridian. He was covered in deep gashes, but his eyes burned with a terrifying triumph.
His combat instincts had evolved from pure desperation into a lethal, focused intent.
Without resting, he set to work. He carved open the skulls of the Alpha and the two wolves he had killed. He extracted three glowing Beast Cores-two the size of walnuts, and the Alpha's, which was the size of a large apple and radiated a deeply freezing, potent Qi.
He did not devour them. The manual had taught him plunder, but his sharp mind recognized reality. If he consumed the Alpha's core now, his newly opened meridian might explode from the sheer volume of energy. Furthermore, he needed these cores. In the world
of Cultivators, wealth was power. These cores, along with the Alpha's thick pelt, were his tickets out of poverty.
He chewed another handful of the Frost-Marrow Weed, directing the cool energy to staunch the bleeding on his arms and legs, letting the crude, violent scabbing process begin anew. He wrapped the cores securely in the smaller pelts and slung them over his shoulder.
Looking past the carnage, toward the southern horizon, the blinding white of the snow was broken by a faint, gray smudge reaching into the sky. It was not a cloud. It was smoke. Woodsmoke.
A border town. The absolute edge of human civilization and the gateway to the vast continent.
Shang Jue gripped his blood-stained iron.
He had conquered the frozen dirt. Now, it was time to step into the world of men, and eventually, the world of the cultivator.
He began to walk toward the smoke.