The sky over the Azure Peaks was not the deep, tranquil indigo one would expect at twilight. Instead, it was stained a bruised, pulsating red—the harbinger of the Blood Moon.
In the outer courtyard of the Azure Sect, Han Luo sat cross-legged on a weathered stone dais. His breath was rhythmic, slow, and agonizingly deliberate. While the other disciples of the Qi Refining realm were frantically rushing to absorb as much ambient energy as they could before the moon fully crested, Han Luo remained motionless.
He was not gathering Qi. He was waiting.
Three years, Han Luo thought, his eyes remaining shut. Three years of scraping by on the dregs of the sect's spirit stones, hiding my progress to keep the elders from probing my dantian.
To the outside world, Han Luo was a mediocrity—a disciple stuck at the peak of the 3rd stage of Qi Refining, struggling to find the breakthrough into the 4th. They mocked him in whispers, calling him a "Broken Vessel" because his intake of standard spiritual energy was inconsistent, even inefficient.
They didn't know that Han Luo's body was not designed for the thin, filtered Qi of the Azure Peaks. It was a vessel designed for the unfiltered, chaotic radiance of the Blood Moon.
As the moon reached its zenith, a heavy, suffocating pressure descended upon the territory. The air grew thick, shimmering with a faint, crimson mist. Most disciples groaned, clutching their chests as the chaotic energy threatened to scramble their meridians.
Han Luo, however, felt his blood hum.
He finally opened his eyes. They weren't black, nor brown, but flashed for a fleeting second with a deep, crystalline crimson.
Lower Soul, resonate, he commanded internally.
He didn't pull the energy into his meridians. Instead, he opened his pores, allowing the brutal, unfiltered chaos to wash over him. It burned like liquid fire, tearing at his skin, but as it entered his body, his unique constitution—the Bloody Moon Physique—began to filter it. The jagged, destructive edges were stripped away, leaving behind a refined, potent essence that felt heavier and sharper than any Qi his sect masters had ever taught him.
Drip.
A drop of crimson, viscous liquid manifested in his lower dantian. It wasn't the gaseous, wispy Qi of a novice; it was the dense, foundational essence of a true cultivator.
The transition was agonizing. His meridians shrieked under the weight of the refined energy, but Han Luo held his focus. He forced the energy to circulate through the "Hidden Veins" he had discovered during his meditations in the Whispering Woods—a path no book in the sect library ever mentioned.
Not yet, he cautioned himself, feeling the urge to surge forward. Patience. If I force the foundation now, I will crack. I need it stable. I need it perfect.
For hours, the Blood Moon hung over Aethelgard, and for hours, Han Luo endured the slow, grinding process of compressing his essence. By the time the moon began to wane and the crimson light faded from the sky, Han Luo slumped forward, sweat soaking his robes.
He checked his dantian. The gaseous Qi of his past was gone, replaced by a singular, steady drop of liquid energy.
He was still in the Qi Refining realm, but the quality of his foundation had shifted. He wasn't just a peak-stage amateur anymore; he was a cultivator who had finally touched the threshold of something the Azure Sect could not comprehend.
He stood up, his limbs stiff, and looked up at the fading red glow of the moon.
"One step," he whispered, his voice raspy from the effort. "Only four hundred and ninety-nine more to go."
The path to the Heaven Creator was long, and for Han Luo, the slow climb had only just begun.