Chapter 3 Strange presence
A crippled disciple.
Lu Tian sank slowly onto the edge of the bed, his brows furrowing as he considered the implications. If he could not cultivate properly, then everything he hoped to change might prove impossible. The sect would still fall, the invasion would still arrive and history would repeat itself exactly as before.
Silence filled the small room.
Then Lu Tian tried circulating his energy again.
Suddenly, he remembered a cultivation technique he discovered in the later years of his previous life, deep within a forbidden ruin. He had thought at that moment that the manual was too dangerous to practice. It was named the Void Meridian Reversal Art and it demanded total destruction of one’s cultivation base. It required a foundation so thoroughly shattered that nothing stable remained.
At that time, he had been too complete and high in his cultivation to practice it but now, he was empty and luckily for him, he had a photographic memory that could remember things when he read them.
A knock came from the door, breaking his thoughts.
“Senior Brother Lu?” a hesitant voice called. “I’ve brought your medicine.”
Lu Tian composed himself. “Come in.”
The door slid open, revealing a young outer disciple who, in his previous life, had died during the invasion but alive and kicking now.
The sight struck deeper than any blade. He felt more motivated to change the outcome of this life.
“They say your cultivation…” the boy began awkwardly.
Lu Tian smiled gently. “It is only a setback.”
The boy blinked in surprise, he was expecting bitterness from Lu Tian, instead, he found him calm.
“You don’t seem upset.” He asked
Lu Tian accepted the bowl of bitter spirit tonic. “Because I have already seen the end of the world”. He said in his mind but aloud he said, “Cultivation is not so fragile.”
The boy turned to leave feeling confused at the state of Lu Tian. He had met others in similar situations and he had to encourage them from committing suicide but he realized Lu Tian was too calm. Like he nothing happened to him except slight injuries.
Lu Tian waited until the door closed. Then his expression turned cold. Forty years, he had forty years before the day of doom.
From the timeline, he knew that at this time, the elders hadalready started diverting resources. Formation maintenance schedules had been subtly altered. Promising disciples are already being sent on increasingly dangerous missions. Corruption masked as incompetence. He could not expose them yet. At fifteen and crippled, he had no authority. But he had knowledge and knowledge was sharper than any sword.
He set the medicine aside, closed his eyes and sank his awareness inward. Rather than attempting to repair his meridians, he guided what little residual spiritual energy remained toward the fractures.
He did not mend them, instead he widened them. Pain engulfed him, sweat soaking his robes as cracks spread further through his spiritual core. Then, when all internal structure collapsed into silence, he stilled his breathing and focused on the space between heartbeats.
The Void Art did not begin with absorption. It began with absence before absorbing energy into the core for retention.
In that emptiness, something faint stirred, like a thin, dark thread coiling within the hollow where his dantian had once functioned.
“This body may be crippled…”
His gaze shifted toward the cracked dantian.
“But something else is inside it.”
He raised his hand slowly and focused his awareness inward.
Deep within his meridians, hidden beneath the chaotic currents of unstable spiritual energy, he could faintly sense the presence of something that had not existed in his previous life.
A small void that was absorbing energy from his broken meridians.
Lu Tian’s eyes darkened slightly as a new possibility began to emerge in his mind.
He wondered why he had never discovered the presence of the different energy that coiled in his broken dantian in his last life. He had to struggle for years, travelling between sects to find a solution to his ruined meridians and repaired his dantian before he could cultivate. He had to double his efforts in training to catch up to his peers in the sect.
It was this his hard work that drew the attention of the previous Sect Master who took him as a disciple and poured resources and techniques into him. The abundance of resources helped him to catch up and fight against Wei Gu for the position of Sect Master at the later years of his masters life.
He knew that the defeat of Wei Gu, who was Elder Fang’s disciple, contributed to the reason for their definite betrayal of the Sect. If Wei Gu was the Sect Master, maybe the situation would have been different.
Lu Tian sat in his different thoughts for a moment before he snapped out and began to map out a plan for his next moves. He could not care about the previous life anymore, he needed to take major steps that would alter the course of this life. The first was to grow stronger, then develop strong disciples who would protect the world with him.
He focused back inward and started to observe the energy that was rotating in his dantian in the form of a core. He had seen the description of the core on the walls of the cave he found the technique, but seeing it in his body filled him with shock. He had been wondering how he was going to build the core as the first step but he discovered a tiny bead already existed and was expanding as he absorbed more energy.
If that strange emptiness could devour spiritual energy… Then perhaps my body is really suited for this cultivation technique. The broken meridians were not a weakness at all. Perhaps they were the beginning of something entirely different.
Outside the window, the distant bell of the sect suddenly rang. Morning training had begun.
Lu Tian rose slowly to his feet and for the first time since his return, a faint smile appeared on his lips.
“This world thinks I am a cripple.”
His gaze lifted toward the distant peaks of the Azure Cloud Sect.
“Let them keep believing that.”
He vowed silently, this time, he would not climb blindly. He would strengthen his fellow disciples before corruption spread. He would monitor formation maintenance personally. He would identify betrayal at its roots and when the Upper Realm tried to descend again, they would not find a fractured pillar. They would find a world prepared to resist.
Lu Tian lay back against the wooden headboard, staring at the unbroken sky beyond the window.
“Forty years,” he murmured softly.
In this life, he would not wait for the sky to fall.
