The alchemy room was dead quiet, thick with the smell of weird herbs and the sharp stink of Ye Chen's own sweat. Fear-sweat. Elder Mu had practically thrown the precious chest down – the Sun-Scorched Lotus Stamen glowing like hot coals, the Dawn Sap shimmering, the Frostbloom Petals radiating cold – and then bolted, giving him one last terrified look. The heavy door slammed shut with a final thunk. Ye Chen was alone. Just him and the clan's best furnace, a mid-grade Spirit Cauldron covered in runes that suddenly felt about as sturdy as wet paper against the storm inside him.
His hands, small and shaky despite how hard he willed them still, hovered over the ingredients. The void core in his gut felt like a block of ice, sucking the warmth out of his bones, whispering promises of nothingness. Sensing Feng earlier, then collapsing... it had hollowed him out worse. He felt cracked, brittle, held together only by the fading warmth of the Spring Dew Elixir and sheer, stubborn refusal to give up. Phoenix's Sigh. A medium grade one antidote. Complicated as hell – needing perfect balance between fire and ice, dawn and dusk. In his past life? Easy. Now? With a kid's weak energy channels, his spirit frayed thin by the void's hunger, and tools barely fit for a beginner. It was like trying to tightrope walk over a volcano.
He started. His movements were careful, precise, wasting nothing. He didn't force it; he nudged it, working with the tiny shifts in the cauldron's heat, the natural hum of the herbs. Crushing the Frostbloom Petals with a moon-jade pestle sent a wave of numbing cold fogging the air. Dissolving the Dawn Sap in clean water made it glow soft gold. Layering the fiery Stamen over it made the energies hiss faintly where they met.
This was where everyone screwed up. The balance was crazy delicate. Too hot? The Dawn Sap's life-force boils off. Too cold? The Stamen's cleansing fire gutters out. Ye Chen pushed out a hair-thin thread of his pitifully small qi. Not to control, just to... bridge the gap. Sweat beaded on his forehead, instantly turning icy from the void's chill gnawing deeper into him.
Inside, the void stirred. It didn't care about the potion. It cared about the strain. The intense focus, the sheer mental effort of holding that balance, was tearing tiny rents in his already fragile spirit. It was like dangling raw meat in front of a starving dog. The void's hunger surged, a silent, relentless pull, threatening to shred his concentration and gobble up the trickle of energy in his veins.
No. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, tasting blood. He pictured the antidote – a complex weave of cleansing fire wrapped in stabilizing ice, anchored by dawn's energy. He poured everything into holding that image, using it like a shield against the void's icy tide. He felt another tiny piece of his own life-force snap away, feeding the darkness. His vision greyed at the edges. Lao Chen. Father. The Clan. The names were lifelines, anchors to hold onto.
Slowly, painfully, the warring energies in the cauldron began to sing together. The hissing faded. A wild, shifting smell filled the lab – sharp cold, then warm sunrise, finally settling into something clean and sharp, like mountain air. A soft, pearly light glowed from the mix. Phoenix's Sigh. It's working.
The last step. The catalyst – a pinch of powdered Star Iron, dust that hummed with pure celestial energy, to lock it all together. Ye Chen reached for the small vial. His hand trembled badly now. The void's pull went vicious, sensing he was almost done, that he was pouring out everything he had. It lunged.
His fingers brushed the Star Iron vial. A wave of dizziness hit him like a hammer blow, worse than anything before. The void core jerked violently. Reacting to his weakness and the sudden surge of potent celestial energy, a wisp of dark energy – thinner than smoke, colder than deep space – flickered out from his fingertip. Uncontrolled. Just a tiny, stupid leak.
It touched the rim of the Spirit Cauldron.
Where it touched, the bronze didn't melt. It just... disappeared. A perfect, coin-sized hole punched right through. The stabilizing runes around it flickered and died. The perfect, humming energy field inside the cauldron instantly went haywire.
A soundless flash erupted inside the vessel. The pearly glow turned blinding white, then sickly green, then violent red. The cauldron screamed – a horrible, metallic shriek of pure stress. Before Ye Chen could even suck in a breath, the whole damn thing crumpled inwards with a terrible groan, folding like cheap tin around the void-touched spot. Molten slag and half-formed, twisted elixir sprayed out in a deadly wave.
Pure instinct, honed over lifetimes, threw him sideways. The searing wave missed him by inches, splattering against the reinforced stone wall where it sizzled and ate into the rock like acid. The stench hit him – ozone, burnt metal, and the toxic rot of ruined herbs. The Spirit Cauldron was a twisted, glowing wreck, still radiating heat where the void had bitten it.
Silence. Just the hiss of cooling slag and Ye Chen's own ragged, gasping breaths. He lay on the cold floor, staring at the wreckage. Not just the cauldron. His shot. Lao Chen's chance. Those impossible-to-find herbs… gone. Utterly destroyed or turned to poison.
Failure.
The word echoed in the empty space the void had carved inside him. Louder than the cauldron's death cry. A cold deeper than any winter spread from his core, numbing his limbs. He looked at his hand. The skin was ghostly pale, almost see-through, blue veins stark underneath. He felt… less. Hollowed out. The price for that stupid leak was steep. He hadn't just failed; he'd paid a chunk of his already dwindling life for the privilege.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
"Ye Chen! Young Master! What happened? Are you alright?" Elder Mu's voice, high-pitched with panic, battered against the door.
Ye Chen pushed himself up. Every movement screamed with exhaustion and the crushing weight of despair. He looked at the ruined cauldron, the poison melting the wall, the empty chest. Nothing. No antidote. No time. Lao Chen was dying. The Scarlet Moon goons would be back at sunset. And inside him, the void stirred, momentarily satisfied by the life-force it had stolen, but already whispering about its next meal.
He stumbled to the door, not to open it, but to lean his forehead against the cold, heavy wood. The void's chill seeped into his skin. The only idea left was pure madness. A gamble where oblivion was the house.
"Elder Mu," Ye Chen called out. His voice was flat, scary calm, stripped bare by the void and utter defeat. "Bring Lao Chen. Bring him here. Now. And... get me the broken piece of Feng's jade talisman."
Silence from the other side. Then, hesitant, "Young Master? The guard... he's too weak! He can't be moved! And the talisman shard...?"
"DO IT!" The command tore from his throat, raw and edged with an authority that froze the blood. It wasn't a child's voice. It was the cracked sound of someone who'd stared into the abyss and decided to jump.
He shoved away from the door, turning back to face the wreckage, the monument to his disaster. His ancient eyes, reflecting the dull red glow of the slag, held no despair now. Only a terrifying, absolute certainty. He would use the void. Not by accident. Not a leak. He would wield it. Turn the devourer into the cure. Use the fractured space-energy in Feng's jade as a target, a lightning rod for the chaos.
He would purge the Silverspine poison from Lao Chen's body directly, using the void like a scalpel to cut out the sickness. It was theory. It was suicide. One slip, and Lao Chen gets erased. Or his own fragile spirit gets torn apart. The void might just eat them both.
But it was the only move left. The Phoenix hadn't risen. Now, only the Void's icy breath remained. The countdown to sunset wasn't just a deadline for tribute anymore; it was the ticking clock before he bet his soul and a clansman's life on the hunger of an endless dark. The borrowed time he'd been living on had just turned to ice in his lungs.