The forest around Crimson Cloud Sect's outer disciple barracks smelled of damp leaves and moss. Chirping insects buzzed through the still morning air, and soft shafts of light pierced the canopy like golden spears. Everything was… painfully familiar.
Li Shibai moved like a ghost through the underbrush.
His limbs were young. Weak. His bones hadn't yet hardened from years of martial refinement. His skin lacked the hardened calluses of countless blade grips, and his spirit sea was laughably shallow — a meager trickle of Qi swirling in a fragile container.
And yet, inside him… something stirred.
The Mark.
It lived in the pit of his soul, carved into his spiritual foundation like a forbidden seal. He could feel it now — dormant but watching. Not a parasite. Not quite a curse. More like an eye. An ancient eye blinking open inside him.
Ten years.
Ten years until I stand beneath the Gate again.
This time… I will not fall.
As he returned to the training field where younger versions of familiar faces sparred with dull blades and crude Qi techniques, a strange unease coiled in his gut.
These were children to him now.
The outer disciples laughed. Bragged. Practiced footwork under the lazy supervision of older initiates. They still thought the Sect was a temple of glory. That cultivation was a ladder anyone could climb with enough "heart."
He had once believed that too.
Not anymore.
"Li Shibai!"
He turned at the sound of his name.
A round-faced boy jogged toward him — a younger version of Meng Tao, one of the few who had ever shown Shibai real kindness in his first life.
"You're late again," Tao huffed, wiping sweat from his brow. "Master said if you skip another morning drill, they'll reassign you to latrine duty."
Shibai blinked. The warmth in Tao's voice struck him oddly. He hadn't felt genuine human kindness in years.
In his past life, Tao died during the Fire Lotus Beast Raid. Devoured while trying to save an injured junior.
That won't happen this time.
"I'll handle it," Shibai said.
Meng Tao raised a brow. "You good, man? You're… weird lately."
Shibai offered the faintest hint of a smile. "Weird is relative."
Later That Night
While others slept in the shared barracks, Shibai sat cross-legged on a silent hill just beyond the Sect walls. The moon was a murky crescent, the sky cloudless. Crickets whispered through the grass.
He closed his eyes.
And opened his spirit sea.
The swirling Qi within him was pathetic — barely above the starting threshold of Qi Gathering. But beneath that shallow pool, in the very floor of his spiritual foundation, the Mark pulsed.
A black circle of shifting lines.
It didn't radiate Qi. It radiated knowledge .
As he focused on it, his consciousness twisted — not outward, like normal cultivation, but inward. He was pulled down through himself, like drowning in his own soul.
And then he heard it again.
The whisper.
"Learn..."
A symbol etched itself into his mind — one he couldn't read, but understood. A cultivation formation. Ancient. Brutal. Designed not for healing or growth… but for extraction.
"This… is the Void-Leeching Diagram."
He gasped.
His spirit sea convulsed. His veins burned with sudden knowledge. It was like drinking boiling water — not painful, but overwhelming.
This formation let a cultivator devour another's essence.
Not just steal Qi — but drain their lifespan, their comprehension, their very potential.
This is heresy, he thought.
And yet…
It feels more real than anything I was ever taught.
He couldn't forget it now. The symbol was burned into his soul like a second dantian.
The Mark pulsed again.
And another whisper followed.
"Ten years. Learn. Build. Feed. Ascend."
Shibai opened his eyes.
The wind had stopped. Even the insects were silent now.
The stars above seemed farther away than they had before.
Weeks Passed
Li Shibai played his role well.
To the outer disciples, he was quiet, serious, perhaps a little odd — but dedicated. The instructors praised his sudden "focus." He rose through rankings in drills, no longer just clever, but uncannily precise.
He kept to himself. Ate little. Slept less. Spent nights on forbidden hills meditating under silent moons.
He began to cultivate in secret using the Mark's knowledge.
Techniques beyond the scope of mortal sects — foreign breathing patterns, soul-tempering rituals that should have melted his nerves, but didn't.
And the whispers became clearer.
Sometimes they gave him memories — not his own — of emperors weeping, of stars devoured by a mouth that had no body.
Sometimes… they asked questions.
"Why crawl back to the heavens that broke you?"
"Why ascend when you could rule from below?"
He never answered.
But he listened.
The First Test
It was inevitable.
An arrogant senior — Zhou Fan, an inner disciple from a noble clan — decided to "teach the outer dogs some discipline."
A sparring match was arranged. One of those humiliating public displays meant to remind the low-born of their place.
Zhou Fan sneered as he stepped onto the dueling platform.
"Li Shibai? Never heard of you. You'll be screaming in ten moves."
Shibai stepped forward.
His face was Undecipherable.
"I'll give you one."
The crowd laughed.
Fan's eyes narrowed. "Then I'll break both your legs."
When the match began, Fan attacked immediately — flames bursting from his palms, a Crimson Palm Art augmented by his clan's fire root.
Shibai dodged once.
Then again.
On the third strike, he raised his hand… and touched Fan's wrist.
A small movement. Gentle.
And Fan froze.
His face went pale.
His knees buckled.
He collapsed.
Eyes wide with terror.
His cultivation… was gone.
He lay trembling on the floor, weeping without understanding why. Not even the elders watching could explain what had happened.
Shibai turned and walked away.
The mark in his soul pulsed — satisfied.
That night, he vomited black blood into a basin behind the barracks.
The Mark's power was not free.
Every time he fed from another… it fed too.
He felt something growing inside him — not physically, but in presence. Like a second will Pressuring lightly against his own.
It's still dormant… but not silent.
He washed the blood away and stared at his reflection.
If I become a monster to break the world… so be it.
Six Months Later
Shibai had ascended to Mid Qi Refining in record time. Officially, he credited it to strict training and discipline.
Privately, he had consumed three outer disciples and one elder — not with malice, but with precision. Each was chosen carefully: cultivators with shaky foundations or secrets worth erasing.
He left no trace. No witnesses.
The Mark taught him how to hide the loss of Qi. How to "paint over" karma.
And still, the whispers came.
One night, they asked:
"Will you challenge them again?"
"The Emperors?"
He answered aloud, for the first time.
"…No."
A pause.
"…No?"
"I will not challenge one."
"I will challenge them all."
Silence.
Then the Mark laughed.
And Shibai felt it — the presence shift again.
The door he had seen in the void? It wasn't closed.
It was just waiting.
Li Shibai stood on the edge of a dark cliff near the border of the Crimson Cloud Sect's lands, wind howling through his robes. The stars watched from above, silent as judgment.
Inside him, the Mark of the Abyss pulsed like a second heart.
And in his gaze — once arrogant, now something colder — flickered a vision.
Not of glory.
But of ruin.