The wind howled across the mountain range like a beast in mourning.
Deep within the fractured valleys of the Ashen Sky Sect, a young boy knelt beneath the withered Tree of Trials, hands bloodied from the jagged stones he had gathered. The moonlight flickered against his bruised cheekbones, but he didn't cry. He hadn't cried since the day they told him he had no spiritual root.
"Waste," they whispered.
"Dirt beneath the path of cultivators."
His name was Li Shen—though few remembered it. Orphaned at five, beaten at six, and discarded from the sect's inner training by seven, Li Shen should've died like the others. But he didn't. He survived.
And tonight, as he drew a circle of blood around his body and placed the final stone before him, he spoke a name forbidden in the Seven Heavens:
"I call upon the Void Root, that which exists outside the Dao. If I cannot cultivate the way of Heaven, then let me tear Heaven down."
The ground trembled.
The stars flickered.
And then... silence.
For a heartbeat, nothing happened. Then his chest convulsed. Pain lanced through every bone in his body. It wasn't Qi. It wasn't spirit energy. It was something older. Darker. Hungrier.
From the roots of the dead tree, black tendrils slithered forward, wrapping around Li Shen's wrists and throat—not to strangle, but to bind.
The Void has heard you.
A voice echoed in his mind, both ancient and hollow.
You were born rootless. Now you are rooted in Nothing.
He collapsed, barely breathing, eyes wide with terror—and a strange calm. Within him, a new kind of power surged. Cold. Silent. Incalculable.
And the cultivation path of Heavenbreaking began.