The morning mist clung to Stonehaven Village like a burial shroud—quiet, suffocating, prophetic.
Long Wuqing did not believe in omens.
Superstition was the refuge of minds too weak to shape outcomes. But if he were the sentimental type, he might've called the fog a warning. Instead, he called it irrelevant.
At seventeen, his cultivation lingered at second-tier Qi Condensation—insignificant. Unremarkable. Forgettable.
A perfect camouflage.
He reached for a rare ironroot sprouting along the cliff's edge, its bitter red stalk useful for stabilizing meridians. But the soil betrayed him. The stone beneath his feet gave way with a low groan.
The world tilted.
The canyon yawned open.
He fell.
Sixty-two feet. Impact in 3.4 seconds. Survival probability: 1.1%.
No flailing. No screams. No prayer.
Fear is emotion. Emotion is delay. Delay is death.
The universe did not reward fear. It rewarded function.
Then the world met him with stone.
He slammed into a jutting outcrop twenty feet down—his ribs cracking like snapped bone flute reeds. His left arm twisted backward at an angle nature never intended. Blood masked half his face. He tumbled, lifeless, onto a hidden ledge, motionless save for the twitch of one foot.
And yet—he lived.
For thirteen seconds, he did not move. He only calculated.
Two fractured ribs. One dislocated shoulder. Minor spinal bruising.
Internal bleeding likely. Neurological trauma: low.
Healing elixirs: none.
Witnesses: zero.
Probability of external rescue: 0%.
Screaming would not help. Breathing too heavily would reduce oxygen efficiency.
He moved.
Agony was acknowledged, not indulged. Pain was an alarm—not a command.
He clawed forward, inch by inch, dragging himself across the ledge's moss-laced surface. After forty-two feet, a curtain of vines parted in the breeze, revealing darkness behind.
A cave. Unmarked. Undisturbed. Undocumented.
He entered.
The air shifted. Cold. Dense. Alive.
Beyond the threshold, the cave widened into an ancient chamber—its walls carved with patterns that hummed with dormant intelligence. A language lost to time, etched in spirals and hunger.
But Wuqing's eyes went only to the center.
A pedestal. And on it—a Pearl.
It did not glow. It pulsed.
Black to crimson. Gold to void. Fire to silence.
It was not inert matter. It was will made manifest.
A contradiction bound in spherical form.
A Dao Artifact.
The kind that reshaped sects, rewrote legacies, and justified genocide.
No obvious traps. No active arrays. Its wards were crumbling, ancient, unfed for centuries. High instability. No known precedent.
Risk: incalculable.
Yield potential: infinite.
Conclusion: engage.
He pressed his bloodied hand to its surface.
The world shattered.
Not metaphorically—literally. The moment his skin met the Pearl, its form disintegrated and invaded his body like smoke with fangs. His vision cracked. His bones liquefied. His spiritual core erupted like a volcano pressed into a teacup.
Pain was no longer sensory—it was philosophical. It rewrote his existence at the level of meaning.
The voice that came was not sound, yet it echoed through his marrow:
"The Dao of Consumption."
All things exist to be devoured. All paths exist to end in you.
You are the predator. The world is the herd. Heaven is meat.
Three hours passed before Long Wuqing opened his eyes again.
His body was whole. But it wasn't his.
His meridians thrummed not with energy, but hunger—sentient, patient, insatiable. His spiritual root had been overwritten by a system not built to balance qi, but to consume it.
He could feel it: life signatures in every tree, every worm, every speck of dust nearby. The Pearl had not granted him a foundation. It had become his foundation.
He no longer needed to comprehend techniques.
He could absorb them.
He no longer needed to compete.
He could consume.
He no longer needed fate.
He would devour it.
Essence. Bloodline. Talent. Memory. Dao comprehension.
All were digestible.
He flexed his fingers, and luminous runes flickered along his bones before dissolving into skin. Not illusion. Not augmentation. Evolution.
He had not advanced.
He had ended his old self—and replaced it with something else.
He stepped from the cave.
The mist still blanketed the mountain like a funeral veil.
"Time to return," he whispered.
But returning was a gesture, not a longing. The word "home" held no resonance. Not anymore.
He walked down the slope with unnatural calm.
And as he moved, the Pearl within him pulsed once more—this time with a new echo:
"Hunger remembers what the world forgets."
What he did not yet know—
Was that by the time he reached Stonehaven Village,
there would be nothing left to return to.