The stone steps to the Inner Sect tower spiraled endlessly upward.
Li Shen climbed in silence. Two sect guards trailed behind him, keeping their distance, eyes nervously flicking toward the flickering shadow around his feet. They didn't speak to him. No one did.
At the top, carved from white jade, stood the Hall of Discipline. Its doors loomed like judgment itself.
Inside, Elder Qian waited.
He was a man of few words, wrapped in golden robes that shimmered with pure spirit Qi. His beard flowed like clouds, but his eyes were hard and storm-gray.
"You are Li Shen," the elder said.
"I am."
"You shattered a Foundation weapon with no cultivation base."
"I didn't shatter it," Li Shen said calmly. "It broke."
"You walk a dangerous path. Power without root. Will without balance."
Elder Qian circled him like a hawk. "There are whispers that you are Void-touched."
Li Shen said nothing.
After a long pause, the elder turned and raised a hand. A scroll flew to him from a shelf.
"I should destroy you. But the heavens haven't struck you dead yet. That means something."
He handed the scroll to Li Shen.
"This is Mirror Lake Pavilion. A test ground. You'll enter it at dawn. Survive three days. If you do, I'll decide whether to train you—or execute you."
That night, Li Shen found a cave beneath a broken cliff. He sat and began to focus.
The Void stirred more eagerly now. It was hungry—but not mindless. It whispered ideas, not words. Concepts, not commands.
He began experimenting.
He cut a falling leaf in half—not with a blade, but by imagining it didn't exist.
He erased his heartbeat. Slowed his breath. Became still enough for spiders to crawl across his skin without noticing.
He tried to erase a drop of water—and for one brief second, it vanished, not turning to vapor or freezing—just… ceasing.
But the more he trained, the more something pulled back.
The Void was not infinite. It had limits.
"To unmake the world… you must first unmake yourself."
He understood. Void techniques consumed more than Qi. They drew from his sense of self—his ego, his memories, his humanity. Too much, and he could lose himself entirely.
It was power at a cost no normal cultivator would ever accept.
But Li Shen was never normal.
Introduction: The Crimson Hawk of Burning Moon SectWhile Li Shen meditated, far to the east, in the Burning Moon Sect, a young cultivator named Yan Suri stood atop a pyre, flames swirling around her bare arms.
She was known as the Crimson Hawk—a dual fire-lightning root cultivator of terrifying speed and power. Her temper was as fast as her strikes, and her eyes were sharp with ambition.
Elder Zhao approached her with news.
"There is a boy in the Ashen Sky Sect," he said. "No root. No clan. Yet rumors say he broke a spear with his mind."
Suri raised an eyebrow. "Impossible."
"They say he commands the Void."
"Even more impossible."
She smirked. "I'll go see him myself. If he's a fraud, I'll break his bones. If he's real… I'll break them slower."
She spread her arms. Lightning arced across her skin. Flames danced behind her eyes.
"Let's see what the Void does against the Hawk."