The cold wind came down from the northern hills, rattling the shutters of Li Yao's hut like the claws of some sleepless ghost.
Inside, by flickering candlelight, he sat cross-legged on the packed earth, sweat rolling down his bare back. His breath came slow and deep, eyes shut, hands resting on his knees. But there was no peace in him. Every inhalation felt like dragging fire through his chest. Every exhalation ended in a whisper of pain.
The Crimson Meridian Purge had unlocked something inside him—but not enough. A thread of qi stirred behind his ribs, faint and sluggish. Every time he tried to move it; it scattered like frightened ash. His dantian ached constantly, swollen and sore like a half-healed wound.
He gritted his teeth and pushed again.
The qi flickered.
Then it vanished.
He slumped forward, sweat dripping from his chin.
Cultivation, they said, was the path to immortality. A great ascent. But here, now, for him, it felt like drowning in shallow water. Always just short of breath. Always just shy of control.
Outside, Redleaf Town flickered in the dark, distant lanterns barely visible through the treeline. The qi in the air here was scarce and tainted by decades of neglect. The spiritual veins that once ran beneath the land had dried to hairline cracks. What little essence remained clung to the edges of the forest like smoke to wet bark—thin, bitter, and unkind.
The sects had long since abandoned this region.
Even Heaven had turned its face away.
He rose before the sun the next morning, as he had every morning, but did not reach for his axe.
Instead, he stripped to the waist and stood beneath the icy mountain stream that fed the village. The water hit him like stone, and he almost gasped—but he forced the breath down, held it, and focused inward.
If I can't expand the qi... then I'll strengthen the body to contain it.
His limbs trembled as he lowered into a horse stance. The water surged over his shoulders, numbing his fingers, dulling his thoughts. Still, he held. Five minutes. Ten. Fifteen. Until his teeth chattered and his knees burned. Then he stood, staggered, and began to run.
Barefoot, uphill, through the pine roots and mossy rocks.
He tied a log to his back with rough hemp rope and forced his legs to carry him further. Each step jarred his spine. Each breath brought sharp pain behind his ribs. The air was thin here, and cruel.
At midday, he returned and began again—this time striking the river stones with his fists and elbows until his skin split. Blood stained the water. Still, he continued. Pain, he learned, could be a teacher if one stopped flinching from it.
At dusk, he knelt in the hut and traced crude diagrams on the dirt floor—outlines of the body, the dantian, the meridians. He marked where the pain struck deepest, where the qi moved smoothest. He changed his breathing pattern to match the rhythm of his pulse. He adjusted his stance to root deeper into the earth.
He called it the Stone Root Method.
It was ugly. Crude. Half-made from memory, half from madness.
But it was his.
And so, the days passed.
On the sixth night, a storm rolled over the mountains. Rain battered the roof, wind howled through the trees. Yet Li Yao sat unmoving in the centre of the hut, eyes shut, breath slow.
Something had begun to shift.
The pain behind his ribs no longer felt like damage. It felt like pressure. Like something waiting to be shaped.
His skin itched constantly—along his shoulders, across his spine, down his calves. The tension in his limbs had changed from exhaustion to density. His punches struck heavier. His balance grew sharper. He felt it in the way his feet gripped the earth.
The qi inside him began to behave.
Not expand. Not strengthen.
But stabilize.
Each breath pulled in a single, translucent thread of energy. It coiled through him like mist down a canyon—gentle, but present.
On the ninth day, he opened his eyes during meditation and felt… centred.
The exhaustion had not vanished. Nor had the pain.
But beneath it all, there was now rhythm.
Inhale. Hold. Push. Settle. Exhale. Anchor.
His qi looped through his lower meridians and returned to the dantian, slow but smooth.
A closed circuit.
A beginning.
He stood, flexed his fingers, and punched toward the hut wall.
The air cracked.
Just slightly. A whisper of force. But enough to feel it echo in his bones.
Li Yao stood still for a long time.
Then, finally, he smiled.
Not because he was powerful.
But because for the first time in his life, the path was no longer completely closed.
He had made something from nothing.
And soon, he would need it.
Because far to the south, something monstrous had begun to stir in the hills.
And it was coming straight for Green Pine Village.