The mines were not built for men.
They were built for beasts.
Narrow tunnels of jagged rock wound endlessly beneath the corpse of a once-great mountain. Here, where the sun could never reach, where even moonlight was a distant dream, a thousand children slaved in silence—digging, bleeding, dying.
No names. Only numbers. No futures. Only labor.
Among them was Yun Mu, prisoner number 313.
He was eleven.
Thin and bony, he looked more like a specter than a boy. His skin was ashen, his ribs sharp under torn linen. His hair, once black, had faded to a dull grey, choked by stone dust and rot. Shackles, too large for his frail wrists, hung from his arms like mockery. His eyes—those were the only things untouched. Grey as smoke. Cold as the mountain itself.
They held no light.
No dreams.
Only the void.
---
"MOVE!" A spirit whip lashed down with a crack, missing his ear by inches.
Yun Mu didn't flinch. Pain was a language he understood. Pain meant he was still alive.
He lifted his pickaxe again.
Clang.
The blow bounced off a hard mineral vein. Sparks danced for a breath before vanishing into the gloom.
Clang.
Clang.
Clang.
A rhythm, steady as a heartbeat. It echoed across the shaft, blending with the moans of the dying and the curses of the living.
Around him, children dug without words. Talking meant punishment. Hesitation meant death. You ate when the overseers allowed. You slept when your body collapsed. You lived only because someone else hadn't noticed your spirit root yet.
Yun Mu had been here three years.
He had not been noticed.
---
Back then, when the sky still existed, Yun Mu had lived in a nameless village nestled between twin cliffs and rice paddies. He remembered the songs his mother sang. He remembered the way the wind smelled before the rain. He remembered the smile of his younger sister.
He remembered the fire that took it all.
The men in robes had descended like gods. They laughed. They flew. Their hands weaved sigils that tore flesh from bone. They killed not out of hatred, but boredom.
"Check the children," one said.
"They'll fetch better coin than the grain."
He had watched as they crushed his uncle's skull with a single palm. His aunt was burned alive when she tried to resist.
Yun Mu had not cried.
Even then, something inside him had already begun to break.
---
The miners were slaves. That much was clear. But even among them, there were castes.
Spirit-rooted children—those who could cultivate—were assigned to surface labor or sold to sects.
Those without roots, or those whose roots were "dormant", were sent deep into the mines.
To be used.
Or forgotten.
Yun Mu had been tested. The cultivator had sniffed in disdain and tossed his spirit stone away. "Dormant. Useless."
So they threw him in the mines.
And in the mines, he learned the first truth of the world:
> "If you are weak, then your life belongs to someone else."
---
He swung the pickaxe again.
Clang.
Something cracked.
Not the stone.
His hand.
His fingers trembled, blood running from the torn blisters. The handle slipped once. Another boy reached out to help.
"Don't."
Too late.
The overseer saw.
A whip cracked.
The boy screamed.
Yun Mu didn't move. His face was expressionless. But his grip tightened.
The boy who tried to help him died by morning. The overseers didn't even remove the body. They let it rot in the tunnel.
Flies came.
Then the rats.
Then the worms.
Yun Mu ate none of it. But others did. Hunger was a sharper demon than shame.
---
Then came the day everything changed.
He had been working the eastern shaft, a cursed part of the mine where spirit ore was more dense—and more deadly. Toxic fumes warped the lungs. Mutant worms burrowed into flesh. Cultivators rarely ventured that deep, which made it the perfect place to die… or to find something untouched.
It was there he saw it.
A vein of violet embedded in the wall—half-hidden by dust and roots.
He paused.
His instincts screamed.
Spirit Crystal Ore.
Rare. Refined. Potent.
Worth more than a hundred common spirit stones. Worth more than his life.
He glanced around. The other children were busy. The overseer wasn't watching.
His fingers dug into the cracks like a starving rat. He chipped away at the edge with short, controlled strikes. Every tap echoed like thunder in his ears.
Finally, it loosened. A fist-sized shard fell into his palm.
It pulsed faintly.
Warm. Alive.
---
He could sell it. Maybe. If he made it out of the mine. If he wasn't caught. If he wasn't beaten to death for daring to possess something so valuable.
So many ifs. So many risks.
No.
Yun Mu was done waiting.
He did not want money.
He wanted power.
Right here. Right now.
Before his courage could fade, he lifted the crystal to his lips.
And bit into it.
---
The pain was instant.
Spirit energy flooded into his mouth, down his throat, into his core.
His heart nearly stopped.
The world twisted.
The mine vanished.
All he knew was light.
And then—darkness.
Not the comforting dark of night.
But a primordial nothingness. A great, yawning void.
Floating in it was a single, jagged seed. Blacker than shadow. Cracked like ancient bone.
It pulsed.
And inside his soul, something screamed.
Not in agony.
In hunger.
> "You are mine now," it whispered.
> "Feed me."
---
He awoke with blood on his lips and a broken smile on his face.
The overseers were shouting.
"Get a medic! He's awakened a root!"
"A spirit root!? How?!"
"Low grade. Weak. But it's a root."
"Lucky bastard."
---
But Yun Mu knew better.
The spirit he'd seen was not weak.
It was cold. Endless. Hollow.
Not one of the Five Elements. Not even of this world.
A Hollow Spirit Root.
One in a billion. Banned by sects. Hunted by heavens.
He had heard stories.
Of cultivators who walked paths forbidden by fate.
Of those who consumed not pills, but souls. Who walked not toward immortality, but toward emptiness.
And now… he was one of them.
---
They took him to the Outer Servant Camp. Gave him new clothes. Cleaner chains.
The other boys whispered when he walked past.
"Is that him?"
"He awakened by biting a spirit crystal? Madman."
"Demon."
Yun Mu said nothing.
He sat in his corner. He listened. He watched.
And when no one was looking, he practiced.
He began to meditate, to feel the new reservoir forming inside him. Not a lake. Not a flame. Not a tree.
But a hollow chamber.
Cold. Infinite.
And deep inside it—something pulsed.
Waiting to be fed.
---
Yun Mu stared at the moon that night for the first time in three years.
It was pale.
Distant.
Unreachable.
He smiled.
Not for long.