The Outer Servant Camp sat on the base of Blackmist Ridge, a jagged cliff shaped like a blade pointing toward the sky. Every stone, every tree, even the wind carried the taste of iron and blood. It was the graveyard for ambition, a place where those with spirit roots but no background were ground into tools for the sect above.
Ironcloud Sect—one of the mid-tier powers in the region—ruled this land.
In their eyes, Outer Servants were not disciples. They were resources.
And resources were expected to produce results or perish.
---
Yun Mu stood in the shadow of the barracks, watching silently as a group of new servants knelt in the courtyard. Overseers shouted names, handed out tasks, and beat those who hesitated. No one protested.
He didn't speak.
He didn't kneel.
An overseer approached, whip dragging across the dirt. "New trash. You're the one who awakened in the mines?"
Yun Mu nodded once.
The overseer snorted. "Low-grade root. Hollow element, they say? Hah. Probably a misread. You'll be lucky to make it past First Layer Essence Refinement."
He raised the whip lazily.
Yun Mu didn't flinch. He didn't even blink.
The overseer froze. There was something off about the boy's gaze. Not defiance. Not fear.
Emptiness.
Like looking into a well with no bottom.
The man grunted. "Creep. Get to pit work. You'll dig, carry, and clean for the real cultivators."
---
The days blurred into motion.
Yun Mu cleaned blood pits where disciples tested their techniques. He carried crates of foul-smelling beast meat to alchemy labs. He scrubbed parasite sludge from spirit pools. He listened. He memorized everything.
He watched how cultivators circulated spirit energy. How formation lines were drawn. How pills were categorized, how seals responded to qi types.
He was a shadow—never speaking unless ordered, never standing out.
And at night, in the silence of the slave quarters, when others wept or collapsed into restless sleep, Yun Mu sat cross-legged in the dark.
He reached within.
To the void.
---
The Hollow Spirit Root was like a doorway, but it opened in reverse.
Instead of drawing energy from the world to nourish the soul… it pulled the soul into itself.
Meditation wasn't calm—it was painful.
It stripped away thought. Emotion. Attachment.
Each session felt like dying.
And when he emerged from it, Yun Mu's spiritual sea was not clear like a lake, or fierce like a flame.
It was a dark hall.
Empty.
But far in the center, a small flicker pulsed. The Hollow Seed.
He fed it.
With pain. With will. With the emotions he buried each day.
It pulsed, and grew.
---
Two weeks later, he stood beside a cliff behind the servant quarters. Alone.
He extended his palm, focused inward, and summoned the seed's energy.
A black wisp curled above his hand. It didn't radiate heat. It didn't glow.
It consumed light.
A Hollow Qi wisp.
The first step toward cultivation.
---
But then came the real test.
To step into Essence Refinement, one needed a foundation. A technique. A method to stabilize the spiritual energy within and circulate it through the meridians.
Most disciples were given manuals.
Yun Mu had nothing.
So he watched.
He observed Outer Disciples when they practiced at dawn, copying their hand seals in secret.
He memorized overheard chants.
He even sifted through the waste piles of failed talismans and burned scrolls—reading the fragments by moonlight.
And from the scraps, from the pieces thrown away by others, he stitched together his first technique:
> Empty Pulse Method
A cultivation method born not of tradition, but necessity.
Designed to flow Hollow Qi through unstable meridians without burning them.
Built to sacrifice comfort, stability, and safety… for survival.
---
The first time he circulated it, his vision turned black.
Veins burst. Blood ran from his eyes. He vomited bile.
His spirit sea trembled, and his Hollow Seed cracked.
But it didn't die.
It consumed the pain.
And when the agony passed, he felt it.
The first drop of true cultivation essence in his reservoir.
---
Yun Mu reached Essence Refinement: First Layer.
No one noticed.
No one cared.
But he smiled to himself in the dark.
Not out of joy.
But because he was no longer prey.
---
Then came the raid.
One night, Ironcloud Sect was ambushed by rivals. Explosions lit the sky, shaking the mountains. Cultivators screamed. Flame and wind tore through formation wards.
In the chaos, the servant quarters were abandoned.
Most servants fled.
Yun Mu stayed.
He knew what chaos meant—opportunity.
He moved like a ghost through the compound. Slipping through shadows. Reaching where only disciples once walked.
And in a ruined courtyard, buried beneath rubble, he found it:
A dead Inner Disciple. Crushed by falling stone.
His storage pouch lay open.
Yun Mu took everything.
---
That night, he gained:
A spirit-refining manual with annotations in blood
A low-grade Soul Devouring Talisman
Two mid-grade pills
One worn-out but functional Spirit Beast Compass
And a jade slip that pulsed with ancient energy—its script unreadable
He took it all and vanished before dawn.
The next day, the overseers blamed the rebels.
They never questioned the quiet boy scrubbing blood off the courtyard stone.
---
And so Yun Mu's path began—not with recognition, not with glory.
But with a corpse.
With a technique built from trash.
With a root that consumed everything… even light.
He was still just a servant.
But in the silence of his hollow spirit sea, something was growing.
Not a tree.
Not a flower.
But a void, shaped like a blade.