The sky above Blackmist Ridge was heavy with fog, thick as bone marrow, casting a grey gloom across the Ironcloud Sect's outer grounds. Though weeks had passed since the raid, tension still lingered in the air—like the scent of blood long after a slaughter.
Servants moved faster. Overseers beat harder. Disciples grew more paranoid.
And amidst it all, Yun Mu continued to grow stronger in silence.
Each night he returned to his hidden corner—an abandoned stone well behind the herb sheds, long forgotten and half collapsed. Its interior had been cleaned, rearranged, and sealed with a homemade concealment talisman. Inside it, he sat, cross-legged, shirtless, soaked in his own sweat.
Black wisps of Hollow Qi curled around his chest, flowing in strange spirals.
Each breath pulled that essence deeper into his meridians. Each heartbeat sent it crawling through his bones.
Painful. Unnatural. Efficient.
The Empty Pulse Method grew more stable each time he circulated it. His Hollow Spirit Root, which at first resisted all structured flow, was beginning to accept this twisted rhythm. It wasn't control in the traditional sense—it was adaptation.
Like broken glass reshaped by pressure.
And that night, something shifted.
As the Hollow Qi condensed once more into his dantian, Yun Mu felt a snap deep within.
A lock breaking.
A veil lifting.
> [Essence Refinement: Second Layer]
His fingers trembled. Not from joy. From hunger.
The Hollow Seed was growing faster now, demanding more energy, more experience, more… loss.
He had learned the truth of Hollow Cultivation.
> It didn't grow by nurturing.
It grew by devouring.
---
Three days later, a new job found him.
He was summoned to the Mist Valley Trial Grounds, where Outer Disciples tested spells on captured beasts.
His duty?
Beast disposal.
When training ended, and the disciples left—leaving behind corpses, maimed beasts, and half-alive abominations—it was Yun Mu's task to clean up the remains.
Few lasted more than a week.
The beasts weren't always dead.
---
The first time it happened, he had just dragged a half-dismembered Shadow-Scaled Lizard toward the burn pits when it sprang to life—its claw raking across his chest, tearing flesh open.
Blood spilled.
He fell.
And then the pain stopped.
Not because the beast missed—but because his Hollow Qi acted on its own.
A single wisp coiled upward from his spine, curling into a sharp spike and piercing the lizard's eye.
It died without a sound.
And as it collapsed, Yun Mu felt it.
Something flowed into him.
Not spirit energy—not the beast's qi—but something deeper.
Its will, fragmented and broken. A half-formed desire to live.
The Hollow Seed drank it.
And the next time he circulated the Empty Pulse Method, the flow was easier. Sharper. More aggressive.
---
> [New Trait: Beast Devourer - Rank 0]
"The Hollow Spirit Root adapts to consumed instincts. Minor increase in reflex and perception when facing beast-type enemies."
---
So he began to experiment.
He stopped dragging the beasts to the pits.
Instead, he studied them—slaughtering them carefully, absorbing that strange residue of consciousness that lingered in their dying eyes.
Birds. Wolves. Serpents. Mutant rabbits.
Each one left a taste.
A whisper.
A weakness consumed.
His Hollow Seed began to change. It now had slivers within it—marks of what he'd absorbed. Not techniques. Not bloodlines.
But edges.
And on the seventh night, something new emerged.
A spirit construct formed in his dantian—a hazy silhouette shaped like a blade.
It had no name.
No color.
But when he focused on it, it hummed with hunger.
---
That same week, opportunity came dressed in the robes of death.
Three outer disciples, cocky and bored, arrived to "test" a captured beast themselves. They dragged with them a creature known as a Crimson-Striped Vine Serpent—venomous, agile, and unnaturally intelligent.
They tied it to a boulder and laughed while throwing minor spells and fire talismans at it.
But one of them overreached.
The spell missed.
The serpent's head snapped its bindings.
Chaos followed.
The beast lunged, fangs flashing.
One disciple screamed as venom melted through his arm.
The others panicked, running back toward the safety wards.
Yun Mu, who had been hidden among the trees, didn't run.
He watched.
He waited.
And when the serpent turned its gaze toward him, slithering forward with fury in its eyes—
He stepped forward.
---
The Hollow Qi surged.
His body dropped into a stance—learned not from manuals, but instinct. His right palm turned, Hollow Qi forming into a black ripple across his fingertips.
The serpent lunged.
Yun Mu didn't retreat.
He struck forward.
Not with force. Not with speed.
But with precision.
His fingers met the serpent's skull.
Silent Cut.
A line of Hollow Qi passed through its head like smoke.
No light. No impact. Just a whisper.
The serpent dropped mid-leap, its brain severed cleanly.
> [Hollow Technique Gained: Silent Cut (Basic)]
"Consumes 8% spiritual energy. Executes a qi blade that leaves no aura trail. Difficult to detect. Damage scales with enemy weakness."
---
The remaining disciple—bleeding and half-conscious—stared at Yun Mu in horror.
"You… you're just a servant…"
Yun Mu looked at him.
And walked away.
He didn't need to kill him.
Fear would do more damage.
---
By the next morning, the tale had spread.
Whispers passed through the servant quarters.
"A beast killed three disciples."
"No—one lived. A servant killed the beast."
"Impossible. They said he used silent qi. That's forbidden…"
"Who was it?"
"Don't know. Just that his eyes were like frost."
---
Yun Mu returned to the pit alone that night.
He sat at the edge of the stone ring, letting the wind carry the distant howls of the forest to his ears.
He closed his eyes.
Inside him, the Hollow Seed pulsed stronger than ever.
And the blade in his core flickered once—then twice—then split.
Two blades now. Faint, but growing.
The void within him wasn't empty anymore.
It was sharpening.