The mountain behind Xianhua stood hushed, as if listening.
Not the peaceful hush of dusk or prayer, but the kind of silence that made the air feel heavier than it should. In the village below, this place was called Wraith Hill. Children were warned not to wander near it. Grown men spat before mentioning its name.
Li Yuan Tian, barely thirteen, paid no mind to that. He didn't fear silence. He had lived in it far too long to be afraid of it.
He climbed with slow, deliberate steps, an old satchel of dry roots slung over one shoulder and the weathered cultivation manual hidden against his chest. His destination was a weather-smoothed clearing of stone, half-hidden in a cradle of pines—high enough that the village was just a dot, low enough that the sky didn't yet feel out of reach.
This was the day.
He wasn't sure why. It just… felt like it.
---
Li Yuan Tian sat cross-legged on cold rock.
He remembered the posture the manual had described. Chin lowered. Shoulders even. Breath shallow. He had practiced it a dozen times before—every time ending in bitter heat, dizziness, or emptiness.
But today… something in the air felt sharp.
Alive.
He began the breathing cycle slowly.
Inhale. Exhale. Visualize.
The Bone Breath Flow was not a technique in name only—it was a force that required submission. The body had to endure. The will had to bend.
His first cycle brought a sting behind his eyes. The second burned his chest. The third—
Snap.
Something inside him twisted. Not muscle. Not bone.
Meridian.
He gasped, nearly retching. His fingers clawed into the stone. A cold sweat broke out on his back. It felt like a hot nail driving through his spine, dragging upward toward his chest.
The pain was worse than the manual warned.
And then—
Pulse.
Like a drumbeat inside his limbs. A quiet thrum. Like the body had awoken—half-aware, half-resisting.
It lasted only a few seconds.
But when it faded, Li Yuan Tian realized he could hear farther, see sharper, feel heavier—like his body was newly forged steel, still cooling.
He had entered Early Stage Body Tempering.
---
His joy was brief.
A low growl echoed from the brush.
Li Yuan Tian stood slowly, unsheathing his rusted iron blade—the one his father had once used to cut wild grain, still notched from stone and time.
The beast stepped into view. Gray-furred, gaunt, its limbs too long and its eyes a hollow black. A cliffback scavenger, thought to be long gone from these hills.
It crouched.
Then sprang.
---
He didn't think.
He moved.
Not out of mastery. Not even instinct. Just will—honed, momentarily amplified by the raw strength of his Early Stage.
He ducked, slashed. The edge glanced off its shoulder. The beast screeched, twisting in the air, and landed behind him.
Li Yuan Tian turned fast, sweeping his blade low—cutting across a hind leg. Blood hit the stones. The beast staggered.
But it wasn't done.
It lunged.
This time, he met it head-on.
He roared—not from rage, but resolve—and drove the blade upward, into the soft gap beneath its chin.
It convulsed, thrashed.
Then died.
---
The clearing was silent again.
His chest heaved.
His arms burned.
But he was alive.
Not just alive—changed.
The blood in his body had weight now. His legs, though shaking, felt solid. His vision was sharper. His pulse quieter.
This was only the beginning—the first step of the first stage.
But it was a step.
And he had taken it alone.