Li Feng floated in a realm without sky or earth, his consciousness suspended in an endless void. Yet he wasn't alone. A soft, rhythmic pulse echoed through the emptiness. Then, like ripples in a still pond, a figure emerged.
It wasn't truly a man—more a silhouette of light, ethereal and immense, cloaked in the flowing robes of an ancient cultivator. His voice echoed with unfathomable age.
"I am Mo Tianji, once an Immortal Emperor who ruled over the Nine Heaven Realms. This jade slip holds a fragment of my soul and knowledge. You have awakened it."
Li Feng's thoughts were sluggish. "Why me?"
"Fate chooses not the strong, but the desperate. You are broken… yet unyielding. That is the mark of one worthy of Heaven's path."
Mo Tianji's hand lifted, and light poured into Li Feng's chest. He gasped as his meridians—though fractured—flared with a strange energy.
"I shall pass to you the Reversal Heaven Technique," said the voice. "A cultivation art born from defiance. It will rebuild your meridians in a way this world has forgotten."
Li Feng's eyes widened as vast streams of information rushed into his mind—diagrams of the human body, chants of ancient scripture, and the first three stages of the technique.
Suddenly, pain pierced his skull. The vision shattered.
---
He awoke in the forest, coughing up dirt and blood. The jade slip rested cold in his palm, now dull but still intact.
"Was it... real?" he murmured.
Then he felt it.
A faint warmth stirred in his dantian, something he hadn't felt in years. Not Qi—but potential. The first ember.
He clutched the jade slip tightly and staggered home.
---
Over the next week, Li Feng remained hidden in his shack outside the clan compound. He followed the teachings from the jade slip, beginning the first level of the Reversal Heaven Technique.
Each session left him pale and drenched in sweat. The process was agonizing—pushing fragmented Qi through broken meridians, then binding them together with spiritual threads conjured by sheer will.
On the seventh night, as the moon reached its apex, he sat in meditation, guiding a sliver of Qi through the largest crack in his core.
Crack!
A flash of pain blinded him.
Then... silence.
The warmth in his dantian coalesced, forming a small, rotating point of light—a pseudo core. His first meridian, healed.
He laughed. The sound cracked and wild.
"I... I did it. I'm cultivating again."
The jade slip hummed.
"Your path has begun, but the world will not wait. Others will sense the shift. You must grow quickly."
Li Feng's expression sharpened. He stood and faced the rising dawn.
"Let them come. I'm no longer the cripple of Falling Cloud City. I am Li Feng—and I will climb beyond the heavens."
And so, the spark of defiance ignited a flame that would one day set the world ablaze.