Chapter 1: Dao Clan
In the shadowed valleys of the Azure Peak Mountains, where mist clung to ancient pines like forgotten secrets, the Dao Clan held dominion over a realm teeming with spiritual energy.
Towering pagodas pierced the clouds, their eaves adorned with talismans that warded off malevolent spirits, while disciples in flowing robes practiced arcane arts that bent the winds and summoned flames from thin air. This was a world where cultivation was the breath of life, the path to power, and the measure of one's worth.
To be born without the ability to harness qi was a fate worse than death—a curse that branded one as an outcast, a burden to be discarded.Dao Ling was such a curse.At sixteen years of age, he knelt in the clan's ancestral hall, his frail body trembling under the weight of judgmental gazes.
The hall was a cavernous chamber, its walls etched with glowing runes depicting the clan's illustrious history: ancestors who had shattered mountains with a single palm strike, subdued flood dragons in raging rivers, and ascended to the immortal realms. Incense smoke curled lazily from bronze cauldrons, carrying the scent of sandalwood and regret.
Before him sat the elders, their faces as unyielding as the stone thrones they occupied.
At the center was Patriarch Dao Xuan, a man whose cultivation had reached the peak of the Core Formation realm, his eyes like twin abysses that swallowed all hope."Dao Ling," the patriarch intoned, his voice echoing like thunder in a storm, "your meridians are shattered, twisted beyond repair. You cannot absorb even the faintest wisp of heaven and earth essence. In the Dao Clan, weakness is not tolerated.
It invites calamity upon us all."Whispers rippled through the assembled clan members—cousins who once played with him in the courtyards, now sneering from behind silk fans. "Cripple," one muttered. "A stain on our bloodline," another hissed. Dao Ling's hands clenched into fists, nails digging into his palms until blood trickled down.
He had known this day would come.
From birth, his body had rejected the spiritual energy that flowed so freely through others.
While his peers formed their qi seas and broke through realms, he could only watch, his dantian a barren void."I... I can still serve the clan," Dao Ling pleaded, his voice barely above a whisper.
"As a servant, or in the outer courts—""Silence!" An elder slammed his fist on the armrest, sending a ripple of qi that cracked the floor tiles. "Service? You are a liability.
The Li Clan eyes our spirit veins with greed, and the beasts of the wilds grow bolder each moon. We cannot afford to shelter the weak.
"Patriarch Dao Xuan raised a hand, and the hall fell silent. "You are hereby exiled.
Leave before sunset, or face the clan's enforcers.
"Dao Ling's world shattered in that moment, not with a bang, but with the quiet finality of a door closing forever.
He was dragged from the hall by rough hands, his meager belongings—a tattered robe and a jade pendant from his late mother—thrust into his arms.
The gates of the clan compound creaked open, revealing the wild expanse beyond: jagged peaks shrouded in perpetual fog, where demonic beasts lurked and rogue cultivators preyed on the unwary.As the sun dipped toward the horizon, painting the sky in hues of blood, Dao Ling stumbled into the wilderness.
His legs burned from exhaustion, his stomach gnawed by hunger. "Why?" he rasped to the uncaring winds. "What sin did I commit in a past life to deserve this?"Night fell like a shroud, and with it came the howls.
Eyes glowed in the darkness—spirit wolves, their fur infused with baleful energy, drawn by the scent of vulnerability.
Dao Ling ran, branches whipping his face, until his foot caught on a root and he tumbled into a ravine.
The world spun, rocks battering his body, until he crashed into a hidden crevice, the earth swallowing him whole.When consciousness returned, it was to the dim glow of phosphorescent moss.
Dao Ling groaned, pushing himself up on bruised elbows. He had fallen into an underground chamber, its walls crumbling with age.
Strange carvings adorned the stone—symbols of coiling dragons and swirling vortices, pulsing with a faint, otherworldly light.
At the center lay a sarcophagus, its lid cracked open, emanating an aura that made his shattered meridians tingle for the first time."What... is this place?" he whispered, crawling closer.
Dust motes danced in the air as he peered inside. No body lay within, only a crystalline orb, humming with primordial power.
As his fingers brushed its surface, a surge of energy exploded through him, visions flooding his mind: an ancient sovereign, cloaked in starlight, battling cosmic horrors at planetery Level ; techniques that wove life from death, essence from void.
The orb shattered, its essence pouring into Dao Ling's body like liquid fire.
Pain unlike any he had known wracked him—meridians reforming, dantian igniting. He screamed as his crippled form was reforged, veins glowing with ethereal light.
When the agony subsided, he gasped, feeling the world anew. Qi flowed through him, pure and boundless, drawn from the heavens themselves."This... this is the legacy of the Immortal Sovereign," he realized, the knowledge imprinting on his soul. The Eternal Undying Scripture—a forbidden art that transcended mortality, allowing one to refine the cosmos into an immortal physique.
Rising to his feet, Dao Ling's eyes burned with newfound resolve. The clan that abandoned him, the world that scorned him—they would all witness his ascent.
"From this day," he vowed, clenching his fist as power surged within, "I will seize the heavens and become eternal."Outside, the spirit wolves circled the ravine, but Dao Ling emerged like a phoenix from ashes.
With a single wave, he channeled the scripture's essence, summoning a blade of void energy that cleaved through the pack. Blood sprayed, and the survivors fled in terror.
Thus began the legend of Dao Ling, the forsaken youth who would defy fate and etch his name across the stars.
Notice:
The Patriarch Dao Xuan, was not his Father.
his Father has long ascend to Immortal realms and In trusted his son to his brother DAO Xuan.