Two days had passed since Lin fell.
The mountain pass above him had long since fallen silent. The thunderous collisions of qi, the screaming shockwaves, the earth-splitting impacts... all of it was gone, as if the battle had never happened at all.
Lin did not know who won.
It no longer mattered.
He lay at the bottom of the fissure, half-buried among shattered rock and dirt, his back pressed against an unevenly rough stone wall slick with moisture. The chasm was narrow but deep and the sky above had reduced to a thin, cruel strip of light far beyond his reach.
His left knee throbbed constantly.
Every time he moved even slightly, hot and sharp, shot up his leg and into his spine. The joint had swollen grotesquely, twisted at an unnatural angle when he landed. He had tried standing once on the first day, gritting his teeth and leaning against the rock.
The moment he put weight on it, he screamed.
He did not try again.
By the second day, the swelling had turned an ugly greenish hue with dark veins beneath the skin. The flesh around the wound was too warm. Even Lin, uneducated in medicine, knew what that meant.
Infection...
He had eaten the last of his dried snacks sometime the previous morning, chewing slowly, forcing himself to swallow despite the dryness of his mouth. The water skin had been empty since the first night.
Now his lips were cracked.
His throat burned.
Every breath scraped like sandpaper.
The scrolls lay scattered around him with some partially crushed by fallen stone and others miraculously intact. He had tried gathering them earlier, more out of habit than hope, but the effort had left him shaking and drenched in cold sweat.
He had shouted.
At first with strength.
Then with desperation.
Then with hoarse, broken pleas that echoed weakly up the fissure and vanished.
No one came.
No one would.
This mountain pass was rarely used. Merchants avoided it. Ordinary people feared it. Cultivators passed through only when they had business and the battle that split the ground apart ensured no one would return anytime soon.
Lin was alone.
Time blurred past...
Day bled into night and back into day, measured only by the faint light shifting above him. His thoughts became slow, heavy and drifting. Sometimes he imagined hearing footsteps, voices calling his name.
Every time he forced his eyes open, there was nothing.
By the fourth day, the pain in his leg had become constant, dull and deep, like something gnawing at the bone itself. Fever came in waves, dragging him in and out of consciousness. His body felt heavy and useless.
He stopped yelling.
What was the point?
On the fifth day, clarity returned...
There was no hope, but there was a silent acceptance.
Lin lay staring at the narrow strip of sky, breathing shallowly.
'I won't make it.'
The thought was simple.
There was no anger left in it.
He had tried... worked... waited... obeyed.
And still, he would die here... nameless, unmarked, forgotten.
His fingers brushed against parchment.
It was the scrolls.
He had stumbled into them earlier while trying to crawl, tripped over his own weakness, and fallen face-first onto the scattered bundle. Now one lay unfurled beside his cheek with its contents exposed to the dim light.
His vision blurred, but the characters were still legible.
Cultivation script.
Lin blinked.
No… not just cultivation.
His heart began to pound weakly.
It was a technique.
A scripture.
Low to mid-grade, judging by the rough qi diagrams and incomplete annotations... but unmistakably real.
Duplication…?
He read slowly, painfully, forcing his mind to focus.
It was an unstable and primitive method, meant to divide one's qi and consciousness, forming a temporary duplicate body. The notes were messy, filled with warnings and crossed-out lines.
> Highly dangerous.
Extremely unstable.
Do not attempt without a solid foundation.
Lin let out a dry, humorless laugh that turned into a cough.
Foundation.
He had none.
But the realization hit him all the same.
If he were stronger…
If he could cultivate…
If he had even the slightest enhancement to his body…
He could have climbed out.
The walls, while steep, were not impossible. A cultivator... any cultivator... could scale them easily.
The only reason he was trapped here was because he was weak.
And the only reason he was weak was because he had waited...
Because he had obeyed...
Because he did not have the Emperor's mark...
The treacherous thought surfaced.
'If I don't cultivate… I die.'
Lin hands trembled as he stared at the scripture...
Cultivating without the mark was heresy.
Everyone knew that.
Children were taught it before they could read. Stories were told—warnings disguised as lessons. Unmarked cultivators dragged from their homes. Entire families erased.
Imperial enforcers descending like executioners from heaven.
No trials.
No mercy.
Death.
Lin had lived his entire life under that shadow.
He had waited because he was afraid.
He had waited because he believed.
He had waited because the alternative was worse than death.
But now…
He laughed again, softly.
"What difference does it make?" he whispered to the empty chasm.
If he followed the rules, he would die here anyway... alone.
If he broke them…
At least it would be his choice.
Lin closed his eyes.
His mother's face surfaced in his mind, thin and smiling gently even as she faded away.
'If you were marked…'
The bitterness twisted deep in his chest.
"I'm sorry," he murmured, unsure who he was speaking to. "I tried."
The decision settled in him with terrifying calm.
He shifted, wincing as pain tore through his leg, and forced himself into a sitting position. His back pressed against the rock with his spine trembling. Sweat beaded on his brow.
Slowly, he mimicked the posture illustrated in the scripture.
It felt ridiculous.
He had no teacher. No guidance. No protection.
Only desperation.
Lin inhaled.
The air was thin down here, tainted with dust and faint poisonous qi leaking from deep within the mountain. His lungs burned as he tried to breathe steadily.
He focused inward.
He had felt qi his entire life... dormant, restrained, like a locked door he was forbidden to open.
Now, trembling, he reached for it.
At first, nothing happened... and then, something stirred.
The surrounding qi responded faintly, hesitantly, like a wary animal testing unfamiliar ground. It brushed against his skin, sending a shiver through his body.
Lin gasped as pain exploded through his body.
His meridians trembled as foreign energy forced its way in, unfiltered and unrefined. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth as his body rejected the intrusion.
He almost stopped but then he thought of the darkness closed in and he pulled harder.
Qi flooded into his dantian for the first time.
It was chaotic, violent and unstable.
His body convulsed as something fundamental shifted.
Far above, unseen by mortal eyes, something stirred.
A rule was broken.
A line crossed.
For the first time in his life—
Lin cultivated.
Without permission.
Without a mark.
Without knowing that this single act of desperation would echo through centuries, unravel empires, and give birth to a heretic the world would one day fear.
All he knew was that he refused to die waiting.