The world was a vast, unforgiving plate of gray stone, and he was the smallest speck of grit upon it.
Lin Feng's world ended at the walls of the Verdant Dawn Orphanage. It was a grand name for a squat, damp building of shadow-stained brick, clinging to the underbelly of the floating island of Xuanji like a stubborn lichen. From the high windows, if he stood on the rotting counter in the kitchen, he could see the edge of the island—a sheer cliff that dropped into the endless, churning Gray Mist below. Above, the true city of Xuanji rose in terraces of gleaming jade and singing silver, where cultivators rode swords of light and houses glowed with inner warmth.
Down here, in the "Roots," the only light was the sickly phosphorescence of glow-moss, and the only warmth was what you could steal.
He was fifteen, bones aching with the cold that seeped from the stone floor even through his thin straw sandals. His task was simple: peel three bushels of Shadow-root potatoes. The tubers were ugly, black things that leaked a sap staining your fingers a bruised purple for days. They grew in the lightless crevices of the island, absorbing the ambient dark qi. They were cheap, filling, and tasted of despair and damp soil.
His hands moved mechanically. Peel, slice, toss into the iron pot. The kitchen knife was dull. Every motion was an effort. The Headmaster, a bloated man named Gao, believed labor built character. Lin Feng believed labor built calluses and a deep, abiding hunger.
Scrape. Slice. Toss.
His mind, as it often did, drifted to the stories. The tales the older boys whispered after lights-out, of cultivators who could step on shadows and travel a thousand miles in a heartbeat, of artifacts from the Before-Time that held the power of dead stars. Fairy tales. For people like him, the only artifact was the next meal. The only cultivation was surviving another day.
A sudden, sharp cry cut through the kitchen's gloom.
It came from the storage cellar. Old Man Luo, the half-blind cook who was the closest thing to kindness Lin Feng knew.
Lin Feng set the dull knife down, his heart a cold stone. He moved silently, his footsteps making no sound on the damp stone—a skill born not of cultivation, but of a lifetime of not wanting to be noticed.
The cellar door was ajar. Inside, in the weak light of a single glow-stone, he saw Gao. The Headmaster had Old Man Luo by the collar, shaking him like a ragdoll. A small, cloth-wrapped bundle lay spilled on the floor between them. Two steamed buns, still faintly warm.
"You thieving old relic!" Gao's voice was a low, venomous hiss. "The Sect's tithe was short last month! And you dare steal the good flour?"
"They… they were for the little ones, Headmaster," Luo wheezed, his face pale. "The Chen twins… they're feverish. They need something soft…"
"They need to learn their place! As do you!"
Gao backhanded the old man. The sound was a sickening crack. Luo crumpled to the floor, a thin trickle of blood from his lip stark against his gray skin.
Something in Lin Feng snapped.
It wasn't a heroic surge of power. It was a silent, cold wire tightening in his chest. A familiar, helpless rage. He had seen this before. He would see it again. He stepped into the cellar.
"Headmaster."
Gao turned, his piggish eyes narrowing. "Ah. The quiet one. Come to defend this thief? Feeling brave today, are we, gutter-spawn?"
Lin Feng said nothing. He just looked at Old Man Luo, who shook his head minutely, his eyes begging him to leave.
"Since you're here," Gao sneered, kicking the bundled buns towards Lin Feng. The white cloth, now dirty, unfurled. The buns rolled to a stop at his feet. "You can share his punishment. Kneel. Apologize for his greed. Then you can both go without dinner for a week."
The cold wire in Lin Feng's chest pulled tighter. He looked at the buns. He looked at Old Man Luo's bleeding mouth. He looked at Gao's smug, cruel face.
No.
The word didn't leave his lips. It echoed only in the hollow of his skull. But it was the most powerful word he had ever thought.
He didn't kneel. He took a step forward.
Gao's expression shifted from cruelty to surprise, then to irritation. "You dare?"
Lin Feng dared. He reached down, not for the buns, but for the only weapon he had. A loose, heavy stone brick from the crumbling cellar wall. He hefted it. It was stupid. It was suicide. But the cold wire was now a fire.
With a raw shout that tore from a place of stored-up years of silence, he charged.
Gao, a low-level Qi Refinement cultivator, was slow and complacent. The brick, swung with all the desperate strength of a starving fifteen-year-old, connected with the side of his knee.
There was a crunch. Not the brick. The knee.
Gao screamed. A high, undignified sound. He stumbled back, his face contorted in shock and pain. "MY LEG! YOU LITTLE VERMIN! I'LL SKIN YOU ALIVE!"
Cultivator or not, pain was a universal language. Gao lashed out blindly, a fist wrapped in faint, murky green qi—the weak Earth-attuned energy he'd cultivated. It grazed Lin Feng's shoulder.
The impact was like being hit by a runaway cart. Lin Feng flew across the cellar, crashing into the far wall. The breath exploded from his lungs. Stars burst behind his eyes. Agony, bright and hot, radiated from his shoulder. He slid down the wall, the world swimming.
Gao limped towards him, murder in his eyes. "You're dead. No one will miss a root-rat. I'll throw your body into the Mist myself."
This was it. This was how his story ended. In a damp cellar, over two stolen buns.
As Gao loomed over him, his shadow fell across Lin Feng's face. In the Roots, shadows were deep, pooled, and hungry. This one seemed especially dark. It seemed to pulse.
Lin Feng's hand, scrabbling weakly at the ground behind him, touched something cold and smooth. Not stone. Something else. Buried in the loose earth and rubble of the collapsed wall.
Instinct, deeper than thought, made his fingers close around it.
As Gao's qi-wreathed fist descended toward his head, Lin Feng pulled the object from the dirt and held it up, a pathetic shield between himself and oblivion.
It was a disc, the size of his palm. It seemed to be made of polished, absolute darkness. Not black stone, but a void that swallowed the feeble light of the glow-stone. At its center, etched in lines of faint, dying silver, was the shape of a lotus flower with nine petals.
The moment his skin made contact, two things happened simultaneously.
First, Gao's fist struck the disc.
There was no sound of impact. The murky green qi around Gao's fist flowed into the disc like water down a drain. Then, the physical force followed, absorbed utterly. Gao stared, his rage replaced by bewildered shock.
Second, the world inside Lin Feng's head exploded.
Pain.
A pain not of the body, but of the soul. It was as if a flower of frozen darkness had taken root in the very center of his mind, its roots burrowing into his consciousness, its petals unfolding with a silent, seismic roar.
VISION.
Fragments. A sky bleeding crimson. Mountains breaking like glass. A great tree, its roots in hell and its branches piercing heaven, burning. A whisper, vast and ancient and utterly alien: "Hunger…"
VOICE.
It was not a sound. It was a concept imprinted directly onto his being.
[Host Detected. Soul Signature: Compatible. Mortal Vessel: Fragile. Acceptable.]
[Initializing Symbiosis. Artifact: Nine Petals Shadow Lotus (Damaged. Seal Status: 9/9 Intact).]
[Soul-Binding Protocol: Engaged. Integration: 1%... 5%...]
The cellar vanished. Gao vanished. There was only the dark lotus blossoming in the void of his perception, and a flood of information, cold and precise, layering over his terror.
[System Interface Online.]
[Welcome, Host: Lin Feng.]
[Status: Critical Injury (Fractured Shoulder, Internal Bleeding). Qi Reserves: 0 (Unawakened). Shadow Essence Reserves: 0.1 Units (Artifact Leakage).]
[Initial Quest Generated: 'Survival.']
Objective: Do Not Die.
Reward: Continued Existence.
Failure: Soul-Forge Fuel for Artifact Repair.
Lin Feng's eyes flew open. He was still on the cellar floor. The dark disc was gone. He could feel it—a cold, comforting, terrifying weight nestled inside him, just below his heart.
Gao was staring at his own hand, then at Lin Feng, fear now dawning in his eyes. "W-What did you do? What was that thing? Demon artifact!"
Lin Feng looked up at him. The pain in his shoulder was still there, a bright, throbbing agony. But beneath it, thrumming in time with his heartbeat, was a new sensation. A pool of cool, liquid shadow. He could feel it. He could touch it.
He didn't think. He willed.
The pool of shadow moved.
From the darkness gathered in the corner of the cellar, a tendril of pure blackness, as thick as his wrist, lashed out. It was not solid, not liquid. It was the idea of darkness given form. It wrapped around Gao's good ankle.
Gao shrieked. He tried to pull away, but the shadow held with impossible strength. It was cold. A cold that sank through leather and skin, biting into the bone. The faint green qi around Gao's body flickered and died, snuffed out like a candle in a gale.
"Stop! Stop! Demon! MONSTER!" Gao babbled, clawing at the shadow tendril, his fingers passing through it as if through smoke, yet the cold, gripping force remained.
Lin Feng pushed himself up, leaning against the wall. He was trembling violently. Not from fear. From the cold. The cold was inside him now, too. Feeding on his anger, his pain, his will to live. The System's words echoed: Soul-Forge Fuel.
He looked at Gao, at the terrified, hateful man who had made his life a living hell. He could feel the shadow's hunger. A mirror of his own. He could pull. He could drain this man dry. The thought was seductive, sweet, and monstrous.
He looked at Old Man Luo, unconscious on the floor.
No.
He wasn't Gao. Not yet.
With a gasp of effort, he severed the connection. The shadow tendril dissolved into motes of black light that were swallowed by the greater darkness of the room.
Gao fell backward, clutching his ankle. The skin was pale, frostbitten. He stared at Lin Feng with the pure, primal terror of a prey animal. Then, with a choked sob, he scrambled to his feet and limped, stumbled, fled out of the cellar, his cries echoing up the stairs.
Silence descended, broken only by Lin Feng's ragged breathing and the drip of water somewhere.
The cold inside him settled, a dormant frost. The System text flickered calmly in the corner of his mind.
[Quest 'Survival': Updated.]
Objective: Stabilize Condition. Secure Location.
New Sub-Objective: Understand Your Gift (And Its Cost).]
[Warning: Shadow Essence Usage Detected. Host Emotional Spectrum: Agitation. Risk of 'Resonance Corruption' Low. Maintain Equilibrium.]
Gift. Cost. Corruption. Equilibrium.
The words meant nothing and everything.
Lin Feng crawled to Old Man Luo. He was breathing. Lin Feng, with his one good arm, dragged the old cook into a drier corner. He retrieved the now-dirty buns, wiping them clean as best he could on his threadbare shirt. He placed them next to Luo.
He then slumped against the wall, cradling his injured arm. The adrenaline was fading. The shock was setting in. He stared at his own hand. It looked the same. Pale, thin, scarred.
But it was not.
He had held the dark. The dark now lived within him.
Outside, he could hear commotion. Gao was rousing the orphanage. They would come. With torches, with weapons, with fear in their hearts.
Lin Feng looked at the cellar's rear wall, the one that had collapsed. Beyond it was not more foundation, but a yawning crack—a natural chimney in the island's stone that led down, deep into the lightless bowels of the Roots. A place not even Gao dared to send them to forage.
He looked at the unconscious Old Man Luo. He couldn't carry him. He could barely stand.
The cold lotus in his soul pulsed softly. Hunger. Survival.
[First Mandatory Directive: Preserve The Host.] the System's voice-whisper intoned. [Recommendation: Evacuate. The Mortal 'Gao' represents a statistically high threat in your current state.]
Lin Feng made a choice. It broke his heart into a thousand icy shards.
He took one of the buns. He left the other for Luo.
With a final, agonized glance at the only person who had ever shown him kindness, Lin Feng turned and crawled into the crack in the wall, letting the absolute darkness of the world below swallow him whole.
The Shadow Lotus hummed, content.
The story had begun.