In this world, all things possessed color.
The heavens had azure.
Blood had crimson.
Gold carried fortune.
Black devoured fate.
Even spiritual energy — the breath of heaven and earth — shone with light when gathered within the body.
Cultivators called it one's color of destiny.
A reflection of the soul.
A proof that one belonged beneath the sky.
Without it—
One could not cultivate.
Could not step onto the immortal path.
Could not even be remembered by history.
But there existed one exception.
A mistake.
An absence.
A blank space where color should have been.
Snow fell over Qinghe County.
Quiet.
Endless.
The world was painted white.
Temple bells echoed faintly through the frozen air.
Villagers hurried home before nightfall, their robes tinted with faint spiritual hues — red, blue, green — flickering like dying embers beneath their skin.
Every living thing carried light.
Even stray dogs.
Even dying grass.
Even the corpses buried beneath the earth.
All things returned to color.
All things belonged.
He did not.
At the foot of the mountain path, a lone figure walked slowly through the snow.
Thin clothes.
Old boots.
No clan insignia.
No sword.
No spiritual aura.
No soul in his gaze.
His steps left shallow prints, quickly erased by falling flakes.
As though the world itself rejected the evidence of his passing.
If a cultivator looked with spiritual sight, they would see nothing.
Not darkness.
Not weakness.
Simply—
Nothing.
Like staring into a hole cut from reality.
As if heaven forgot to paint him when creating all things.
He had no color.
No spiritual root.
No fate thread.
No destiny.
Even the heavenly laws could not recognize him.
People rarely noticed him.
When they did, they forgot.
An innkeeper would serve him tea, then moments later ask,
"Have you paid yet, stranger?"
Children bumped into him without apology, as though they had collided with air.
Old acquaintances stared with empty eyes, struggling to remember his name.
Eventually, they stopped trying.
It was easier that way.
Years ago, the sect elder had tested him.
A simple ritual.
Palm on the Spirit Stone.
Channel breath.
Reveal destiny.
Even a common cripple that's begging desperately for money on the street should produce the faintest glimmer.
A speck.
A grain of light.
Something.
The stone lit up brilliantly for everyone else.
Red.
Gold.
Violet.
But when it was his turn—
The stone remained dark.
Not dim.
Not weak.
Dark.
As if light itself refused to exist near him.
Then—
A crack.
A sharp sound.
The Spirit Stone shattered.
As though something impossible had touched it.
"Monster…"
Someone whispered.
"An omen…"
Another said.
"Throw him out."
So they did.
The wind grew colder as night descended.
The mountain path twisted like a dying serpent.
Above, the moon hung pale and distant.
He stopped walking.
Looked at the sky.
For a long time.
His breath fogged the air.
Slow.
Quiet.
Alive.
His heart still beat.
So why—
Why did he feel less real than the snow beneath his feet? Why did he feel inferior to even just a passing breeze?
He watched distant lights flicker in the valley.
Families gathering.
Disciples cultivating.
Fires burning warm.
All of them with somewhere to return to.
All of them part of the world's painting.
He alone stood outside the canvas.
Like spilled ink that never dried.
Like a name never written into the Book of Fate.
"I wonder…" he muttered.
His voice sounded unfamiliar.
Like someone else speaking through him.
"What am I meant to be?"
No answer came.
Heaven was silent.
Earth was silent.
Even the spiritual energy drifting through the air avoided his body, parting around him like water around stone.
If cultivators feared death—
He feared something worse.
To live…
Yet leave no trace.
To walk…
Yet cast no shadow upon destiny.
To die one day…
And have the world continue as though he had never existed.
Snow piled onto his shoulders.
He did not brush it off.
He simply stood there.
Watching.
Waiting.
For something.
Anything.
A sign.
A purpose.
A color.
None came.
Far above, beyond mortal sight—
Something stirred.
The heavens trembled faintly.
Ancient mechanisms of fate, dormant for ten thousand years, shifted ever so slightly.
Like rusted gears grinding back to life.
Like destiny noticing an error in its grand design.
Like the world finally realizing—
Something that should not exist…
Had begun to walk its surface.
And thus—
On a winter night without witnesses,
The Colorless One stepped forward.
Unrecorded by history.
Unblessed by heaven.
Unwanted by earth.
A man with no destiny—
Walking toward a future that even the stars could not predict.
This is not the beginning of his story.
This is its end.
Never ending.
Because when the world finally remembers his name—
Blood will stain the heavens,
Earth will split,
Sects will fall,
Immortals will kneel,
And color itself…
Will learn what it means to fade.