: Echo Above the Silent River
In the world of cultivation, there is an ancient saying: "Heaven and Earth are ruthless; to them, all living things are merely straw dogs."
It meant the laws of existence were cold and impartial. A mortal is born, grows old, falls ill, and dies. This is the natural cycle. This is the will of Heaven. But cultivators are madmen who steal vitality from the sun and the moon to rewrite that law. They swim against the current of the Great River of Time. They rebel.
And among all the rebels who ever walked the dusty roads of the Nine Continents, none was more stubborn than Liu Feng.
Silent River Village was not a place where legends were born. It was a cluster of crooked huts pressed against the foot of a majestic mountain range known as the Azure Peak Ridge. The summits vanished into the clouds, hiding the abode of immortals—the Azure Peak Sect. The villagers looked upward with awe and fear, dreaming that one day the "heavenly ones" would descend and take one of their children as a disciple.
Liu Feng sat at the edge of a cliff with his legs dangling over the void. He was fifteen. Sharp features, a lean frame, and eyes holding a sadness far too old for his age. In his hands was a roughly carved wooden crane—a gift from his father.
"Feng-er!" a rough but warm voice shouted from below. "Enough daydreaming! Help me move these logs!"
Liu Feng flinched, snapping out of his trance. He tucked the crane inside his clothes and shouted back, "Coming, Father!"
His father, Liu Dahe, was a simple carpenter—honest, hardworking, and boundlessly devoted to his family. Liu Feng's mother had died when he was still an infant, and his father raised him alone. Liu Feng loved his father more than anything in the world. And it was for him—for a peaceful old age, for a back free of pain—that Liu Feng so desperately wanted to become a cultivator.
Three days earlier, envoys from the Azure Peak Sect had come to the village. It happened once every ten years. All the village boys and girls lined up to undergo the Spirit Root Test.
Liu Feng remembered that day with painful clarity, as if it had happened a heartbeat ago. The elder's cold gaze in white robes. The transparent sphere that never lit in his hands.
"Empty stock," the elder said indifferently without even looking at him. "Next."
Two words. A sentence.
"Empty stock" meant he had no talent. No future. He would remain a mortal forever—a worm crawling in mud while immortals soared through the clouds.
Liu Feng didn't cry. He simply stood there with his fists clenched so hard his nails cut into his palms until they bled, until his father pulled him away, soothing him and saying that being a carpenter was an honorable life too.
But Liu Feng didn't want an "honorable" life. He had watched neighbors wither. He had seen disease take strong men. He hated that helplessness.
That evening, unable to sleep, he went into the forest. His feet carried him to an old, abandoned ravine the locals called the Dragon's Maw. They said ghosts lived there, but Liu Feng didn't care. Anger and humiliation burned inside him.
"Heavens!" he shouted into the dark, star-strewn sky. "Why are you so unfair?! Why are some born to fly, while others are born to rot?!"
His cry echoed off the cliffs and died away. The wind whispered in answer.
Then the earth crumbled beneath his foot.
Liu Feng didn't even have time to scream before he fell. The impact was brutal. Branches lashed his face, stones tore his clothes. He tumbled to the bottom of the ravine, his head striking something hard.
His consciousness swam. Dark rings danced before his eyes. Blood ran down his forehead, flooding one eye.
Am I going to die here? the thought flashed. Just like this? Ridiculous…
He tried to rise, bracing a hand against the ground, and his fingers touched something strange.
A stone.
Smooth, cold, perfectly round, the size of a pigeon's egg. But the strangest part was its color—absolute black, as if it swallowed every bit of light that fell upon it.
Liu Feng lifted it closer. It looked ordinary—until a drop of blood sliding from his brow fell onto the black surface.
The drop didn't run.
It sank in.
In the same instant, a low, vibrating hum erupted in Liu Feng's skull, like the toll of a bell echoing up from the abyss of time.
The world froze. The wind vanished. The rustle of leaves ceased. Even the pain in his body retreated. Liu Feng felt an invisible force rip his consciousness from his flesh and drag it into the black stone.
He appeared in a gray expanse. There was no up or down, no light or darkness—only endless gray mist. And in the heart of that mist floated a lone, half-ruined stone slab. Upon it, carved in ancient, twisting characters, was a single word:
SAMSARA.
Liu Feng stepped toward it. In that place, he felt strange—as if time flowed differently. Or did not flow at all.
Suddenly, a puff of greenish smoke burst from the slab and condensed into the ghostly figure of an old man. He wore rags, his hair was wild, and his eyes burned with a mad, fanatical fire.
"Three thousand years!" the old man howled, his voice like metal scraping glass. "Three thousand years trapped inside this cursed shard! Finally! Fresh blood! A fresh soul!"
The specter lunged at Liu Feng, clearly intending to seize his body. Liu Feng froze in terror, unable to move.
But the moment the ghostly hand touched his forehead, the black sphere—still in Liu Feng's hand in the real world—flared.
An invisible chain shot out of the mist and bound the old man.
"AAAAH!" the ghost shrieked, convulsing violently. "The damned Shard of Eternal Silence! You still serve him?! Even shattered—still?!"
The specter was hurled back toward the slab. He shrank, becoming half-transparent and weak. He glared at Liu Feng with hatred—and with fear.
"Boy…" the old man rasped, panting, though ghosts had no need for breath. "You… you're the blood's master? You awakened the Shard?"
Still trembling, Liu Feng managed, "Who… who are you?"
The old man suddenly laughed—a harsh, carrion caw.
"Me? I'm the one who once made the heavens tremble. I am Elder Mo, the Great Alchemist of the Void! But now… now I'm nothing but a prisoner in your pocket, a wretch." His eyes narrowed. "Tell me, boy—what is your name? And what year is it by the Five Elements Calendar?"
"Liu Feng…" the youth whispered. "I don't know the Five Elements Calendar… It's the forty-eighth year of the Great Zhao Dynasty."
"Zhao Dynasty?" Elder Mo frowned. "Never heard of it. Then too much time has passed. The world has changed."
He studied Liu Feng as if weighing goods at a market stall.
"You have empty spirit roots," he declared with contempt. "Trash. You will never cultivate. You are fated to die in the dust."
Those words hit Liu Feng harder than the fall. Rage surged back into his heart.
"I know!" he shouted, fists clenching. "Everyone tells me that! But I don't want it! I don't want to be trash!"
Elder Mo's lips curled. A crafty glint flashed in his mad eyes.
"You don't? Hm… This Shard of Eternal Silence you found is no trinket. It is a fragment of an ancient artifact that can govern Time and Entropy. It recognized you as its master. Perhaps… just perhaps… even garbage like you can use it to cheat the Heavens."
Liu Feng lifted his head. A spark of hope ignited in his eyes.
"Can you teach me?"
"Teach you?" Elder Mo threw back his head and laughed again. "I'm no benefactor, boy. I'm a devil in the flesh. My methods are cruel. My path is a path paved with corpses. If you follow me, you will lose your humanity. You will become an outcast. The whole world will hunt you. Are you willing to pay that price for a single chance at strength?"
Liu Feng remembered his father's back bent beneath the weight of logs. He remembered the sect elder's cold face. He remembered his own helplessness.
Something clicked in his heart. The naivety of his years cracked, giving way to something cold and hard as steel.
"If the Heavens won't give me a path," he said softly, staring straight into the eyes of the ancient madman, "then I'll carve one myself. I'm ready."
Elder Mo bared his teeth in a grin.
"Good answer. Then listen carefully, Liu Feng. From this moment on, your life no longer belongs to you. Welcome to hell."
Liu Feng's consciousness returned to his body. He lay at the bottom of the ravine, the black stone clenched in his hand. A drizzle had begun, washing the blood from his face.
He struggled to his feet, wincing through the pain. The world looked the same, but Liu Feng knew everything had changed. In his hand was a power that could shake the world. In his mind sounded the voice of an ancient demon.
He climbed out of the ravine and looked toward the distant mountain peaks where the Azure Peak Sect dwelled. Now he stared at them not with awe, but with cold calculation.
"I'll come back," he whispered to the wind. "And when I do, you'll all remember my name."
He turned and limped toward his father's home. Inside the pocket of his plain canvas jacket lay the Shard of Eternal Silence, pulsing faintly in time with his heart.
This was the beginning of the legend of Defying the Heavens—written in blood.