The morning mist still clung to the trees when Chen Yun stepped barefoot into the clearing.
His breaths were calm, deep — practiced. But within, a storm churned.
The events of the past days had confirmed it: each time he forced Qi through his broken meridians, the pain was excruciating — yet they shifted. Scar tissue cracked. New routes sparked open. And with every drop of blood spilled, something ancient, something unrelenting, rebuilt itself inside him.
"Pain... is the chisel," he whispered, flexing his fingers as the Celestial Void Swift Technique awakened once more.
He was no longer merely coaxing his body to move.
He was learning to mold space itself.
Among the pines, Luo Yao crouched on a low branch, her figure wrapped in mist and shadow. A cloaking talisman hid her from sight — to most, she was just another whisper in the leaves.
But Chen Yun was not "most."
He had sensed her for days now.
The subtle Qi shifts. The stilled air at dawn. The weight of unseen eyes lingering too long.
She was First-Rate, likely. Experienced. Silent. She hadn't attacked — which meant she was observing.
So he gave her something worth seeing.
Chen Yun drew a rough circle in the soil with the tip of his wooden sword.
The air inside it shimmered.
His vision blurred as he forced Qi through fragile paths in his legs. One spike of pain. Then another. A dozen more. Pressure built, tightening like cords around his bones.
Then, in a breath —
He vanished.
And in the next, reappeared on the opposite edge of the circle, gasping — not from exertion, but from the shear that tore through his marrow. The Spatial Flux Stage was awakening. He hadn't moved through space.
He had skipped it.
Luo Yao's eyes narrowed.
That wasn't speed.
That was displacement.
He hadn't passed through the air — he had sidestepped it.
She gripped the bark of her perch tighter.
This boy… he's dangerous. But still broken. Still... recoverable.
Below, Chen Yun coughed, blood painting his sleeve. Hooks of pain tore through his chest. But his smile was calm. Cold. Almost… triumphant.
"One step… now two," he muttered.
He stepped back into a stance.
This time, his entire arm blurred as he swung the wooden sword in a fluid arc. Not a technique. A trial.
A pulse of compressed space burst forward. The air twisted. A tree branch contorted — not from force, but from being displaced.
Luo Yao's heart skipped.
She had only seen distortion like that once — in ancient scrolls locked inside the Heavenless Temple's inner vault.
Void-Type Martial Essence.
But he had no sect insignia. No lineage mark. No recorded history.
And worse — the technique felt raw. Incomplete. Like he was learning not from a master…
…but from memory.
Or instinct.
Or something older.
As Chen Yun dropped to his knees, panting, he tilted his head ever so slightly.
One eye met hers.
Not fully. Not enough for certainty. But just enough to know:
He knew.
The wind stirred through the pines.
Neither of them spoke.
Chen Yun stood with deliberate grace, bloodied sleeve drifting like a tattered flag. He turned — giving her the illusion of secrecy — and walked back to his hut in silence.
Up in the trees, Luo Yao didn't move.
But something inside her had shifted.
She had come to observe a crippled anomaly.
Now, she watched the birth of a storm — a man shaping space and bleeding will.
Who are you?
And why, deep in her chest, did part of her hope… that she would be the only one who knew?