The world was quiet after the storm.
Li Yi walked through the forest with nothing but the wind at his back. His clothes were tattered, and his body ached from the awakening, but his heart burned with clarity.
He was no longer a drifting orphan.
He was a cultivator.
And more importantly—his bloodline had awakened.
Though he didn't yet understand it, the surge of power he felt was no ordinary spiritual qi. It carried echoes of something ancient, something divine and unfathomably deep.
His veins pulsed with the resonance of two great lineages.
> One from the powerful Li Family—proud rulers of the Xuan Realm.
The other, even more terrifying, from a divine heritage buried beyond the heavens.
---
In the distance, he spotted smoke rising between the trees. A small village lay ahead—Green Pine Hamlet—a place where he used to trade herbs and beast hides for scraps of spirit food.
But this time, he didn't carry a basket.
This time, the heavens had marked him.
As he approached, murmurs followed him.
"Wasn't that Li Yi, the silent orphan?"
"He's glowing… his eyes... what happened?"
But Li Yi ignored the whispers. He walked straight to the village's spiritual well and sat down cross-legged, beginning his first conscious attempt to draw qi.
He didn't follow any known method. Instead, his instincts guided him—strange symbols shimmered behind his eyelids, and his breath naturally synced with the world around him.
What he drew in was not just qi—it was Universal Intent.
Even the village's elder, an old cultivator who had once reached the Meridian Opening Realm, sensed the anomaly.
"This... this isn't just awakening," he muttered, watching from afar. "This is a Heavenly Baptism... no, it's something more."
---
Far away, in the Li Family Estate of the Xuan Realm, a crisis was unfolding.
A bloodline beacon had activated—and no one could identify its source.
Elder Li Cheng stood before the family's patriarch, his face pale.
"Patriarch, it's… it's a seal from the main family. A protective ancestral mark. It shields the child's name and identity."
The Patriarch, a stern man with graying temples and robes embroidered with celestial lions, narrowed his eyes.
"The main family? After all this time?"
"Yes," Elder Cheng replied. "And it awakened within our domain."
"Send someone immediately," the Patriarch commanded. "Discreetly. If this child truly has the blood of the main family, he must be found—and protected. Or... controlled."
---
High above the realms, in the sealed void between the Upper Realm and the God Realm, a formless storm raged in silence.
Once, this path had been open. Celestial stairways ascended into eternity, and the proud families of the Upper Realm could return to their divine origins.
But during the Ancient War against the Abyssal Demons, the path had been sealed.
Twisted gods and corrupted immortals had devoured the divine bridges, choking the skies with darkness. None had ascended since.
But now… something stirred.
A ripple passed through the barrier. A signal.
And in the deepest part of the sealed void, something old and demonic opened its eyes.
"Blood of the Primal Heaven… awakened… again?"
---
Back in Green Pine Hamlet, Li Yi opened his eyes. A golden mark flickered briefly on his forehead, shaped like a broken ring.
A symbol not even he understood.
He looked at his hands, then to the skies.
"I will rise," he whispered. "Even if the heavens are broken... I will rise."