The icy mountain wind howled across the jagged obsidian ridges of the Dark Mist Forest, carrying with it the bitter, sharp bite of approaching midnight.
Railin sat completely motionless atop the frozen crag, his dark silhouette blending seamlessly into the surrounding shadows. His eyes were closed, his breathing so faint and rhythmic that he seemed more like a carved stone statue than a living human being. Inside his body, a silent transformation of power was settling into its absolute equilibrium.
Within his lower dantian, the formerly fragile ember of energy had fully condensed into a dense, slowly revolving sphere of pitch-black energy. Thin, iridescent threads of Ashen Devouring Qi flowed through his newly forged, iron-hard meridians like liquid obsidian, filling every muscle fiber, bone marrow, and capillary with an effortless, terrifying surge of strength. The fragile, shattered energy pathways that had cursed his existence as a crippled labor servant were gone, replaced by thick, resilient channels capable of enduring immense spiritual pressure.
Slowly raising his right hand into the moonlight, Railin let his pale fingers trace the cool, unpolished metal of the dark steel storage ring resting on his index finger.
With a single, focused thought, he extended a thin thread of his soul sense into the ring's isolated dimensional space, conducting a precise inventory of the treasures he had pillaged from the collapsing pocket realm. Resting neatly within the spatial void were over five hundred High-Grade Spirit Stones radiating azure light, three golden Meridian-Forging Pills sealed in a jade vial, three glowing Spirit-Nourishing Dragon Fruits pulsing with primeval vitality, and the ancient jade slip containing the complete cultivation mnemonic for The Seven Void-Severing Steps.
The pure energy contained within this single spatial ring exceeds the total annual resource allocation of an entire outer academy hall, Railin calculated, his internal monologue remaining entirely cold, analytical, and sharp. If I were to sit here and absorb these five hundred High-Grade Spirit Stones right now, I could easily push my Third Level Spirit Refining cultivation directly into the Fourth or Fifth Level before dawn. However, breaking through open barriers in the outer forest leaves behind heavy energy fluctuations that would attract senior patrol elders.
He opened his eyes. The pitch-black pupils glinted with an unsettling, icy radiance that reflected the pale moonlight above.
Before he could step back into the outer quarters of the Sun-Moon Academy to quietly digest his newly acquired wealth, he needed to address a practical problem: his attire. His current labor servant's tunic was completely shredded, blackened by dried beast blood, coated in ancient stone dust, and scorched by the violent friction of spatial shear. Arriving at the outer disciple gates in such a state would instantly raise alarm bells among the security wardens.
Railin pushed himself up from the frozen crag. His movements were no longer the heavy, staggering, and labored steps of a crippled youth; they were fluid, weightless, and completely silent, like a shadow drifting across the snow.
He stepped off the edge of the jagged ridge, dropping twenty feet down into the misty valley below. His boots touched the damp, mossy earth without making a single sound, nor did his landing disturb a single loose pebble. The moment his balance anchored, he began gliding through the grey mist, heading directly toward the perimeter boundary that separated the wild northern forest from the disciplined, white-walled domain of the academy.
As he traversed the dense tree line like an invisible phantom, his heightened soul perception—now far sharper than that of standard cultivators—picked up faint voices echoing through the fog roughly half a mile ahead.
Railin slowed his pace instantly, slipping into the hollow trunk of a colossal, black-barked cedar tree. He pulled his dark Qi inward, suppressing his vital breath to absolute zero, and extended invisible threads of soul sense toward the source of the noise.
Through the swirling grey mist, a small campfire flickered against the damp darkness. Two young men clad in the pristine, navy-blue robes of official outer academy disciples were seated near the flames, roasting the hind leg of a wild mountain goat over the fire. Beside them lay two longswords housed in scabbards forged from polished white steel. Both men possessed cultivation bases at the Second Level of Spirit Refining—disciples assigned to the monotonous night watch along the forest edge to prevent wild beasts from wandering into the servant quarters.
"Still no sign of that runaway trash from the furnace room," one of the patrol disciples muttered grumpily, tearing a greasy chunk of meat with his teeth. "Supervisor Ba was red in the face this evening. Said the crippled bastard vanished right in the middle of his coal-hauling shift. If the boy turned coward and ran away, Ba promised to break both his arms before dragging him back to the fires."
"Forget about him," the second patrol disciple sneered, taking a heavy swig from a clay wine gourd before wiping his chin. "A cripple with shattered meridians wandering into the Dark Mist Forest at night? He's already beast dung by now. One stray Shadow Hound or iron-clawed falcon would have torn his throat out in minutes. Tomorrow morning, we simply write a brief death report for the administrative hall, sign off on the patrol log, and claim our basic merit points."
Behind the thick bark of the cedar tree, Railin's lips curved upward into a thin, merciless smile.
Supervisor Ba... twenty lashes... broken arms...
The vivid image of the furnace room's head supervisor—a cruel, bloated man who regularly beat weak labor servants to death and pocketed their meager rations—flitted briefly through Railin's mind. In his past life as a supreme sovereign, such pathetic, crawling ants would not have possessed the right to breathe the same air in his presence, let alone threaten his flesh. Now, they were merely nuisance weeds waiting to be uprooted from his path.
Railin stepped out from the hollow tree trunk.
This time, he made no effort to suppress his footfalls. He allowed his boots to press heavily against the dry pine needles, producing a deliberate, crisp rustle that instantly cut through the silence of the woods.
SNAP.
"Who goes there?!"
Both outer disciples dropped their food instantly, their hands flashing to their sword hilts as they sprang to their feet. Steel screeched against scabbards as two blades were drawn, glowing with a faint, pale-blue light as thin streams of spirit qi were channeled into the metal. They squinted aggressively into the misty gloom.
Out of the swirling grey fog, a tall, slender silhouette emerged.
Railin stepped into the soft glow of the campfire, standing ten paces away from the two sword-wielding disciples. His face was partially shadowed, his shredded, blood-stained servant rags hanging in rags around his hardened frame. But what stopped the two disciples in their tracks was not his ruined clothes; it was his eyes. Pitch-black, devoid of emotion, and radiating an ancient, chilling stillness that made the hair on their arms stand up in sudden terror.
The second disciple narrowed his eyes, recognizing the face through the dirt and blood. "Wait... isn't that... the furnace trash? Railin?!"
A harsh, nervous laugh burst from the first disciple's mouth, though his grip on his hilt tightened uncomfortably. "Ha! It really is the crippled rat! Look at you—you look like you crawled out of a mass grave! You little bastard, do you have any idea how much trouble your vanishing act caused us tonight? Hand over whatever herbs you managed to scavenge out here, drop to your knees, and maybe we won't snap your ankles before dragging you back to Supervisor Ba!"
"Your outer robes," Railin spoke.
His voice was low, smooth, and chillingly calm. It did not sound like the voice of a beaten servant; it carried a heavy, metallic resonance that vibrated through the cold night air, instantly overpowering the crackle of the wood fire.
The two disciples froze, caught completely off guard by the total absence of fear or subservience in the youth's posture.
"What did you just say, trash?" the second disciple barked, stepping forward with his blade raised high.
"I said, hand over your navy-blue outer robes," Railin repeated, taking a measured step closer to the fire. "My current garments are dirty, and I require clean ones to re-enter the gates. Leave your robes, drop your weapons, and I will permit you both to walk away from this clearing with your lives."
For three terrifying seconds, absolute silence fell over the camp. Then, as if hearing the most absurd joke of their lives, both outer disciples erupted into furious, mocking laughter.
"You crippled piece of garbage! Have you completely lost your mind in the dark?!" The first disciple's expression twisted into pure rage. "A servant dare demand the robes of an outer disciple? I'll cut your tongue out and feed it to the crows!"
SWISH!
The first disciple lunged forward, his longsword whistling through the damp air as he executed a standard, practiced thrust aimed directly at Railin's throat! The steel blade gleamed with pale-blue light, backed by the full physical momentum of a Second Level Spirit Refining body.
Railin didn't retreat. He didn't even shift his stance.
He waited until the razor-sharp tip of the steel blade was three inches from his collarbone. Then, with a speed so blinding that it left a dark residual ghost in the air, Railin's right hand shot out like an iron clamp.
PAK!
Railin's bare fingers closed directly around the flat edge of the lunging steel blade, stopping the attack instantly in mid-air!
The force of the sudden stop generated a sharp gust of wind that blew the firelight sideways. The first disciple's eyes nearly bulged out of his sockets in sheer disbelief. He planted his feet and pulled back with all his physical strength, his teeth grinding, his face turning bright red—but the sword remained utterly immobile in Railin's bare hand, as if welded into a solid block of granite. Not a single drop of blood leaked from Railin's palm; his skin, reinforced by devoured spirit essence and Third Level cultivation, was as impenetrable as tempered dark steel.
"W-What?! How is your bare hand—"
"You are too slow," Railin whispered softly into the disciple's ear.
CRACK!
With a slight, effortless twist of his wrist, Railin snapped the heavy steel longsword into two jagged pieces as if it were nothing more than a dry twig.
Before the horrified disciple could even process the sound of breaking metal, Railin stepped smoothly inside his guard, driving the broken, jagged upper half of the blade straight through the man's throat!
THWACK!
Hot, dark blood spattered across the grass, reflecting the flickering firelight. The first disciple choked violently on his own breath, his hands clawing uselessly at Railin's forearm, his eyes wide with unadulterated terror as the light rapidly faded from his pupils. His knees buckled, and his limp body crashed heavily onto the earth.
The second disciple dropped his clay wine gourd, the container shattering against the rocks as his face drained of all color. He stumbled backward several steps, tripping over his own boots, his sword trembling violently in his white-knuckled grip. "D-Demonic technique! Your meridians were shattered... you're not human! You're a monster!"
"Devour," Railin spat coldly, completely ignoring the surviving disciple's screaming hysterics.
He pressed his open palm flat against the chest of the dying man on the ground. A thick, roaring shroud of pitch-black Ashen Devouring Qi erupted from his skin, plunging deep into the fallen cultivator's vascular system.
BZZZZZZZZT!
The second disciple watched in paralyzed, traumatized horror as his companion's corpse began to wither at a visible, sickening speed. The skin shriveled, the muscles collapsed, and the Second Level spirit qi lingering in the dead man's dantian was violently extracted, stripped of its identity, and dragged down Railin's arm to feed his inner dark core. In less than twenty seconds, the once-healthy cultivator was reduced to nothing more than a dried, hollow shell of bone and parchment-like skin.
HAHH...
Railin exhaled a long trail of white mist into the night air, feeling his Third Level Spirit Refining foundation solidify into an unbreakable bedrock as the fresh vitality merged into his system.
He slowly turned his head to look at the remaining disciple kneeling in the dirt.
"P-Please! Don't kill me! I'll give you everything!" The second disciple fell completely to his hands and knees, weeping hysterically, throwing his leather pouch and sword into the dirt as his trembling hands frantically unbuttoned his navy-blue outer robes. "Take my spirit stones! Take my merit badge! Take my robes! Just let me live!"
"A wise decision," Railin murmured softly, stepping closer.
He reached down and gently took the clean, navy-blue outer tunic from the kneeling disciple's shaking hands. Then, without a single thread of hesitation or mercy, Railin's left hand shot out like a lightning bolt, snapping the man's neck with a sharp, brutal twist.
CRACK.
The second disciple's weeping stopped instantly as his body went limp, collapsing face-down into the grass.
Railin did not let the second corpse go to waste either. Placing his hand on the dead man's back, he unleashed his dark Qi once more, absorbing the blood vitality and spirit essence until a second dried husk lay beside the first.
Within minutes, Railin stripped off his own tattered, blood-soaked servant rags, tossing them into the campfire where they quickly caught fire. He put on the clean, high-grade navy-blue robes of an outer academy disciple. The fine fabric fitted his broadened shoulders perfectly, concealing the dark steel storage ring resting safely on his finger. He clipped the dead disciple's copper merit token to his waist band, instantly assuming the visual identity of an outer cultivator.
He looked down at the two withered husks lying near the burning logs. With a casual wave of his arm, he used his Qi to scatter the burning coals over the dried remains, letting the intense heat consume the brittle bone dust until not a single trace of physical evidence remained in the clearing.
Picking up the leather storage pouches left behind by the two guards, Railin dumped their handfuls of low-grade spirit stones into his dark steel spatial ring before turning his gaze toward the distant white stone gates of the Sun-Moon Academy.
The night mist swirled around his tall silhouette as he began his steady, measured walk back into the heart of the sect.
He was no longer the broken, helpless servant waiting for death in the dark furnace room. He was a sovereign returning to a realm of lambs—and his grand harvest was only just beginning.
See you in next chapter....