The afternoon sun filtered through the dense, ancient canopy of the Southern Quadrant forest, casting dappled shadows on the damp earth. The air here was fresher than in the main city, smelling of pine needles, wet soil, and the sharp tang of wild herbs—the scent of isolation.
In a small clearing beside his dilapidated hut, Lin Kai stood motionless. He was shirtless, his lean muscles glistening with sweat, his eyes closed in deep, agonizing concentration.
He was not practicing a high-level art. He couldn't. He was not eligible to practice that. The doors to the Library were locked to him for now. Now, he was attempting to hack the most fundamental law of the Mortal Foundation Realm.
In this world, the Mortal Foundation (Rank 1) was the bottleneck that trapped ninety percent of the human population. It was a realm of cruel limitations. A Mortal Foundation cultivator was like a sealed bottle thrown into an ocean; surrounded by infinite water (Aether Qi), but completely dry on the inside. They could not draw Qi into their meridians. They could not store it in their Dantian.
To fight, mortals had to use the "Coating Method."
It was a clumsy, inefficient technique where one tried to make the slippery Aether Qi stick to their skin for a split second to enhance a strike. It was like trying to hold water in a sieve.
"Draw..." Lin Kai whispered through gritted teeth, a vein pulsing in his temple. "Pull it... trap it."
He visualized the Aether Qi in the air—millions of tiny, glowing motes of light. He tried to coax them toward his right fist using sheer mental willpower.
But the Aether was stubborn. The moment he pulled a wisp of Qi onto his skin, it would disperse, sliding off his pores like oil on glass.
Fizz.
The energy dissipated again.
"Dammit!" Lin Kai cursed, dropping his hand. His arm was trembling. The mental strain was immense, creating a rhythmic pounding behind his eyes.
Xiao Bai sat on a mossy rock nearby, her three tails wrapped neatly around her paws. She watched him with intense, unblinking golden eyes. She didn't yip or play; she seemed to be analyzing his flow.
"I need a magnet," Lin Kai panted, staring at his shaking hand. "Cultivators use their Awakened Blood as a magnet. I don't have blood... but I have the Affinity."
He closed his eyes again.
This time, he didn't just reach out with his mind. He looked inward. He sought that swirling, inky mist he had seen inside the Crystal Prism earlier that day.
The Darkness.
"Wake up," he commanded the shadow in his soul. "I am hungry. Feed."
The reaction was instantaneous.
A cold sensation, like liquid nitrogen, flooded his veins. It wasn't Qi; it was a vacuum. A hunger.
The Darkness didn't ask the Aether to come; it demanded it.
Lin Kai felt the pores on his right fist open. The surrounding Aether Qi didn't just float towards him—it was dragged in violently.
Whoosh.
A visible distortion appeared around his hand. The white motes of Aether were sucked against his skin, but before they could slide away, the violet-black aura of his Darkness latched onto them. It was a predator catching prey. The Darkness "ate" the resistance of the Light, binding the volatile energy to his flesh with terrifying stability.
"It's heavy," Lin Kai gasped.
His fist felt like it weighed a thousand pounds. The condensed Qi was vibrating so fast it hummed, turning his skin a dark, bruised purple.
"Hold it... compress it..."
Ten seconds. Two minutes. Five minutes.
A normal Mortal cultivator could hold a coating for barely a heartbeat. Lin Kai was holding it, condensing it layer upon layer.
"Now!"
Lin Kai's eyes snapped open, flashing with a crimson light.
He stepped forward, pivoting his hips, and drove his right fist into the trunk of an ancient Iron-Bark Pine.
BOOM!
The sound was not the dull thud of flesh hitting wood. It was the dry, sharp crack of a miniature explosion.
Wood chips flew like shrapnel, slicing the nearby leaves. The entire tree, thick as a barrel and known for being as hard as steel, shuddered violently. Needles rained down like a green storm.
Lin Kai pulled his hand back, panting heavily, steam rising from his knuckles. He stared at the impact zone.
There was a crater in the wood, three inches deep and scorched black at the edges. A massive structural crack spider-webbed up the trunk.
"Heavens..." Lin Kai whispered, looking at his own fist. It was red and throbbing, but unbroken.
The force he had just unleashed wasn't the strength of a Mortal Foundation cultivator. That level of destruction... that was comparable to the Initial Stage of Qi Condensation (Rank 3).
He had bypassed an entire major realm (Blood Awakening) in terms of raw destructive output.
"I did it," he breathed, a grin splitting his face, adrenaline masking the pain. "The Darkness... it didn't just coat the fist. It collapsed the energy upon impact."
But as the adrenaline faded, the cost became apparent.
Lin Kai's vision blurred. His knees buckled, and he slumped against the scarred tree, sliding down to the dirt.
"Three hours," he muttered, wiping cold sweat from his eyes. "It took me three hours of meditation to charge a single punch. And now... I feel like I've run a marathon."
His stomach growled ferociously—the Darkness had consumed his body's physical stamina to fuel the suction.
"In a real fight, I'd be dead," he analyzed critically, his mind working even as his body failed. "I can't ask an enemy to wait three hours while I charge up. It's a cannon, but I need a pistol."
He looked at his legs.
"If I can't punch fast enough yet... can I move fast enough to run away?"
He forced himself to stand. His legs were jelly, but his mind was sharp.
"Different application," he muttered. "Don't compress for damage. Compress for propulsion."
He closed his eyes again, shifting the focus of the dark vacuum. This time, he pooled the suction beneath the soles of his feet. He drew the Aether Qi into the ground, creating a pressurized cushion between his sandals and the earth.
Because he wasn't trying to condense the energy into a weapon, it was faster. The Darkness aided him again, creating a stable platform of air.
"Explosive Step... Go!"
Lin Kai crouched and detonated the energy.
Bang!
He shot into the air like a fired arrow.
He cleared the roof of his hut effortlessly. His hand brushed the lower branches of the pine tree—a height of over eight feet. The world tilted as he reached the apex of the jump, suspended in the air for a glorious second of freedom.
He landed in a roll, tumbling through the grass, laughing breathlessly.
"Success!"
He lay on his back, staring at the artificial sky.
"I can jump. I can climb. With this, the rocky terrain of the Violet Yang Domain won't stop me. I can escape beasts I can't fight."
He sat up, his eyes burning with renewed determination.
"My new goal," Lin Kai declared to Xiao Bai. "Reduce the casting time. If I can get the coating down to one minute... no, ten seconds... I can survive out there."
It was a small start. A tiny, jury-rigged art for a boy with no bloodline. But it was his.