The shack didn't smell like a home anymore; it smelled like blood, like a slaughterhouse.
Li Xiao sat in the dirt, his back pressed against a rotting wooden beam that groaned under the weight of the city's eternal soot. In his right hand, the emerald shard was no longer just a stone. It was a beating heart. A jagged pulse that seemed to sync with his own racing heart and rushing blood. He looked down at his thumb on which was now a thin red line that leaked a single drop onto the crystal's surface.
The reaction was instantaneous.
The shard glowed but it wasn't a "golden glow" or a "divine aura." It was filled with violence and hunger. It was oily green fire that snaked up his arm. Li Xiao's eyes flew back in his head. His mouth opened to scream, but no sound came out only a gray smoke that tasted like burnt iron.
The energy didn't flow smoothly but ravaged along his body. It felt like someone was pouring molten lead into his marrow and then stirring it with a rusted needle. This was Qi, but instead of being comforting it was filled with malice and was feral. It was the essence of the Dire Wolf, filtered through a celestial fragment that didn't care if his mortal frame could survive the process or not.
Focus, he hissed to himself, the word felt like a wet gargle in his throat.
He reached for the only other thing he owned. The smooth, cold river stone his mother had given him years ago. He gripped it in his left hand, the contrast between the freezing stone and the burning shard creating a frantic equilibrium.
Then came the "Purge."
In the stories at the tea-house the old drunkards told, cultivation was a graceful ascension. They lied. For Li Xiao, it was a cellular pain. His skin began to weep. A thick, black, tar-like substance containing the mortal impurities oozed from his pores, carrying with it the stench of fifteen years of starvation, chimney soot, and sickness. It felt like his very muscles were being unstrung and re-woven with wire.
CRACK.
The sound echoed inside his head. It felt like breaking of a door. It was his first mortal gate located at the base of his sternum. It didn't just open but shattered like cheap porcelain under a hammer. The body tempering realm depended on opening of the gates also called meridians and opening the first gate was his first step towards the abyss.
The sudden influx of space in his chest made him gasp. For the first time in his life, his lungs felt breathable. The air in the slums, usually heavy and suffocating, suddenly felt thin, as if he were standing on a mountain peak.
He slumped over, his forehead hitting the damp earth. He lay there for hours, suspended in a fever dream of green wolves and silver swords. When he finally regained consciousness, the shack was silent. The shard was dim, tucked safely into the crook of his elbow.
Li Xiao sat up, his movements were fluid in a way they had never been. He felt ligh, not the lightness of hunger, but the lightness of a predator. He wiped the black filth from his arms with a rag, shivering as he realized he could feel the individual fibers of the cloth. He could hear the heartbeat of a rat beneath the floorboards, a rhythmic thump-thump that sounded like a drum.
He was at the first stage of Mortal Body Tempering.
But as he looked at his reflection in a puddle of brackish water, he didn't see a hero. He saw a boy with eyes that had turned a shade too bright, a boy who had just stolen fire from the heavens and was now waiting for the burn.
His wait did not last long.
Outside, the heavy, rhythmic thud of iron-shod boots hit the mud. They are not the gaurds, he thought. The guards were too lazy for this sector. It was the "Black Dogs," the gang that ran the Ashfall Slums like a personal fiefdom.
"I know you're in there, little ghost," a voice growled. It was 'Iron Fist' Hu. "I saw what you picked up. Hand it over, and I might let you keep your life".
Li Xiao didn't scramble for a hiding spot. He didn't beg. He simply stood up, his bones popping with a sound like dry wood. He looked at the thin pathetic barried which was door to his shack that had been his only protection for years and realized he didn't need to hide anymore.