"There was once a boy born with no Qi, no bloodline, no soul…Yet every grave he walked by remembered his name."
The burial mists never lifted in the Valley of Nameless Ashes.
For three days, the mourners waited for the child's body to rot.
He had been stillborn, the midwife said. No breath. No heartbeat. His skin, pale like frozen milk, had already begun to cool in her hands. Even the crows didn't come near.
The mother had died in labor. No one remembered the father.
So, as tradition dictated, the infant was placed in a shallow grave at the edge of the valley — a place for the cursed, where Qi could not flow.
And then, they forgot him.
But in the third night of silence, something shifted beneath the ash.
A hand rose, small and trembling, fingers cracked by the cold.
Then a face.
Eyes opened — not in panic or hunger, but awareness.
He did not cry.
Instead, he listened.
And the valley… spoke.
By the time he was ten, he had no name.
He wandered the Valley like a ghost, never aging, never eating, never needing light.
Gravestones whispered to him. The wind carried dying mantras. Bones in the soil told stories — of rage, regret, revenge, and realization.
He didn't walk like a child. He moved like someone ancient.
He didn't speak. But when he finally did, on the day of his eleventh year, he spoke a single word to the oldest tomb:
"Teach."
And the tomb obeyed.
There were many things he learned in the Valley of Nameless Ashes:
How to silence his heartbeat, and walk without disturbing dust.
How to wield a blade formed from bone, sharp enough to split thought.
How to resist soul attacks by not having a soul at all.
For others, cultivation meant rising. Ascending. Gathering Qi. Forming cores. Opening heavens.
For him, cultivation meant remembering.
The memories of the dead poured into him.
And stayed.
He did not age.
Time passed the valley by, but he remained unchanged.
Until, on a day veiled in storm, his eyes opened once again — and this time, they were filled with intent.
He had learned all the valley could teach.
He had buried gods.
He had memorized the movements of ten thousand fallen geniuses.
He had heard the final regrets of blade saints and soul kings alike.
Now it was time to leave.
Clothed in ash-stained robes, with a crude wooden sword strapped to his back, the boy stepped out of the valley and into a world that had long forgotten him.
A world filled with sects and empires.
A world of divine pride and inherited might.
They called him talentless.
They called him rootless.
They would not call him twice.
In the records of the Twin Serpent Sect, it was noted that on a spring morning, a boy with no presence entered the outer disciple trials.
He scored zero on the Qi test.He had no bloodline resonance.His soulstone glowed black — a sign of absolute void.
They laughed.
That night, their top five outer disciples vanished from the rankings, unconscious and broken — their techniques, their legacies, their memories… gone.
No one saw who did it.
But from then on, the wind carried whispers.
"The Void Disciple walks alone."