*By ArkGodZ | DaoVerse Studio*
Silence surrounded Jian Yu's courtyard, but within his soul, the past stirred like embers beneath ash.
He sat cross-legged, breath slow and even. Yet his mind wasn't in the present—it drifted to where it all began. Not when he awakened in the forest. Not when he fought in the clearing. But before all of that.
To the moment he first touched cultivation.
To the moment he first touched himself.
---
Three Years Ago
He had no memory.
No identity.
No answers.
He had woken in the servant fields, skin scraped by stone, ribs aching from impact, lungs weak from smoke.
Yuan was the one who found him.
Her expression had been unreadable—stern, but not unkind. She checked his pulse, his meridians, his dantian. Her brows lifted briefly.
"You shouldn't be alive," she murmured.
He tried to respond, but only air escaped.
She hesitated.
Then whispered: "Jian Yu."
It was not a question.
It was a naming.
That name stayed. The past didn't.
---
He became a servant.
Sweeping stones, hauling water, grinding herbs. The work was ceaseless, and the cruelty subtle. Other servants resented how he appeared from nowhere and earned the attention of a core disciple. The outer disciples ignored him completely. A few mocked him.
"Nameless boy. Shadow cleaner."
But Jian Yu said nothing. He worked. He endured. And at night… he remembered.
---
The Qi called to him before he knew what it was.
At first it felt like pressure in his stomach. Then heat in his lungs. Then—like breathing from the world itself.
He began to mimic meditation postures he had seen. He sat behind sheds. In abandoned shrines. Under the cracks of the training platforms.
He failed. Repeatedly. He choked on Qi. He felt nothing for weeks.
Then, during one rainy night beneath the western bell tower, he sat again—numb, soaked, humiliated after being kicked by a passing disciple.
He focused not on energy, but on pain. His ribs. His fingers. His breath.
And in that pain—something opened.
Qi flowed. Not much. But enough.
Enough for awakening.
---
The First Layer.
He didn't tell anyone. But he walked differently the next day.
---
He trained in silence. Improvised his breathing cycles. Created his own rhythm—three breaths to circulate, two to stabilize.
He realized his body responded better near water. So he began cultivating inside the herbal pond filtration system. Laying beneath stone plates, hidden by vines.
Each breakthrough came with a cost.
Nosebleeds. Blurred vision. One night, he vomited blood for nearly an hour and couldn't move for two days.
But he continued.
---
He nearly died breaking into the Second Layer.
He attempted it mid-day—when the spirit roots were being rotated in the garden. A servant shouted. A disciple kicked a bucket near him.
The surge struck while he was distracted.
The Qi tore through him unfiltered. He collapsed, barely breathing.
He crawled into the shadows behind the medicinal cellar and screamed into the stone.
And then—it stabilized.
Not because he forced it. Because he surrendered.
"Let me live," he had whispered.
Something heard him.
And the flow adjusted.
---
After that, he began noticing… the world.
Qi had scent. Texture. Emotion.
The petals of the lotus garden vibrated during full moon. The well near the western wall had an echo that amplified energy.
He mapped them. He built routes in his mind. He walked them in silence.
And the world began to respond.
---
One day, a scroll appeared under his bed. It described a stabilization technique he had already developed… instinctively.
There was no name. But the ink smelled faintly of sandalwood. Like Yuan.
---
Disciples started noticing him. Not with praise. But with caution.
A boy named Xian tried to humiliate him—knocking over his bucket, calling him a "parasitic weed."
Jian Yu remained still. Didn't react.
Until Xian tried to strike him.
The blow never landed.
Jian Yu exhaled. Qi flared. Xian's foot missed and twisted. He stumbled. Fell.
The courtyard went quiet.
Jian Yu looked up. And an elder stood in the hallway. Watching.
He nodded once. Then disappeared.
---
That night, Jian Yu meditated. And broke into the Third Layer.
---
It wasn't clean. His body seized. His heart raced like thunder. The Qi spiraled faster than his control.
His arms trembled. His eyes blurred.
Then—he felt it.
Desire.
It wasn't lust. Nor hunger.
It was need.
Need to be more. To not vanish. To matter.
It came from his soul. And something answered.
A warmth behind his ribs. A voice he couldn't understand. A heartbeat not his own.
And then silence.
He collapsed.
But when he woke… the world felt softer. The Qi no longer resisted him.
And above his bed, a petal hung—floating midair. Black. Veined in red.
He reached for it. It vanished.
---
In a high chamber, two Elders spoke once more.
"The seed blooms."
"Too soon?"
"Not soon enough."
"Will he fall?"
"Only if we stop watching."
---
Jian Yu sat beneath the tree where he always returned. His cultivation no longer hidden—but still quiet.
He didn't ask for titles. He didn't challenge anyone.
He just grew.
And the Eternal Flower Sect began to shift.
Not from war. Not from ceremony.
But from the roots.
---
End of Chapter
Next Chapter:Chapter 11 – Part 3: The Flame Beneath the Silence*
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