The Broken Meridian

I stand at the edge of Cloudrest Peak, my tattered robes snapping against my skin as the mountain winds try to push me off. The air up here tastes different—thinner, purer, laced with the sharp scent of winter pines and the metallic tang that precedes a storm. The mist that gives this mountain its name curls around my ankles like hungry ghosts.

Below me—so far below that the people look like insects—the Sacred Lotus Sect sprawls like a scattered handful of white jade across the emerald valleys. Morning light catches on curved rooftops adorned with azure tiles and golden lotus emblems. Disciples move between pavilions in their pristine white and green, already beginning their daily cultivation routines. The faint chiming of spirit bells carries upward, marking the Third Incense time when inner disciples gather to absorb the morning spirit tide.

Not one looks up. Not one notices me.

Seven years. Seven damn years of humiliation is enough.

The memory cuts fresh: Elder Ming's face contorting as he examined my dantian, the hushed whispers, then the devastating announcement. "Shattered beyond repair." Four elders and three master physicians all reaching the same conclusion. A cultivation vessel that would never hold spiritual energy again.

"Like trying to fill a cracked gourd," Elder Qin had said, not bothering to lower his voice. "The boy's meridians look like a spider web someone stomped on."

From prodigy to pariah in a single afternoon.

I close my eyes, feeling for the familiar emptiness where my golden core should have formed. Nothing. Still nothing after seven years of trying everything—choking down bitter spirit herbs that left me vomiting for days, enduring meridian reconstructions that felt like being flayed alive, submitting to acupuncture with foot-long needles forged from spirit metal.

All for nothing.

"The Fallen Star," they call me behind my back. Sometimes to my face when they're feeling particularly cruel. I hear it when I'm scrubbing the training hall floors or emptying their chamber pots. The whispers follow me like persistent ghosts.

I glance down at my calloused hands. Once, these fingers could trace spirit formations with such precision that Master Zhu declared I would become the sect's youngest formation master in five centuries. Now they're good only for carrying water and sweeping courtyards.

A small, crimson fox with three tails darts across the rocky path thirty paces away, pausing to regard me with knowing eyes. A minor spirit beast, likely drawn to the rare cultivation herbs that grow near the peak's edge. Even the foxes here have more spiritual essence than I do.

Master Zhu tried. I'll give the old man that much. But I saw the moment he finally gave up. The slight sag of his shoulders, the way his perpetually straight back curved just a fraction.

"You should leave the sect, Lin Feng," he told me last week, his ancient eyes cloudy with what looked like genuine sorrow. "Find a peaceful town. Learn a trade. Live a mortal life."

A harsh laugh escapes me now, startling the fox into disappearing among the rocks. A mortal life. As if I even remember what that means. As if this sect hasn't been my only home since demon cultivators slaughtered my parents ten years ago.

I take three steps toward the cliff's edge. The drop is sheer—nearly a thousand feet before the first outcropping. Would it hurt? Or would the wind rushing past my ears be the last thing I'd know before darkness? The sect chronicles claim that cultivators who reach the Spirit Foundation realm can survive such falls, their spiritual energy cushioning the impact.

I wouldn't know. I never got that far.

My foot dislodges a small stone. I watch it fall, counting heartbeats until it vanishes into the mist below.

One simple step. That's all it would take to end seven years of humiliation. To stop being the living reminder of what happens when talent fails, when the heavens withdraw their favor.

I step back, cursing my own cowardice. Or perhaps it's not cowardice at all, but the last ember of my parents' fighting spirit. They didn't raise a son who gives up.

"Is this the end?" The words taste ashy in my mouth.

Tomorrow—no, today—is the Lotus Ascension Ceremony. By sunset, disciples will be sorted into new ranks, assigned new masters, given new privileges. Outer disciples who show promise will be permitted to attempt the Spirit Veil Crossing, gaining access to the sect's true cultivation techniques rather than the watered-down versions taught to beginners.

Master Zhu wanted me gone before dawn. Sparing me the shame of standing among peers who've reached the Spirit Gathering realm while I remain frozen at Body Tempering. Even Liu Wei, who came to the sect two years after me and could barely form a spirit seed, now proudly wears the azure-trimmed robes of an inner disciple.

The first stars peek through the darkening canopy overhead. Soon the entire mountain will be swallowed by night, and I should begin my descent if I'm to reach the valley by morning. Yet my feet refuse to move.

A sudden urge seizes me. If I am to leave forever, I want one last look at the Forbidden Archives, where the sect's highest mysteries are kept. Not the public collection where outer disciples study, but the sealed chamber beneath Elder Zhu's residence. I've glimpsed it only once, when carrying scrolls for my master three years ago.

One final act of defiance before I vanish into the mortal world.

A streak of silver cuts the sky—a shooting star. My mother once told me such stars were immortals racing across the heavens, and that wishes made on them reached the celestial court.

"I wish—" I stop myself. Childish nonsense. If the celestial court exists, they've made their opinion of me perfectly clear.

But something's wrong with this star. It's not fading as it burns through the atmosphere. It's growing brighter. Bigger. And its trajectory...

"Shit!" I stumble backward as understanding hits. The light isn't diminishing because it's coming straight at me.

No time to run. The blazing light strikes Cloudrest Peak with uncanny silence—no explosion, no earth-shaking impact, just sudden blinding radiance that forces me to shield my eyes. The air fills with the scent of burning metal and something older, stranger—like the musty pages of ancient scrolls mixed with night-blooming flowers.

When I can see again, a small crater smolders before me. Inside lies a jagged black stone no larger than my palm, etched with strange silvery characters unlike any script I've studied. It pulses with an inner light, like a dying heart. With each pulse, the air around it seems to bend, as if the stone exists partly in another realm.

Every sect teaching warns against touching unknown celestial objects. Even children know the tales of cultivators driven mad by heavenly treasures they weren't qualified to possess. The Sect Chronicles describe the Crimson Monk who found a celestial pearl and burned from the inside out when he tried to absorb its essence. Or Sword Master Feng, whose mind was shattered after bonding with a meteorite blade.

But what do I have to lose?

My hand moves before I can reconsider. The moment my fingers brush the stone's surface, white-hot pain erupts through my arm. I try to pull away, but the stone liquefies, becoming a mercury-like substance that slithers beneath my skin like a living thing. A scream tears from my throat as burning agony traces every meridian in my body, all paths converging on my shattered dantian.

I'm dying. My body convulses against the cold stone of the mountain peak. Perhaps this is better.

As consciousness begins to slip away, I see... things. Impossible things. A sky filled with stars I've never seen in any night sky of our world. A city floating between twin moons. Beings of pure light engaged in battle with shadows that swallow everything they touch.

And through it all, a voice enters my mind—ancient, weary, and utterly inhuman.

"At last... a vessel with the Shadow Meridian."

The words mean nothing to me as darkness claims my sight.

Crimson and gold paint the eastern sky when I open my eyes. I lie exactly where I fell, my body aching but somehow... different. Sitting up slowly, I instinctively check my dantian.

The emptiness remains, but beside it—like a shadow cast by something invisible—is something else. A secondary pathway I've never felt before, dark and cold, yet humming with potential.

"Impossible," I whisper, cautiously directing my awareness into this strange new channel.

Pain immediately flares—not the scorching agony of last night, but a deep, penetrating cold that steals my breath. I pull back instinctively, gasping.

A fragment of last night's vision flashes before my eyes—a figure composed entirely of darkness standing before a shattered moon, drawing power from the very emptiness between stars.

"The void between light is where true power hides."

I don't know where the thought comes from. It feels foreign in my mind, like words whispered by a stranger.

My hands tremble as I examine them. My skin looks normal, but something beneath it has changed. When I focus, I can almost see my meridians beneath the surface—not glowing with golden spiritual energy like proper cultivators, but traced with faint lines of midnight blue.

On my left palm, a tiny mark has appeared—a crescent moon with a star inside it. The meteor is gone, but its essence has become part of me.

I try again to reach for this new energy, more carefully this time. What responds isn't spiritual energy but something else—dark, ancient, hungry. It flows through my meridians, not bright and warm like the sect's lotus energy, but cool and liquid, like starlight given form.

When it reaches my fingertips, the morning dew on a nearby leaf suddenly freezes, crystallizing into delicate patterns. I jerk my hand back in surprise, and the ice immediately melts.

What is this power? Not one of the five orthodox elements taught by the sect. Not yin energy, though it bears similarities. Something older, perhaps. Something forbidden.

A bell rings from the central pavilion far below, announcing the beginning of the Ascension Ceremony. I hesitate, Master Zhu's words echoing: Leave before dawn. Live a mortal life.

But dawn has come, and I am no longer the same broken disciple who climbed this peak to say goodbye.

Another flash of vision—countless stars dying, their light consumed by something vast and patient. A hunger older than worlds.

A chill runs down my spine. Is this power a blessing or a curse? The sect teachings warn that unorthodox cultivation paths often exact terrible prices. What will this one demand of me?

My lips curl into an unfamiliar shape—not the bitter smile I've worn for seven years, but something sharper, more dangerous.

Everyone expects Lin Feng to disappear quietly.

Instead, I think I'll give the Sacred Lotus Sect one last surprise.

I brush dirt from my tattered servant's robes and begin the descent from Cloudrest Peak, toward the ceremony grounds where the sect elders wait. With each step, I feel the strange energy settling deeper into my meridians, flowing into places that have been empty for years.

My outer appearance hasn't changed—still the lowest of disciples—but inside, something new pulses in rhythm with my heart.

Hope.

And behind that hope, something darker—a shadow waiting to be unleashed.

As I descend, I notice something odd—a small spirit bird, normally attracted to cultivators with active golden cores, circles me curiously. It shouldn't be interested in a failed disciple like me. Yet it follows, keeping pace, occasionally emitting soft trills of confusion.

Whatever this Shadow Meridian is, it seems the natural world can sense it. I wonder what else might be drawn to its power—or what might come hunting for it.

For the first time in seven years, I find myself looking forward to what comes next.