Chapter 8: First Devouring – Fire Root
The forest was still.
The corpse of Mo Lin lay half-buried in moss, the scent of blood thick in the air. Ashen Wu knelt beside him, his hand pressed to the dead man's abdomen, where the spiritual core had once pulsed.
Now it was gone.
Devoured.
And something else had awakened.
Inside Ashen's body, within the hollow shell of his dantian—where once there had been nothing—a spark flickered.
A crack.
A pulse.
A Root began to form.
Not natural. Not forged by heaven.
But built from stolen light.
Ashen clutched his stomach as pain wracked his body.
It was worse than swallowing the moldy pill.
Worse than the beast bone elixir.
This pain was inward. Cellular. It wasn't his veins that burned—it was reality itself unraveling within him.
The Heaven-Eating Scripture stirred in his soul, ancient runes seething with black heat.
"To devour a root is to defy the sky," it whispered. "Let the Void bear your fruit."
He collapsed onto the forest floor, gasping, as fire ran through his meridians.
Mo Lin's Fire Root—wild and volatile—fought him from within.
It refused to submit.
But Ashen was not asking.
He tore it apart.
He stripped it down to its purest essence.
And where once there had been nothing, something began to grow.
A new Root.
But it was not fire.
Not metal, not wood, not water, not earth.
It was Null.
A chaotic, ever-changing seed of emptiness, forged from the shreds of another man's core and the abyss inside Ashen.
It pulsed not with color—but with hunger.
It devoured residual energy. Swallowed impurities. Assimilated pain.
The Null Root was alive.
It had no fixed nature.
No allegiance to the elements.
Only one instinct:
Consume.
Ashen lay still for hours, drenched in sweat, barely breathing.
By the time the sun began to rise, he stood again.
Taller.
Stronger.
Changed.
His eyes glinted—not with fire, but with a strange darkness that shimmered like oil on water.
The beasts nearby sensed it. Their cries had gone silent.
Even the trees leaned away.
Ashen clenched his fist.
Qi gathered naturally now, pulled from the air like threads drawn to a spinning wheel. His veins drank it in—not with grace, but with greed.
"I have no root," he whispered.
"I am the root."
As he walked back through the Silent Forest, his mind spun.
He had done the impossible.
A rootless body… now cultivated.
Not by creation—but by theft.
He knew what it meant. He remembered the old legends—the Heaven-Eaters, cursed beings who consumed spiritual energy like parasites, unraveling the balance of the world.
They had been hunted.
Wiped out.
Burned from the records by those who called themselves heaven's wardens.
And now… one had returned.
In him.
Near the forest's exit, he encountered a group of outer disciples, fresh blood and sweat on their robes. They had survived the trial as well. One of them sneered at Ashen.
"Thought you'd be dead by now, servant."
Ashen looked him over.
He could feel their cores now—could taste the resonance of their roots in the air.
Wood. Earth. Water.
Weak. Weak. Delicious.
He didn't answer.
He simply walked past them.
The others shivered as he passed.
Something about him felt… wrong.
Like the forest had spit him out darker than before.
He returned to the servant quarters in silence.
At night, in the dim light of a flickering lantern, he stared into the cracked mirror again.
But the face that stared back was no longer the trembling boy.
It was Ashen Wu—the man who had been executed by the heavens for cultivating a scripture that should not exist.
He placed a hand on the glass.
"You followed me here, didn't you?" he murmured.
The scripture pulsed in response.
It had crossed death.
Crossed realms.
And now it was feeding again.
Inside his body, the Null Root spiraled slowly, drawing in energy from the air, fusing it with what little remained of Mo Lin's fire.
Ashen felt its potential.
It was not stable.
It could not be.
But that was its strength.
Where other roots were bound to law and balance, his fed on imbalance.
Every broken rule, every forbidden act, every stolen essence—it would grow.
He was no longer a cripple.
He was the enemy of heaven.
And he would grow until even the stars feared him.
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Author's Note:
This chapter marks a true turning point. Ashen doesn't just break the rules—he rewrites them inside his own body. The Null Root is not just a tool; it's a threat. A declaration of war on cultivation as the world knows it. And it's only the beginning. His power will come with consequences—watch how the world starts to bend and burn in response.
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Formation of the Null Root
It began with a pulse.
Not of life—but of hunger.
Ashen Wu sat cross-legged in the dark, deep within an abandoned cavern beneath the servant quarters. This place had once been a forgotten pill furnace, scorched by fire and ash. Now, it served him well—a place of silence. Of secrecy.
Inside his dantian, the Null Root writhed.
Unlike other roots, which harmonized with elements or mirrored the five natural laws, this one rejected harmony. It devoured.
Its surface was not smooth crystal, nor gnarled wood, nor glowing ember. It was ever-shifting—a writhing spiral of black-red energy, like a serpent coiled in a storm. It pulsed with every beat of Ashen's heart, yet felt alien to his body. Alive. Hungry.
He tried to guide the flow of qi as the servant's manual instructed.
Breathe in. Circle through the twelve gates. Open the meridians.
But the energy refused to obey.
Instead, the Null Root reached out like tendrils, dragging ambient qi into itself. It crushed it. Swallowed it whole. And from the wreckage, it released something else—a darker, deeper current. Not pure qi, but something richer, heavier. Like molten shadow.
Ashen gasped.
His bones ached. His blood boiled. But he didn't stop.
"Eat," he whispered to the root.
It pulsed.
Hours passed.
Each breath brought more pain. Each cycle of devouring tore at his insides—but also reshaped them. His flesh was being rewritten. The Heaven-Eating Scripture carved new paths inside his body, marking him with sigils that burned beneath the skin.
This was not cultivation.
This was corruption.
And yet… he grew stronger.
By dawn, his body had absorbed more qi than most servants touched in a year. His senses sharpened. His wounds healed. His limbs grew heavier with power.
But it came with a price.
His stomach howled.
He was hungry.
Not for food—but for roots.
For spiritual essence.
The moldy pill. The beast bone elixir. Mo Lin's core. They had not been enough. Now that the root had been born, it needed to be fed.
Ashen staggered to his feet.
The cavern around him flickered as his senses extended.
He could feel it now—the taste of nearby cultivators. Their elemental affinities wafted through the air like invisible incense.
Water-rooted. Weak and fluid.
Earth-rooted. Sturdy but slow.
Fire-rooted… sharp, like blood and ash.
He closed his eyes.
His Null Root growled from within, twisting greedily.
Ashen forced it to still.
"No," he muttered. "Not yet."
It would be easy to kill another outer disciple. Tempting. But too soon.
He needed control.
Power meant nothing if it consumed him.
He left the cavern and returned to the surface before anyone noticed his absence. Servants bustled around the courtyard, scrubbing floors and washing bloodstains from training grounds after the Silent Forest trial.
Some looked at Ashen differently now.
They didn't know what had changed—but they sensed it.
He stood straighter.
His gaze burned.
And there was something wrong about his presence—like the world itself recoiled around him.
One servant muttered behind his back, "He didn't come back alone…"
In the mirror, Ashen stared at himself again.
And this time, the reflection stared back with red eyes.
They faded quickly, but he'd seen them.
They weren't Mo Lin's. They weren't a spirit beast's.
They were his.
A mark left by the Heaven-Eating Scripture awakening deeper within.
He pressed a palm against the glass, and the reflection rippled like water.
"Null Root… a seed of hunger. A curse, or a key?"
Either way, it was his now.
And it was growing.
That night, he recorded what he had learned in charcoal on the stone floor beneath his bunk:
Heaven-Eating Path – First Layer
Null Root Formation complete.
Cultivates by devouring external qi and refined essences.
Cannot form traditional meridian circuits—creates chaos channels instead.
Residual energy must be consumed, or it backlashes.
Craves spiritual cores, especially roots of other cultivators.
Possibility of mutation with each devouring—unpredictable.
At the bottom, he scrawled a warning:
Each step forward risks losing your humanity.
He paused, staring at that final line.
He didn't feel less human.
He felt… free.
Elsewhere, in the heart of the Broken Sect, a golden scroll lit up inside a sealed jade chamber.
It shimmered as if disturbed by something ancient.
Far above, deep in the Pinnacle Sky Temple—a floating fortress unseen by mortal eyes—Sovereign Yama stirred.
His divine senses twitched.
His chains vibrated.
A forbidden ripple had touched the celestial balance. The Heaven-Eating Scripture was no longer dormant.
"It begins again," Yama murmured, rising from his throne.
Around him, the chains of law whispered.
"Devourer…"
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Author's Note:
Ashen's Null Root isn't just unique—it's wrong by cultivation standards. This chapter is about that unsettling realization: he's becoming something the world doesn't understand… or want. But with it comes power no one else dares touch.
Up next: Demon in the Outer Ring –
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