Chapter 9: Demon in the Outer Ring
They whispered of it in broken voices, eyes darting in fear.
A shadow. A scream. A body gone cold.
The servant sector had always been a place of suffering—where blood mixed with sweat, and humiliation was daily bread. But now, there was something worse than beatings. Worse than hunger.
Something invisible was stalking the Outer Ring.
They called it a demon.
Ashen Wu sat alone beneath the flickering torchlight, sharpening an old bone blade. He listened.
Another scream. Far off. Quickly silenced.
The third this week.
Servants were vanishing.
Some said it was a spirit beast that slipped through the wards during the Silent Forest trial. Others believed it was a punishment from the elders—a silent culling of the weak. But a few, like Old Ji, the limping herbalist, had whispered a different theory:
"It came when he returned," he muttered, side-eyeing Ashen. "A shadow born of a hungry root…"
Ashen knew the truth.
It wasn't him.
Not this time.
Though the Heaven-Eating Scripture made him dangerous, he hadn't killed since devouring Mo Lin's Fire Root. He had avoided temptation, resisted the Null Root's cravings.
But he felt it.
Something else had awakened in the dark.
Another hunger.
That night, he slipped away from the servant barracks, following the trail of vanished souls. A bitter wind scraped through the mountains. The moon hovered behind torn clouds, offering only broken light.
He found the first corpse in a dry well.
Eyes wide open. Face drained of color. No wounds. No blood.
The spirit root had been removed.
Cleanly.
Ritually.
Ashen's breath frosted the air. His Null Root stirred restlessly in his dantian, tasting the aftermath. This wasn't the work of a brute.
It was a predator.
Like him.
Or worse.
Further up the mountain, near the border of the Silent Forest, he found another trail.
A scent only he could sense now—burned qi and broken essence.
He crouched low, moving through the trees like a shadow. The hairs on the back of his neck stood upright.
And then… he saw it.
Perched atop a jagged rock, feeding on the last breath of a dying servant, was a figure cloaked in shadow. It had no face—only glowing red markings etched into featureless skin. Like calligraphy cut into flesh.
Ashen froze.
The markings… they were ancient script.
Heaven-Eating script.
The figure looked up.
It had no eyes, but it saw him.
Felt him.
The shadow shape tilted its head, like a curious beast recognizing its kin.
Ashen gritted his teeth, stepping into the open.
"What are you?" he asked quietly.
The thing didn't answer. But it breathed. And with that breath, Ashen felt it again—
Hunger.
Not just for power.
But for devouring roots.
Just like him.
No… older than him.
The shadow lunged.
Ashen barely dodged, rolling to the side as a tendril of dark qi slashed through the air like a whip. It burned the grass, corroded the trees. He felt his own root react in panic, pulling back.
The creature struck again—blindingly fast.
Ashen raised his hand. Qi gathered at his palm in defiance.
Spirit-Rending Palm!
His blow collided with the shadowy figure's chest, tearing through it like cloth—but it reformed instantly, as if made of smoke and willpower.
It wasn't alive in the normal sense.
It was a fragment.
A remnant.
Ashen understood in a flash: this wasn't a rogue cultivator.
It was a piece of something forgotten.
A shard of an ancient soul that once followed the Heaven-Eating Path.
And now, it recognized him.
The fragment hissed, whispering words in a language Ashen barely remembered:
"You… returned…"
Ashen gritted his teeth, channeling every drop of his stolen energy into one last strike.
He didn't need to kill it.
Just consume it.
Devour it.
The Null Root awakened fully in that moment, rising like a monstrous whirlpool inside his core.
He reached out—not with his fist, but with his root.
Spiritual tendrils lashed out and pierced the shadow.
The creature screamed, a sound that bent the air.
Its script markings flared red, then shattered.
Ashen dragged it into himself—inch by inch, piece by piece.
Not qi. Not essence. But memory.
A buried will.
When the final whisper faded, Ashen fell to his knees.
His body trembled.
His veins felt scorched, but his mind… his mind opened.
For a moment, he saw flashes of a temple of obsidian, built at the edge of reality. Of monks chanting the Heaven-Eating Scripture in tongues that tore the sky. Of a man—no, a god—standing atop a mountain of devoured stars.
He saw a name burned into stone:
"The First Devourer."
And then, silence.
The vision ended.
Ashen lay in the grass, heart pounding.
Whatever that creature had been, it had been drawn to him. To his scripture.
And now it was gone.
But not forgotten.
Inside his root, the markings of Heaven-Eating script began to bloom—new glyphs, more complex than before.
His power had evolved.
But something else had changed too.
The next time he looked into the mirror…
His reflection whispered back.
•
The Spirit-Rending Palm
The mountain was quiet again.
After consuming the shadow fragment, Ashen Wu found his nights restless. His bones buzzed with invisible qi, and his dreams were no longer dreams—they were memories that didn't belong to him.
Visions of black palaces. Screaming skies. Silent monks flayed by light.
And always, the palm—a hand cloaked in devouring energy, ripping through techniques like paper.
He would wake up gasping, his hands burning, his spirit root thrumming in eerie pulses.
It wasn't random.
The Heaven-Eating Scripture was teaching him.
Inside the crumbling servant shrine where he trained in secret, Ashen knelt before a pile of old scrolls he had stolen from the outer sect. None of them held the technique he was seeking.
Because the technique he wanted no longer existed in modern cultivation manuals.
It was born of an older era—one that had been erased.
But it lived in him now.
He took a deep breath and raised his right palm.
Thin veins of black-red qi began to crawl over his fingers, like serpents dancing under his skin. It hurt—not like a wound, but like truth being forced into flesh.
The scripture etched itself into muscle and marrow.
And then, the name whispered itself into his ear:
Spirit-Rending Palm.
The first attempt nearly killed him.
When he struck the training dummy, the palm erupted with backlash, cracking the bones in his wrist and sending him flying into a stone pillar.
The technique wasn't like normal ones.
It didn't project qi. It twisted it.
The Spirit-Rending Palm was not meant to be a technique one simply cast—it was a counterforce. A parasitic strike that latched onto enemy techniques, broke their form, and fed off their structure.
If a normal palm shattered bones, this one shattered laws.
But it required timing. Focus. Hunger.
It was the embodiment of the Heaven-Eating Scripture itself—to devour, not defend.
Ashen trained in silence for days.
Every night, he would wrap his arms with beast sinew to protect his bones.
Every morning, he would soak them in blood elixirs made from the remains of fallen creatures.
By the fifth day, he no longer screamed when it struck.
By the seventh, the backlash began to fade.
On the eighth, he shattered a reinforced stone slab with a single strike—and the palm absorbed its spiritual formation like ink into water.
He wasn't just learning the technique.
He was evolving it.
A week later, trouble found him.
In the hidden servant sector, a small group of outer disciples gathered, laughing cruelly. One of them, Senior Disciple Liang, had recognized Ashen's face during the Silent Forest trial.
"You think we don't know what you did to Mo Lin?" Liang sneered, pushing Ashen against a wall. "He went missing right after that trial. His jade slip shattered. You think the elders are fools?"
Ashen said nothing.
Another disciple stepped forward, cracking his knuckles. "He's just a cripple. Let's break both legs and toss him down the cliff."
They charged.
Ashen moved.
The first disciple raised a flame-covered fist. A mid-tier fire art.
Ashen stepped into it—directly into it.
His right palm burned black-red.
Spirit-Rending Palm.
The fire art twisted midair, unraveling like pulled thread. The spiritual structure collapsed, turning to black ash that drifted harmlessly around Ashen's face.
He struck.
The palm landed on the disciple's chest—not crushing it, but disrupting it.
The man screamed, not from pain, but from the fracturing of his meridians. His technique turned on him, and his core faltered.
Ashen turned to the next one.
Terror replaced laughter.
"You—y-you used a devouring technique!"
Ashen's voice was calm.
"Correct."
He struck again.
By the end of the fight, only one was conscious—Senior Liang, pinned to a wall by a broken bamboo spear.
"You're… you're a demon," Liang whispered.
Ashen crouched down, his Null Root slowly receding.
"I'm what the heavens tried to burn," he murmured. "But fire only tempers steel."
Liang spat. "They'll come for you. When they find out what you've done… when they sense that technique…"
Ashen smiled.
"They already did. Once."
He walked away, leaving the battered disciples groaning in the dirt.
The Spirit-Rending Palm was no longer a secret.
It was his declaration.
That night, as he sat beneath the stars, meditating with blood-soaked bandages around his arms, the scripture flared in his soul.
Lines of forgotten wisdom burned behind his eyes.
To strike the soul, not the skin…
To eat the law, not the flesh…
To punish the divine… and undo the heavens…
He had mastered his first real technique.
But it was more than a weapon.
It was a philosophy.
To rend the world, one truth at a time.
And behind that truth, always… the hunger.
*
*
Author's Note:
The Spirit-Rending Palm is the Heaven-Eating Path's signature first technique—it doesn't just attack, it counteracts, devours techniques, and turns them into backlash. It's as dangerous to its user as it is to the target until mastered.
In future arcs, it will evolve into terrifying forms like Technique-Inversion Palm and Law-Shattering Hand—but for now, Ashen's just unlocked the door.
Up next:
The Cultivation Test – Ashen enters the sect's formal exam… and stuns the elders with something never before seen.