The heavens and earth stretched vast and boundless, endless in all directions, filled with countless beings and hidden gods.
Yet at the very northernmost edge of the world, there lay a land forsaken by both the Heavenly Dao and humankind.
No immortal energy, no spirit veins — only endless white snow stretching to the horizon, icy winds that pierced flesh and bone, and ragged figures huddled in crude fur garments, struggling to survive through the merciless winters.This was the Northern Wastelands.
Here, spiritual energy was so sparse it was almost nonexistent.If any who sought the path of cultivation stepped onto this land, they would find their meridians severed and their bones shattered by the cold before even completing half a technique.
Thus, the people here, even those with strength, were merely mortals who tempered their bodies through hardship — hunting fierce beasts, reforging their muscles and bones, cultivating a form of crude mortal martial arts.
They knew nothing of spirit roots, had never heard of golden cores or nascent souls, and dared not even dream of immortality.
Their lives were simple, brutal — hunting, gathering, fighting for every scrap of meat, every piece of fur, every inch of land.
The inhabitants of the Northern Wastelands were scattered across tribes, dwelling in forests buried beneath eternal snow or hidden valleys shielded by rugged mountains.Each tribe had its own totems, its own ancestral rituals, but they all shared the same nature: primitive, wild, and violent.
Power did not come from bloodlines nor from knowledge.It came from fists, spears, and survival.The one who slew the fiercest beasts, who forged weapons from bone and stone, that one became the leader.
The Black Rock Tribe was one of the largest among these scattered peoples.
At the foot of the Coldwind Mountains, they had endured for over fifty winters.The elders said their ancestors had once been exiles from the South, fleeing from the great war between gods and demons, abandoned by heaven and earth and forced into this frozen hell.
No one knew if that was truth or legend, but the Black Rock people believed their blood once flowed on the battlefields of myth.
Among them lived a youth named Liu Chen.
He was not like the others — not stronger, nor smarter, but quieter.
Since childhood, Liu Chen rarely played, never joined the others, and never raised his voice.
He preferred to climb the snowy hill behind the shaman's hut and sit alone for hours, unmoving, like a small stone statue waiting for something unknown.
Some said he was dull, others that he was mad.
But the tribe's only shaman, the Vu Mi, said:"He hears the voice of the earth. He is not mad — he is clearer than any of you."
No one knew Liu Chen's true origin.Only that, seventeen years ago, during a night of howling blizzards, hunters found him beneath the White Bone Ravine.
He had been naked, a blood-red, hook-shaped scar seared across his chest, his skin frozen blue, his breath faint like a dying ember.
Yet he still breathed.And when he awoke, the first words he spoke were in a tongue none understood — so ancient that it took the shaman two full months just to teach him the common speech.
Seventeen years passed.Liu Chen grew up on the margins of the tribe — not despised, but never truly accepted.From childhood, he bore a physique stronger than most.
At twelve, he slew a snow wolf alone.At fifteen, he brought down a great ice bear single-handedly — a beast that only seasoned hunters dared to confront.
Yet every time he won glory, he asked for nothing.He would drag the beast back to the tribe, then vanish again into the snowy forests without a word.
Some called him the "Madman of the Snow Forest," others whispered he was possessed by a beast spirit.
Liu Chen himself did not know why he existed in this place.
Sometimes, on nights when the winds howled like ghosts through the stones, Liu Chen would lie by the fire, staring blankly at the torn ceiling of his hut.A vision would always haunt him — a colossal city submerged in flames, the sky torn apart.
He did not understand it.
One day, as ash-like snow fell from the grey sky, a group of hunters surrounded a giant black bear atop Coldwind Mountain.
Their shouts echoed down the slopes, the clash of spears against flesh and the gush of blood roaring like the drums of some ancient war.
Liu Chen watched silently from a high outcrop, gripping his bone knife tightly, his eyes still and cold as a frozen lake.
Suddenly, the bear roared, throwing two hunters violently aside — one slammed into a tree and lay still.The others hesitated, fear freezing their movements.
At that moment, Liu Chen could endure no longer.
He leapt down from the rocky ledge, his body weaving through the air like a snow wolf, the bone knife gleaming with icy light.
He did not shout, nor did he hesitate.Each step he took crushed deep into the snow, radiating an unseen pressure that made even seasoned hunters instinctively part before him.
The black bear roared again, sweeping its massive paw across.
But Liu Chen did not dodge.He slid low, slipped inside the beast's reach, and slashed upward at its vulnerable inner thigh — the gap between its thick fur and tough hide.
The black bear shrieked in agony, staggering, blood gushing from its wounds.But Liu Chen did not relent.He twisted, using the momentum to vault onto the bear's back, driving the knife deep into its throat.
The crowd stood frozen.His every movement had been clean, brutal, merciless.
In less than ten breaths, the beast — weighing hundreds of pounds — collapsed in a pool of blood, its eyes wide, its breath silenced forever.
No one spoke.
Liu Chen brushed the snow from his shoulders, his gaze colder than the midnight frost, and turned away without a second glance.
The battle was over.The beast lay dead, the snow soaked red, and the tribe erupted in cheers — but Liu Chen did not join them.He walked away, his solitary figure swallowed by the endless snow.
That night, he slept in a hollow between stones, wrapped in rough furs, clutching his bone knife.The fire was weak, the snow still fell, but he felt no cold.
Seventeen years — no one had ever taught him how to survive.He learned by blood, by hunger, by the storms that howled without end.As long as he could breathe tomorrow, it was enough.
He tilted his head, sensing a strange, ancient chill creeping into his bones — colder than the northern winds, gnawing at every joint until they burned with pain.
By dawn, Liu Chen slowly opened his eyes.
The sky was still grey.The snow still fell.The winds still howled.
But the world before him had changed completely.
No more laughter, no more children's cries, no more low murmurs from the stone huts.Only a suffocating silence — a silence heavy with death.
Liu Chen's gaze swept over the central square where the tribe usually gathered to butcher prey and share food.
Now it was stained with blood trails and strewn with corpses, their eyes wide open, mouths agape, faces twisted in terror, as if something unseen had torn their very souls away.
The shaman's stone hut had collapsed.The fur curtains at the entrance were shredded as if clawed by invisible talons.Inside, the Vu Mi lay motionless, blood pooling black at her lips, broken runes scattered around her.
No one in the tribe had survived.
Only death remained — a tide of death, as if some invisible wave had swept through in an instant.
Liu Chen stood alone in the midst of this nightmare, his eyes empty, his fingers clenching his bone knife so tightly that blood seeped from his palm.
Above him, the sky loomed heavy and grey.Snow buried the dead.And in the endless whiteness, only one figure still lived — Liu Chen.