The heavens were boundless; the path of cultivation, endless.
Far to the north of the Three Thousand Worlds, beyond the Nine Continents, beyond seas of ice and endless celestial mountains, stretched a desolate realm cloaked in eternal snow and mist — a land where the sun and moon were veiled, where heaven and earth lay shrouded in shadow.
It was called — the Northern Wastes.
The Northern Wastes was no prosperous land of cultivation, no sacred ground where divine sects flourished.
Rather, it was the harshest frontier of the Three Thousand Worlds — where the air itself cut like blades, where spirit veins were sparse, where fierce beasts ruled the land, where mortals struggled to survive and cultivators could scarcely find peace.
Yet it was precisely because of this that the Northern Wastes had become a realm of chaos and bloodshed, a battlefield where ancient forces had clashed for countless eras.
Over millions of years of cultivation history, countless sects had risen and fallen here.Today, when one spoke of the power structure of the Northern Wastes, only one name was passed down across the Three Thousand Worlds:
The Six Great Sects.
They were divided into two paths: three righteous sects, three demonic sects — opposing forces like yin and yang, locked in a stalemate for eight thousand years.
The righteous sects:
Azure Cloud Sect, seated atop the Azure Spirit Mountains, where disciples cultivated the sword, guiding their qi through intent, riding their blades across the heavens.They were hailed as the foremost sword sect of the Northern Wastes, their dao hearts bound to purity and righteousness, sworn to vanquish evil and protect the world.
Heavenly Might Sect, inheritors of ancient traditions, who cultivated both body and slaughter dao.They forged their path through battle, famed for their "Eighteen Heavenly Might Strikes," and every generation of Sect Masters had led armies to suppress demonic forces, earning them the title of Generals of the Cultivation World.
Nine Origins Temple, descendants of an ancient Buddhist lineage from the Primordial Era.They cultivated the heart, turning nothingness into existence, using compassion to cleanse hatred, and chanting sacred mantras to anchor wandering souls.For twenty-two millennia, they had guarded the northern gate of the Three Thousand Worlds.
Opposing them were the three demonic sects:
Heavenly Gate Hall, occupying a corner of the Northern Wastes deep within the Frozen Demon Glacier, was the foremost demonic sect since ancient times.Beyond their gates, snow fell in sheets a thousand fathoms thick; within, nine layers of forbidden halls each guarded a different corrupted dao.They did not cultivate spirit, nor refine soul — they practiced the Dao of Blood, sacrificing thousands of lives to glimpse slivers of the sealed heavenly secrets.
Desolate Spirit Valley, hidden within the Blighted Spirit Lands — once a battlefield of ancient wars.Its disciples were mostly women, practicing soul-forging arts that merged yin and yang, devouring souls to forge "Spirit Embryos" said to be capable of reincarnation and the inheritance of countless lifetimes.
Demon Sound Sect, a rootless sect without a fixed stronghold.Their practitioners nurtured spirits with killing intent and wielded forbidden arts that defied the natural order.The Eighth Generation Sect Master once sacrificed tens of thousands of lives in blood rituals to open the "Gate of Demonic Chains," nearly drowning the Northern Wastes in blood three centuries ago.
Three righteous, three demonic sects — six powers locked in eternal struggle.
No sect dared to claim absolute supremacy.No force dared to underestimate another.
In the shadows of the Northern Wastes, there were beings whose cultivation had transcended names, whose very existence bent heaven and earth.
And now, deep within the fourth layer of the Heavenly Gate Hall, in a place known as the Sevenfold Illusory Seal, buried over seven hundred fathoms beneath the frozen earth, a boy clad in a prisoner's robe, his body shackled and his consciousness dim, was slowly beginning to awaken.
His name was — Liu Chen.
His awareness drifted like a blade sunken into icy waters.
Each flicker of consciousness was dragged back down into the abyss.
Every attempt to open his eyes was met with crushing weight — as if molten lead had been poured over his eyelids — and any stir of thought summoned waves of dull, marrow-deep agony, as if his body had been shattered and pieced together with congealed blood and dying breath.
He did not know how long had passed.
At last, a faint chill drifted into his nose — half-real, half-illusory, like a breath exhaled from hell itself.It was cold, still, and merciless.
Within the fourth layer of the Sevenfold Illusory Seal, the space was utterly devoid of light.Ancient gray walls, carved with seal runes resembling the shells of dead beasts, flickered weakly with dim, sunken light — warding off intruders for countless millennia.
At the center of this forsaken cavern, a circular stone platform five fathoms wide stood.
Coiled upon it were black chains — forged from metals birthed by the fusion of heavenly fire and earthly ore — binding a frail, pitiful figure.
Liu Chen opened his eyes.
A thin slit of light — no thicker than a blade's edge — sliced through his cracked eyelids.His once dark pupils were now pale and bloodshot, veined with countless threads of crimson like spider silk stretched across a corpse's sclera.
He could feel nothing of his body.
Only the last ember of consciousness — like a guttering flame in a storm — flickering in this timeless, hopeless void.
He tried to move.His fingers did not respond.
He tried to breathe deeply.His chest felt crushed, every breath slicing his lungs apart.
It was not merely physical exhaustion.
It was the desolation of soul — as if his spirit had been drained, leaving only a hollow shell adrift in the underworld.
"Where... am I?"He tried to speak, but no sound left his parched throat.
He remembered — an iron cage, demonic mist, blood, agony, a cold that pierced his very bones.He remembered the cold, soulless gazes of the three robed figures.He remembered the crimson light swallowing him whole.And then — only emptiness.
No voice answered him.Only silence.
A silence that gnawed at sanity.
One hour... two hours... no one came.
Liu Chen lay there, abandoned like discarded trash — not worthy even of torment, not worthy of exploitation.
But he was not dead.
Though his body was broken, though his qi was depleted, though he had never even formed a spiritual core — he clung to the final scraps of consciousness with fierce, stubborn will.
Time crawled onward.
At length, Liu Chen forced his eyes open once more.
This time, his gaze sharpened slightly — not yet bright, but no longer clouded.
Before him — darkness.
But this darkness was moving.
Not the motion of objects — but the invisible drift of black mist, like ink bleeding into water, coiling along the cavern walls, slipping through cracks in the runes, gathering in a hidden corner of the forbidden layer.
Here, in the frozen silence of the Sevenfold Illusory Seal, Liu Chen remained motionless.
His blood frozen, his mind teetering on the edge of oblivion.
Yet within the void of his soul, he glimpsed a spark — a flicker of fire amidst the snowstorm.
The smoky scent of burning wood.A wavering orange-red glow.
He opened his eyes wider.
The frozen cavern was gone.
Before him stretched a desolate wilderness — ragged tents made of beast-hide surrounded him, battered by howling winds.Snowflakes the size of goose feathers fell thickly.
The Northern Wastes.
He recognized it instantly.The camp where he was born, where he grew up — where he had hunted snow wolves, gathered frost lotus roots, fought over scraps of roasted meat beneath moonless skies.
But something was wrong.
The camp was too silent.
No laughter of children.No barking of dogs.No stories murmured around the fires.
Only dying flames flickered weakly over the frozen ground.
And there — at the center of the square — sat a figure.
An old woman, robed in patchwork furs of snow leopards and foxes, a beast skull adorning her head, a tattered blue veil masking her face.
Only her eyes were visible — cloudy, ancient, bottomless.
He knew her.
The Shaman — Vu Mi.
The one the tribe had called "Grandmother Witch."
The one who never left the altar.
The one who once placed a hand on his fevered brow and whispered:
"This boy... carries blood that is not wholly human."
The memory struck like a blade to the heart.
He had thought her dead — lost in the destruction of the tribe.
Yet here she sat — waiting for him.
"Liu Chen... you have finally returned,"her voice rasped like wind over stone.
He tried to speak — but his throat closed.
"You thought you had escaped this place? No. You never left.Your blood still belongs to this land.The sacred covenant does not abandon its bloodline,"she intoned.
Behind her, the altar blazed with cold blue flames, runes swirling, bones drumming a hollow beat.
A chill rose from beneath Liu Chen's feet — countless ghostly hands dragging him back toward the snows of his slaughtered kin.
"Have you seen it all, Liu Chen?"she asked — each word hammering into his soul.
Memories shattered like mirrors.
His eyes widened — not in fear — but in recognition.
He had heard these words before — at the age of eight, before he had coughed blood during the tenth snow season.
"I have seen you... before,"he whispered inwardly.
The Shaman smiled — a weary, ancient smile — as if she had waited a hundred years for that answer.
Everything crumbled.
The fire snuffed out.The wind died.The Shaman faded into mist.
Liu Chen opened his eyes.
He was still in the Illusory Seal.
His body broken.
But his soul... had begun to stir.