Chapter : The Black Lotus Awakens

Chapter 3: The Black Lotus Awakens

Three more years of hell had passed.

Kael Voss was now sixteen years old. Tall and lean, but still dangerously underfed. His face had sharpened with hunger and hardship. The coldness in his eyes had grown deeper — like two black abysses that had already seen too much death.

On this particular night, desperation had pushed him too far.

He had tried to steal food from the outer disciples of the Iron Claw Clan, a minor but arrogant cultivation clan that controlled a part of Greywind Town. He was caught.

“Filthy street rat! How dare you steal from us?!”

The beating was merciless.

Four young disciples, all at the early stages of Spirit Realm cultivation, took turns kicking and punching him. Bones cracked. Blood sprayed from his mouth. They laughed as they dragged his broken body into the depths of the nearby Darkmist Forest and threw him into a muddy ditch like garbage.

“Leave him here to rot. The beasts will finish what we started.”

Kael lay in the cold mud, his body screaming in agony. Every breath felt like knives in his lungs. Blood flowed freely from multiple wounds. The black lotus mark on his chest was burning hotter than it ever had before.

‘Is this… how it ends?’ he thought, his vision blurring.

Memories flashed through his mind — his mother’s warm smile, her final scream, the stones thrown at him, the endless humiliation, the cold nights with no food.

Rage. Unimaginable rage surged through him.

“I… refuse… to die… like this!”

As if responding to his will, the Black Lotus Seed inside his body exploded with power.

BOOM!

A massive surge of dark energy erupted from his chest. Purple-black light illuminated the dark forest. Ancient, terrifying runes appeared in the air around him as a deep, majestic voice echoed directly inside his soul:

“The weak are destined to be devoured… But you, child of the Black Lotus, shall devour the heavens themselves.”

Intense pain flooded every part of Kael’s body as the Primordial Black Lotus Cultivation Technique began to forcefully awaken. His broken bones started knitting together at terrifying speed. His torn muscles regenerated. Even his blood, which had been spilling onto the ground, began to flow backward into his body.

Kael screamed — not in fear, but in pure, overwhelming power.

Shadowy tendrils rose from the ground around him, absorbing the dark essence of the night itself. For the first time in his life, he felt strength flowing through his veins.

When the process finally stopped, Kael slowly stood up.

His ragged clothes were still torn and bloody, but his body was healed. His long black hair fluttered even though there was no wind. His eyes, once dull, now glowed with a cold purple-black light.

He raised his hand.

A small ball of pure shadow formed above his palm. He could feel it — the power to manipulate darkness, to hide, to strike from the shadows.

“This power…” Kael whispered, his voice low and hoarse.

A cruel, cold smile slowly formed on his lips — the first real smile in eight long years.

He looked toward the direction of Greywind Town, where the Iron Claw Clan disciples lived.

“They thought they could kill me and throw me away like trash…”

Kael clenched his fist, crushing the shadow orb. Dark energy crackled around him.

“Now… it’s time they learned what happens when you awaken a monster.”

End of Chapter 3

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