A Void in a World of Power

### **Chapter 2: A Void in a World of Power**

The Awakening Ceremony was over, but the whispers had just begun. Ren’s “phaseless” status, a new and humiliating term coined by his peers, had spread like a plague through the **Xiao Clan**. He was a curiosity, a living testament to failure. His name was no longer a symbol of his father's prestige but a mark of shame.

His father, **Elder Xiao Hua**, was a shadow of his former self. He rarely looked at Ren, and when he did, it was with a guarded, pained expression. The disappointment hung in the air between them, as tangible as the dust motes in the morning sun. His mother, however, did her best to shield him, her love a quiet, fierce defiance against the clan’s cold judgment. But even her comfort was not enough to fill the void that had opened up between him and his family.

Cultivation training was a daily torment. The children were separated into groups based on their awakened bloodline. The Fire Dragons trained in the scorching heat of the Volcano Peak. The Earth Titans wrestled with boulders that weighed more than they did. Ren, with no bloodline to guide him, was relegated to the “basic” group—a handful of children from commoner families who were still attempting to awaken a minor bloodline. He was the only child of an elder in this group, a constant reminder of his fall from grace.

He would attempt to practice the foundational techniques, the ones meant to draw in and circulate ambient qi. While his peers would feel a gentle warmth or a rush of energy, Ren felt nothing. The qi flowed around him, a river that refused to touch him. He would sit in quiet meditation for hours, his mind a blank slate, while the others, including his cousin Lei, began to advance into the **Middle Foundation** stage, their meridians pulsing with newfound strength. His body refused to cooperate, a stubborn, unyielding vessel that would not accept the gift of cultivation.

One day, while practicing a basic energy manipulation skill, his cousin Lei approached him, a smug look on his face. Lei held a perfectly formed, humming fireball in his hand, its heat radiating across the training field.

“Still trying, cousin?” Lei sneered, his voice dripping with condescension. “I heard the grand master said your meridians are like dried riverbeds. Nothing can flow through them.”

The other children around them giggled, their faces a mixture of pity and amusement. Ren’s cheeks burned with a familiar shame. He clenched his fists, the humiliation a bitter taste on his tongue.

“It’s not my fault my bloodline is different,” Ren muttered, the words barely a whisper.

“Different?” Lei laughed, his voice ringing with disdain. “You have no bloodline, Ren. You’re a phaseless void. You will never amount to anything.”

The words struck Ren with the force of a physical blow. A phaseless void. It was the truth. He was nothing. He had nothing.

After that encounter, Ren stopped attending public training sessions. The Grand Library became his refuge. It was a vast, ancient building, filled with countless scrolls and books on cultivation techniques, clan history, and the great deeds of past heroes. The very air in the library smelled of parchment and wisdom, and he found a strange sense of solace there, a place where he could be alone with his shame and his despair.

He read everything, from the clan’s proud history to obscure texts on failed cultivation theories. He was searching for something, anything that could explain his condition. He devoured scrolls on ancient, forgotten bloodlines, hoping to find a hint of his own. But every text described bloodlines with clear, powerful abilities—some commanded the very essence of the sun, while others could speak to beasts. There was no mention of a bloodline that was nothing, that was a void. He was a unique kind of failure, an anomaly that had no place in the world.

He spent his days in the deep, quiet aisles of the library, the only sound the soft rustle of paper as he turned a page. He was a ghost in the clan’s house of knowledge, a boy who had lost his future. He wasn’t looking for glory anymore. He was just looking for an answer. And in the forgotten corners of the library, among the scrolls no one bothered to read, he found a faint flicker of hope, something that would change everything.

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