Not like memory. Not like a dream.
Like a calling.
Li Fan stood on a vast plain of black stone beneath a sky with no stars—only a looming silver gate suspended in the void. No hinges. No keyhole. Just endless runes pulsing softly, etched with symbols that danced across its surface like the movement of time itself.
He stepped closer.
As he reached out, the runes rippled—one line in the center igniting with faint starlight.
Then a whisper—like a voice made of wind and ancient thunder:
“Name yourself.”
Li Fan opened his mouth, but the dream shattered.
He awoke in his shack, heart pounding. Moonlight streamed in through the cracks in the wooden roof. But something had changed.
He could feel the world now.
The stillness of the night. The breath of the trees. The pulsing of something beneath the earth—not qi, but something deeper. Older.
He looked at his palm again. No symbol. But the warmth lingered in his chest.
Drawn by instinct, he slipped out into the night, bare feet silent on the dirt path. He didn’t stop until he stood at the edge of the Azure Mist Forest.
They said it was haunted.
That people who entered never came back.
He stepped inside.
The forest was quiet. Too quiet.
No wind. No insects. No night birds. The mist hung thick and blue, curling like living smoke.
Li Fan wandered deeper, the pull in his chest growing stronger. Until—
A clearing.
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And in the center… a stone.
Not a pedestal. Just a weathered boulder, half-buried, cracked down the middle.
But it radiated something. A presence.
On the stone’s surface, seven markings—dull and eroded, yet strangely familiar. They looked like stars. No… fragments of a constellation.
The same pattern as the one on his palm.
He reached out.
The moment his fingers touched the stone, the air split.
A single pulse of light erupted from the crack, knocking him backward. He hit the ground hard, eyes wide—
As the stars above blinked back into the sky, one by one.
Seven stars.
Then six.
Then five.
Then…
Only one remained.
A shard of that final light descended like a falling snowflake—and entered his chest.
Li Fan gasped as his body arched off the forest floor. Light surged through his meridians—but they weren’t supposed to exist. He was rootless.
And yet now, something forged itself inside him.
A new root.
No... not a spiritual root.
A Starforged Core.
His veins shimmered. His breath stopped. Then returned stronger. Slower. Deeper.
And the voice from the dream returned—louder, clearer.
“You walk the Starforged Path. You shall not refine qi. You shall refine the void between stars.”
“Welcome, Child of the Unbound.”
- Path: Starforged Body
- Cultivation Method: Astral Pulse Absorption
- Core Type: First Fragment of the Starforged Echo
- Stage Unlocked: Qi Refining – Stage One
(Note: Astral Pulse differs from normal qi. Compatible techniques: 0. Adaptation required.)
Li Fan collapsed in the grass, chest heaving.
He had no master. No sect. No manuals.
But for the first time in his life, he was cultivating.
And the heavens—whatever they were—had noticed.
Far above, in a celestial hall that no mortal could see, a slumbering statue cracked.
Its eyes opened.