Cultivation starts with picking up attributes

The following dawn broke in muted gold, clouds scattered across the sky as if painted by the trembling hands of the heavens. The Feilun Sect bustled with an intensity that had not been seen in decades. Disciples poured across courtyards, sparring, strengthening formations, chanting incantations to reinforce the spiritual barriers that wrapped the mountain like invisible armor.

Everywhere Tian Shen walked, heads bowed. Not merely in respect, but in fear. His aura lingered around him, faint but undeniable, a predator's edge that pressed on even the most stalwart cultivators. He had begun to notice how footsteps stilled when he passed, how conversation broke into silence the moment his shadow fell across disciples.

It should have angered him. Instead, it left a hollow ache.

The Utopian Core pulsed within him like a second sun, and with it came a ceaseless whisper: Take. Consume. Stabilize. He fought it with every breath, but there were moments when his vision blurred, when he imagined drawing the qi from every disciple around him until the hunger subsided.

He never acted on it. But the thought itself gnawed.

"Root Division—gather."

His voice carried across the sparring ground, and immediately his detachment assembled before him. Thirty cultivators, each handpicked by Elder Su for their discipline and versatility. They dropped into formation with precision, saluting him with spears raised in unison.

Feng Yin stood to his right, her green robes gleaming faintly with defensive runes. Little Mei bounded to the front row, brimming with eagerness as her beast companion—a small, fiery fox—snapped its jaws at the morning air. Behind them, Lian Hua's presence radiated calm authority, her Azure Phoenix aura weaving smoothly with the group's qi.

They looked at him, waiting.

Tian Shen's grip tightened on his own spear. "The enemy is not like the Demon Sect we once fought. They are shadows, infiltrators, warlocks who carve at foundations instead of striking at the surface. You've seen the corrupted formations. You've seen disciples vanish. You know what we face."

A murmur rippled through the detachment—controlled, restrained, but tinged with unease.

He lifted the spear, its silver veins flickering like lightning beneath the morning sun. "Then know this: they bleed. And if they bleed, they can be broken. We are the Root Division not because we stand tall—but because we sink deep. Where they hide, we will root them out. Where they corrupt, we will cleanse. And where they dare to raise their hands against this sect—"

He thrust the spear downward, the stone shattering at the impact. Dust rose in a sharp ring around him.

"—we will sever them to the marrow."

A roar answered him, the Root Division striking their weapons against the ground in thunderous rhythm. The qi in the air shuddered, aligning, a single heartbeat echoing across the mountain.

Yet beneath their fervor, Tian Shen felt the Utopian Core stir. It drank in the gathering energy, hungering to devour not only enemies but allies. His jaw tightened, and he pulled his aura back sharply, forcing the storm into silence. No one noticed the tremor in his hand except Feng Yin, who cast him a sidelong glance—sharp, worried, but silent.

When the detachment dispersed to their drills, she remained behind. "You can't keep caging it like this."

He didn't look at her. "What would you have me do? Unleash it on our own?"

"I would have you master it." Her tone was steady, but the weight of it pressed harder than any reprimand. "If you keep suppressing it, it will break you. Use it, Tian Shen. Make the Core serve you—not the other way around."

The thought clawed at him. To wield that storm without losing himself—to turn hunger into a blade. Was it even possible?

Before he could answer, the clang of the great bronze bell echoed across the mountain. Three strikes, heavy and deliberate. The Sect's emergency signal.

Feng Yin's eyes widened. "Intrusion."

They moved instantly.

The outer formation shuddered when Tian Shen arrived, accompanied by the Root Division. What had once been a seamless spiritual barrier now flickered with jagged fractures, black veins of corruption spiderwebbing across its surface.

Sect Master Feilun stood at the forefront, hands raised as he poured qi into stabilizing the array. His face, usually impassive, was set with grim determination. Elder Su knelt beside him, weaving talismans at lightning speed to reinforce the gaps.

"Report," Tian Shen demanded, his voice cutting through the chaos.

Elder Su glanced up, sweat dripping from his brow. "A breach attempt. Subtle, but strong. They are testing the wards with void-forged talismans. This is no ordinary infiltrator's trick."

Lian Hua's gaze swept the horizon. "Then they are near. Hiding just beyond the veil."

She was right. Even as Tian Shen extended his senses, he caught the faintest ripple of qi—wrong, distorted, like the stench of rot clinging to the wind.

His grip on the spear tightened. "Root Division, forward. Spread formation. Anything that moves within the perimeter is an enemy."

They obeyed instantly, their presence unfolding like a net across the mountainside. The spiritual pressure stabilized for a moment under their unity, but then—

A handprint.

It pressed against the barrier from the outside, black and colossal, searing itself across the glowing surface of the formation. The air trembled. Disciples gasped. The handprint burned into the barrier like a brand, veins of shadow spreading outward.

Recognition struck Tian Shen like a blade. He had seen it once before, at the site of the vanished scouting team.

The Void Hand.

Before he could react, the barrier ruptured with a sound like shattering glass. Darkness poured through the cracks, and from it stepped figures cloaked in shifting shadows. Their eyes glowed faintly, and their robes bore no insignia—only jagged scars carved into flesh where sect emblems once might have been.

Warlocks. Remnants. Betrayers.

One of them raised his staff, and the air warped with void qi. "Feilun Sect. You cling to your mountains like children clutching toys. Today, we take what was denied to us."

The Root Division braced, their qi surging into formation. Tian Shen stepped forward, spear leveled, his voice cutting like thunder.

"You'll find this mountain has teeth."

Then the battle erupted.

Chaos engulfed the plateau. Warlocks unleashed torrents of twisted qi, black flames and void spears raining against Feilun disciples. The Root Division moved as one, their formation absorbing the shock, countering with precise strikes that lanced through the enemy ranks.

Tian Shen surged into the fray, his spear a streak of silver lightning. The first warlock he struck was cleaved cleanly in half, his void qi unraveling into nothingness. Another lunged from behind, but the spear reversed in a fluid arc, impaling him through the chest before he could chant his curse.

Every movement was instinct sharpened to a razor's edge. Yet with every kill, the Utopian Core roared louder, devouring the released essence, urging him to consume more. His strikes grew heavier, faster, tinged with the silver hunger that bled into his qi.

He felt himself slipping.

A sudden flash of green intercepted his vision—Feng Yin, weaving defensive runes that shielded a cluster of disciples from a collapsing void-sphere. Her voice cut through the haze: "Tian Shen!"

The storm faltered. He grounded himself with her presence, forcing his will to anchor. For a heartbeat, the beast recoiled.

He drove forward again, this time with controlled ferocity, not mindless hunger.

The warlocks faltered. They had not expected resistance this sharp, nor a spear that seemed to pierce not only flesh but the very corruption that fueled them. Cracks formed in their cohesion.

But then the ground shook.

From the ruptured barrier stepped a figure far larger than the rest, his body wrapped in shifting void patterns. His eyes glowed a deep violet, and when he raised his hand, the sky itself seemed to darken.

"The Hand does not come as fragments," he intoned, his voice like stone grinding against stone. "It comes whole."

The pressure that descended crushed the battlefield into silence. Disciples gasped for air, knees buckling. Even Sect Master Feilun staggered under the weight.

Tian Shen alone stood unbent, his spear braced against the earth, the Utopian Core roaring in defiance. His lips curled into a snarl.

"Then let the Hand be severed."

The battlefield trembled, the storm inside him surging to meet the storm outside.

...

The void commander's aura deepened, swallowing the morning light until the mountain stood beneath an unnatural dusk. His palm stretched outward, and runes of broken law coiled like chains across the battlefield. Disciples froze, their qi suffocated beneath the weight.

Tian Shen exhaled, silver light bursting from his eyes. The Utopian Core thundered in his chest, its hunger uncoiling in waves that shattered the chains as they neared him. His spear flared, silver flames licking along its length until it burned like a fragment of the heavens themselves.

The commander's violet gaze fixed upon him. "So it is you," he murmured, voice both curious and condemning. "The fractured one who defies the void."

Tian Shen stepped forward, his aura tearing through the dusk. "Fractured or not," he said, lifting his spear, "I am the blade that breaks your hand."

The plateau quaked as they clashed.