The morning began like any other: the sun shone, the disciples were shouting, and the sect chickens were attempting flight formation number seven.
Li Ming sipped his tea, enjoying the rare calm.
For once, no letters had fallen from the sky, no divine auditors appeared, and Bai Guo hadn’t exploded anything since dawn.
It was a good day.
Until the mountain started screaming.
Not taphorically — the mountain scread.
A low, resonant roar echoed through the sect grounds as every formation rune along the stone flared with unstable Qi.
Lan Yue stord into the courtyard. "Li Ming! The Spirit Testing Hall is—"
Her words were drowned by another boom.
Li Ming stood, eyebrows twitching. "Of course. Peace was too suspicious."
He, Bai Guo, and Lei Shan rushed toward the testing hall. Disciples were panicking everywhere — so glowing, so floating, one crying because his hair had turned into literal fire.
"What in the heavens—" Li Ming muttered.
Inside the hall, the Spiritroot Stone — a massive crystal that revealed a cultivator’s natural affinity — was vibrating violently, cracks spreading through its core.
It pulsed once, twice—then exploded into shards of blinding light.
Everyone ducked for cover. When the glow faded, a dozen disciples were kneeling in confusion.
One girl looked horrified. "Elder Li! My Fire Spiritroot just... turned into Steam?"
Another raised a trembling hand. "Mine beca Spicy Earth!"
Li Ming blinked. "What does that even—"
A faint sizzling sound ca from her Qi. The air slled like roasted peppers.
Lei Shan squinted. "She’s seasoning the atmosphere."
Bai Guo wheezed. "Gourt cultivation!"
Li Ming ignored them and focused. He extended his divine sense—and felt sothing wrong in the flow of heaven and earth. Qi currents twisted, tangled, and fused unnaturally.
"This isn’t random," he said. "It’s systemic. Soone tampered with the elental laws."
Lan Yue frowned. "Who could even do that?"
Before he could answer, the ground trembled again. The sect’s main spiritual vein pulsed — and a surge of pure energy erupted, lancing through the sky like a beacon.
Li Ming’s expression darkened. "The root of the problem... is below us."
---
(Part 2)
The Azure Sky Sect’s underground spirit vein was normally serene — a river of luminous energy flowing deep beneath the mountain. But as Li Ming, Lan Yue, Bai Guo, and Lei Shan descended through the sealed tunnels, the air grew thick, tallic, and alive.
Cracks of rainbow Qi snaked along the walls. Every step humd with pressure.
Bai Guo muttered, "Feels like the ground’s got a fever."
Lei Shan’s fur bristled. "It slls like lightning."
Lan Yue drew her sword, eyes sharp. "Sothing is cultivating down here."
They reached the core chamber — and froze.
The spirit vein wasn’t a river anymore. It had taken shape.
A colossal mass of glowing roots coiled around the vein’s heart, pulsing with chaotic energy. Threads of tal, wood, water, and fire intertwined like veins of madness — and in the middle of it all... a faint human silhouette was forming.
Li Ming’s face went pale. "That’s impossible. Spiritroots don’t... grow people."
Then the silhouette spoke.
"You are late."
The voice echoed inside their minds — deep, calm, ancient.
Lan Yue instinctively raised her sword. "Who are you?"
The being’s eyes flickered open — glowing with every elent at once.
"I am the Root of All Cultivation... and he," it said, pointing directly at Li Ming, "is the reason I’m awake."
Silence.
Li Ming blinked. "Okay. I know this looks bad."
Bai Guo flapped his wings. "What did you do this ti?"
Lei Shan growled softly. "Is that thing supposed to be glowing inside out?"
The being extended a hand. Elental energy swirled around it, condensing into a single droplet of shifting light.
"Balance was broken the mont you created artificial Spiritroots, Dream Patriarch."
Li Ming froze. "I... what?"
"You spread your essence through the Qi veins when you tampered with Heaven’s flow. The world adapted. Now, cultivation itself seeks correction."
Li Ming’s lips twitched. "So, let guess — correction involves killing ?"
The being smiled faintly. "No. You will help ascend."
"...That sounds worse."
Before anyone could react, the ground split open. Energy surged upward, consuming the chamber in light.
Lan Yue shouted his na as the world folded inward—
And Li Ming vanished.
---
The first thing Li Ming felt was pressure.
Not spiritual pressure — but cosmic pressure, the kind that made his soul feel like it was being squeezed through the tip of a sword. His thoughts slowed, stretched, and then snapped back into focus all at once.
When sensation returned, he wasn’t in his body anymore.
He floated in an endless radiance — a realm woven from strands of pure Qi that shimred like threads of dawn. Every color humd with elental resonance: fire roared, water whispered, tal clanged, wood sang, and earth thrumd like a sleeping heart.
Mountains drifted upside down. Rivers flowed sideways. The laws of nature weren’t broken here — they were under revision.
At the center of the vast expanse pulsed a massive crystalline heart. It shone with every elent at once, radiating the calm majesty of sothing far beyond mortal comprehension.
The Heavenly Root.
---
A voice echoed through the void, ancient and patient:
> "Welco to the Convergence, Dream Patriarch."
Li Ming turned — and nearly cursed aloud.
A figure stood before him, human in outline but ford entirely of luminous strands — his strands. It had his face, his posture, even that faint air of exhausted sarcasm that refused to die no matter how divine the situation.
"Fantastic," Li Ming muttered. "I broke reality so hard it started cosplaying as ."
The figure tilted its head, eyes flickering with runes. "You misunderstand. I am not an imitation. I am the balance your interference forced Heaven to manifest. The world adapted your essence to stabilize itself."
"So you’re saying Heaven made a Li Ming patch update?"
"Essentially."
Li Ming sighed. "Figures. Even the Dao couldn’t resist outsourcing."
---
He looked down at himself — or what passed for "self." His body was translucent, composed of flowing filants that connected him to everything around. When he breathed, the landscape shivered. When he moved, the rivers changed direction.
"...Wonderful," he murmured. "I’m a glorified Wi-Fi router for the universe."
The other Li Ming smiled faintly. "You jest, yet the analogy holds. All elental flows pass through you now. The Root tests your balance."
"Tests how, exactly?"
The light-being didn’t answer. Instead, the ground — if there even was a ground — rippled outward. The luminous threads convulsed, and from them, figures began to rise.
They took form — towering silhouettes woven from elental energy. A fire spirit whose body blazed like a furnace. A water guardian whose limbs flowed like rivers. Golems of jade, storms of tal, forests that moved as one.
All of them radiated killing intent.
"Intruder detected," one intoned. "Unstable Spirit Signature: Li Ming. Designation — Root Corruptor."
To be continued...
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