Chapter 3

The road to the central plains was long, and Lin Feng walked it with the careful patience of a man who had died once and did not intend to rush toward anything.

He traveled as a mortal. No displays of cultivation. No qi signatures. The Demon Vein within him was easy to conceal—it did not radiate like ordinary meridians. It sat quiet and dark, like a sleeping beast.

On the fifth day, he encountered his first problem.

A group of bandits—seven of them, armed with cheap steel and expensive confidence—stepped out from behind a rock formation. Their leader, a scarred man with a missing ear, pointed a rusty dao at Lin Feng's chest.

"Toll road, friend. Five silver taels to pass."

Lin Feng stopped. He looked at the bandits the way one might look at insects—curious, but not threatened.

"I have no silver," he said.

The leader grinned. "Then we'll take what you're carrying. That pendant looks valuable."

His hand reached for the jade at Lin Feng's throat.

What happened next was not a decision. It was instinct.

The Demon Vein activated. Black qi surged from Lin Feng's core, not outward but through his body, reinforcing muscle, bone, and sinew. The world slowed. The bandit's hand moved as if through honey.

Lin Feng caught the man's wrist.

The bandit's eyes widened. He tried to pull back. He could not.

"You should not have touched that," Lin Feng said quietly.

He did not strike. He did not need to. The black qi that now curled around his fingers was enough. The bandits saw it. They saw the darkness in his eyes, the stillness of his stance, the absolute certainty of a man who had nothing left to lose.

The leader dropped his sword.

"Demon cultivator," he whispered. "Run!"

They ran.

Lin Feng released the wrist. He looked at his hands. The black qi dissipated, but the feeling remained—a cold, focused clarity. The Heavenly Demon Arts were not gentle. They were not righteous. They were efficient.

His master had warned him about this. "The Demon Vein does not corrupt," the old man had said. "But it reveals. What you do in moments of power is what you truly are."

Lin Feng walked on.

Three days later, he reached Clear River City—the first major settlement on the route to the central plains.

The city was larger than Clear Water Town. Walls, gates, guards. A proper city. And within it, the kind of trouble that Lin Feng had spent his previous life avoiding.

The Martial Alliance had an office here. So did two of the Five Great Sects. Cultivators walked the streets openly—their robes marked by sect colors, their qi signatures broadcasting their strength like peacocks displaying feathers.

Lin Feng kept his head down. He found an inn. He registered under a false name.

And that night, as he sat in his room and cultivated, the jade pendant pulsed again.

More characters formed in his mind. The second passage of the Heavenly Demon Arts.

This one was titled: "The Art of Becoming Invisible."

Lin Feng smiled. For the first time in ten years, he smiled.

The universe, it seemed, had a sense of humor.