The Void Devouring Scripture

Three days unconscious on the lakeshore.

When Liang Fei opened his eyes, the morning fog was thick enough to swallow sound. His cultivation base was gone — every scrap of the low-grade qi he had scraped together over years had been consumed. But in the void where his dantian should have been, something else breathed.

He reached inward and touched it. It touched back.

The Void Devouring Scripture. Three thousand words that had assembled themselves in his mind while he slept, as though they had always been waiting for him to stop trying to fill himself up.

He sat up and channelled the first breath cycle. The fog around him drew inward. Not the moisture — the laws governing the moisture. He felt Condensation as a concept that he could fold. He felt Evaporation as a door he could lock.

A mosquito landed on his wrist. He reflexively devoured the nature law tethering its wings to the air.

The mosquito did not fall. Its wings simply forgot how to exist.

Liang Fei stared at the falling insect and then at his own hands.

"Well," he said.

No one was around to hear him, which was probably for the best.