Lord of the void realm

Langrave City pulsed with life.

Stone streets buzzed with merchants shouting prices, beast carts clattering over iron plates, and the faint hum of cultivators using spirit techniques just to carry baskets or clean boots. Giant banners waved above sect outposts, each flaunting their colors and power as if the heavens were watching.

Raizen stepped through the city gate.

The guards didn't stop him. One glanced up, squinting at the void haze that flickered around him like heat mirage, then blinked and looked away. They wouldn't remember him if they tried. The void didn't want to be noticed. Not yet.

He kept walking.

Everywhere he looked, people moved with purpose. Rushing toward goals they barely understood. Sects recruiting new disciples. Auction houses glowing with sealed treasures. Spirit cultivators bragging about rankings, bloodlines, or the last pill they took.

It was loud. It was crowded.

It was small.

Raizen walked past it all, hands in his sleeves, calm as a stone dropped in a river.

His eyes scanned sect buildings layered with defensive formations and spiritual contracts. He could already sense it—there were techniques inside. Powerful ones. Hidden scrolls behind locked walls. Forbidden arts buried beneath jade floors. He didn't need to join a sect.

He just needed to get close.

In one instant, a ripple passed through his core.

Tracked.

He felt it—a subtle pulse of energy brushing against his void. Not an attack, not even hostile. Just… watching. Testing.

High-level cultivator.

He didn't turn his head.

Two buildings over, behind a teahouse window, a hooded figure narrowed her eyes.

"That pressure…" she whispered to herself. "But no realm. No aura. How is that possible?"

Another voice from the table beside her scoffed. "He's just suppressing his cultivation. Probably a minor clan's genius playing low."

She didn't reply. Her divine sense had tried to pierce the boy's identity — and instead of reading him, it had been swallowed. Her spirit energy hadn't been blocked. It had been eaten.

Raizen entered a quiet square lined with floating lanterns and sat beneath a spirit tree shaped like a lotus. A few cultivators glanced his way, but none dared approach. The air around him didn't reject them — it ignored them.

He closed his eyes.

He didn't need rest. His body, pulsing with infinite energy, could go without sleep or food for as long as needed. But he remembered rest. He liked the feeling of stillness before action.

His power was there, waiting.

Infinite, yes. But incomplete.

Like having a sea with no rivers to guide it, his strength still lacked direction. And until he could fully shape it, immortals and realm dominators still had the upper hand — for now.

He had to grow smarter, not just stronger.

He would steal techniques from sects.

Not their scrolls — their essence. Their patterns. With space manipulation and void comprehension, Raizen could see through the logic of techniques just by watching them once. Eventually, he would create his own—hybrids of the strongest moves in existence, refined by void-space principles.

And those who tried to stop him?

Let them try.

Already, in distant lands, cultivators were whispering. A few immortals had felt the faint shift in cosmic pressure. It was subtle, like a thread being pulled loose. They didn't know the source. But it unsettled them.

In the far west, a divine elder opened a sealed scroll and frowned.

"Infinite pulse… incomplete dominion. It's too early."

In the north, a spirit beast old enough to have seen empires fall stirred in its sleep.

Below Langrave, in the city's root-level forbidden zone, an ancient formation flared for a moment before fading. A watcher looked up and narrowed his eyes.

"Void-born…"

Above it all, Raizen opened his eyes.

Someone would come soon.

Someone powerful.

They would try to test him. Stop him. Bind him to something smaller than he was.

They didn't understand — he wasn't growing inside the world's rules.

He was reshaping them.