Rain pelted the bluestone paving, splashing into tiny droplets. Lin Xiu clenched his fists, his nails nearly digging into his palms. The sect's grand competition was only three days away, yet there was still no response from his dantian. It was like a lifeless stone.
"Useless! You can't even break through the Body Tempering Realm, and you think you're worthy of the Lin name?"
The taunts of his cousin Lin Hao from the previous night still echoed in his ears. Lin Xiu looked up at the stone stele in the sect's forbidden grounds. The three ancient characters for Reverse Life Cliff glimmered faintly through the curtain of rain. Legend had it that a hundred years ago, an ancestor had comprehended heaven-defying Dao patterns here, but lost control of his power and fell into the abyss.
"Maybe I can find the answer here." He took a deep breath and crossed the warning line. The moment he entered the forbidden grounds, blood-red patterns suddenly appeared on the ground and wound around his ankles like living things.
"Agh!"
Excruciating pain spread from the soles of his feet throughout his body, and Lin Xiu fell to the ground. Countless fragments of Dao patterns surged up from beneath the earth and burrowed into his meridians. A hoarse voice rang in his mind: "The Way of Reverse Life seizes the fortune of heaven and earth..."
The rain abruptly stopped. Lin Xiu got shakily to his feet. A twisted black Dao pattern appeared on his chest, shaped like an inverted sword. He tried circulating his true energy and discovered that the spiritual energy in his dantian was surging like an erupting volcano.
"Is this... the awakening of a Dao pattern?"
Before he could finish speaking, muffled thunder rumbled across the sky. A pillar of blood-red light shot upward, illuminating the entire Yunlan Sect. In the elders' pavilion, the Grand Elder, who had been in secluded cultivation, suddenly opened his eyes. "The Reverse Life Dao pattern! Seal off the rear mountain at once. This boy must not be allowed to leave alive!"
