EYE OF THE FALLEN HEAVEN

Chapter 1 – The Useless Heir

In the Martial Continent, power was truth-and the powerless were forgotten.

Here, a single clash between cultivators could sunder mountains. Armies bowed to lone warriors. Sects rose or fell by the will of one soul.

It was not kings who ruled this world-but those who had awakened their Martial Soul.

A Martial Soul was more than just power. It was destiny. Born at sixteen, forged by bloodline and fate, it shaped the road a cultivator would walk. A blade of fire. A tiger of lightning. A phoenix of ice. The soul was weapon, companion, and the cultivator's very spirit.

And in this world where the strong ascended to the heavens and the weak vanished like mist, there was no fate crueler than being born without one.

That was the fate awaiting the Lin Clan's only heir.

They once said the heavens whispered at his birth. But now, those same heavens wouldn't even look his way.

The Eastern Provinces stretched across a land scarred by old battles and reborn in spirit. Rivers shimmered with qi beneath glowing moons. Peaks floated, suspended in the air by ancient formations. In this land of wonder and bloodshed, names rose in legend-and none towered higher than the Lin Clan.

The Lin ruled Cloudveil Peak, a mountain fortress wreathed in mist and guarded by spirit beasts older than the Empire itself. Their banners bore a coiled dragon wrought in gold thread, and their warriors carried bloodlines that had once defied death itself. Every generation, one among them awakened a Heaven-grade Soul, drawing envy and fear in equal measure. They weren't just cultivators. They were cultivator-kings.

Lin Tianhai, the current patriarch, was the peak of that legacy. Thirty years ago, when the Black Serpent Sect marched to seize the Nine Peaks, he stood alone-and ended a war. His Martial Soul, the Starlight Dragon, had descended like a god. The mountains still carried the scars of that battle. The Serpent Sect no longer existed.

Now, Lin Tianhai was older, silver-haired, still unchallenged. His aura alone could silence a hall of elders. But even the strongest man cannot silence fate. Not when it mocks him through his only son.

Lin Feng.

At his birth, the stars themselves had shifted. The ancestral seers whispered omens. Elders rejoiced. A son born of destiny, they said. A prodigy who would surpass even the patriarch.

And yet, sixteen years later, the name Lin Feng echoed with pity. Or worse-scorn.

The boy who stood beneath the morning mist of Cloudveil Peak bore little resemblance to the hope once spoken of in hushed reverence.

Lin Feng's hair was long and raven-black, tied behind his head with a simple cloth knot. His eyes, deep and quiet, shimmered with a flicker of gray-like storm clouds yet to break. His robes, though plain, were clean, neat. His hands were calloused from relentless training, his frame lean but honed. There was no golden aura around him, no crackling qi, no signs of awakening. And yet-he stood with a quiet defiance. He always had.

"Still no soul," he whispered to himself, eyes gazing across the training courtyard.

Disciples sparred in the distance, their battle cries piercing the air. Sparks of qi danced between them-flames, winds, even illusions of beast-shaped spirits. Some had already awakened. Most hadn't. But all of them trained with expectation. All of them were still... seen.

Lin Feng stood apart, a silent shadow on his own clan's land.

Behind him, the mountain winds howled as if mocking his solitude.

"I've done everything," he thought, jaw tightening. "Everything they asked. Everything they didn't."

He remembered the cold mornings-barefoot climbs up the thousand-step path. The bleeding palms from striking trees until his bones ached. The nights poring over scrolls long after oil lamps had dimmed. Techniques, theory, formations-he knew them all. He studied even when no elder was assigned to teach him.

But talent? Talent could not be forced. Or so they said.

"Maybe the soul never existed at all," he muttered.

He wouldn't let himself believe it. Not entirely. But the thought had rooted itself deep in his heart. Every whisper behind his back, every narrowed gaze, every cold smile-it had chipped away at the boy who once believed himself chosen.

His cousin Lin Kun walked past him then, flanked by two retainers. Though he hadn't awakened either, Kun carried himself like a young lord. Tall, broad-shouldered, with a permanent smirk that could slice deeper than any sword.

"Still staring off into nothing?" Lin Kun's voice cut like ice. "Maybe if you look hard enough, your soul will pity you and show itself."

The retainers laughed. Lin Feng didn't answer.

He'd learned silence was the sharpest shield.

But inside, something stirred. Not rage-though that was always there, buried beneath the years. It was a flicker of something older. A voice he couldn't name.

Soon.

He blinked. The whisper faded.

Lin Kun gave one last sneer before walking on. "Don't get in the way at the Awakening. We wouldn't want your lack of talent to be contagious."

Lin Feng turned back to the courtyard. He watched the youngest disciples train, mimicking the basic stances he had once mastered years ago. They laughed, fell, rose again.

He remembered when he laughed like that. Before the silence came.

But even now, at the edge of being discarded, he clung to one thing.

Hope.

The Soul Stone awaited him. In three days, he would place his hand upon it. It would either awaken his destiny-or crush him completely.

"Whatever comes," he said, "I won't kneel."

Even if the heavens had forgotten him...

Even if the soul never came...

Even if he was truly alone...

He would not bow.

Because if fate had turned its back on him-

Then Lin Feng would forge forward without it.