Dong Lin City was a city located in the far west corner of the Lan Qu Province.
"The Jing Clan of Dong Lin City is glorious! Their fame will spread throughout the nations!"
"The Jing Clan is strong and prosperous, the name of the Genius of the Jing Clan will spread far and wide!"
A year ago, people were saying such things throughout Dong Lin City. Even a three-year-old knew the name of the Jing Clan.
The Jing Clan gained such remarkable fame because of the birth of a martial arts genius named Jing Yan.
Jing Yan stepped onto the path of martial arts at age five, and he was already a warrior of the Third Heaven at age six. Between the ages of eight and twelve, he rose from the Sixth Heaven to the Ninth Heaven. By the age of fourteen, he broke through the Ninth Heaven and reached the rank of Precelestial. He had become a powerful warrior.
There were very few warriors of Precelestial rank in the entirety of Dong Lin City. Even among the larger families, there were fewer than a dozen Precelestial warriors.
It was inevitable for Dong Lin City to be shaken by the news of someone reaching the Precelestial rank at the age of fourteen.
By sixteen, Jing Yan had successfully entered the Wind God Institute, one of the top three institutes in the Lan Qu Province. He was the only warrior from Dong Lin City who had entered one of the top three institutes in the past decade.
At that time, Jing Yan's glory shone across the whole of Dong Lin City. He was the pride of the Jing Clan, and his name was on the lips of every disciple of the Jing Clan. Even though he was only sixteen years old, Jing Yan was already a role model for countless young warriors in the city.
However, just a year ago, Jing Yan was expelled from the Wind God Institute, leaving him with no choice but to return to his clan.
It was a rare case to be recruited by the Wind God Institute and then expelled. When the news spread, Jing Yan wasn't the only one who was mocked by the other warriors; even the Jing Clan itself became a target of ridicule and gossip in the city.
Jing Yan had been expelled because of his falling martial arts rank.
Not only did Jing Yan's rank fail to grow and improve at the Wind God Institute, it actually started to fall. In the six months he spent at the Institute, his rank fell from Precelestial back down to the Ninth Heaven.
That was just the beginning. In the months following that, Jing Yan dropped a rank almost every single month. At this point, Jing Yan's cultivation had fallen all the way to the Third Heaven.
In the beginning, when he had just returned to his clan, the senior warriors in the clan held multiple meetings in an attempt to find out exactly why Jing Yan's rank was falling. However, nothing ever came of these meetings. The Jing Clan spent a large amount of resources to bolster Jing Yan's strength, but not even that could prevent the continuous fall of Jing Yan's martial arts rank. In the end, they had to give up.
Now, whenever Jing Yan was brought up, the members of the Jing Clan could only give long, deep sighs of helplessness.
The star that once shone the brightest had become a nobody.
Now, Jing Yan lived in a chamber on the outer edge of the Jing Clan mansion.
When Jing Yan was revered by his peers, warriors of the Jing Clan would visit him in this courtyard every day. Now, the courtyard was silent and abandoned. Not even a bird could be seen anywhere.
Inside the room, Jing Yan sat crossed-legged on the bed.
"Whew!"
Jing Yan, who had just flowed through his cultivation cycle once, opened his eyes slowly. A wry smile appeared on his face.
"It's still the same!" Jing Yan shook his head slightly. "The Vital Qi that I cultivated disappeared immediately without any trace. What am I doing wrong?"
A feeling of powerlessness swept over Jing Yan.
He could still produce Vital Qi whenever he cultivated. However, as soon as he stopped cultivating, the Vital Qi would vanish within a few breaths. It was as if he had never even summoned the energy in the first place.
Normally, warriors could create Vital Qi by cultivating, then store this Vital Qi in their bodies. The more Vital Qi a warrior had stored in his body, the higher his martial arts rank would be. However, Jing Yan's body was like a bottle with a hole in the bottom. He could no longer hold the Vital Qi properly. No matter how much Vital Qi he cultivated, it drained out of him as soon as he was done practicing.
Even Jing Yan himself didn't know the actual reason for this.
This began happening three months after he entered the Wind God Institute. At first, Jing Yan didn't pay much attention to it. However, within a few months, he had fallen from the Precelestial rank down to the Ninth Heaven rank. Jing Yan knew then that there was something wrong with his body.
If any normal person had experienced such ups and downs, they would have given up on themselves long ago. Jing Yan did not. The idea of giving up martial arts didn't even cross his mind. Even if Jing Yan's rank was continuously falling, he kept on cultivating every day. Even if he couldn't hold on to his Vital Qi for more than a few moments, he had never gone a single day without cultivating.
"Am I going to become a mere mortal?" Jing Yan looked up at the sky as dusk fell. "No! I don't believe it! I will bounce back and get back to the top again."
"I have to keep practicing!" Jing Yan stood up, moved a little, then crossed his legs and sat again to continue his cultivation.
Time flowed like a river, passing quickly. Gradually, the night faded away and the morning light poured down.
Jing Yan spent the entire night cultivating, flowing through six complete cycles and cultivating quite a lot of Vital Qi.
"Don't disappear! Don't disappear!" he murmured in his mind as he ended this session of cultivation.
"It's just the same." He sighed as he felt the Vital Qi he had cultivated disappearing at an alarming rate. Jing Yan shook his head again. In truth, he knew that the possibility of keeping the Vital Qi was very low, but after each flow, Jing Yan again hoped that things would be different.
That hope was crushed again and again, but he kept holding onto it, and the cycle would repeat.
"Huh?"
Just as Jing Yan was about to get up and stretch his legs in the yard, his mind sensed something new. He had detected an unusual sensation within him. There was something different about the loss of his Vital Qi this time. It didn't happen the way it had in the past.
"What's going on?"
Jing Yan's sight fell quickly to the ring he wore on his finger.
The Ring of the Universe, that was what it was called. Jing Yan's grandfather had passed it to him more than a year ago. His grandfather, Jing Tian, had been the head of the Jing Clan before he died. Jing Yan had been at his grandfather's bedside as the old man passed away. Jing Tian had personally given the Ring of the Universe to Jing Yan, telling him to keep the ring safe and that he must never lose it. Although Jing Tian didn't explain why the ring was so meaningful to him, Jing Yan knew the Ring of the Universe was very important.
So, after he was given the Ring of the Universe, Jing Yan never took it off his finger. He always wore it, no matter what he did.
Since the day it came into his possession, Jing Yan had never noticed anything unusual about the ring.
At that moment, though, a layer of milky yellow light was glowing dimly from the surface of the Ring of the Universe.
Because the ring had never shown any unusual signs of life or activity, Jing Yan frowned slightly as he stared at it. He could feel a warm sensation emanating from the Ring of the Universe.
At first, the warm sensation was still concentrated near his palm, but after a few moments, the feeling spread throughout his whole body. The milky yellow light that glowed from the ring's surface showed no sign of disappearing. Instead, it was growing stronger.