Sect hidden under a rock

[kankup]

Chapter 1

The Dustspire Barrens were not known for their grandeur. A sun-scorched wasteland of cracked earth and jagged stone, it was the kind of place where even vultures grew bored. The Crimson Talon Sect, self-proclaimed rulers of this desolate corner of the world, had grown complacent in their mediocrity. Their leader, Elder Kharos Vhel, sat hunched at his desk in an austere chamber, its walls bare save for a single rusted blade mounted as a relic of better days. He scowled at a ledger, tallying the sect's meager harvest of spirit herbs, when the air twisted.

No sound. No ripple of Qi. One moment, the room was empty. The next, a man stood before him—tall, draped in frayed gray robes, his face hidden behind a featureless wooden mask. No aura emanated from him. No pulse of power. He might as well have been a mirage.

Kharos shot to his feet, his chair clattering behind him. His Third-Realm cultivation flared, brittle and unsteady. "Who—"

"Elder Vhel." The stranger's voice was calm, almost bored, as if reciting a grocery list. "How… quaint. Your dedication to ledgers is admirable. If futile."

"You dare mock the Crimson Talon?" Kharos snarled, though his hand trembled near his dagger. The intruder hadn't triggered a single ward. The silence of the sect around them screamed louder than any alarm.

The mask tilted slightly. "Mock? No. I've come to offer clarity. My sect—the Sect Hidden Under a Rock—has taken root in your… ah, territory. A formality, really. We require no tribute. No fealty. Only that you… look the other way."

Kharos barked a laugh. "A new sect? Here? The Barrens couldn't sustain a sect of beggars, let alone—"

The stranger flicked a finger.

A pebble materialized above his palm—ordinary, unremarkable. Then it shivered. Light bled from its core, etching sigils into the air that seared Kharos's eyes. The elder staggered, his Qi recoiling as if scalded. The symbols tasted of epochs, of realms beyond the Dustspire's feeble heavens.

"The higher realms," the stranger said, snapping his fist shut. The light died. "Celestial enforcers. Star-born emperors. The locusts who strip worlds like yours to the bone. They will not come here. Not while my sect remains… unbothered."

Kharos gagged on the stench of his own fear. Higher realms. A myth. A lie told to children. Yet the pebble's glow had carved itself into his mind, undeniable.

"Why?" he croaked. "Why here?"

The mask tilted again, its hollow eyes swallowing the lamplight. "Stones thrive where others see only dust, Elder. Remember: ignore us, and your irrelevance becomes a shield. Interfere…" He gestured to the ledger on the desk. It disintegrated into ash. "…and irrelevance will be the kindest fate left to you."

The stranger faded—not in a flash of light, but like smoke unraveling. Gone.

Only the pebble remained, cold and dull on the stone floor.

Kharos did not sleep that night. By dawn, his orders were clear: no disciple was to venture near the eastern canyons. When his lieutenants protested, he showed them the pebble. One touch, and their faces palmed.

Rumors soon followed. Of a fissure in the earth, its depths humming like a sleeping beast. Of masked figures in gray, gathering the forgotten—the sick, the orphaned, the mad. Of a sigil scratched into the cliffs: a crude boulder, half-buried, as if hiding something beneath.

The Crimson Talon Sect, for the first time in its wretched history, learned the weight of true power.

And the Dustspire Barrens, at last, had a secret worth keeping.

 

[kankup]

Chapter 2

The village of Hollow's End clung to the edge of the Dustspire Barrens like a scab. Its ramshackle huts and dusty well had been picked clean days prior by recruiters from the Crimson Talon Sect. Only the dregs remained: the lame, the elderly, children with frayed spiritual roots, and a blind girl named Lira, who sat listlessly by the well, her clouded eyes fixed on nothing.

The stranger arrived at noon.

He wore the same frayed gray robes as the masked figure who had haunted Elder Vhel, though his face was bare—a gaunt, unremarkable man with eyes the color of dry clay. He carried no banners, no spirit beasts. Only a wooden staff topped with a small, uncarved stone. The villagers stared as he planted the staff in the center of the square.

"The Sect Hidden Under a Rock seeks disciples," he announced, his voice carrying an unnatural clarity. "Any who wish to cultivate may step forward. Age, affliction, talent—irrelevant."

A bitter laugh rose from the crowd. Old Man Bren, his leg twisted from a youth spent mining low-grade spirit stones, spat into the dust. "Even the Crimson Talon didn't want us. What use are we to a sect?"

The recruiter's gaze slid to him. "The strong build their towers on polished foundations. We prefer… raw clay."

Lira stood first, her hand brushing the well's edge for balance. "Can your sect cure blindness?"

The man tilted his head. "At a high enough realm, cultivators regrow limbs, reverse decay, and unspool time itself. Blindness?" He shrugged. "A pebble in the path."

Murmurs rippled. A boy missing two fingers stepped forward. Then a girl with a withered arm. A dozen others—the unwanted, the broken—shuffled into the square.

"There are conditions," the recruiter said, raising his staff. The stone at its tip pulsed faintly. "Our sect's laws are absolute. Once you join, ties to family, village, or past loyalties are severed. You will speak of nothing you see or learn beyond our walls. Violators…" The stone darkened. "…become part of the foundation."

The villagers stiffened. Lira's mother clutched her arm. "Lira, don't—!"

The blind girl pulled free. "What choice do I have? Stay here until the next sandstorm buries us?" She turned toward the recruiter's voice. "I'll go."

---

The group departed at dusk: fourteen souls trailing the gray-robed man into the wastes. By midnight, the younger children whimpered from thirst. Tarek, the fingerless boy, glared at their guide. "Why us? Even the weakest sects test for spiritual roots. You're just… collecting scraps."

The recruiter didn't slow. "A sword is forged in fire, not plucked from a tree. You'll understand when we arrive."

Lira stumbled on a rock, but a hand steadied her—the recruiter's, cold as river stone. "Why the secrecy?" she asked. "Why cut us off from our families?"

"To survive." His tone softened, almost pitying. "The world hates what it cannot comprehend. Our sect endures by staying buried. By the time you grasp its truths, you'll thank us for the silence."

They walked until the moon hung like a sickle overhead. The recruiter halted at the edge of a fissure—a jagged split in the earth, its depths swallowing the starlight. He gestured to the void.

"Down."

Old Man Bren balked. "You expect us to climb into some hellmouth?"

The recruiter snapped his fingers. The stone atop his staff flared, illuminating a narrow path along the fissure's wall. "The strong cling to light. The wise learn to see in the dark."

One by one, they descended. Lira trailed her fingers along the cold stone, her blindness suddenly irrelevant in the blackness. The air grew thick, humming with a low, resonant energy that made her teeth ache.

"Welcome," the recruiter said, ushering them inside, "to the Sect Hidden Under a Rock. Here, you are no longer broken. Here, you will learn to thrive in the cracks."

As the door sealed behind them, Lira realized the hum in the air wasn't energy.

It was breathing.

The walls. The floor. The very stone.

And far below, something ancient stirred.

 

[kankup]

Chapter 3

The fissure's throat swallowed them whole.

Lira's world narrowed to the scrape of boots on stone and the suffocating hum vibrating in her molars. The recruiter's staff cast a sickly green light, illuminating quartz veins that pulsed like dormant arteries. Old Man Bren cursed as his twisted leg dragged, but the recruits pressed onward—down, always down, until the air shifted. Dry. Electric. Alive.

The recruiter halted. Ahead, the tunnel ended at a wall of seamless stone. He pressed his palm to it, and the rock rippled, dissolving into ash. Beyond lay a cavern so vast its edges swallowed the light. At its center stood a monolith—a jagged pillar of obsidian, its surface etched with sigils that writhed like trapped serpents.

"The Gate," said the recruiter, his voice hollow. "It breathes."

The monolith shuddered. A low, resonant tone shook the cavern, and the sigils bled light—a spectrum beyond mortal eyes. Lira staggered, her clouded vision flooding with colors she couldn't name. The other recruits collapsed, clutching their heads as the hum became a roar.

"What is that?" Tarek snarled, blood trickling from his nose.

The recruiter's clay-colored eyes dulled, pupils dissolving into static. When he spoke again, his voice layered, echoing with a hundred whispers:

"A relic. A bridge. The First Grain, carved by hands that shaped stars."

He stepped toward the monolith. The ground beneath their feet trembled, and sand rose in swirling eddies—not the Dustspire's parched grit, but grains that glimmered with inner fire. Lira reached instinctively, but the recruiter seized her wrist. His grip was cold, inhuman.

"Each mote here," he said, letting sand trickle through his fingers, "is a miracle. Forged by the sect's elders in realms where creation itself is a tool. They generate Qi ex nihilo—from nothingness. One grain in this desert holds more energy than all the spirit stones in your world combined."

Old Man Bren scoffed. "Bullshit. No cultivator's that powerful."

The recruiter's head twitched—a marionette's jerk. "Power?" He gestured to the monolith. The nearest sigil flared, and Bren's twisted leg snapped straight with a wet crack. The old man howled—not in pain, but shock—as muscle and bone reknit. "This desert is the sect's masterpiece. Outside, Qi is a trickle. Here, it is an ocean. You've spent your lives sipping from puddles. Now, you stand in the storm."

Lira stared at her hands. The sand clung to her skin, humming. "Why?"

"Because strength thrives in paradox." The recruiter's fissured gaze swept the recruits. "The Crimson Talon hoards scraps. We drown in abundance. The strong cling to talent; the wise see potential in voids."

He raised his staff. The sand surged, coalescing into a staircase that spiraled into the cavern's depths. "Follow. Breathe. Do not speak."

---

The descent burned.

Qi pressed against Lira's skin—thick as molten glass, so dense it prickled her lungs. This was no mere energy. It was alive, a primordial force that hummed in her marrow. By the time they reached the bottom, even Tarek's defiance had crumbled into awe.

They stood in a desert.

Dunes stretched endlessly under a sky of churning ash. No sun. No stars. Yet light pulsed from the sand itself, each grain a tiny furnace casting jagged shadows. Lira knelt, her fingers sinking into the warmth. The sand shifted, curling around her wrist like a living thing.

"It's… singing," whispered a girl with a withered arm.

"A nursery rhyme compared to what it could do," said the recruiter. His form flickered at the edges now, as if the desert rejected his presence. "This pocket was crafted for you. The elders designed every grain—each one a generator, a wellspring. The Qi here is infinite. Unyielding. Outside, your world's greatest spirit vein is a raindrop. Here, you swim in the sea."

"Why stay?" asked Tarek, his voice small.

The recruiter's skin peeled away in papery strips, revealing swirling sand beneath. "Because out there, you would suffocate. Here, you learn to breathe."

---

The obsidian spires loomed closer, their shadows alive with whispers.

A figure emerged—a silhouette of sand and static, featureless save for two smoldering embers where eyes should be. When it spoke, the desert itself trembled.

"Seven recruits. Fourteen days. Reach the Fifth Level of Qi Gathering. Use this."

A scroll materialized midair, unfurling to reveal text that squirmed like worms. Earth-Rank Technique: Unbroken Stone Cycle.

Tarek frowned. "No training? No teacher?"

"The desert is your teacher," the figure intoned. "Breathe the sand. Walk its paths. When you sleep, let it bury you. The technique is a sieve—a way to drink the ocean without drowning."

Lira clutched the scroll. Symbols seared her palm, imprinting knowledge: simple meridians, breath cycles to channel the torrent. "What happens if we fail?"

The figure's ember-eyes brightened. "You don't."

---

They slept in the sand's embrace.

Lira woke buried to her chest, grains prickling her skin. Yet she felt no fear. The desert hummed, a lullaby in a language older than words. When she clawed free, the others were already moving—Tarek pacing the dunes, the girl with the withered arm tracing the Earth-Rank technique's motions.

"It's not evil," the girl murmured. "The sand… it wants to help."

Lira pressed her palm to the ground. The grains glowed, warm and steady. Designed, the recruiter had said. Crafted. This wasn't a wasteland. It was a garden. A cradle.

By dusk, the first recruit triggered a breakthrough.

Old Man Bren, of all people. He'd spent hours sitting motionless, sand piled around him like a cairn. When he stood, the ground shuddered. A pulse of Qi rolled outward—crude, unrefined, but unmistakable.

"First Level," intoned the sand-figure, reappearing without sound. "Adequate."

Tarek glared. "How? He didn't even—"

"You think cultivation is doing?" The figure's laugh was a rockslide. "Here, it is allowing. The Qi exists. The path exists. You are the blockage."

Lira glanced at her scroll. Unbroken Stone Cycle. Not a technique to gather Qi, but to channel it—to hollow herself, to let the desert's ocean flow through her.

She sat. Breathed. Let the sand swallow her.

Somewhere, in a realm beyond realms, an elder smiled.

The lesson had begun.

 

[shakeval]

Hmmmmmm, an interesting start to things, is this based in a world from some other story or are building it whole cloth from scratch?
Will this continuously follow all the new recruits or eventually settle on just one or two?

 

[kankup]

Hmmmmmm, an interesting start to things, is this based in a world from some other story or are building it whole cloth from scratch?
Will this continuously follow all the new recruits or eventually settle on just one or two?

Click to shrink...

to be honest. this story will be original word, i am currrently not sure if i plan to focus on only one person. I may in the future write another story with the same premise in estaplished world like ATG

 

[kankup]

Chapter 4

The desert sang their ascensions.

By dawn of the fourteenth day, all seven recruits stood atop the dunes, their auras thrumming in unison with the sand. Lira exhaled slowly, her clouded eyes now sharpened to the desert's hidden frequencies. She saw the Qi not as light but as pressure—a gravitational tide pooling around Tarek's clenched fists, swirling through the girl with the once-withered arm (Jessa, she'd learned her name was), and vibrating in Old Man Bren's newly straightened spine.

"Fifth Level," declared the sand-figure, its ember-eyes flaring as it materialized. "Adequate."

Tarek barked a laugh, flexing his regenerated fingers. "Adequate? We did what your puppet master asked. Now what? Throw us into a meat grinder to test our 'hollow reed' crap?"

The figure's static silhouette rippled. "No. Now you become."

The desert shuddered. Dunes collapsed, sand spiraling upward into seven obsidian altars—jagged, pitted with ancient runes, their surfaces streaked with dried ichor that glistened like fresh blood. Jessa staggered back. "They look like… sacrificial slabs."

Lira's pulse quickened. The altars hummed with a dissonant frequency, a sound that clawed at her molars. She'd heard tales of demonic sects that harvested disciples' souls to fuel forbidden techniques. Was this their fate? To be drained, reforged into some elder's weapon?

Old Man Bren, ever pragmatic, stepped forward. "If you wanted us dead, you'd have left us in Hollow's End." He pressed a palm to the nearest altar. The runes ignited, searing his skin, but he didn't flinch. "Well? What's the catch?"

The sand-figure's voice softened, almost human. "You were chosen not despite your flaws, but because of them. A clean slate is easier to sculpt than a half-finished statue." It gestured, and the altars shifted, their surfaces peeling open to reveal hollows lined with crystalline filaments. "Lie down."

"Like hell!" Tarek spat. "You expect us to just—?"

"Yes." The figure's tone brooked no argument. "The altars are mirrors. They will rewrite your flesh, your meridians, your spiritual roots. Replace the broken with the perfected."

Jessa paled. "Rewrite… how?"

"The Sect Hidden Under a Rock has existed longer than your mortal empires. We have harvested the essence of celestial phoenixes, void dragons, and star-forged titans. Their strengths—their genes, as some realms name them—are encoded in these altars. You will drink from that well."

Lira's mind reeled. Genes. A foreign word, yet its meaning flooded her thoughts—blueprints of life, threads of destiny. "But our memories… our selves…?"

"The body is clay. The mind…" the figure paused. "…is harder to preserve. Which is why you will now learn the Memory Palace Crucible."

A snap of its fingers. Seven jade slips materialized, each etched with a labyrinthine diagram. Lira caught hers midair. The symbols burned into her palm, unfolding a mental architecture—a fortress of thought, tiered and infinite, where memories could be stored like treasures in vaults.

"This technique," the figure continued, "allows you to encode your consciousness into your cultivation base. Your past becomes a pillar of your foundation. Fail to master it, and the altar's overhaul may fracture your identity. Shadows of who you were might… linger."

Tarek's bravado cracked. "You're saying we could forget our families? Our names?"

"Worse. You might remember them as strangers."

---

The Memory Palace Crucible was not a meditation.

It was surgery.

Lira sat cross-legged in the shadow of her assigned altar, the jade slip's knowledge unspooling in her mind. To build the Palace, she had to dissect her memories, brick by brick. Her mother's face. The scent of Hollow's End's dust after rain. The ache of blindness—all had to be extracted, placed in mental vaults, and sealed with Qi.

Jessa wept openly as she worked. "I don't want to lose my little sister's voice," she whispered, tracing a finger over a crude wooden doll in her lap—the only possession she'd brought from home.

Old Man Bren, ever stoic, grunted as his Palace took shape. "Memories are anchors. No wonder they want us to cut them loose. Easier to control hollow reeds, right?"

"No."

The voice came from the sand-figure, now looming behind them. "A tree with deep roots bends but does not break. The Crucible is not about loss. It is about… relocation. Your memories fuel your cultivation. Your pain becomes power. Your joy becomes resilience."

Lira's Palace crystallized—a library of ice and shadow, each shelf holding a moment. She stored her blindness last, the sensation of void sharpening into a dagger of Qi. When she opened her eyes, the desert had changed. The grains sang in distinct frequencies, their ex nihilo generation laid bare—trillions of microscopic furnaces, each a captured echo of some cosmic being's essence.

"I'm ready," she said, rising.

Tarek wasn't. They found him hours later, curled in a dune's lee, his Crucible half-built. "What if I want to forget?" he rasped, clutching a scarred pendant. "Some things don't deserve to be saved."

"The altars will take those too," the figure said quietly. "But erased wounds leave scars on the soul. Better to bury them in your Palace, where you control the locks."

---

The overhaul began at midnight.

Lira lay in her altar's hollow, the crystalline filaments snaking over her limbs. The sand-figure loomed above, its ember-eyes bright. "The process will feel like dying. You will be reborn. Scream if you must. It will not help."

The filaments pierced her.

Agony.

Not physical, but existential—a scalpel flaying her DNA, her meridians, the brittle spiritual roots that had made her a pariah in Hollow's End. Visions assaulted her:

A phoenix's birth cry, tectonic and raw.
A dragon's scale, galaxies swirling in its depths.
A titan's heartbeat, echoing through the void.

She felt her bones dissolve. Her blood boiled. Her mind frayed at the edges, memories slipping—

Mother's face.
The well.
The recruiter's cold hand.

—then the Memory Palace ignited. Vaults slammed shut, preserving the core of her identity even as her body unraveled.

When it ended, Lira was floating.

The filaments retracted. She stumbled from the altar, her new body humming with alien perfection. Her skin glowed faintly, veins tracing luminescent pathways. Jessa stared at her own hands—once shriveled, now smooth and strong, fingertips crackling with dormant energy.

Old Man Bren laughed, deep and resonant, his voice stripped of its old wheeze. "I'm twenty again. No—better than twenty."

Only Tarek remained silent. He emerged last, his pendant now a melted slag in his palm. His eyes held storms.

The sand-figure surveyed them. "You are now Soumei - Hollow Vessels. Your mortal shells have been emptied to make room for true cultivation."

Lira suddenly gasped, clutching her abdomen. The Fifth-Level Qi Gathering she'd painstakingly achieved... it was gone. Her meridians felt not broken, but pristine - like a riverbed swept clean of debris before the flood.

"What have you done?!" Tarek roared, his regenerated hands sparking with impotent Qi. "We worked for those levels!"

"You worked to survive," the figure replied, its ember-eyes flaring. "The Fifth Level was never the goal—it was the minimum threshold to endure the Memory Palace Crucible. A child's sandcastle, washed away to make room for a fortress."

The desert shifted. Sand coalesced into stone tablets older than civilizations, etched with a deceptively simple cultivation method. "Now you begin the Ten Thousandfold Path," the figure intoned. "A foundation refined through nine million iterations. Your previous cultivation was a scaffold—it let you build the Crucible without your mind collapsing. Now the scaffold falls."

Old Man Bren stared at his rejuvenated hands. "So everything we did—the Qi Gathering, the breakthroughs—was just… preparation?"

"You needed to reach Fifth-Level Qi Gathering to withstand the Memory Palace Crucible," the figure intoned. Its static form blurred momentarily, revealing glimpses of a colossal machine beneath—gears forged from dead stars, pistons pumping liquid time. "The Crucible fractures weak minds. Your crude cultivation was a whetstone—not to taste Qi, but to temper your souls enough to survive the carving." It gestured at their drained cultivation bases. "The Ten Thousandfold Path cannot be taught to those clinging to old foundations. This purge is mercy. Even your Crimson Talon Elder would trade his sect and lifespan to undo his cultivation… but his pride would shatter before his meridians did."

Jessa trembled, not from fear but revelation. Her new eyes saw the truth - the "simple" technique's characters shifted subtly, evolving as she watched, incorporating some unimaginable collective wisdom. "It's... alive. The cultivation method learns."

"It is the perfected child of three hundred seventy-two failed ascendants," the figure confirmed. "Each character contains the death screams of techniques that couldn't breach the Heavenly Dao. Your predecessors' failures are your stepping stones."

Lira pressed a palm to the desert floor. Though her cultivation was gone, she felt the terrifying potential in her rebuilt meridians - pathways wide enough to drown continents in Qi. "We start from Qi Gathering again. But differently."

"Not differently. Properly." The sand-figure dissolved, its final words vibrating in their bones: "Cultivate. When you reach Foundation Establishment this time, you'll understand why kings would slaughter worlds to be where you kneel in the dirt."

As the recruits sat cross-legged in the singing sand, Tarek stared at his empty palms. The Fifth Level he'd been so proud of now felt like a child's scribble compared to the epic being inked on his soul. For the first time, his sneer softened into something like awe.

On each altar, ghostly afterimages appeared - their former selves preserved in obsidian. The blind girl, the cripple, the broken boy. Not warnings, but benchmarks. Lira touched her altar's frozen shadow, feeling the vast gulf between what she was and what she might become.

The Sect Hidden Under a Rock didn't discard weaknesses - they used them as fertilizer. What grew from such bitter soil might yet shake the heavens.

 

[Candlewick105]

I like the worldbuilding, but also it feels so much more like tell then show. Which is onbrand for xianxia, but, I'll like to see the mysterious mentor do some wild shit in between his instructions, yaknow?

 

[kankup]

I like the worldbuilding, but also it feels so much more like tell then show. Which is onbrand for xianxia, but, I'll like to see the mysterious mentor do some wild shit in between his instructions, yaknow?

Click to shrink...

To be honest i picked for myself quite a hard premise from action perspective because. in wuxia it all pretty much beginns and ends with invincible attack huzzahh and this is it. but I will keep your suggestion in mind

 

[TheEldritchKnight]

To be honest i picked for myself quite a hard premise from action perspective because. in wuxia it all pretty much beginns and ends with invincible attack huzzahh and this is it. but I will keep your suggestion in mind

Click to shrink...

Nah, you are doing just fine. You are building up an original world by dripping names is names and implying certain things that happened and what is possible with this sect. It already feels so alive. I love the premise already and I am quite intrigued for more.

 

[readsalot]

Watched.

Really like what your cooking, plz keep serving.