The Devouring Knight-Chapter 101 - 100: A Cultivator Without a Sect

Duskspire Base – Inner Sanctum

Lumberling sat cross-legged in the dim silence of his chamber. The light of a single lantern flickered against the stone walls, casting long shadows across stacks of training manuals, folded cloth armor, and the spear that rested unused in the corner.

Tonight, he shifted paths.

His hand opened a worn notebook, handwritten pages filled with reassembled fragments from a dead man’s mind. At the top, in crisp ink:

Imperial Mindseal Meditation.

A high-grade cultivation method. Refined. Structured. Elegant. Designed to calm the spirit and train the mind while nourishing the internal pathways of the body.

But for Lumberling, it was none of those things.

Not yet.

He closed his eyes. Inhaled slowly. And began.

The Body Tempering Realm.

The first realm of cultivation.

Goal: Harden flesh, bone, and meridians to withstand Qi.

No flowery arts. No golden light. Only breath, pain, and trial.

And it hurt.

Lumberling sat cross-legged, back straight, palms resting lightly on his knees.

He inhaled slowly.

Held it.

Exhaled.

"Imperial Mindseal Meditation," he muttered under his breath, eyes still shut.

Refine the spirit. Calm the mind. Anchor the self.

He’d read the devoured scroll fragment a dozen times, and it still barely made sense. The script glowed like embers in his memory, half-scorched and full of holes.

Still, he tried.

The breathing patterns were strict. The postures unfamiliar. At first, the Qi flow he tried to induce was jagged, raw and painful, like pushing gravel through his veins.

His body, enhanced through essence devouring and battle, could endure it. But it wasn’t clean. It wasn’t right.

He had no master. No corrections. Just fragments of Nie Fenghun’s memories, brilliant flashes, unfinished scrolls, confusing diagrams. Pieces of genius... and arrogance.

His breath followed the rhythm the manual described, deep, slow, controlled. He visualized the internal image the meditation required: a seal etched into the core of his being, pulsing faintly. A fortress against chaos.

But Qi didn’t come.

Not yet.

Only pressure. Tightening behind the eyes. A creeping weight in his chest.

"How the hell is this supposed to refine anything?"

.....

"Fei’s memories were like broken scrolls," Lumberling muttered aloud one night. "Confusing. Incomplete. But... filled with flashes of brilliance."

The dreams came often.

Blurry visions of Fei in a snowy courtyard, performing stances beneath a waterfall. Breath held for hours. Hands glowing with energy he didn’t understand. Murals of coiling dragons and diagrams of meridian paths etched in gold across an obsidian wall.

At first, they overwhelmed him, useless noise without context.

But over time, he began to reverse-engineer them.

He watched. Memorized. Compared them to what little he understood of human anatomy and the Knight pathways he’d absorbed through devouring others. Slowly, with effort, logic, and trial, he decoded them, like a soldier deciphering a foreign war map.

And then, he adapted them.

He didn’t sit under waterfalls. He trained in the yard, shirtless in cold rain, breath sharp and regulated. He didn’t meditate beneath cherry trees.

He didn’t follow a sect’s silent forms.

He forged a martial path from madness.

.....

The first month was failure.

Pain in the chest. Shortness of breath. Headaches.

He almost passed out once.

But he endured. His monstrous body, forged in wars, adapted.

What would’ve killed a disciple left him on one knee, coughing blood... and then getting up.

"So that’s how it is," he growled. "Break until I bend."

.....

The stillness was supposed to bring clarity.

But today, it only brought pain.

Lumberling knelt in the dim training hall, shirt clinging to his back with cold sweat, heart pounding like a war drum. His vision blurred. The breathing form of the Imperial Mindseal twisted inside his mind like a snake eating its own tail, wrong, misaligned, corrupted.

He tried again.

Inhale.

Hold.

Exhale.

His meridians flared, no, screamed, as if something sharp and hot surged through his bloodstream. He clutched his chest, breath ragged.

Then, it hit.

A tearing pain lanced from his spine to his skull.

He pitched forward, smashing into the wooden floor, vomit spilling from his lips, red, thick with blood. He choked. Gasped. Felt the edge of consciousness crumble like wet paper.

Something in his body had torn. A qi vessel, maybe. Or worse, his mind had snapped under pressure.

His vision filled with dancing afterimages: burning runes, Fei’s memories, voices that weren’t his screaming into his skull.

"You are not him. You are not him. You are not...."

He curled in on himself.

For a moment, he wasn’t Lumberling.

He was no one.

Just a broken shell filled with memories he didn’t own.

He didn’t know how long he lay there, twitching, spasming.

A distant part of him screamed to stop. To rest. To abandon this path.

But then he remembered the faces. Skitz. Aren. Krivex. The five graves behind the Hollow Pines.

He dragged himself upright, every muscle trembling, blood still dripping from his mouth. His nose bled. His ears rang.

And he sat back down.

Cross-legged.

Eyes closed.

Breath held.

....

Then, something shifted, after four months of relentless training.

After a particularly brutal round of spear training, thrusts laced with meditative breathing, he collapsed into a seated posture and stilled his thoughts.

His body quieted.

His breath deepened.

And inside him... the faintest flicker of resonance.

Not from essence.

From something else.

Qi.

It wasn’t loud. It wasn’t bright. But it was there.

A faint ripple across the vast black stillness inside him.

The sea of memories that once threatened to drown him... finally obeyed.

Fei’s broken stances?

He reconstructed them, his way.

Breathing forms became battle rhythm.

Stillness came in motion.

The Imperial Mindseal began to etch itself within him...

A spiritual tattoo at the center of his being.

Then a message rang in his head:

(You have learned: Imperial Mindseal Meditation – Level 0 (1/1000))

Lumberling opened his eyes slowly.

His limbs ached. His lungs burned.

But his mind... felt sharp.

Stronger than it had ever been.

He touched two fingers to his temple. He could feel the difference, not physical strength, but clarity. His thoughts no longer swirled in fractured loops. The dark memories he devoured no longer dragged like chains.

’This... this is how I anchor myself.’

Even before he had a cultivation method, the meditative practices he’d brought from Earth, used to cope, to focus, had helped him. Grounded him. But now, with Qi cultivation strengthening that mental framework, it felt unbreakable.

’With this, I won’t lose myself to foreign memories again.

Not monsters. Not Fei’s. Not anyone’s.

I’ll sail through them. Absorb them. And remain me.’

The realization settled like stone in his chest.

And it wasn’t just his mind that had changed.

In battle, he now found moments of stillness between strikes. In chaos, clarity. His movements no longer relied on brute force, but flow. His breath synchronized with his body, and his Qi responded, subtle, but real.

He had begun to resonate.

.....

Outside, the Duskspire Legion continued to grow.

Skitz handled contracts. Aren trained the squad. The mercenaries’ name spread through Greyvale and beyond.

But inside the base, hidden from the noise of the world, Lumberling forged a path not of this land.

A warrior without a sect.

A disciple without a master.

A cultivator born of monsters and memory.

And this was only the beginning.

.....

Duskspire Base - Outer training grounds, late afternoon

The gates creaked open as the Duskspire Legion returned, their armor dulled by dust and travel, their packs heavy with coin and salvaged gear. The sun had dipped low, casting amber rays across the courtyard.

They expected to find the keep quiet.

Instead, they paused, one by one, at the sight before them.

There, in the center of the training grounds, sat their Lord.

Shirtless. Barefoot. Still.

Lumberling’s skin was streaked with sweat and dust, muscles coiled beneath the fading sunlight. He was seated in a lotus position, motionless, but radiating tension like a drawn bowstring. A soft hum lingered in the air around him, not sound, but pressure. Not aura, not essence... something else.

"Is he... meditating?" Trask murmured, adjusting his half-mask.

"No," Gorrak said, narrowing his eyes. "He’s doing something deeper."

As if in answer, Lumberling’s eyes opened.

And he stood.

It wasn’t sudden, nor showy, just fluid. Grounded. Balanced. His breath exhaled slowly, misting faintly despite the warmth.

Skitz was the first to step forward, eyes flicking over his Lord’s frame.

And he felt it immediately.

The same pressure he once felt from Nie Fenghun... but not as wild, not as arrogant. This was colder. Tighter. Controlled.

"...It feels like you could crush me with one hand now," Skitz muttered.

Lumberling glanced over and gave a slight grin. "I probably could," he said lightly. "But you’d make it annoying."

Skitz let out a chuckle. "Fair."

But his eyes were serious. "That aura... you’ve changed."

"I’ve begun cultivating," Lumberling said. "And something finally clicked."

Behind them, the rest of the core members gathered, dropping their gear. Gorrak crossed his arms, nodding slowly.

"You’re not the only one who’s been training, my Lord," he said. "Skitz’s nearly at the peak of Quasi-Knight. I can feel it."

Lumberling raised a brow. "Good."

Gorrak gestured to himself. "I’m at the edge of Knight Page now. Rogar and Trask? Mid-level. And the squads... well..."

Lumberling looked beyond them to where the 54 elite warriors were settling into formation. The difference was clear. They moved like wolves. Disciplined. Scarred. Focused.

Veterans now. Blood-tested.

Aren stepped forward last, helmet under one arm. His frame broader, eyes sharper. "I haven’t reached the next stage yet," he said, "but I’ve grown into it. I know what I’m capable of now."

Lumberling nodded with satisfaction. He looked at them, not just subordinates, but the army he’d forged.

’I trained them. Sharpened them. And they didn’t wait for me to carry them, they rose alongside me.’

His chest warmed with pride.

"You’ve all done well."

A beat passed. Then he asked, voice quieter now, "How’s the goblin village? And Krivex? Any word from them?"

Skitz scratched the back of his head. "They’re doing fine. Krivex’s group has been growing fast, especially with all the monsters out there in the deep forest. Honestly, it’s probably best we see the results for ourselves when we head back. The goblin village is secure too, Shade, Grokk, and Skarn have been holding things down well." freёnovelkiss.com

"And Jen?" Lumberling asked.

"She’s mad," Skitz said with a smirk. "Said you stopped sending letters out of nowhere. Told me to tell you that if you’ve become some closed-door training weirdo, she’s coming to throw rocks at your window."

Lumberling chuckled. "I see. I’ll write her later."

Then his gaze drifted eastward, toward the forest line beyond the hills.

"...Actually," he continued, his voice firmer now, "I think it’s about time we visit them."

Skitz raised a brow. "You mean it?"

"The Duskspire Legion has spent over a year in war and chaos, we deserve a break, even if it’s just for a little while. "

Gorrak grunted in approval. "They’ll be glad to see how far we’ve come."

Lumberling looked back at the core of Duskspire.

"It won’t be long now. We’re coming back."

The others nodded.

And in the fading light, beneath a sky tinged with orange and gold, Duskspire’s warriors stood tall, stronger, sharper, and ready for the next step in a path none of them had imagined... but all of them had chosen.

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