The Northern Demon Territories was a land where the strong preyed on the weak and seemed to be ruled by the Dao of Slaughter. But recently a new fear had begun to creep into the minds of the warlords, bandit chiefs and other less morally sound organizations. A fear of the silence.

  It started with the destruction of the Iron Tooth Fortress. Then the constant attacks on the supply line at the Blazing Gorge. Then the spirit stone mines of the Black Rock Valley fell silent. Each time it was nearly the same.

  There were no survivors to tell the tale. When patrols were sent to investigate the silent outposts, they found only emptiness.

  At the Black Rock mines the investigators found the slave cages open and the massive iron gates torn from their hinges. The demon overseers were gone, completely erased. There were no bodies, no blood splatters and no witnesses. Just a lingering, cold emptiness in the air that made the investigators' bodies tremble.

  At a forward operating base near the Glacial Spine, a relief column arrived to find the entire garrison frozen solid. Hundreds of elite fire attribute demons were encased in ice so cold it had extinguished their life fires instantly. The atmosphere was still heavy and suffocating. The air was so dry from the cold that the investigators couldn’t stay for long.

  At a weapon foundry deep in the Smoldering Crater, the scene was different again. There was no ice to be found. The entire foundry had been flattened. Massive craters dotted the landscape as if a titan had descended from the heavens and trampled the facility. The ground was pulverized. There were some twisted metal scraps that people identified as part of the metal forges here. The forges themselves were completely gone, stolen.

  The reports flooding into the Demon Lord courts were contradictory.

  "It is a sect of Yin Cultivators!" One scout claimed.

  "No, it is a desolate beast with immense physical strength!" Another argued.

  "It is a ghost! A void spirit! I caught a freed slave and they said they couldn’t see who did it. That the thing was being covered in the void."

  The only common thread was the silence that followed. No one who actually saw the attacker lived to describe him. The slaves who escaped could offer no description other than a blur of grey fog.

  Because the attacker left no trails, almost different types of Qi techniques each time and no face, the people gave him a title.

  The Void Demon.

  However, as the attacks continued, more and more information was pouring in. A repeating pattern emerged. The slaves that were freed all said the same thing. It was one cultivator. And given the area that the void was distorting the cultivator wasn’t large. So, the title changed.

  The Little Void Demon.

  Li Yu sat on a high branch deep in a forest of petrified trees. He was meditating on laws. As a safety precaution, Li Yu was also currently wrapped in a layer of the void. His presence was completely erased from the sensory spectrum of the world besides those with a very strong sense of the void.

  As his second mind was entering the different law rivers, he checked the map he had stolen from his last raid. He was deep in the territory of the Onyx Syndicate now. A loose alliance of merchants who became warlords and who controlled the flow of cultivation resources in this area.

  Below him a patrol of Spiritual Trackers was moving through the underbrush. They were elite scouts, specializing in tracking spiritual residue. Spiritual Trackers were a species of elementals that was attuned to the spiritual plane.

  "The trail ends here," the leader of the Trackers hissed. He sniffed a tree trunk where Li Yu had rested hours ago.

  "A Gnome perhaps?" Another Tracker asked. "Or a halfling?"

  "Too heavy for a halfling. Too light for a Gnome," the leader growled. "It’s human sized. Maybe smaller. A runt."

  Up in the tree, Li Yu’s eyebrow twitched.

  "The rumors are true," the leader continued as he was spitting on the ground. "It is the Little Void Demon. Hiding in the cracks because his cultivation base is too weak to face us openly."

  The squad laughed openly. They were ordered to find the one causing all of the trouble recently. The Syndicate was on high alert and the patrols got more frequent.

  "Let’s find this little rat and peel his soul," the leader said. "The bounty the Syndicate placed on his head is enough for us to lounge and take it easy for a long time."

  Li Yu stood up on the branch. The Void Fog around him shifted and turned from a passive cloak into a turbulence of grey energy. He dropped and simply let gravity take him. Li Yu then channeled his Qi into his legs to increase his weight.

  BOOM.

  He landed in the center of the squad. The impact didn't just shake the ground; it caved it in. A shockwave of physical force exploded outward and stripped the bark off the petrified trees. It also turned the nearest two Trackers into a bloody mist before they could even circulate their Qi.

  The leader, thanks to his higher cultivation, was able to manage to leap back to avoid a lethal blow. However, he was injured and was coughing up blood.

  Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

  He looked up with eyes wide with terror. The subject that they were joking and laughing about moments before had suddenly become a living nightmare. The worst part of it all was that he couldn’t even see this damned Little Void Demon. He could only see the fluctuating void energy before him.

  Standing in the center of the crater was a figure wrapped in shifting void fog. The figure wasn't even close to ten feet tall. It lived up to its name. But the pressure radiating off it was heavy and only death seemed to loom. It was the pressure of a vast and deep ocean.

  "You..." the leader gasped while scrambling for his jagged blades. "You are the—"

  Li Yu vanished. He utilized his Rippling Shadow Step, one of the first movement techniques he had ever learned. It had now been heavily modified and infused with the Laws of Water and Laws of the Void. The technique allowed him to move quickly and was in front of the leader in moments. He simply reached out a hand.

  The leader struck out with his blades flashing with poisonous green Qi. Li Yu’s hand moved in a fluid arc and parried the strikes with casual slaps that shattered the weapons like glass. Then, his hand continued forward and gripped the demon’s throat. He squeezed.

  Crack.

  He dropped the corpse and turned to the remaining three Trackers who were already running for their lives in opposite directions. Li Yu raised a finger and javelins formed of ice Qi condensed. With a flick of his finger the spikes shot forward, piercing the cores of the remaining demons. They fell instantly. Their cultivation bases shattered along with their bodies.

  He walked over to the leader’s corpse and snatched the storage bag that he had. He also had to make a few things clear.

  "Not little," Li Yu muttered to the corpse. "Compact and efficient."

  He looted the rest of the squad quickly. He took their tracking talismans and spirit stones. He checked the sky. He needed to keep moving to avoid being caught. He needed more resources.

  Li Yu dissolved back into the void, leaving the broken bodies behind. Three days later, Li Yu found a target worthy of his attention.

  He was scouting a mountain pass known as the Swift Wind Corridor. It was a notorious trade route. It was usually avoided due to the chaotic wind blades that naturally formed in the canyon. However, some major clans used it for high value transport because the natural hazards deterred common bandits.

  Li Yu watched from a jagged overhang. He had been here for a few days but found no good targets. Below, a convoy was moving against the wind. It wasn't a standard convoy either. There were no beasts of burden carrying goods or people.

  Instead, there were three massive floating palanquins that were being carried by enslaved Stone Giants. Surrounding them was a phalanx of heavily armored troops. Demons clad in full armor from head to toes and made of black star metal. They were all radiating the aura of Soul Formation the realm.

  But what caught Li Yu’s eye was the leader.

  Walking at the front was a towering puppet. A twelve foot construct made of black metal and pulsing with purple runes. It moved with a fluidity that shouldn't be possible for metal. Its eyes were burning coals.

  It was a Spirit Puppet, a powerful one at that. An ancient war tool that was rarely used. The fact that it was being used here meant that this convoy was very special. Li Yu’s eyes lit up. To have such a guardian meant the cargo was exceptional as well.

  He waited until the convoy reached the narrowest point of the pass. For one reason or another they were taking their time. It would seem they were worried about something. Li Yu raised his staff. He didn't aim at the convoy at first. He aimed at the cliff face above them. He focused his Qi into the tip of the staff. He struck the mountain.

  CRACK.

  A massive section of the cliff face detached and thousands of tons of rock plummeting toward the convoy. The convoy reacted instantly though. The Obsidian Puppet looked up as its eyes were flashing. It didn't dodge. It raised its massive stone arms and punched the air.

  A shockwave of purple spiritual energy blasted upward and pulverized the falling rocks into dust before they could crush the palanquins. The canyon was instantly filled with a thick and choking cloud of pulverized stone. Visibility dropped instantly.

  The guards shouted orders and quickly formed a defensive circle. Li Yu dropped into the dust cloud. He moved like a wraith among the smoke. He bypassed the outer ring of guards and slipped through the gaps in their formation. He headed straight for the Puppet.

  The construct sensed him. It spun around and a massive fist swung through the dust with the speed of a whip. Li Yu ducked. The fist passed inches over his head. He slammed his staff into the Puppet’s knee.

  CLANG.

  It felt like hitting a mountain. The metal didn't crack. The golem didn't even buckle. The star metal reinforcement was too dense. The Puppet roared loudly. Li Yu was forced back and skidded across the broken stone. His hands vibrated from the impact. Physical force wasn't enough.

  The Puppet marched toward him. It seemed unstoppable. The Elite guards were onto him as well. Soul attacks would be useless against such a puppet as well. It was nearly immune to such things. His greatest trump card wouldn’t work.

  ‘If I can’t beat the forces, I just need to get what I came here for and leave. It can’t match me in terms of speed.’ Li Yu thought and acted immediately.

  Instead of facing his enemies, he was going to become a thief. His Sentry separated from him and was also cloaked in void energy so it could not be seem. Li Yu, at the same time slipped into the first layer of the void. His Sentry then rocketed away drawing the puppet and some of the elite guards. The remaining guards stayed behind to protect the goods.

  From the first layer of the void, Li Yu reappeared where the cargo looked to be stored. He easily crushed the guards there and went to check the cargo. To his disappointment, there was nothing inside at all.

  ‘If it's not here, it is most likely with that puppet. But how am I going to defeat that thing? It’s stronger than me and my soul attacks are useless.’ Li Yu thought quickly. Then a plan came to mind. He didn’t need to defeat it. He just needed to steal what it was carrying.

  He went into the first layer of the void again. He quickly got close to the puppet as it chased his Sentry. Li Yu then allowed his Sentry to be crushed and smashed, dissipating into energy. With the enemy defeated, the puppet’s guard was lowered. Li Yu was checking to see if there was a storage ring or bag on the puppet and found nothing.

  Just as Li Yu was about to give up and go away he noticed there was a tiny box attached to the puppet. It was well hidden and almost looked like the metal of the puppet itself. If Li Yu had not been next to the puppet for so long and scanning constantly, he would have missed it.

  Seeing as how that was the only thing he could find, Li Yu appeared and ripped it off of the puppet. He quickly Void Stepped away before the puppet could react to him. In a cave that Li Yu had been hiding in earlier, Li Yu was panting heavily. His Qi was drained significantly and he popped a few pills in his mouth.

  Once he had recovered slightly, Li Yu opened the box. Inside sat a pearl. It was the size of a fist. It was perfectly round and black as pitch. But it wasn't solid. The surface seemed to swirl like a storm. It pulsed with a rhythmic beat, like a heart.

  Thump-thump. Thump-thump.

  Waves of pure and dense Void energy rolled off it. It was so potent that the space around the pearl was visibly warping and looked to be creating tiny hairline fractures in reality. Li Yu stared at it. He could tell it was valuable but what it was he had no idea.