Chapter 485: A Power Born From Hatred...

Damien anger rose to unimaginable hieght... His fingers dug into the rough concrete as hatred slowly spread through his mind. He remembered every moment he considered humiliating, every rejection that had wounded his pride, every time he had felt powerless, and every occasion when he believed someone had treated him as though he were insignificant.

Those memories had always existed separately, buried beneath his arrogance and self-confidence, but now they were being dragged to the surface by the pain he was experiencing.

"I’ll kill you..."

The words escaped his mouth in a weak whisper. Nobody nearby heard him.

Damien swallowed painfully and continued staring at the floor. His breathing grew heavier as the anger inside him intensified. "I’ll make you pay."

He was no longer thinking about the inmates who had beaten him. Their faces had already faded into the background of his thoughts. His hatred had found a different target, and every painful memory seemed to feed it.

’Sophie. Stan.’

He imagined them suffering. He imagined them experiencing the same humiliation that had been forced upon him. He imagined taking everything from them and watching the confidence disappear from their faces. The more he thought about it, the stronger the desire became.

Yet something strange began happening within him.

At first, Damien did not notice the change. He was too consumed by his resentment to realize that the hatred filling his mind was gradually becoming something more intense than ordinary anger. It no longer felt like a temporary emotional response to humiliation. It had begun to sink deeper, reaching into something fundamental within his consciousness.

Every rejection he had suffered, every humiliation he had endured, every grievance he had carried, and every person he believed had wronged him seemed to gather together inside the depths of his mind. The emotions began overlapping until they became difficult to distinguish from one another. Anger merged with resentment. Resentment became hatred. Hatred became an overwhelming desire to retaliate against those he believed responsible for his suffering.

And eventually, all of those emotions converged upon a single concept.

’Revenge.’ Damien’s consciousness suddenly trembled.

For a brief moment, the prison corridor seemed to disappear from his awareness. The cold concrete beneath his body, the distant conversations of the inmates, the footsteps moving through the corridor, and even the throbbing pain in his ribs gradually became distant and indistinct. It was as though his consciousness had slipped beneath the surface of reality and entered a place where none of those things mattered.

There was only darkness. And within that darkness, there was only one desire.

He wanted them to suffer.

The thought became clearer as it repeated itself within his mind. He wanted Sophie and Stan to experience the same humiliation and helplessness that had consumed him. He wanted them to understand what it felt like to be powerless, to have everything they valued stripped away, and to realize that nobody was coming to save them. More than anything, he wanted them to feel the same hatred that now consumed him.

Another tremor passed through his consciousness.

Damien had no idea what was happening.

He could not explain the strange sensation spreading through his mind, nor did he understand why his hatred suddenly seemed so incredibly clear. It was no longer simply an emotion he was experiencing. It felt as though he had grasped something intangible, something that had always existed but had remained beyond his perception.

The realization was almost frightening.

His hatred had become a concept. A principle. A path. Revenge.

And somewhere beyond Damien’s understanding, something answered.

A faint ripple passed through the unseen fabric of the world.

It was subtle enough that no ordinary human could have noticed it. There was no explosion of energy, no brilliant light, and no dramatic change in the surrounding environment. The prison remained exactly as it had been, with the inmates continuing their conversations and the guards continuing their routines. Yet beneath that ordinary appearance, something fundamental had shifted.

The world had begun to change. Damien’s eyes suddenly widened.

For the first time since entering Blackridge, he felt something other than pain.

Something was entering his body. At first, the sensation was so faint that he almost dismissed it as another consequence of his injuries. His body was exhausted, his mind was unstable, and he had just endured a brutal beating. It would have been easy to assume that the strange sensation was nothing more than another symptom of his battered condition.

But the feeling continued.

As Damien focused on it, he realized that something unfamiliar was slowly moving through his body. It was weak, almost imperceptible, yet undeniably real. He could feel it entering through his surroundings, slipping into his body and gradually spreading through his flesh.

His breathing stopped. "What..."

The word came out barely above a whisper.

Damien stared blankly ahead, unable to understand what he was experiencing. He had never felt anything like this before. There was no scientific explanation he could immediately associate with the sensation. Yet despite his confusion, there was an undeniable certainty within him.

Something had changed. Something had awakened.

The unfamiliar energy continued moving through his body, slowly circulating through his muscles and blood before following pathways he had never known existed. The sensation was neither entirely warm nor cold. It felt almost weightless, yet at the same time, it carried a presence that Damien could somehow perceive with absolute clarity.

Deep within the depths of his body, an unfamiliar force had begun to take root.

Damien did not know what it was. He did not know where it had come from.

He did not understand why he could suddenly perceive something that should have been completely invisible to ordinary human senses.

He certainly did not know that the change occurring within his body was connected to something far greater than himself.

For countless years, humanity had lived without ever realizing that another form of energy existed beyond the limits of ordinary scientific understanding. The world had changed, civilizations had risen and fallen, and generations of humans had lived and died without ever sensing it.

Qi had existed in the world all along.

It had simply remained dormant, sealed and absorbed out of the world by the formation

But now it was back and something had changed.

The barrier that had separated humanity from that ancient energy was beginning to weaken.

And Damien, consumed by hatred and driven by an overwhelming desire for revenge, had become one of the first humans on Earth to comprehend dao and establish a connection with it.

He did not know its name. He did not understand its origin. He did not know what it would eventually bring.

All he knew was that something was flowing through him.

Something that had never existed within his awareness before.

Something that would change his life forever.

Deep within his body, Qi slowly circulated through his meridians.