A soft, golden glow bathed the entirety of her world. Beautiful, it would have been, under other circumstances. A beautiful prison was a prison still. It had taken just over a hundred years to probe the dome covering the valley. To find the tiny gaps, small enough for trickles of qi to slip through. To find spaces so small they may as well not be real.

It had taken another hundred years to learn of the outside world. The mountain peaks and valleys, the rivers and lakes. The lands around this golden cage were rich with qi. Rich with power. All for the taking.

Beasts fed and spirits grew. The world moved on and life thrived just outside. Just beyond reach.

When the first beast submitted, the feeling of joy had been overwhelming. As the beast fed, it grew. As it grew, more of its cultivation trickled into the accursed golden dome. Eventually, a second beast recognized the true ruler of this world. It, too, submitted.

Bit by bit, more beasts and spirits gave of themselves. The trickle of qi continued. Only a tiny amount could ever pass the barrier, so the going was slow. But one could fill an ocean drop by drop if one were patient enough. If there was one thing a prison could teach, it was patience.

More qi trickled into the cage. Another hundred years passed. Time lost what little meaning it yet still held. Outside the golden dome, the land itself finally submitted. Qi flowed up from the earth, and the power drawn into the prison increased yet again.

The steady outward march of influence, of rule, of possession continued. Day upon day. Year upon year. Ever onward, ever grasping for more. After three hundred years, Jin Xifeng could reach out from the Dawn Palace and bestow her gifts.

The first creature was a winged serpent. A mere infant, having only advanced to the Fourth Realm. It was enough. She placed within it a seed from her own spirit. The seed and serpent grew together. The serpent devoured any spirit or beast it could find weaker than itself. Such creatures were rare in these qi-rich, untamed wilds. But they were enough. Enough to feed the sliver of Jin Xifeng’s power that nestled around the serpent’s core.

Eventually, the seed devoured the serpent. Jin Xifeng hadn’t expected it to last long, and it hadn’t. But it had served its purpose. With its death, the serpent’s cultivation base returned to her. It returned all at once, in a rush of sustenance more nourishing than she’d had in over three hundred years. Enough that she could send out two more seeds. Claim two more subjects.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Over the next hundred years, she became a queen of beasts. The seeds she spread through the valleys and peaks sustained her. The gaunt and corpse-like appearance she’d taken on in those first hundreds of years of her imprisonment filled out to her former beauty. She could cultivate once again. She studied her prison. She studied the Dawn Palace. Jin Xifeng learned, and she planned.

Her spirit encroached upon the surrounding lands. Beasts and spirits and the very earth itself fell under her sway. She built upon the ashes of her defeat and imprisonment a new domain. Eventually, she could send her servants out into the wider world. Out of the valleys, out of the wilds.

She remembered well where she had fallen. Where victory had been stolen from her grasp. Stolen by Cai Weizhe. She knew where she was, but something prevented that knowledge from leaving with her servants. Once they’d passed beyond her domain, they could never return. Yet for a time her connection allowed her to see through their eyes. Hear through their ears. Their experiences were hers, and such she learned of the outside world.

At the edge of the vast wilderness she’d come to claim as her own, she found him. Cai Weizhe. An insignificant little sect had cropped up around him. It was the key. She knew it with all her being.

As the surrounding creatures and lands gave more and more of themselves, it became easier to learn of the outside world. So much had come to pass, yet so much had remained. The empire persisted. As years had turned first into decades, then centuries—the Dragon Empire forgot. The fact had come as a surprise at first. Then she learned that the forgetting was by design.

She saw the shape of Cai Weizhe’s plan. She folded that knowledge into the plans of her own as she sent her subjects ever further afield.

After five hundred years of imprisonment, a revelation. The Sunset Court endured! She then spent the next hundred years refining her technique. Changing it to suit her present situation, her current purpose. She sought one who was loyal to her, who had seen and recognized the storm eagle she’d sent far to the north.

She bestowed not a mere seed, but a core. The first demon core of her making. An independent sliver of her own spirit, given life and intelligence and a will of its own.

It devoured him.

The unnamed cultivator who had accepted her gift succumbed to it within days. It took her a decade to work out the problem. The core had grown too rapidly. It had fed upon its courier, and by the time it reached its intended recipient, it was too much.

Jin Xifeng adapted. It had taken another half dozen attempts, but finally she found a host capable of mastering the sliver of power she bestowed upon them. Soon thereafter, the core revealed its true purpose. It reproduced.

A second core formed. Through her pact, she instructed her subject.

“Upon those loyal and worthy, bestow my greatest of gifts. The Shrouded Peaks Sect is the key. Find me. Free me.”

After a thousand years of imprisonment, Jin Xifeng placed a hand on the walls of the Dawn Palace. The formation barrier trembled beneath her touch. Her cage had grown brittle. Freedom was within her grasp.