"Who are you, really?!" Staring at Arya — who hadn't moved an inch, who was still watching him with that same cold, empty gaze as though none of this was worth his attention — Danan finally understood what real terror felt like. He had fired repeatedly, point blank, and not a single bullet had touched the man. No dodging. No movement. Just a thin, faintly luminous barrier that had stopped every round as casually as an umbrella stops rain. A barrier that looked fragile but had proven harder than steel. Who was Arya Ananta? Danan's face had gone completely white. And as Arya continued to look at him without expression, without urgency, without a single flicker of concern — the cold crept inward, and Danan felt warmth spreading through his trousers without meaning for it to. Aruna, lying on the floor beside him, had gone pale as well. Like Danan, she couldn't react. She could only stare at the figure standing in the ruined doorway and quietly wonder — was this still her brother? Th

The doctor nodded heavily, apology written plainly across his face. "You're doctors. Is there truly nothing you can do?" The doctor shook his head, his voice carrying the particular helplessness of a man who had exhausted every option available to him. "Deputy Mayor Bramasta, we are deeply sorry. Despite everything we've tried, there is simply nothing we can do. What has happened to Mr. Danan falls entirely outside the boundaries of anything we've encountered before — outside anything recorded in modern medicine. I'm afraid—" "Alright. I understand." Bramasta cut him off with a nod, not unkindly but with finality. "You can go." The doctor left. Bramasta turned back to his nephew. Danan lay in the bed looking, in every outward sense, completely fine. No wounds. No bruising. No visible injury of any kind. And yet he couldn't move a single part of his body, couldn't make a sound, couldn't do anything at all except lie there and watch his uncle with eyes that had filled slowly with t

For now, even though visiting his parents' graves had settled something in his chest, Arya knew he wasn't ready to move against the Wijaya family. Not yet. It wasn't that he couldn't. It was that he refused to let them off with something ordinary. Not after what they had done. The Wijaya family was clearly not a common household. To bring them to their knees the way they deserved, Arya knew he would need to strike at the three pillars they stood on: wealth, power, and influence. He would need to dismantle all three. But before any of that, he had to see to the safety of Kiara and Aruna. Yesterday had made one thing clear. In this world, just as in the cultivation world, the law was only as strong as the force behind it. If you had enough power to override it, you could do as you pleased. Without sufficient strength of your own, the law was simply a set of words. Kiara's bloodline had been awakened. That was a foundation. But her safety couldn't wait on her cultivation progressing

"Important matters?" Arya raised an eyebrow slightly, studying the woman in front of him. She struck him as genuinely unlike anyone he had encountered before, which was saying something for a man who had spent millennia in the company of immortal cultivators. He found himself briefly wondering if something was off with her. "The Valerya cream," Evelyn said, gesturing toward her own face. "Our new product. The first trial was a complete success. The results are exactly what you described. I used it myself this morning, actually." She turned her cheek toward him slightly, as though presenting evidence. "Look. Isn't my skin smoother? Don't I look a few years younger?" She knew, on some level, exactly what she was doing. But she couldn't quite help it. The product she had spent years chasing had not only come together, it had exceeded her expectations. And beyond the product itself, there was something else she n

Calvin sat on the floor of the lobby with a hollow expression, watching Evelyn and Arya walk out through the entrance, disbelief still written plainly across his face. He didn't want to believe it. But he knew it was over. Every word he had said, every insult he had directed at her, the woman who was the president of Valen Beauty herself. He could still hear himself saying all of it. He looked around at the faces watching him from various points in the lobby, the open contempt, the embarrassed looks, the quiet mockery, and understood that there was no coming back from what had just happened. The truth was, he had never thought much about Valen Beauty as a company. He had only come today because of a tip from his cousin Adrian, who had told him that their new product, this Valerya, was so extraordinary it bordered on unbelievable. Calvin had decided he needed to get ahead of it. Instead he had lost everything. "Arya Ananta." He ground his teeth. Everything had started going wrong