In the middle courtyard near the weapons rack, Mo Qian reached out and took hold of a blade at random. He was not planning to devour it — he simply wanted to read the weapon spirit, to check whether his mental strength had progressed.He looked at the data that appeared in front of him.Mental power: Level 1.Still level one.Not entirely unexpected. By his reckoning, the eighty-one first-order tree spirits from Wild Boar Mountain had been digesting for only a little over two weeks — not long enough. He had only been at it a matter of days since.Mo Qian let out a quiet breath.The Taizang Sutra was inaccessible for now. His mental power had not broken through. The one thing he could currently train — the one goal within reach — was the Bone Shrinking Skill.He would get it to a working level in the shortest time possible.Decision made, his mind cleared, and something that felt like energy moved through him.He walked back to the dormitory quickly, shut the doors and windows, and beg

Both men were applauding. The same painter, two completely different approaches, both perfectly matched to their audience.Jiang Qingyu felt a quiet, reluctant admiration stir in his chest."Brother Mo's painting — I love it!" Ximen Kandan announced. "I'm going to show this to Xia Shuangshuang and deflate that smug look of hers. Let her see what a real painting looks like."Mo Qian smiled, though he privately hoped Ximen Kandan would not actually do that.Jiang Qingyu looked at Ximen Kandan's expression and silently gave up. Some aesthetic disagreements were simply not worth the breath."Brother Mo, we've hit it off immediately! Come — let me show you my collection of treasures!" Ximen Kandan tucked the painting under his arm and gestured grandly.The moment those words left his mouth, Jiang Qingyu's expression underwent a dramatic change. He clasped his fists briskly. "Brother Mo, lovely to see you! I just remembered — I have something urgent I need to see to. I'll take my leave!"He

The body of the Ming King would become a mountain — the main peak. His shoulders would become the subsidiary ridges. His crossed legs at the base would become a lake. The surrounding blank areas he would fill with streams, mist, and trees in careful arrangement.A landscape painting that concealed a sacred image within it. A hidden mandala that could hang on any wall without drawing a second glance.Mo Qian worked through all four portraits in this way.When he was done, the dormitory was cramped enough to begin with — he made it smaller by pulling the wardrobe and the easel out from the walls at angles, positioning them to create a corner enclosure. With the two walls behind him and these two barriers in front, he had a rough approximation of the enclosed orientation space described in the practice instructions.He hung one portrait on each of the four sides, following the directional requirements of the text. Acala in the east. Buzhi Vajra in the west. Vajra Yaksha in the north. Hor

The moment the statues disappeared, the baby seemed to feel it. What threads remained in the air around him, not yet formed into the cocoon he had been beginning to weave around himself, stopped moving. They drifted free, scattered by the returning mist.A faint impression reached Mo Qian from the baby — brief, wordless, unmistakably displeased — and then the baby fell into deep sleep. The connection between them went quiet.The grey-white mist that had been held in suspension rose again immediately, spreading in every direction, filling the world within moments with its usual thin rolling motion.Mo Qian stood up from the black earth and looked up at the dome.The baby was still there — visible inside a layer of light threads thin as a cicada's wing, curled in its sleeping posture, still as something very old.Mo Qian said the name of the technique quietly to himself. Taizang Sutra.He walked to the southwest, to where the sea of tree spirit light had been.The light threads that had

The breathing method of the Taizang Sutra was its own kind of discipline — intricate, requiring a very particular quality of attention. After all the complicated preparation, he had to direct his mental power into the inflection point between inhalation and exhalation precisely enough to slip through into the sea of consciousness.He had succeeded on the first try the previous night. Tonight it took him three attempts.Even so, the moment he crossed the threshold, the sea of consciousness struck him with the same force as the first time.The black earth stretching away without limit. The sky pressing low and vast. The thin mist rolling endlessly between them. An ancient, immense quality in the air that was not quite sound and not quite feeling, but something between the two.Mo Qian looked up first.At the top of the dome, the baby light shadow rested inside a cocoon barely thicker than a cicada's wing — curled, sleeping, emitting a quiet milky fluorescence.He looked at it for a mome