Aiden's figure slid through the darkness. Rocks flew in every direction around him as the two men across from him kept firing, trying to pin him down and keep him from showing his face. Beams of energy tore through the rock walls, scattering debris everywhere.No hurry. They're probably more desperate than I am. Aiden stayed perfectly calm. From where he crouched, the two men in front of him were awkward to reach, but he had a clean line of sight on the three figures one level down in the underground palace, easy targets by comparison.He gripped his energy pistol, tucked behind a boulder, and waited for the right window to strike.BANG!One man took a hit to the stomach. The searing heat sealed the wound instantly, and his agonized scream tore through the chamber.Aiden seized the moment and fired off several more rounds in quick succession. The second man caught a beam straight to the head, blood, bone, and brain matter scattering across the stone.Below, the third man had already s

An ordinary person could never have pulled that off. Whoever this was, they were probably no weaker than Redmane, wielding real martial cultivation alongside some formidable breathing technique. Genuinely terrifying."One of ours!" a middle-aged man's voice called from behind a distant rock, part of his body coming into view, wearing a protective suit nearly identical to Aiden's.Aiden said nothing, continuing to draw spiritual energy from the golden jade to steady his newly broken cultivation, tucked behind the rock formation with his energy pistol ready to fire at the first sign of trouble.That man was dangerous. He nearly closed the distance on me without a sound. If I hadn't broken through when I did, I probably wouldn't have noticed him at all.And worse, the man had clearly meant to strike.A dozen or so figures emerged outside the underground palace, all armed with energy pistols, taking cover behind rocks and around bends in the rock.A woman's voice cut through the group. "W

After returning, Aiden talked with Redmane about the shortcomings of the world's current cultivation methods, then caught a cab home. Redmane had explained just how difficult training in the old techniques truly was.The term "cultivation method" was really just what people called it casually. Its true name was the breathing cultivation method, a practice of shaping one's breath to draw energy from the world and refine the self through it.But every breathing technique unearthed from tombs and ruins scattered across Celestara had turned out incomplete. A broken path, nothing that could compete with true martial arts.These days, martial arts could carry a practitioner all the way to the Heaven realm, methods already existed to transcend the ordinary entirely, and countless techniques existed to push cultivation even further, into realms no one had mapped before.Breathing techniques were different. Even the strongest cultivator to walk that path had only reached the late Heaven realm,

The higher the floor in Emperor Tower, the steeper the prices climbed. As a fresh graduate, Aiden felt a small pang of guilt heading up there on nothing but an entry-level salary.Derek, though, was a different story. His family had money to spare, so Aiden never worried about him covering the bill. Checking the time, he saw the sun was already sinking. Time to head out.The streets around Emperor Tower buzzed with life, a sprawling, well-established commercial district packed with foot traffic, right in the heart of the city. People used to call this area the Lantern Quarter, back in the day.Aiden arrived and rode the elevator straight to the top floor.Three restaurants shared that floor, each one absurdly overpriced, and each one perpetually packed.He guessed Derek had booked ahead, and if nothing had changed, it would be at the Rosewood Court.Derek had brought people there before, always insisting the food was the most authentic in the city and the servers the easiest on the ey

Vanessa's surprise was genuine when her whip kick met resistance. Even a mid-stage Yellow-realm warrior shouldn't have been able to block a full-force strike from her that cleanly.She masked it fast, twisted her stance to adjust her footing, and her right hand flared with bright white light, sharp as a blade, cutting forward.At the same moment, her left fist snapped toward Aiden's chest. That deceptively delicate little fist carried astonishing force, the air itself trembling faintly around it.Aiden stopped holding back. He called on the full strength of his mid-stage Spirit Awakening Realm, raising his left hand to block the descending hand-blade, then twisting his wrist to lock down that small, pale hand.In the same motion, his right hand snapped into a palm and shot forward, intending to trap both her arms and end this test as quickly as possible.His current cultivation was, after all, a one-time gift, and Aiden had already planned to burn the golden jade's spiritual energy pu