2026-01-26 16:37:14Morning sunlight streamed through the window as Darwin opened his eyes and yawned. He felt energized and immediately got up, planning to visit the clan's library to acquire a cultivation manual so he could begin his journey properly.
However, the moment he stepped outside his room, he encountered an annoying and familiar face. "Garwin," he muttered under his breath. The patriarch of the Azure clan had six children. Garwin, barely ten years old and the youngest of the six, was one of the people who tormented Darwin the most. At age ten, he was already at Qi Refining Stage 7, thanks to the abundant resources the family provided. At that level, he could easily defeat Darwin with both eyes closed. "Where have you been for the past two days? And what's with the black hair? It looks disgusting. I came by to vent my frustration on you, but you were absent. Are you planning a rebellion?" Garwin said with a smug look, folding his hands behind his back. Darwin wanted to say, "Get out of my way, brat," but before he could speak, a sharp pain exploded in his stomach. He spat out blood. If not for his Body Refining Stage 3 cultivation, he might have passed out already. "Anyway, I only came here to tell you that Father said you should prepare for the trial. Although trash like you should be expelled, it seems you'll die soon instead," Garwin said before turning to leave. "I swear you'll be the first person I kill in this world. Just wait a few months," Darwin cursed inwardly as he picked himself up. As he continued walking, he noticed a message from the system indicating he had two unclaimed daily gifts, which made him smile. "It seems there are daily gifts as well. I'll check those when I get back to my room. For now, let's find a cultivation manual." After several minutes of walking, he arrived at the library, where he was greeted by the librarian, who asked what he needed. "Good morning, Elder. I came to see if I could borrow a cultivation manual from the library," Darwin asked pleasantly. The man before him was one of the few people who actually treated him with respect. "I'm sorry, Young Master, but the clan only gives out one manual per person. If you want something else, you can exchange it using clan points. I believe you received the clan's Grade 2 cultivation technique when you were eight years old," the librarian said. Darwin frowned. He vaguely remembered burning that manual in frustration when he couldn't even draw in qi. It had been at least three years since he'd last tried to cultivate, and he'd long forgotten the technique. The librarian, aware of Darwin's circumstances and inability to cultivate, decided to help him. "Here, kid. You can have mine," he said, waving his hand and producing a book from his storage ring. Darwin hesitated. "Don't worry. It's of no use to me anymore. I hit a bottleneck in my cultivation years ago, so keeping it with me is a waste of precious resources," the librarian insisted. Darwin couldn't refuse anymore, especially after realizing it was actually a Grade 3 manual—far better than what he'd planned to acquire. In this world, treasures, artifacts, skills, techniques, and manuals were divided into grades. The higher the grade, the higher the value. Grade 1 was classified as Mundane, Grade 2 as Common, Grade 3 as Uncommon, Grade 4 as Rare, Grade 5 as Super Rare, and Grade 6 as Epic. The differences between grades were like night and day. He immediately took the manual and rushed back to his room, eager to cultivate. But first, he decided to check the daily gifts. He focused on the notification. [Ding! Daily gift boxes opened: 2] [Reward 1: Upgrade Points x2] [Reward 2: Upgrade Points x3] [Total Upgrade Points: 5] [Note: Upgrade points can be used to upgrade anything] This was a huge jackpot. Including his two daily upgrades, he had a total of seven upgrades—practically a cheat code. He decided to use three upgrade points on his meridians, three on his roots, and the last one on his manual. [Ding! Upgrade successful] [Basic Meridian → Intermediate Meridian] [Intermediate Meridian → Advanced Meridian] [Advanced Meridian → Refined Meridian] [Low Spirit Root of Wind → Mid Spirit Root of Wind] [Mid Spirit Root of Wind → High Spirit Root of Wind] [High Spirit Root of Wind → Peak Spirit Root of Wind] The change was so dramatic that Darwin immediately broke through just by breathing. He felt a hundred times better than before. His qi channels were broader, his body felt like it truly belonged to him, everything flowed smoothly, and each breath carried abundant qi. He could sense an almost endless well of power within his meridian. At this point, he could be called the greatest genius of his clan. Even his elder sister, hailed as an unparalleled genius, only had a refined meridian and a high spirit root of wind. His qi was now purer than hers. [Grade 3 Azure Sky Cultivation Manual (Uncommon) → Grade 4 Celestial Azure Cultivation Manual (Rare)]
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The cost(2)
Rhen Obsidian arrived at the Azure Clan's outer gate at the eighth hour of the morning. He arrived alone. This was notable — a patriarch traveling between clan territories without escort in an active conflict situation was a specific statement about the patriarch's confidence in his own cultivator's capability or a specific statement about what kind of meeting he wanted to have. In Rhen's case it was both, since a Nascent Soul Stage Seven cultivator traveling alone through territory where the ceiling threat was Nascent Soul Stage Eight was a reasonable security posture and also produced the specific condition of a meeting with no attendants and no record. He was shown to the war room by an Azure Clan attendant who had been given precise instructions about which room to use. Celeste was at the table. Aldric was beside her. The documents were on the table. Rhen sat across from them with the settled quality he always carried — the particular ease of someone who had been sitting
Chapter 122: The Cost
Rael Vermilion did not wait forty-eight hours. He waited thirty-one. He was at Core Formation Stage Two and his ribs were cracked and his secondary fire meridian pathway was disrupted and the medical cultivator had said forty-eight hours before the cultivation channel disruption could be safely worked on. He had spent thirty-one of those hours lying on the third cot from the left running the engagement through his mind from every angle he could reach and arriving repeatedly at the same point — the single pulse the Stage Four had sent in the first thirty seconds. At thirty-one hours he stood up from the cot. The ribs disagreed. He stood up anyway and found his outer robe and walked to the war room. Celeste looked up from the table when he entered. She looked at how he was standing. She looked at his face. "You should be on the cot," she said. "I need to tell you something about the engagement," he said. "You can tell me from the cot. I can come to the medical wing." "
The vanguard answers(3)
In the library, Garwin and Elder Ming were still reading. Garwin had been reading for six hours with the focused quality of someone who had decided that reading was what he could contribute and had committed to contributing it fully. He was not a fast reader — he was eleven and reading historical military records that used terminology and frameworks he had not previously encountered, and understanding them required him to stop and ask Elder Ming questions more frequently than he would have preferred. Elder Ming answered every question without suggesting that the question was below his station to answer. At the sixth hour, Garwin set down the Greenwater Clan's resistance account and looked at the stack of volumes that remained unread. "There is something in these accounts that is consistent," he said. Elder Ming looked up. "Every clan that resisted the Iron Blood Clan and survived more than ten days did something the Iron Blood Clan did not anticipate," Garwin said. "Not
The vanguard answers (2)
Kiran Vermilion received the recommendation exactly as Celeste had predicted he would receive it. The communication jade was warm in Aldric's hand from the heat of the Vermilion patriarch's response, which was a function of Kiran's fire-attribute cultivation qi expressing through his emotional state rather than a property of the jade itself. "You are recommending surrender of a Vermilion installation," Kiran said. The words were precise and controlled in the specific way that a fire cultivator produced precise and controlled words when the alternative was producing a fire technique. "I am recommending that we not spend the fire corps on a communications tool," Aldric said. "The array can be rebuilt. The fire corps' cultivation capacity cannot be rebuilt in eleven days." "One hundred Iron Blood cultivators at a Vermilion installation and the Azure Clan recommends we stand aside." "The Azure Clan's full defensive force is committing to the relay station engagement," Aldric sai
The Vanguard Answers
Dawn came to the Southwestern Territory's outer lands with the unhurried quality of a dawn that did not know what was in the territory it was illuminating and would not have changed its pace if it did. The Iron Blood Clan's vanguard began moving at the second hour after dawn. Not toward the Azure Clan's main compound. Not toward the Vermilion Clan's eastern boundary where the fire corps had engaged the previous night. The vanguard moved in three coordinated groups of one hundred — each group moving toward a different point in the coalition's outer defensive infrastructure with the precise, unhurried quality of a force that had received a specific objective and was executing it. The Azure Clan's outer formation relay station — the qi-gathering node at the eastern boundary's midpoint that fed the perimeter formation network's secondary loop — was the first target. The Obsidian Clan's ley line anchor point at the Southwestern Territory's central position was the second. The Vermili
The return (3)
The medical wing at the third hour of the morning had the quality of a space that had been designed for periodic use and was now being used continuously and was adapting to the continuous use with the slightly overwhelmed quality of a system meeting a demand above its design baseline.Rael was on the third cot from the left in the main recovery room. He had been treated — the medical cultivator’s assessment had been precise and thorough and had produced the specific prognosis that a Core Formation Stage Two fire cultivator with significant impact trauma to the left side’s ribs and a cultivation channel disruption in the secondary fire meridian pathway received from a medical cultivator who had been treating combat injuries for twenty years and had seen this category of injury before and knew what it needed.Rest. Qi-stabilizing pills. Forty-eight hours before the cultivation channel disruption could be safely worked on. Full recovery in ten to fourteen days.Ten to fourteen days was e
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