2026-06-06 02:31:52The yellow arc of the warden’s sword cut through the heavy downpour, humming with the force of his Level 5 Qi. The blade was aimed straight for Li Xuan’s shoulder, meant to pin him to the mud before chopping off his fingers.
Li Xuan didn't move. He stood perfectly still, his wild black hair plastered against his face by the rain.
"Die, you freak!" the warden roared, his face twisted in a mixture of panic and greed.
Just as the iron blade was an inch away from his skin, Li Xuan’s left hand shot out like a striking viper. He didn't block the flat of the sword. He grabbed the razor-sharp edge of the blade with his bare palm.
CLANG!
A metallic ring echoed through the dark woods. The warden’s breath hitched. He expected Li Xuan’s fingers to fly off into the mud. Instead, the moment the iron blade touched Li Xuan’s hand, the dark emerald light beneath his tattered robes violently flared.
The surface of Li Xuan’s skin didn't bleed. It rippled with a jagged, crystalline sheen, acting like the surface of a shattered mirror. The crushing impact of the Level 5 blow didn't push him back—it slammed into his internal jade engine, bouncing off the jagged shards inside his stomach, multiplying in speed, and reflecting straight back up the iron blade.
CRACK!
The warden’s iron sword violently detonated into dozens of sharp, jagged metal splinters.
Before the warden could even scream in shock, Li Xuan flicked his blood-stained wrist. The swirling dark emerald hurricane around his body grabbed those flying steel shards mid-air, reversing their direction with a terrifying velocity.
SHOOSH! SHOOSH! SHOOSH!
"AAAHHHH!"
The warden screamed, stumbling backward as his own shattered sword pieces tore through his dark iron armor, shredding his arms and thighs. He crashed heavily into the mud, his iron lantern rolling away and sputtering out, plunging the clearing into near-total darkness.
Li Xuan stepped forward. His boots squelched softly in the bloody mud. Each step felt like a heavy drumbeat of death to the wounded warden.
"Level 5 Qi Refining," Li Xuan murmured, his voice layered with that terrifying, metallic resonance. He looked down at his bare palm, which bore only a faint, shallow white line where the sword had struck. "So slow. So soft. To think that yesterday, I would have called a minor warden like you a warrior."
"Monster... you're a monster!" the warden whimpered, dragging his bleeding body backward against the trunk of a dead tree. His iron sword was gone, and his hands were shaking so hard he couldn't even draw his backup dagger. "Your core was smashed! I saw the glowing green shards myself! You should be a dead man!"
Li Xuan knelt down, his hand shooting forward to wrap around the warden’s throat like an iron vice. He lifted the grown man a foot off the ground, pinning him against the rough bark of the tree. His glowing emerald eyes locked onto the warden’s terrified pupils.
"I am a dead man," Li Xuan whispered, a cold, bloodthirsty smile stretching across his face. "The Li Xuan who begged for mercy died in that room. The one standing in front of you is the one who will harvest your soul."
He squeezed his fingers, cutting off the warden's air supply. "Tell me... what are Mo Fan and Ning’er planning for tomorrow morning?"
"Cough... ack..." The warden thrashed against the tree, his face turning dark purple. "The... the Grand Ascension Celebration... cough... at dawn... Young Master Mo Fan is presenting... your jade core shards to the Grand Sect Master... to secure his position as the new Crown Disciple... They are getting married next week..."
"Married next week?" Li Xuan let out a soft, dark laugh that sent a primal shiver straight down the warden's spine. "How beautiful. A thief and a snake, celebrating their plunder."
His eyes flared with a blinding emerald light. Inside his stomach, the ten thousand jagged jade shards began to spin with a manic, hungry speed.
"Master Mo... Mo Fan will kill you..." the warden choked out, his vision fading. "The entire Azure Sky Sect... will hunt you..."
"Let them come. But you won't be alive to see it," Li Xuan murmured. "Your Qi... belongs to the broken."
Fractured Ascension: Devour.
With a violent surge of his will, Li Xuan forced his shattered core to pull. A terrifying, dark emerald vacuum erupted from his palm, locking onto the warden’s throat.
"AGHHH!"
The warden’s body violently convulsed. The liquid yellow Qi inside his veins didn't flow naturally anymore—it was violently ripped out through his neck, turning into a stream of dull yellow light that was forcibly swallowed into Li Xuan’s open palm. The energy rushed down into his stomach, hitting the spinning jade shards.
CRUNCH. GRIND. PURIFY.
The crude, low-grade yellow Qi was instantly crushed and shredded by the razor-sharp jade fragments, refined into pure, concentrated emerald force.
Fractured Ascension: Level 2!
Level 3!
The green cracks across Li Xuan's chest tore open a millimeter wider, pulsing with a dense, heavy energy that leveled the wild grass for five yards around him.
The warden's body went completely limp, his skin turning gray and withered as his lifeforce and cultivation were drained dry. Li Xuan carelessly let go, letting the lifeless husk drop face-first into the muddy puddle below.
Xuan stood upright, his tattered grey robes snapping in the howling wind. He looked up toward the towering, jade-veined peaks of the Azure Sky Sect in the distance, where the bright palace lights were still shining through the storm.
The dawn was coming. The Grand Ascension Celebration was about to begin.
"Mo Fan. Ning'er," Li Xuan whispered, his fingers curling into a tight fist as a violent hurricane of green energy blades erupted from his skin, slicing the falling raindrops into mist. "The guest of honor... is on his way."
Li Xuan turned and walked out of the clearing, heading straight up the jagged, rocky cliffs toward the main gates of the Azure Sky Sect. He didn't sneak through the shadows; he walked right up the main disciple path, leaving a trail of frosty, dark emerald footprints behind him.
As he reached the grand marble steps of the outer gate, the first light of dawn was just beginning to break through the storm clouds, painting the sky in a bloody, dark orange hue.
Standing at the top of the steps were two elite Inner Disciple guards wearing bright turquoise robes, their eyes widening in absolute horror as they saw a blood-drenched, tattered figure walking out of the abyss, carrying a terrifying aura that made the stone stairs vibrate.
"Stop! Who goes there?!" one guard shouted, drawing his silver sword.
Li Xuan didn't speak. He just lifted his head, his glowing white eyes locking onto the grand sect banner floating above the gate.
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The Flavor of Salt and Smoke
The stew bubbled slowly in the heavy iron pot, sending up thick, fragrant plumes of steam that carried the rich scent of root vegetables, fresh herbs, and the savory depth of wild garlic Orem had foraged near the riverbank.Outside, the indigo night deepened, and the quiet stars cast a pale, silvery glow over the porch. The world was utterly still, save for the occasional rustle of the apple tree leaves and the soft scratching of Elian’s pen.Li Xuan sat on the edge of the porch steps, whittling a small piece of scrap pine into a flat wooden spoon. His movements were slow, deliberate, and entirely unburdened by the frantic urgency that had defined his past lives. Every curl of wood that fell to the dirt was a discarded fragment of tension, leaving his hands steady and his mind clear."You've been carving that spoon for three days," Orem noted from his rocking chair, his voice a dry, friendly rasp. The old man was holding his half-finished wooden duck, squinting at it in the dim candlel
The Ink of the Hearth
The afternoon heat settled over the northern ridge, baking the newly turned clay of the irrigation trench until it smelled of dry dust and sweet, sun-warmed earth. They had stopped working shortly after the midday sun reached its peak, retreating from the open fields to the cool, amber shadows of the porch.The traveler—whose name, they learned over a simple lunch of salted bread and water, was simply Master Orem—sat in the corner rocking chair, whittling a small block of soft pine into the rough shape of a sitting duck. The rhythmic shhh, shhh of his pocketknife peeling curls of wood matched the steady scratching of Elian’s pen at the wooden table nearby.Li Xuan stood at the kitchen counter, washing a bundle of freshly harvested carrots in a wooden basin. The water was cold, drawn straight from the deep spring beneath the roots of the ancient apple tree outside."Chapter fifty," Elian said suddenly, his voice breaking the quiet hum of the afternoon. He paused, lifting his pen from th
The Architecture of Morning
Dawn broke over the garden with a crisp, amber clarity, spilling light across the dewy leaves and the newly reinforced thatch roof. Inside the hut, the fire had burned down to a cozy bed of white-grey ash.Li Xuan was already awake. He stood by the open window, breathing in the sharp, clean scent of morning air, watching the silver-winged entities drift lazily between the apple branches. Behind him, the rhythmic, gentle scraping of a pen against paper filled the silence.He turned around. The traveler was still fast asleep on a pallet of blankets near the hearth, wrapped in his heavy coat, snoring softly. Across the room, Elian sat at the wooden table, his brow furrowed in intense concentration, writing by the dim, warm light of the early sun.Li Xuan walked over quietly, leaning against the edge of the table to look down at the page.“And the traveler stayed,” Elian had written in his steady, careful hand. “Not because he was looking for a destination, but because the tea was hot, an
The Sound of a Skillet
The kitchen inside the small wooden hut was sparse, functional, and smelled permanently of dried herbs, woodsmoke, and cast-iron. A single window looked out over the western hills, framing the shifting, bruised-violet ribbon of the aurora as it slowly bled into the deep blue of evening.Li Xuan placed the golden egg on the wooden counter. He stood beside it for a moment, hands resting on the edge of the board, staring down at the shell as if trying to recall a forgotten formula.Elian leaned against the doorframe, watching him with an amused smirk. "It's just an egg, Li Xuan. You don't need to channel your inner strategist to crack it.""You'd be surprised," Li Xuan muttered. "I’ve dismantled complex arrays guarding imperial vaults with fewer existential concerns."He picked up a small, dull kitchen knife, tapped the side of the shell against the rim of an iron skillet, and parted it cleanly. The yolk was a rich, deep amber, sliding into the pan with a soft sizzle as he added a pat of
The First Egg
The chickens, as it turned out, were indeed uncooperative.They were not ordinary chickens, nor were they magical beasts of fire and shadow. They were creatures born from an idle afternoon experiment when Elian had written a paragraph about wanting fresh breakfast ingredients, and the unwritten world—taking his words a bit too literally—had conjured three plump, golden-feathered hens out of a patch of wild daisies.They possessed no cultivation base, but they possessed an attitude of profound entitlement."They hate me," Elian announced, marching up to the porch where Li Xuan was oiling the wooden handle of his hoe. The boy held his left hand protectively, where a small peck mark reddened the skin. "I tried to feed them chopped cabbage, and the big one—the one I named 'The High Chancellor'—looked me dead in the eye and stole my pencil."Li Xuan set down the rag and the bottle of oil, hiding a smile behind his hand. "Well, to be fair, Elian, you did give the High Chancellor a rather po
The Weight of Dry Thatch
The afternoon sun beat down on the southern slope of the roof, radiating a dry, earthy heat that smelled of sun-baked grass and old dust. Li Xuan balanced on the wooden scaffolding he and Elian had built the day before, a bundle of dried reeds resting against his thigh.Down below, sitting on an upturned wooden crate, Elian acted as ground support, handing up the braided willow cords one by one and occasionally shouting advice he had read in one of his storybooks."Make sure the overlap is at least four inches!" Elian called out, shading his eyes against the glare. "Otherwise, the wind gets underneath and lifts the whole section!""Where did you read that, a manual for royal castle architects?" Li Xuan shouted back, though he adjusted the thatch layer according to the boy's instructions."Princess Elspeth’s Guide to Fortified Homesteads," Elian replied proudly, tapping the cover of a book he had left on the crate. "Chapter twelve: Of Molds and Monsoons.""Tell Princess Elspeth that he
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