The Supreme Immortal’s Return To Earth

The Laurent Heiress(III)

The Copper Kettle was near the edge of the downtown district—close enough to Ashford University that Isabella Laurent had probably been taking a break between classes, or meeting someone, or simply escaping campus for a few hours. Adrian walked in the opposite direction, back toward the quieter streets where the Vale house stood.

He was not thinking about Isabella. Not exactly. He was thinking about the way she had looked at him—the way she had studied him, the way she had catalogued everything about him. She had seen something. He was not sure what.

He was also thinking about what she had said.

There’s a man named Voss. He collects debts. He also collects information.

So Voss was not simply a criminal with a taste for property. He was a collector of a different kind. That changed the shape of the problem. A man who collected debts could be reasoned with, frightened, or broken. A man who collected information had other sources of power—and other people who depended on him.

Adrian did not like coincidences. He had lived long enough to know that they rarely existed.

But he could not act on a suspicion. Not yet. He needed more information.

He walked home.

Elena was in the kitchen when he arrived. She looked up, and her expression shifted—relief, concern, something else he could not name.

“You’re back,” she said.

“I told you I would be.”

“I know.” She turned back to the stove. “I made lunch. Nothing fancy. Sandwiches.”

Adrian sat down at the table. “Thank you.”

Elena set a plate in front of him. “Sophia’s in her room. She’s been there since school. She won’t talk to me.”

Adrian looked at the plate. It was a simple sandwich—bread, lettuce, some kind of meat he did not recognize. It was the kind of meal that came from a family that was trying to stretch its resources.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said.

Elena looked at him. There was something in her expression that he had not seen before. Not hope. Not worry. Something older.

“She’s angry,” Elena said. “Angry at everything. At your father, at me, at the world. She’s been angry for a long time. I think she just… found a new thing to be angry at.”

“At me.”

“At what you’ve become.”

Adrian said nothing.

“I don’t know what happened to you,” Elena said. “I don’t know who you are now. But I know you care about her. I know you want to protect her. That’s more than she had before.”

Adrian looked at his mother. This woman who had spent years holding her family together, one broken piece at a time. This woman who had never asked for anything in return.

“I’ll talk to her,” he said again.

Elena nodded. She did not look convinced. But she did not press.

Sophia’s door was closed.

Adrian knocked.

“Go away.”

“I need to talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk.”

“We’re going to talk anyway.”

There was a pause. Then the door opened. Sophia stood in the doorway, arms crossed, expression thunderous. She looked like her mother—the same dark hair, the same eyes. But where Elena’s expression was usually warm, Sophia’s was hard.

“What?” she said.

Adrian looked at her. He did not say anything for a moment. He simply looked, and allowed her to be seen.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

Sophia’s arms uncrossed slightly. Not much. But enough.

“For what?”

“For not telling you the truth.”

Sophia’s expression did not change. But something in her eyes shifted—a flicker of interest, perhaps, or suspicion. “What truth?”

“I’m not the same person I was before.”

“I know.”

“You don’t know why.”

“I know I don’t.” She stepped back from the door, letting him in. “So tell me.”

Adrian entered the room. It was small—a single bed, a desk, a bookshelf. Sophia had made it her own. Posters on the walls. Books stacked on the floor. A laptop open on the desk.

He sat in the desk chair. She sat on the edge of her bed.

“You’re not going to believe me,” he said.

“Try me.”

He looked at her. He did not know how much to tell her. He did not know how much she could handle. But he knew he could not lie to her—not anymore. She would see through it. She had already seen through him.

“I woke up in that hospital,” he said. “And I was different.”

“Different how?”

“Different in a way I still don’t understand.” He paused. “I know things I shouldn’t know. I can do things I shouldn’t be able to do. And I don’t know where it comes from.”

Sophia stared at him. “That’s not an answer.”

“It’s the only answer I have.”

She stood. She crossed to the window. She did not look at him. “You want me to believe that you’re some kind of… what? Superhero? Person with powers?”

“I want you to know that I’m not the brother you remembered. But I am still your brother. And I want to protect you. I want to protect all of you.”

Sophia was silent for a long time. She stood at the window with her back to him, and her shoulders rose and fell with slow, deliberate breaths—the kind of breathing people do when they are trying not to cry, or not to shout, or both.

Then she turned.

Her eyes were wet. She was angry—he could see it in the set of her jaw, the tension in her shoulders. But she was not angry at him.

She was angry at the world.

“You don’t get it,” she said. “You don’t get what it’s been like. Watching you lie there. Watching Mom and Dad fall apart. Watching everything we built get torn down, piece by piece, and not being able to do anything about it.”

“I know.”

“No, you don’t. You weren’t there. You were in a hospital bed, and then you were—whatever you are now. You weren’t there when Mom sold her wedding ring to pay the hospital bills. You weren’t there when Dad came home and sat in the dark because he couldn’t face us.”

Adrian said nothing.

“And now you’re back,” Sophia continued. “And you’re different. And you’re acting like everything’s going to be fine. Like you can just—fix it. Fix everything. Because you’re what? Some kind of miracle?”

“Not a miracle.”

“Then what?”

Adrian looked at her. He did not know how to answer. He did not know how to explain ten thousand years of cultivation to someone who had spent the last three years watching her family fall apart. He did not know how to explain the Origin Boundary, or the fracture, or the Presence that had sent him here.

But he knew one thing.

“I don’t know,” he said. “But I can fix it. I can protect you. I can make sure you never have to feel that way again.”

Sophia stared at him. “How?”

“By being what I am now.”

She shook her head. “That’s not enough.”

“It’s what I have.”

She looked at him. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. The silence stretched—awkward, heavy, the silence of two people who had once known each other and were now discovering that they did not. Sophia’s jaw worked, as though she were arguing with himself. Then, without a word, she crossed the room and sat down beside him on the edge of the bed.

She did not touch him. She did not look at him. She simply sat, her hands folded in her lap, staring at the floor.

“You’re still my brother,” she said quietly. “I don’t know what you are now. But you’re still my brother. Don’t forget that.”

“I won’t.”

Another pause. Then, slowly, she leaned against him. Just slightly. Just enough. Her shoulder pressed against his arm, and she let out a breath she had been holding for a very long time.

For a moment, Adrian felt something he had not felt in ten thousand years.

He felt like he belonged.

Across the city, in a room that was not part of any public building, Councilor Wei sat alone.

The room was old. Not old in the way that modern buildings were old—not fifty years, not a hundred. It was old in the way that stone was old. The walls were rough-hewn granite, carved with characters that had been worn smooth by centuries of fingertips. Shelves lined the walls, filled with scrolls bound in silk and jade slips that glowed faintly with preserved spiritual energy. A single window looked out over the city, but the glass was ancient—thick, slightly warped, so that the skyline of Ashford City appeared distorted, as though seen through water.

Wei did not look at the city. He looked at the report on his desk.

The report was short—two pages, typed on ordinary paper, with a photograph attached. The photograph showed a young man leaving a café. He was not looking at the camera. His expression was calm. His posture was relaxed.

The report described him as: unknown cultivator. No measurable spiritual signature. Demonstrated physical superiority over three ordinary humans. Notable: subject did not use supernatural abilities. Notable: subject did not appear to be exerting himself.

Wei read the report twice. Then he read it a third time.

He picked up a phone—an old phone, a landline, the cord coiling across the desk like a sleeping snake. He dialed a number he knew by heart.

“This is Councilor Wei,” he said. “I’ve received the report from Inspector Lin. The subject’s name is Adrian Vale. He’s nineteen years old. He’s a university student. And he’s something we’ve never seen before.”

There was a pause. Then:

“No. I don’t know what he is. But I think we need to find out.”

He set down the phone. Outside the warped glass, the city continued its ordinary business, unaware of the eyes that watched it from the old stone room.

Wei turned back to the report. He looked at the photograph for a long time.

Then he opened a drawer, removed a jade slip, and pressed it to his forehead—reading the ancient record stored within, searching for any mention of a cultivator who could not be measured.

He did not find one.