The initial breaking and specialization of the four heroines was complete. They were now tools, their wills subsumed into the machinery of the Dynasty. But for the Ancestor, a sharpened blade was useless if not wielded with purpose. The next phase of their training was integration and application, turning them from mere instruments into seamless extensions of his own will.
Bai Wei: The Dance of the Crippling Blade
Bai Wei's training under Chu Ling entered its practical phase. She was no longer practicing on bound prisoners in the Crucible. She was deployed.
Her first official assignment was to a mining outpost where worker discontent was simmering into organized slowdowns. She did not go with guards or announcements. She arrived alone at dusk.
That night, she moved through the worker barracks like a ghost. There was no battle, no clash of steel. Only the soft, precise shink of her blade, a sigh, and a whimper.
In the morning, the shift foreman found his workforce terrified and docile. Three ringleaders were not dead. One, a powerful man known for his stirring speeches, found his tongue literally pinned to the roof of his mouth with a needle-like qi construct that dissolved after twelve hours, leaving him mute and terrified. Another, a swift runner who carried messages between dissidents, had the tendons behind his knees precisely severed. The third, a charismatic organizer, awoke to find his face perfectly, horribly paralyzed into a mask of idiot slackness, unable to form any expression but a vacant drool.
There was no evidence. No culprit. Only the clear, undeniable message: defiance would be met with the loss of your most valued asset. Bai Wei had not pacified a mine; she had surgically installed despair. She returned to the Citadel without a word, her expression as cold and polished as her sword. Chu Ling greeted her not with praise, but with a nod of professional respect.
Lin Xian'er: The Designer of Maladies
Wang Xia took Lin Xian'er's inverted healing arts and gave them a population-scale application. The Poison Sovereign designed the weapon; the Hospitaller of Harrow would now mass-produce it.
A region known for its stubborn independence and hardy populace was due for a "health outreach" from the Dynasty. Lin Xian'er was tasked with designing the program.
She created a "Vitamin Tonic" to be distributed to all children. The tonic did everything it promised: it strengthened bones, sharpened minds, and boosted immune systems. But woven into the formula was a subtle alchemical trigger keyed to a specific, rare frequency of qi—the frequency emitted by the Imperial communication arrays.
If the region ever rebelled, a single, silent command broadcast from the Citadel would activate the trigger. The children's boosted immune systems would turn hyper-aggressive, causing them to attack their own bodies in a devastating, autoimmune collapse. The parents' choice would be simple: surrender or watch their strongest, healthiest children wither and die.
Lin Xian'er presented the formula to the Ancestor, her eyes downcast. She explained the mechanics not with pride, but with the clinical detachment of a physician describing a treatment. She had designed a perfect, undetectable sword of Damocles to hang over an entire population. The Ancestor approved it without comment. The weaponization of compassion was complete.
Luo Ying: The Unblinking Gaze
Luo Ying's spatial surveillance network, the "Panopticon," was made operational. Her prison was a chamber lined with hundreds of shimmering spatial windows, each showing a different part of the Citadel and key locations beyond.
Her training now was endurance and analysis. She was to watch, for eighteen hours a day, cataloging everything. A servant pocketing a spare spirit stone. Two concubines sharing a glance of mutual resentment. A guard nodding off at his post.
The constant flow of intimate, trivial secrets was a form of torture in itself, eroding her sense of self and morality. She began to see people not as people, but as collections of vulnerabilities and violations.
Her first major success was detecting a plot before it began. She noticed a junior clerk in the Prime Minister's office, a nephew of one of the captured rebels, practicing his signature with a nervous intensity. Cross-referencing his spatial location with archive logs, she discovered he was practicing to forge a requisition order for a transport to the border.
She did not sound an alarm. She simply sent a spatial whisper directly to Chu Ling's ear. The would-be forger vanished that night, and his entire family's tribute quota was doubled. Luo Ying felt no satisfaction, only a cold, empty efficiency. She had prevented an escape by condemning a family to poverty. The math of control was all that mattered.
Elder Sister Lian: The Atmosphere of Dread
Lian's illusions moved from testing to constant deployment. Her "Reality Hushes" became a permanent layer over the Citadel.
The Ancestor had her focus on two new arrays:
1. The "Cocoon of Contentment" over Niu's stable and the nurseries, ensuring absolute placidity and lack of curiosity in the Dynasty's most vital assets.
2. The "Mist of Paranoia" over the barracks of the Blackscale Guards and the lower-level bureaucrats. This array did not cause fear of an external enemy, but of each other. It fostered suspicion, making trust impossible and encouraging them to report on one another for the most minor infractions, creating a self-policing population.
Lian's once-serene lunar energy was now a tool for mass psychological manipulation. She sat in a meditation chamber, her face pale and strained, channeling her power not to connect to the heavens, but to weave a blanket of silent despair over the very earth. Her art, once a path to enlightenment, was now the engine of a perfect prison.
The Ancestor reviewed the reports from the System. The four Secondary Concubines were no longer just trained; they were fully operational, their twisted talents now deeply integrated into the daily functioning of his eternal state.
[Bai Wei: Field effectiveness: 100%. Deterrence value: Extreme.]
[Lin Xian'er: 'Tonic' deployed in target region. Compliance now guaranteed without garrison forces.] [Luo Ying: Panopticon operational. Internal security threat detection rate: 99.8%.]
[Lian: Area-effect Psy-Ops stability: 95%. Measurable increase in subordinate-on-subordinate reporting.]
He looked out over his Citadel, feeling the perfect, terrified harmony they helped maintain. They were his left and right hands, his eyes and ears, the very atmosphere of his rule. The heroines were gone. Only the Instruments remained. And the symphony of control played on, perfectly in tune.