The first rays of dawn were a trespass, slicing through the high, arched window of Lu Ren's chamber, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the silent air. I stood, fully dressed, in the center of the room, a ghost haunting the ruins of my own deception. The woman on the bed, my mother's murderer, was a beautiful, broken thing, her mind a shattered mosaic of fear and confusion. I had not laid a hand on her, yet I had violated her more completely than she had ever violated me. The hatred in my gut was a cold, satisfying weight. The game had changed.
I slipped out of her chambers before she stirred. My first stop was not my own courtyard, but the dusty, forgotten archives. I needed to verify, to burn the words into my soul again. I opened her diary. The ink was cold, the words colder.
'…ensured the midwife was clumsy. A simple, untraceable poison… I feel no guilt. I feel nothing.'
I closed the book, the leather cool against my skin. There was no rage now, no shock. Only a profound, crystalline certainty. This woman's continued existence was an error in the fabric of the world, a bug in the system. And I was the programmer who would write the patch to delete her.
My mind, free from the fog of lust, was a whirring engine of pure, cold logic. The path forward was clear. I needed power—real power, not just the borrowed authority of my intellect. And I needed to remove the slave seal, the ultimate symbol of my vulnerability. Both paths led to one place: Blackwood City, and the alchemist known as Old Man He.
My pretext for the journey was the bank. I summoned my father, Lu Tao, and my new pawn, my half-brother Lu Peng, to a morning meeting. I presented them with the fully-formed charter for the Golden River Bank, a document so detailed, so filled with revolutionary concepts, that their simple, martial minds could barely comprehend it.
"The foundation is laid," I stated, my tone that of a master briefing his apprentices. "Lu Chen is managing the construction of the headquarters. Lu Peng, your task is to use your connections to secure the provincial charter. Father, your role is to lend the project the full, public authority of the Clan Patriarch. But to create our bank notes, to ensure they are impossible to counterfeit, I require special materials. Runic ink from a master calligrapher, and paper woven with threads of spirit-silk. These can only be procured in Blackwood City. I will also use the opportunity to establish correspondent relationships with the merchant guilds there. I leave in the morning. I will travel alone to maintain a low profile."
They were so overwhelmed by the sheer scope and velocity of my plans that they could only nod in agreement. I was no longer the third son; I was the engine of their clan's salvation, and they were now cogs in my machine.
My final meeting was with Lu Ren. She was waiting in her courtyard, her face pale, her usual mask of arrogant composure replaced by a haunted, uncertain look. She had been broken, and she didn't yet know how to put the pieces back together.
"You are leaving," she whispered, her voice a shadow of its former power.
"I am," I confirmed, my expression a perfect blend of a loyal servant's regret and a competent subordinate's efficiency. "The bank requires it. It is for the good of the clan. For your good, Mistress."
I was giving her orders under the guise of serving her. The subtle shift in our dynamic was a new, exquisite form of torment for her, and a cold, satisfying pleasure for me.
"And what of… us?" she asked, the question a raw nerve of vulnerability.
"I will think of my mistress every moment I am away," I said, my voice a silken lie. "I will count the hours until I can return to my duties at your feet."
I bowed, a gesture of perfect, contemptuous submission, and walked away, leaving her standing alone in her cold, beautiful prison.
The journey to Blackwood City was a two-week affair by carriage. I traveled light, with only a non-cultivator driver and a single, unassuming carriage. The solitude was a gift, a mobile laboratory for the advancement of my own power.
Each day, I dedicated myself to my SoulForge OS. The breakthrough to the Qi Foundation Realm had been a violent, explosive success, but now came the hard work of optimization and refinement. My hatred for Lu Ren was the fuel, a clean, high-octane energy source. But my mind was the engine.
I spent hours in a deep meditative state, not just absorbing Qi, but actively programming my own cultivation. I refined my Resonant Breathing technique, learning to isolate not just Earth-elemental Qi, but specific "flavors" of it—the dense, stable Qi from deep within the earth, the vibrant, life-giving Qi from the forests. I was becoming a connoisseur of energy.
I developed new sub-routines. A Thermal Regulation Protocol allowed me to control my body temperature, making me immune to the biting cold of the nights and the searing heat of the days. A Neural Enhancement Algorithm used a trickle of refined Qi to sharpen my senses, heightening my sight, my hearing, my sense of smell, to a level far beyond that of a normal Foundation Realm cultivator. I was not just getting stronger; I was evolving, upgrading my own biological hardware.
By the time the twisted, smog-shrouded spires of Blackwood City appeared on the horizon, I was a different man. My cultivation had stabilized at the Third Stage of the Qi Foundation Realm—a speed of advancement that was simply unheard of. But my true strength was not in the quantity of my Qi, but in the quality of my control. My body was no longer a simple vessel; it was a finely tuned, high-performance machine, and my mind was in the driver's seat.
Blackwood City was a sprawling, gothic metropolis, a city of perpetual twilight under a permanent haze of alchemical smoke. The air tasted of sulfur, strange herbs, and the ozone crackle of powerful arrays. Twisted towers of black stone clawed at the sky, connected by high, arching bridges. It was a city built on knowledge, secrets, and a profound disregard for conventional morality. It was my kind of town.
My first stop was not a fancy inn, but a place called the Whispering Wyrm, a disreputable tea house that doubled as the city's premier information brokerage. The proprietor was a woman known only as Lady Silkworm, a grotesquely fat woman who sat behind a reinforced counter, her small, intelligent eyes missing nothing.
I bought a pot of her finest, most expensive tea and asked a simple question. "I am a scholar, researching the works of the great master craftsman, He. I wish to learn more about his life and his unique theories on alchemy."
Lady Silkworm's eyes glittered. "Old Man He? A dangerous subject, little master. His creations are as famous for their perfection as they are for their cruelty. To speak his name is to invite trouble."
"Knowledge is never without risk," I said, sliding a heavy bag of gold across the counter.
The gold disappeared into the folds of her robe with the speed of a striking snake. "He is a paranoid recluse," she began, her voice a low, greasy whisper. "He lives in the highest spire of the Artificer's Quarter, protected by arrays that could turn a Golden Core master to dust. He takes no students. He sees no clients. He has not left his tower in fifty years."
"Then how does he live?" I asked.
"He has one vice," she said with a fat, knowing smile. "He is a connoisseur of rare, mutated spirit-beast components. The more bizarre, the more unstable, the better. He pays exorbitant prices for things no other alchemist would dare to touch. He has a single, trusted agent who procures these items for him. A man named 'Rat-Tail' Qiang. Find the rat, and you might find a path to the dragon's lair."
The Corpse-Flower Bazaar was the city's festering underbelly, a black market where one could buy anything from a stolen artifact to a fresh corpse, no questions asked. The air was thick with the smell of blood, strange chemicals, and desperation. It was here I went hunting for bait.
My newly enhanced senses were a powerful tool. I could smell the faint aura of decay from a poorly preserved monster part, see the subtle flicker of a fraudulent runic inscription. I bypassed the common stalls, my eyes searching for something truly unique, truly unstable.
I found it in a dusty corner, at the stall of a one-eyed old woman. It was a heart. The heart of a Shadow-Flame Panther, a Grade 5 Spirit Beast. But this one was mutated. It was preserved in a crystal jar, and it was still, impossibly, beating. A slow, rhythmic pulse. And with every beat, a wisp of cold, black fire would lick against the inside of the glass, leaving a trace of frost behind. It was a paradox, a thing of shadow and flame that radiated an aura of absolute cold. It was perfect. It was also ruinously expensive. I bought it without haggling, the vast wealth from the Lu Clan's hidden treasury now my personal expense account.
I found Rat-Tail Qiang's stall easily enough. It was a cluttered, stinking mess of cages and jars. The man himself was a wiry, nervous creature with shifty eyes and a long, thin mustache.
I placed the lead-lined box containing the heart on his counter. "I hear you are a man who can get unique items into the hands of discerning collectors," I said.
He eyed me suspiciously. "Depends on the item. And the commission."
I opened the box. The panther heart gave a slow, cold pulse. The black flame licked the air. Rat-Tail's shifty eyes widened, and a raw, naked greed transformed his face.
"Shadow-Flame heart… with a Nether-Ice mutation…" he breathed, his voice filled with awe. "By the gods… He will pay a king's ransom for this. A king's ransom!"
"Indeed," I said smoothly. "But I am not interested in selling. I am interested in a consultation. My own master is a theorist working on similar principles of elemental paradox. He wishes to consult with the great Master He. This heart is not for sale; it is a key. A gift to open a door that has been closed for fifty years. Can you deliver it? And can you deliver a message with it?"
The game was set. I was not a seller; I was a peer. I was not asking for a favor; I was offering an intellectual tribute. Rat-Tail, seeing the potential for an even greater long-term profit in becoming the go-between for two mythical masters, agreed instantly.
The message I gave him was simple. It was a single line of arcane text, a theoretical equation I had concocted on the journey here, based on my own experiments with Qi refinement.
[ (Qi Input x Resonant Frequency) / (Dantian Core Temperature + Meridian Resistance) = Refinement Efficiency² ]
It was pure, unadulterated scientific jargon, dressed up in the language of cultivation. To any other alchemist, it would be meaningless gibberish. But to a paranoid, obsessed genius like Old Man He, a man who had spent his life trying to find a logical system in the chaos of mutation… I was betting it would be the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Two days later, Rat-Tail returned to my inn, his face pale, his hands trembling. "He… he has agreed to see you," he stammered. "No one has been granted an audience in fifty years! What in the hells was in that message?"
"The future," I said with a smile.
I walked to the Artificer's Quarter alone. The tower of Old Man He was a twisted, gothic spire of black stone, humming with a palpable, deadly power that made the air around it feel thick and heavy. The arrays protecting it were real, a shimmering web of lethal energy that was visible even to my naked eye.
I did not have to shout this time. As I approached, a low, grinding sound echoed from the tower. The ancient, rune-scribed gates, sealed for half a century, began to swing inwards, revealing a passage of absolute darkness.
A voice, old and dry as dust, raspy from disuse, drifted out from the blackness.
"The author of the equation may enter. You claim to have balanced the paradox. I find your theory… intriguing. But theories are just ink on paper."
The voice paused, and I could feel an ancient, powerful, and deeply unstable consciousness scanning me, dissecting me layer by layer.
"Show me your proof. Show me the machine that can contain the fire and the ice. And pray for your soul that you are not a liar. I have very little patience for liars."
I stepped out of the hazy light of Blackwood City and into the absolute darkness of the dragon's lair. The hunt for my freedom had truly begun.