The night air in the modest neighborhood was cool and carried the distant, tinny melody of a street vendor's radio. Su Yang walked with a measured pace, the events of the evening—the warm, awkward dinner, the old man's drunken plea, Lihua's volcanic embarrassment—replaying in his mind. It was a curious tapestry of mortal concerns, so trivial in the face of cosmic cultivation, yet somehow… grounding. A faint, almost imperceptible sigh escaped his lips. The weight of his new managerial duties, the expectations, the sheer *noise* of human interaction was a different kind of tribulation, one his cultivation hadn't prepared him for.
His spiritual senses, usually attuned to the flow of Qi, were dialed down, turned inward. Thus, the aggressive snarl of a high-performance engine and the screech of tires didn't register as a threat until they were right upon him.
A low-slung, blood-red Ferrari Spider swerved, cutting him off and blocking the narrow sidewalk. The doors swung open like the wings of a predatory insect.
Out stepped Lin Mei, her face a mask of petulant boredom that quickly sharpened into malicious recognition. Behind the wheel was Jin Feng, his usual smirk in place, though it didn't quite reach his eyes, which held a new, permanent shadow of anxiety.
"Well, well. Look what the cat dragged out," Lin Mei sneered, her eyes raking over Su Yang's simple hemp robes with disdain. "Still playing the impoverished monk, I see. Couldn't even afford a proper suit with your big promotion? Or did you spend it all on rent for that hovel you call home?"
Jin Feng sauntered around the car, leaning against the gleaming hood. The sight of Su Yang, calm and unchanged, was a needle of frustration pricking at him. His family was still in an uproar over the potential scandal of Su Yang's reappearance, and here the source of his troubles was, walking around as if he owned the world.
"Maybe he's into the whole 'ascetic' look now," Jin Feng drawled, his voice laced with false amusement. "Trying to meditate his way out of poverty. Tell me, Su Yang, do the rats in your apartment join you for your chanting sessions?"
They were looking for a reaction. They needed to vent the simmering distress of their own lives—the pressure from Jin Feng's family, the hollow perfection of their relationship—onto the one person they believed was beneath them. They expected him to flinch, to get angry, to show the same broken desperation he had in the café.
The Su Yang of a month ago might have. That Su Yang's heart would have been pounding with humiliation and rage.
But the man who stood before them now merely regarded them with a gaze so deep and calm it was unnerving. He saw not two tormentors, but two forces of karma. Their previous humiliation had been the catalyst that shattered his old life and sent him stumbling onto the path of the Primordial Emperor. In a twisted way, he owed them a debt. Without their cruelty, he might still be a miserable intern, blind to the true nature of the world.
He had no desire for petty revenge. Their ridicule was like the chirping of sparrows to a dragon; it held no meaning.
"I have no business with you," Su Yang said, his voice even, devoid of emotion. "Move your vehicle."
His utter indifference was more infuriating than any insult. It stripped them of their power.
"Who do you think you're talking to, you trash?" Jin Feng pushed off the car, stepping closer, his personal space invading Su Yang's. "You think because you got a pity promotion you can look down on us? You're still nothing. You'll always be nothing. An orphan with no name, no future."
Lin Mei joined in, her voice shrill. "He's right! You should be on your knees thanking us for giving you a moment of our attention! We are your betters in every way!"
Su Yang didn't move a muscle. He simply looked at Jin Feng, his eyes seeming to see straight through the expensive clothes, the arrogant posture, the carefully constructed facade of virility and power.
What he saw was a void. A fundamental lack. A critical dysfunction that was the source of a deep, hidden shame.
The Primordial Emperor's inheritance contained vast knowledge of the human body, of energy flows and meridians governing all aspects of life, including procreation. To Su Yang's spiritual perception, the specific meridian cluster in Jin Feng's lower dantian—the one that governed masculine potency—was not just weak or blocked. It was atrophied, lifeless, a dead channel. It had likely been that way since birth.
The arrogance, the flashy cars, the need to possess a beautiful woman like a trophy… it was all a magnificent overcompensation for a profound and secret inadequacy.
Su Yang had intended to walk away. But they persisted. They blocked his path, hurling their petty insults, trying to provoke a reaction from a being who had transcended such things.
A flicker of something—not anger, but perhaps divine pity laced with a need to end this farce—crossed Su Yang's features.
He took a half-step forward, not aggressively, but with an air of finality. His voice, when he spoke, was not loud, but it carried a weight that silenced their taunts instantly.
"Jin Feng," Su Yang said, his tone clinical, dissecting. "Your posturing is as tiresome as it is transparent. You surround yourself with symbols of a power you do not possess. You flaunt a woman you cannot truly claim."
He paused, letting the words hang in the air. Jin Feng's smirk had vanished, replaced by a confused frown. Lin Mei looked equally bewildered.
Su Yang's gaze was unwavering, pinning Jin Feng where he stood. "You mock my poverty, my home. But you… you are the truly impoverished one. All the wealth in your family cannot purchase what you lack. All the posturing cannot hide the emptiness."
He leaned forward, just slightly, and delivered the verdict with the calm certainty of a doctor delivering a terminal diagnosis.
"The source of your arrogance, and your shame, is a biological fact. The meridian is dead. You have never been, and will never be, a man. You are, and always will be, impotent."
The word landed in the silent street with the force of a physical blow.
Jin Feng's face went from confused, to stunned, to a horrifying, bloodless white. His jaw went slack. It was as if Su Yang had reached into his chest and ripped out his deepest, most desperately hidden secret. How? *How could he possibly know?* It was a truth known only to him, his personal physician, and the few experimental specialists his family had paid for in secret, all of whom had failed.
Lin Mei stared at Jin Feng, her own face a mirror of shock and dawning, horrifying comprehension. The pieces began to click into place—his avoidances, his excuses, the strange, clinical nature of their intimacy. Her expression shifted from malice to a kind of sickened revelation.
Jin Feng made a sound, a choked, guttural noise that was neither a word nor a scream. He stumbled back against the Ferrari as if Su Yang's words had physically shoved him. All arrogance, all pretence, was stripped away, leaving only raw, naked humiliation and a terror so profound it shook him to his core.
Su Yang looked from Jin Feng's shattered form to Lin Mei's pale, stunned face. There was no triumph in his eyes. Only a faint, distant sadness for the pointlessness of it all.
Without another word, he stepped around the paralyzed couple and their ludicrously expensive car. He continued his walk down the sidewalk, leaving behind a silence more absolute and devastating than any outburst of violence could have been.
The night swallowed him, leaving the young master and his trophy girlfriend frozen in the starlight, their world of shallow privilege utterly annihilated by five quietly spoken words. The hum of the Ferrari's engine was the only sound, a meaningless purr next to the deafening truth that now lay broken between them.