For seven days, he remained within its walls, neither wandering its markets nor indulging in idle rest. His father's gold ensured him a quiet courtyard inn, one that came with a private training ground enclosed by high stone walls and spirit-etched wooden posts scarred by countless past cultivators.
Morning mist had not yet dispersed.
"Thwack!"
Hanyuan's spear shot forward, straight as an arrow, its tip striking the center of a wooden target.
"Thwack!"
He withdrew and thrust again, feet shifting, waist twisting, Qi flowing in a precise, disciplined cycle.
Each thrust revealed something new.
A fraction of hesitation in his wrist. A breath taken half a moment too late. A faint imbalance in how his Qi gathered at the spearhead instead of flowing smoothly along the shaft.
He corrected them one by one.
That was what he loved most about the spear—not brute force, but clarity. The weapon demanded honesty. Any flaw, no matter how small, would be reflected immediately.
Sweat soaked his robes. His palms burned. Yet his eyes shone with quiet joy.
Again.
By the end of the week, his thrusts were sharper and cleaner. His Qi circulation during combat had grown smoother, his control tighter. Though his cultivation realm had not advanced, his foundation had grown heavier, more solid.
When the seventh day ended, Hanyuan made his decision.
It was time to return.
Zhang Hu would not be accompanying him. The captain remained behind to tend to the wounded, settle compensation for the fallen, and recruit new blood to replace those lost in the forest.
Instead, Hanyuan joined another merchant caravan—smaller, quieter, protected by a different group of mercenaries.
The route they chose was not the shortest.
They made a wide detour around the nightmare forest, skirting mountain paths and lesser trade roads. The Main Road, they were told, had become a battlefield. Blood-Iron Bandits clashed daily with joint forces from the Bai and Ma Clans, and cultivators were dying by the dozen.
No merchant with sense would go anywhere near it.
The journey took four days.
Then, on the morning of the fifth, the land opened up.
Hanyuan lifted his gaze—and froze.
Massive stone walls rose in the distance, bathed in morning light. Spirit-veins embedded in their foundations shimmered faintly, a familiar, comforting glow.
Spirit Spring City.
His heart pounded.
Before the caravan fully halted, Hanyuan had already dismounted, his steps quickening into a run. The city gates loomed above him, guards in armor standing watch.
One of them squinted, then stiffened. "Bai Hanyuan?"
Hanyuan nodded, barely containing his excitement.
The guards immediately straightened and waved him through.
The moment he crossed the threshold, all the tension he had been carrying finally loosened.
He did not stop.
Through streets he had walked a thousand times, past familiar shops and training halls, he ran—until the Bai Clan estate stood before him.
Servants barely had time to announce his arrival.
The doors flew open.
His mother stood inside.
Lin Ruo's face was pale, her hands clenched tightly at her sides. The moment her eyes landed on Hanyuan, they reddened, and she hurried forward, pulling him into her arms as if afraid he might vanish.
"You're thinner," she whispered, fingers trembling as she touched his shoulders. "And you smell like travel…"
"I'm fine, Mother," Hanyuan said softly. "Truly."
Before she could say more, a powerful presence surged from deeper within the hall.
"HA—!"
Bai Feng rose from his seat in a single motion. In the next instant, he was in front of Hanyuan, gripping his shoulders with a strength that bordered on painful.
"You're back!" Bai Feng laughed, then pulled him into a crushing embrace. "Tell me—how was it? The caravan, the beasts, the road!"
He spent the first few hours back recounting his journey to his parents. While Lin Ruo turned pale at the mention of the Macaque King, Bai Feng listened with a grim, prideful silence. Finally, the exhaustion of the road caught up to him. Hanyuan slipped into his room and collapsed onto his bed, the soft silk sheets feeling like a miracle compared to the damp, hard earth of the Wandering Beast Forest.
Ah, how comfortable, he thought, falling into a dreamless sleep before the sun had even fully set.
The next morning, Hanyuan woke with a single goal: to show Elder Wei the progress of his Glacial Spear Art. However, halfway to the Elder's residence, he noticed the atmosphere of the clan was tense. Groups of disciples were whispering in hushed tones, and the usual training drills were being overseen by junior instructors.
"Did you hear?" a disciple whispered. "Elder Wei and the Ma Clan's Head of Enforcers took a squad of experts to the Northern Hills. They've finally pinned down the Blood-Iron Bandits."
Hanyuan halted. Elder Wei was gone. A pang of worry hit him, but he knew the Elder was a Mortal Core master; few bandits could truly threaten him.
He turned to head back to his courtyard when a sharp, mocking voice sliced through the morning air.
"Oh, look who decided to crawl out of his hole. The little trash is finally back from 'hiding'?"
Hanyuan didn't need to look. Xueling stood a few paces away, surrounded by a small clique of fawning branch-family disciples. She looked radiant, her skin glowing with the refined essence of the Spirit Cleansing Pool.
Hanyuan's obsidian eyes swept over her. His brow twitched. She had reached the Peak of the 3rd Layer of Qi Refining. The gap in their cultivation levels had actually widened while he was away.
"You've been gone so long, I thought you'd joined a traveling circus," she sneered, her followers giggling behind her. "Did the big, scary monsters in the forest make you wet your bed?"
Hanyuan let out a long, weary sigh.
"If you don't have anything important to say," Hanyuan said, his voice cold and flat, "then fuck off."
The silence that followed was absolute. Xueling's face turned from a smug porcelain white to a blotchy, furious crimson. Her followers gasped, some backing away. No one in the Bai Clan spoke to her like that—not after her 7-star Talent reveal and her jump in rank.
"What... what did you just say to me?" she hissed, veins throbbing at her temple.
"I'm busy," Hanyuan replied, stepping around her.
"You coward! If you think you're a man, come and challenge me right here! Right now!" Xueling shrieked, her Qi beginning to flare, dropping the temperature around her.
Hanyuan stopped and looked back at her. His gaze was pitying, which infuriated her even more. He shook his head slowly. "There is no meaning to it now."
Without waiting for her retort, he turned and walked away, leaving her screaming insults into the wind.
Back in his private courtyard, Hanyuan locked the gate. His blood was boiling, but not from Xueling's words. It was from the realization that his cultivation was lagging behind. He sat on the stone porch and pulled the small jade bottle from his chest pocket. Inside, a thick, crimson-black liquid pulsed with a faint, feral light.
The Macaque King's Heart-Blood.
He hesitated, recalling his father's warning from the night before: "Taking the heart-blood of a Spirit Beast can bring immense benefits, Hanyuan, but the pain is not to be taken lightly. Do not swallow it raw. Dilute it in a wooden barrel filled with boiling water and cooling herbs, or it might burn your meridians to ash."
Hanyuan shouted for a servant to bring a large cedar tub, several bundles of 'Iron-Root Herb,' and gallons of boiling water.
Within the hour, the tub was steaming, the water turned a murky green by the herbs. Hanyuan stripped to his waist, his silver scar on his chest standing out against his pale skin. He uncorked the jade bottle. The scent of raw power and ancient forest filled his nostrils.
I need to catch up, he thought fiercely.
He tipped the bottle, pouring the viscous blood into the tub. The water hissed and instantly turned the color of a dark sunset. Without a second's hesitation, Hanyuan stepped into the scalding, pulsing liquid and sat down.
His eyes snapped wide.
It didn't feel like hot water. It felt like ten thousand red-hot needles were being driven into every pore of his body simultaneously. The feral Qi of the Macaque King was fighting to enter his flesh, and it wasn't a gentle process. It was a violent invasion.
Hanyuan bit his lip so hard it bled, his hands gripping the edges of the cedar tub until the wood began to crack.
"Let's see..." Hanyuan growled through gritted teeth.