The recruitment plaza of Blue Stone City was awash in the midday sun, yet the primary current of attention had completely drifted away from the polished pavilions of the established sects.
Crowds pressed in a wide circle around a rickety three-legged stool, a salvaged timber table, and a youth in unblemished white silk who peered out through dark, tinted spectacles. Above his makeshift stall, suspended between two crooked bamboo poles, hung a faded strip of canvas bearing crooked, hand-inked characters:
Sanatan Flame Sect – A New Life Begins.
Directly opposite the ragged display, the leaders of three local martial houses stood shoulder to shoulder, their lips twisted into wolfish grins.
"Look at this charlatan," sneered Fei Yun, master of the Iron Eagle Sect, crossing his arms over his chest. "Setting up a booth with roadside scrap and calling himself a sovereign patriarch? Ridiculous."
Guo Tie of the Tiger Claw Sect spat a glob of phlegm into the dirt. "Sanatan Flame? Never heard of such a dog-kennel. If your treasury is too barren to afford a proper tent, perhaps you should be sweeping our courtyards instead."
Xu Wansheng, representing the Mist Cloud Sect, took half a step forward, his silk fan snapping shut with an airy click. "A beggar daring to recruit the realm's youth? What curriculum do you offer? A chipped bowl and lessons on street corners?"
Laughter rippled through the surrounding cultivators, the onlookers trading amused whispers at the expense of the lone youth.
Shaurya didn't flinch. He leaned back against the creaking splinters of his chair, hooked an index finger over the bridge of his dark glasses, and slid them down just enough to expose amused, half-lidded eyes.
"A begging bowl has its charms," Shaurya remarked, his voice cutting through the snickers with lazy ease. "At least an empty bowl is honest. That's still ten times better than cramming poisoned, impurity-riddled pills down your disciples' throats and drilling them in trash-tier katas like you three clowns do, right?"
The laughter choked in dozens of throats.
Xu Wansheng's face flushed an ugly shade of plum, his finger stabbing toward Shaurya's nose. "You impudent—!"
The rest of the retort was crushed under a suffocating weight.
A wave of dense, scorching pressure rolled over the cobblestones like an invisible tidal wave. The ambient temperature spiked in an instant, the loose dust on the stones swirling into hot, dry eddies. Spectators fell back in a scramble, parting down the center as heavy, deliberate footsteps rang against the rock.
A broad-shouldered elder clad in the vermilion robes of the Jade Fire Sect marched into the clearing. In his left hand, he hauled a battered, limping youth by the scruff of his collar, trailing the boy across the ground like a sack of spoiled grain.
Elder Huo Ming. The apex cultivator currently present in the city district.
He tossed the whimpering disciple onto the flagstones with an indifferent flick of his wrist. "Point him out."
The youth—the very same clan heir whose core channels Shaurya had cleanly dismantled earlier that morning—raised a trembling, bandaged hand toward the rickety timber table. "Elder! Him! It's the bastard in the white robes! He mocked our lineage... and shattered my dantian!"
A hush swept through the plaza. Several cultivators took three instinctive paces back, muttering under their breath.
"He touched a disciple of the Jade Fire Sect?" "The boy is already dead and doesn't know it..."
Sensing an opportunity to curry favor, Xu Wansheng stepped forward, offering a low, deferential bow to the elder. "Elder Huo Ming! This roadside lunatic has insulted the dignity of all orthodox sects here. If you permit it, the Mist Cloud Sect will gladly assist in breaking his—"
Huo Ming turned his head by a fraction of an inch. His irises burned with the crimson intensity of fresh coals.
"Are you attempting to direct my hand?" the elder rasped.
Xu Wansheng turned stark white, swallowing his remaining words as he scrambled backward into his retinue. "N-No offense intended, Elder!"
Huo Ming's gaze shifted to the young man lounging behind the peeling banner. His lip curled in disgust. "A stray beggar daring to style himself a Sect Leader? And what is this nonsensical banner? Sanatan Flame? In my full century upon this earth, I have never encountered a name so absurd."
Shaurya blinked, tilted his head toward his two young disciples cowering behind the table, and stage-whispered without lowering his volume in the slightest: "Wait... a hundred years? Old monsters actually walk around that long? No wonder his skin looks like a sun-dried peach."
The entire square froze. Nobody breathed.
Veins corded along Huo Ming's forehead, his jaw muscles clenching until teeth ground together with a dry, ceramic screech.
"You dare wag your tongue?" The elder's spiritual pressure flared, a corona of red heat shimmering above his shoulders like an open furnace. "You crippled my sect's bloodline, spat on our prestige, and stand there babbling insults? I will not grant you an easy death. I will strip the hide from your bones, shatter the limbs of every brat who signs your roster, and scour your pathetic lineage from the annals of the realm!"
Shaurya tapped his chin, looking genuinely intrigued. "To scour my sect from the annals of history, wouldn't I need an actual mountain first?"
A translucent golden pane flickered into existence before his pupils.
[Then acquire one, Host.]
[Furthermore: survival is recommended.]
Shaurya's left eyelid gave a faint twitch. Your emotional support remains peerless.
Huo Ming's patience snapped.
With a guttural roar, fiery crimson Qi erupted from the elder's pores, the sheer thermal displacement blasting loose stones outward and forcing the vanguard of the crowd to shield their eyes.
"Die!"
The elder launched forward.
The flagstones beneath his boots caved inward, spiderweb fissures racing across the square as he crossed twenty paces in the space of a heartbeat. His right fist, wrapped in a mantle of raging vermilion fire, bore down directly on Shaurya's skull.
The playful smirk vanished from Shaurya's lips.
Every nerve in his spine ignited. Shifting his hips back into the splinters of the chair, he brought his forearms up into an interlocking guard before his temple.
BOOM!
The concussive detonation sounded like an iron battering ram meeting a bronze gate.
The kinetic wave pulverized the wooden desk into matchwood, flinging banners and parchment into the air. Shaurya's boots hit the ground as he was blasted backward, the friction of his soles carving two smoking furrows through the solid stone before he managed to drop his center of gravity, skidding to a halt thirty paces away near the edge of the fountain.
The clearing fell into an absolute, ringing silence.
Shaurya lowered his forearms, the sleeves of his white robe scorched to cinders at the cuffs. A violent tremor ran from his wrists through his clavicle, his capillaries burning from the sheer heat of the collision. Copper welled beneath his tongue; he tilted his head and spat a thick glob of crimson onto the cobblestones.
Muffled shouts erupted from the spectators.
"He stopped it?" "With bare arms against Elder Huo Ming's Flame Fist?!"
Shaurya rolled his shoulders, feeling the dull ache in his joints, and focused his intent on the floating system interface.
System.
[Target Appraisal]
[Entity: Huo Ming]
[Cultivation: Qi Initiate Realm, Level 7]
[Advisory: Target exceeds Host by four minor boundaries.]
Shaurya looked at the golden text, then at the smoking figure of the elder across the plaza, and back again. The corner of his mouth curved upward. Instead of the cold dread typical of a cornered rogue, a bright, reckless spark ignited in his eyes.
"Four levels above?" He wiped the red streak from his chin with the back of his thumb, cracking his neck to the left and right. "Spicy."
Across the plaza, Huo Ming didn't wait for his opponent to catch his breath.
The elder surged forward like a runaway furnace, his palms churning out rapid waves of condensed flame. Every strike cracked against the air like thunder, missed blows gouging blackened, bubbling trenches into the masonry.
A fiery palm struck downward from an angle; Shaurya ducked beneath the arc, the blast striking the fountain behind him and turning the cold water into a geyser of white steam.
BOOM!
Stone shards sprayed like shrapnel. Shaurya weaved through the smoke, but Huo Ming followed through with an relentless barrage—swiping, thrusting, and driving three consecutive palm strikes that sheared through the air in howling arcs.
"Scurrying vermin!" Huo Ming bellowed, his irises bloodshot. "Face your judgment!"
The elder swung his arms wide, releasing a fan of a dozen blazing palm prints that blanketed the path ahead in an unbroken wall of flame. The surrounding stalls caught fire instantly, canvas turning to floating ash as the radiant heat drove the cultivators against the perimeter walls.
Shaurya dropped his hips, sliding along the slick flagstones beneath the cresting wave of fire. The heat sheared over him so close that several dark strands of hair above his ear charred and curled with a sharp hiss.
Coming to a halt in a low crouch, Shaurya reached up and pinched the singed ends between two fingers. He glanced at the brittle black ash, then lifted his eyes toward the panting elder.
His grin stretched wide.
Huo Ming's brow furrowed. Nearby, Xiao Rui peered out from behind a stone pillar, his jaw slack in total bewilderment. His master was pinned down, scorched, bleeding from the mouth, yet he looked as though he had just been handed a warm cup of wine.
A soft chime chimed within Shaurya's mind.
[Hidden Criteria Satisfied: Unshakable Demeanor Before Greater Might]
[Remuneration: +5 Dharma Points]
Shaurya let out a sharp, breathless laugh that rang out clearly across the burning cobblestones.
The crowd blinked. Huo Ming's advance hesitated for half a second.
"What could you possibly find amusing, mongrel?!"
Shaurya ignored the roar completely. System.
[Awaiting instruction.]
Current Dharma balance?
[10 Dharma Points available.]
The golden glint in Shaurya's eyes flared with frightening clarity. Spend the entire reserve. Every point.
[Transaction confirmed.]
[Dharma expenditure processed.]
[Metabolic and Spiritual Ascension initiated.]
BOOOOOOM!
A column of raw, blinding golden radiance tore out from Shaurya's dantian, punching directly into the sky above the square. The sheer atmospheric displacement blew Huo Ming's incoming flames apart like autumn leaves in a tempest.
[Qi Initiate, Level 3 → Qi Initiate, Level 5]
The ground trembled. The fractured stones around Shaurya's boots lifted into the air, suspended by the violent vortex of ascending Qi.
Huo Ming brought an arm across his eyes to shield against the blinding flare, his boots skidding back two paces as the pressure wave hammered into his chest. "What manner of witchcraft is this?!"
Within the pillar of light, golden leylines raced along Shaurya's skin. The bruised capillaries in his forearms knit closed in seconds; the dull, throbbing ache in his ribs dissolved into a surge of pristine, unblemished vigor. The spiritual ocean within his lower abdomen doubled in depth, clear and raging like an untamed river.
The golden radiance contracted, snapping back into his pores in a quiet, pressurized hiss.
Shaurya rolled his shoulders once more. The sound of his vertebrae settling echoed like dry bamboo snapping in winter. He tilted his dark spectacles back up the bridge of his nose, his gaze settling on the elder's stunned face.
"Round two," Shaurya drawled. "Dried Peach."
Huo Ming's face twisted into an ugly mask of rage, but before his vocal cords could engage, Shaurya was gone.
There was no preliminary shift in weight, no telltale gust of wind. The space where the youth stood was simply vacant.
Crack!
Shaurya reappeared inside Huo Ming's personal perimeter, his lead boot already planted deep between the elder's legs.
Huo Ming's pupils shrank to needlepoints, his arms reflexively dropping to cover his torso—
Too slow.
BAM!
Shaurya's right fist drove into the elder's floating ribs with the weight of a dropped anvil. The sound of wood splintering beneath heavy iron echoed across the square. Before the elder's nervous system could register the trauma, Shaurya rotated his hips, driving a short-range left hook directly into the man's solar plexus.
BAM!
The remaining air detonated from Huo Ming's lungs in a bloody mist. His spine arched forward, his eyes bulging—
CRACK!
A clean upward knee strike met the descending sternum, fracturing bone and folding the hundred-year-old cultivator in half.
The onlookers flinched as one.
"Impossible..." Huo Ming wheezed, dark blood pouring over his chin as his boots scrambled backward across the scree. "I am an Elder of the Jade Fire—"
Shaurya shadowed his retreat, his footwork smooth as silk on ice. "And you call this meager output cultivation?"
A straight right caught the elder on the bridge of the nose, spraying red across the stones.
"You call this strength?"
A brutal palm strike drove into Huo Ming's throat, cutting off his speech with a choked gurgle.
"I am... an elder..." Huo Ming's hands clawed weakly at the air, his fiery aura sputtering like a dying candle in a draft.
"You are just fragile," Shaurya murmured.
Closing the final inch, Shaurya's right hand shot forward like an iron clamp, his fingers digging deep into Huo Ming's face, engulfing the man's features entirely. Pivoting on his heel, Shaurya hoisted the struggling elder off his feet by the skull, arced his entire torso backward, and slammed the man vertically into the stone plaza with devastating downward momentum.
CRAAAAAASH!
The plaza floor gave way.
A circular crater five paces wide caved inward, fracturing flagstones into pulverized shingle. A concussive shockwave ripped outward, carrying a billowing plume of dust and shattered rock into the surrounding stalls.
When the pale dust gradually drifted down, the ruin was laid bare.
Huo Ming lay sprawled at the base of the depression, his robes shredded to ribbons, the arrogance that had dominated his features entirely broken. His chest rattled with shallow, desperate intakes of air, blood pooling in the fissures beneath his shoulders.
Standing above him, Shaurya shook the dust from his pristine sleeves, the golden glint in his eyes steady, quiet, and cold.
He took half a step forward, bringing his boot down onto the center of Huo Ming's sternum, pinning the elder firmly against the broken stone.
The square was dead silent, save for the ragged whistle escaping the elder's crushed throat.
Gone was the righteous indignation. Gone was the pride of a sect that looked down upon the common folk. All that remained in Huo Ming's bloodshot gaze was the raw, unvarnished terror of a beast staring at the butcher's knife.
Shaurya looked down at him, his expression devoid of theatrical fury.
"What happened to scouring me from the annals of history, Elder?" Shaurya asked, his voice conversational as he leaned a fraction of his weight into his heel. The bone beneath his boot groaned under the pressure. "Weren't you going to skin my future disciples?"
Huo Ming's mouth worked uselessly, bloody saliva trailing down his cheek, but no coherent sound emerged.
Shaurya slowly lifted his boot from the elder's chest.
For a fraction of a second, a desperate flicker of hope ignited behind Huo Ming's clouded eyes—the delusion that martial etiquette or fear of regional reprisal might grant him clemency.
Shaurya's lips parted in a thin, merciless curve.
Then his heel drove down.
CRUNCH.
The sickening sound of structural collapse echoed cleanly off the surrounding buildings.
The concussive force obliterated the skull like dry clay beneath a sledgehammer, driving fragments of bone, dark gore, and shattered rock outward in a violent crimson splash. The elder's half-formed gasp died before the air could leave his throat, his limbs going entirely limp as the stone beneath fractured into another ring of fine crevices.
Several cultivators in the front row turned green, shielding their eyes in horror. Others scrambled backward into the alleys, their boots slipping on loose debris.
Shaurya did not avert his gaze. He ground his heel once, settling the crushed stone beneath his sole, before stepping cleanly out of the crimson mire.
His features remained cool, unbothered by the violence. In a world where the strong carved their will into the weak with cold indifference, evil tolerated was simply an invitation for future butchers. The elder had arrived with murder in his heart; he had departed with the exact wages he had earned.
The square remained wrapped in a dense, suffocating hush.
Nobody moved. Nobody spoke.
A core elder of the Jade Fire Sect—a senior expert at the seventh layer of the Qi Initiate realm—lay dead in the dirt, snuffed out during an ordinary autumn recruitment drive.
"He... he actually slaughtered Elder Huo Ming..." someone stammered in the rear. "In broad daylight... with bare hands..."
Nearby, Xiao Rui and Xiao Lian emerged from behind their stone pillar, their small faces pale with awe, their gazes glued to Shaurya's back with absolute reverence.
Shaurya casually dusted a speck of gray soot from his collar, turned on his heel, and strolled back toward the leaning shade tree.
He pulled out the battered, three-legged wooden stool, gave it a gentle test with his foot, and sat down. The wood gave its familiar, high-pitched creak. Overhead, the torn banner flapped lazily in the autumn breeze, the ink characters catching the noon light.
Shaurya leaned back, hooked his thumbs into his waistband, and slid his dark sunglasses back down over his nose.
"As I was saying before the disturbance," Shaurya's voice carried across the silent crowd with crisp authority, "if you wish to accomplish something meaningful in this life, step up to the Sanatan Flame Sect."
He offered the wide-eyed crowd a relaxed grin.
"A new life genuinely begins here."
A sharp, cheerful chime resonated within his mind.
[Hidden Mission Concluded: Eradicate an Impure Authority]
[Reward Granted: Divine Eye Technique]
[Overview: Instant structural appraisal of external skills, artifacts, and meridian flow at a glance.]
Shaurya's brows lifted behind his tinted lenses, a warm glow settling in his chest. System... you truly understand the needs of a growing household.
[Praise logged and filed.]
The heavy silence in the square snapped like dry glass.
A young rogue cultivator in patched coarse robes broke through the front line, stumbling forward and dropping to both knees before the table. "Master! Take me in! I want to join the Sanatan Flame!"
Before Shaurya could open his mouth, another rushed out. "Senior, accept this one as well! I can carry water, forge iron—anything!"
"Make way! I was here first!" "Accept me, Master!"
The perimeter dissolved into an absolute frenzy. Disciples from small clans, wandering rogues, and rejected youths surged forward in a dense wave, thrusting written credentials and lineage scrolls toward the rickety timber stall. The old table groaned under the sudden barrage of hands, wobbling dangerously until Xiao Rui rushed forward to brace the legs with his shoulder.
A fresh golden window unfolded before Shaurya's eyes, the script flowing in rapid, rhythmic pulses.
[Automated Roster Registry: Engaged]
[Filtering candidates...]
[Standard enrollment protocols active.]
Shaurya's grin widened into a beaming crescent.
Within minutes, the counter reached its threshold.
[Objective Finalized: Induct 10 Disciples]
[Current Sect Roster: 15 / 50]
[Remuneration Dispatched: Sect Master's Grand Hall + Core Sect Architecture Blueprints]
[Bonus Incentive: 1x Divine Spin of the Divine Fortune Wheel]
Shaurya kicked back from his stool, throwing both arms toward the blue expanse of the sky, completely indifferent to the cooling crimson puddle fifty paces away.
"YES! Finally! The real estate is secured!"
His white robes snapped in the wind as the new recruits cheered, their voices echoing off the stone walls of Blue Stone City. The Sanatan Flame Sect had planted its first flag, and the heavens were finally being forced to look down.
TO BE CONTINUED....