Kaelen walked away from the Old Town Market, melting back into the anonymous river of mortal life that flowed through the city's arteries. The confrontation with the arrogant young master and his cultivator attendant had been a minor, almost insignificant footnote, yet it served as a stark and necessary reminder. His possession of the inkstone was a secret that could get him killed. The faint energy it now emitted was a beacon, and he was a man walking through a forest of unseen predators, holding a lantern he could not extinguish.
He kept his pace steady, his posture slightly stooped, perfectly emulating the downtrodden student he appeared to be. He did not look over his shoulder. He did not need to. Instead, he used the city itself as his shield. He ducked into a crowded subway station, letting the press of bodies swallow him whole, then emerged three stops later. He boarded a bus heading in the opposite direction of his apartment, riding it for several blocks before getting off and doubling back on foot through a series of narrow, winding residential streets. They were simple, mortal techniques of evasion, but they were effective. Any spiritual sense as weak as Elias's would have been lost in the chaotic psychic noise of the subway, and any physical tail would have been thrown by the erratic path.
By the time he arrived back at the derelict apartment building, the sun was beginning its slow descent, painting the smoggy sky in hues of orange and bruised purple. The weight of the Celestial Inkstone Fragment in his jacket pocket was a source of both profound hope and immense pressure. It was the key to his resurrection, but it was also a ticking bomb. He knew, with the certainty of a being who understood the greedy nature of sentient life, that Dante Valerius would not let the matter rest.
He climbed the creaking, graffiti-scarred stairs to his floor. The door to his apartment hung slightly ajar, the splintered wood around the lock a testament to his morning's violent encounter. He pushed it open and stepped inside, the familiar smell of mildew and despair greeting him like an old, unwelcome friend. He wedged the broken door shut, jamming a rickety wooden chair under the handle. It was a pathetic defense, one that would not stop a determined child, let alone a cultivator, but it was the best he could do. For now, privacy was a luxury he had to create for himself.
He walked to the center of the small, grimy room and carefully took the inkstone from his pocket. He unwrapped it from the handkerchief and placed it on the floor. In the dim, fading light of the afternoon, it looked even more unremarkable than it had at the market—just a lump of dark, pitted stone. Yet, when he focused his will, he could feel the immense, sleeping ocean of power sealed within it. It was a divine engine waiting for a worthy driver.
He needed to refine it. He needed to draw out that power and absorb it, to cleanse and temper this fragile mortal shell and take the first true step on the long path of cultivation. To do that, he needed a formation. A Spirit Convergence Array.
In his past life, creating such an array would have been a trivial matter. He would have commanded the celestial forges to craft him a platform of pure star-iron, used the nebulae themselves as ink, and carved runes with the focused light of a dying sun. The array would have spanned continents, drawing power from the very heart of a planet.
He looked around his current domain. A lumpy mattress, a wobbly table, a floor coated in a thin layer of grime. The irony was so thick it was almost suffocating.
His mind, a grand repository of divine knowledge, began to work, adapting ancient principles to this pathetic new reality. The System had provided the blueprint for a "Lesser Spirit Convergence Array," but a blueprint was useless without materials. He needed specific components to draw the runes and create the necessary energy conduits.
He began a systematic search of his squalid kingdom.
From the tiny, cramped kitchen, he procured his first ingredient: salt. Common table salt. He poured a small amount into a chipped bowl, feeling a wave of self-disgust. He was going to use a mundane condiment, a mineral used to season food, as a component in a divine ritual. It was blasphemy. But it would have to do. Salt crystals, when properly aligned, could form a stable, low-grade energy channel.
Next, he went into the bathroom. He looked at the cracked mirror above the sink. He needed a reflective surface, something to focus the ambient spiritual energy, what little there was, towards the center of the array. With a sharp, precise tap, he broke off a larger, triangular shard of the mirror. It was flawed, its reflective surface clouded, but it would serve its purpose.
Finally, he needed a medium for drawing the runes themselves. He had no spiritual ink, no celestial brushes. He remembered seeing a maintenance closet left ajar on the floor below. He slipped out of his apartment, his movements silent, and confirmed it was still open. Inside, amidst dusty mops and buckets, he found a box of cheap, white chalk used for marking pipes. He took a single piece.
He returned to his room, his three components assembled: a bowl of table salt, a shard of a broken mirror, and a stolen piece of chalk. A sovereign's tools. He wanted to laugh at the sheer, tragic absurdity of it all. But he did not. His will was a cold, hard diamond, and there was no room for laughter, only for grim, unwavering purpose.
He began by meticulously cleaning a two-meter circular space on the wooden floor. He used a damp rag, scrubbing away years of accumulated filth until the dark, worn wood was exposed. This was not just cleaning; it was a ritual. It was the act of imposing divine order upon mortal chaos. In this small, perfect circle, he would build his new foundation.
He took the piece of chalk and began to draw. His hand did not tremble. His movements were fluid, precise, and filled with an ancient, innate understanding. He was not just drawing lines; he was carving the fundamental laws of energy into the fabric of reality. Complex, geometric patterns flowed from the chalk, intersecting at precise angles, forming a web of interconnected runes that even the most advanced mortal mathematician would find incomprehensible. He was recreating, in crude, pathetic form, the Lesser Spirit Convergence Array.
He placed the mirror shard at the circle's northernmost point, angling it to catch the faint moonlight that would soon filter through the dirty window. He then used the salt, pouring it with painstaking care to trace over the primary energy conduits of the chalk diagram, creating thin, white lines of crystalline power.
When he was finished, he stood back and observed his work. It was a mockery of a true formation, a child's crayon drawing of a divine masterpiece. Yet, it was perfect in its own flawed way. It would work.
He sat in the lotus position in the exact center of the array. He took a deep breath, calming his mind, focusing his will into a single, sharp point. He then placed the Celestial Inkstone Fragment on the floor directly before him, at the heart of the formation.
The final component was the catalyst. He needed to activate the array. He bit his thumb, a sharp, stinging pain, and squeezed a single drop of his own blood onto the central rune where the inkstone rested.
The moment the blood touched the chalk and salt, the array flared to life.
A faint, golden light pulsed from the runes, humming with a low, almost inaudible energy. The entire room seemed to grow still, the ambient noise of the city fading away as the formation isolated the space from the outside world.
Kaelen felt the power of the array begin to work. It was like a weak, spiritual siphon, drawing the almost nonexistent spiritual energy from the surrounding air, from the very wood of the building, and focusing it through the mirror shard onto the inkstone.
The inkstone began to vibrate, a low thrumming that he could feel in his bones. The ancient, dormant power sealed within it, roused by the external energy and the catalyst of his blood, began to stir.
He knew this was the moment. He placed his hands on the inkstone, closed his eyes, and focused his entire consciousness on the task at hand: to draw out the power, to absorb it, to refine it, and to be reborn in its fire.
He pulled.
The power did not trickle out. It erupted.
It was a tidal wave, a tsunami of pure, raw, untamed spiritual energy that had been compressed and sealed for millennia. It surged from the inkstone, up through his hands, and slammed into his meridians.
The pain was absolute. It was a white-hot, searing agony that dwarfed any sensation he had ever known. His mortal meridians, those fragile, narrow channels designed to carry only the barest trickle of life force, were being scoured by a river of molten suns. It was a pain that would have instantly incinerated the soul of any normal mortal, a pain that would have driven a lesser cultivator to madness.
But Kaelen's will was not that of a mortal. It was a will that had been forged in the heart of dying stars and tempered in the cold, endless expanse of the void. He did not fight the pain. He did not flee from it. He met it, endured it, and bent it to his purpose.
He gritted his teeth, a low groan escaping his lips as his entire body convulsed. His skin flushed a deep, alarming red as his blood temperature skyrocketed. Black, foul-smelling sweat, thick as tar, erupted from his pores, a physical manifestation of the lifetime of impurities being violently purged from his new body.
The System's notifications began to flash frantically in his mind's eye, a clinical, detached commentary on his agony.
[WARNING: Host's meridians are sustaining critical damage!] [WARNING: Physique is reaching structural failure point!]
He ignored the warnings. He continued to draw the power from the stone, a relentless, desperate torrent. His bones began to crack under the strain, the sound sharp and sickening in the silent room. But the moment they cracked, the pure energy would forcibly knit them back together, stronger, denser than before. His muscles were torn to shreds on a microscopic level, then instantly re-woven, each fiber infused with a thread of spiritual power.
It was a brutal, agonizing process of destruction and creation. He was being unmade and remade, second by second.
And then, just as his consciousness was beginning to fray at the edges, just as his mortal body reached its absolute breaking point, the torrent of energy from the inkstone slowed to a trickle and then stopped. The ancient artifact had been depleted.
A profound silence descended once more.
Kaelen remained in his meditative pose, his body trembling, his skin coated in a layer of black filth. He took a single, shuddering breath. And then another. This breath was different. It felt deeper, cleaner, more powerful.
He opened his eyes. The world seemed different. Sharper. The faint moonlight filtering through the window was no longer a dim glow, but a brilliant, silver light, and he could see every single particle of dust dancing in its beam. He could hear the faint, rhythmic dripping of a leaky faucet in the apartment two floors below. He could smell the ozone from a distant power line. His senses had been reborn.
A wave of notifications scrolled through his vision, a litany of his triumph.
[Refinement Complete.] [Congratulations, Host! You have successfully reached the Qi Sensing - Stage 1!] [Physique has been fundamentally enhanced. All internal injuries have been healed.] [Mortal impurities have been purged. Status: Spirit-Tempered Body (Initial).]
He slowly, deliberately, uncrossed his legs and stood up. There was no stiffness, no pain. He felt light, incredibly light, as if the chains of mortal gravity had been loosened. He looked down at his hands. The skin, once pale and sallow, now had a faint, healthy luster, like polished jade. He clenched his fist. It was a small, simple movement, but he could feel a quiet, coiled strength within his muscles that had not been there before, a power that was his own, earned through fire and pain.
He walked to the window and looked out at the sprawling, glittering lights of the city. He felt no disgust now, no despair. The fear and the weakness that had plagued him were gone, burned away in the alchemical fire of his first refinement.
He was still weak, a flickering candle in a world of storms. But now, he had the power to protect that flame. And he knew, with an absolute and chilling certainty, that soon, very soon, he would be the one to command the storm.
His first target was Viktor. The debt was no longer a threat; it was an opportunity. An opportunity to announce his return. The hunt, he decided, was about to begin from his side.