Hours earlier, before the disciples had even started their training, the first true light of dawn gentled its way into their secluded courtyard. It found Li Meixiu already awake.
The realization had struck her the moment consciousness returned—a vibrant, humming certainty deep within her dantian. The carefully nurtured spark of qi she had cultivated under his watchful gaze was not just present; it was thriving, a steady, warm ember where before there had been only fleeting sparks.
Her head snapped to the side. Lin Feng lay beside her, deep in a restful sleep she knew he rarely allowed himself. The pale light traced the flawless line of his jaw, his features softened into a rare, unguarded peace. He had stayed with her last night, a silent sentinel until her own breathing had evened out into sleep.
A mischievous grin spread across her face. This demanded celebration. And an audience.
She moved with sudden purpose, throwing the silken covers aside. In a flurry of twilight robes and dark hair, she scrambled atop him, settling herself on his torso with a decisive plop. Her knees bracketed his hips, her hands planting firmly on the solid plane of his chest.
She began to bounce, a joyful, insistent rhythm. "A-Li! Wake up! Wake up, wake up, wake up!"
Beneath her, Lin Feng's eyes opened. There was no disorientation in that dark gaze, only a slow, patient awareness that bloomed instantly into focus. He did not startle, simply watching her from beneath heavy lids.
"Did you feel it?" she demanded, her voice a thrilled whisper that seemed too small to contain her excitement. She stopped bouncing and leaned down, her face inches from his, her eyes wide with incredulous delight. "It's still there! It didn't fade! It's really, truly there!"
She straightened back up, her expression shifting into one of profound self-satisfaction. She patted her own chest, just above her heart. "I'm amazing. An absolute genius. A natural prodigy! Who else could have done it? Meixiu, that's who!"
She looked down at him again, as if expecting confirmation. He merely continued his silent watch, the faintest ghost of amusement in the set of his mouth.
This seemed to fuel her further. "They should write poems," she declared, her tone utterly serious for a moment before breaking back into a giggle. "Songs! Epic songs about my magnificent breakthrough! All the other disciples will be so jealous of your brilliant, incredible, supremely talented Meixiu!"
She bounced once more for emphasis, her laughter like the chime of glass bells in the hushed morning air. Mr. Bunbun, clutched in her hand, flopped against Lin Feng's sternum in silent, threadbare agreement.
Lin Feng remained still, a mountain beneath her joyous earthquake. His hand came up, not to stop her, but to rest lightly on the small of her back, a single point of steadying contact. His thumb brushed once, slowly, against the silk of her robe.
It was the only answer he needed to give. Her audience was captivated.
Her triumphant declarations showed no sign of slowing. "—and I should be the master, really! I'll teach you, A-Li! I'll show you how a true genius—"
A hand settled on her shoulder. Not to push her away, but to anchor her. The weight was familiar, steady, a tether to the calm that always existed at her center. Lin Feng's dark eyes held hers, the faint amusement now veiled by a deeper, more serious light.
"Enough for now, Mom," he said, his voice a low rumble that traveled through his hand and into her bones. "Or you'll spend all your energy before breakfast."
Meixiu's brilliant grin collapsed into an exaggerated pout. She swatted at his arm, though the gesture carried no real force. "Don't call me that here! And I have plenty of energy! I'm a wellspring! A font of limitless power!" Yet even as she protested, the frenetic joy around her softened, soothed by his steady presence.
His gaze didn't waver. "Celebrate after you've recovered. Right now, your foundation needs to set." His concern was quiet, practical, woven into the very fabric of his words. He wasn't doubting her achievement; he was guarding the achiever.
Still holding her shoulder, he shifted to rise, bringing her with him in one fluid motion. His fingers slid down her arm until they found her hand, lacing through hers with the unconscious ease of long habit. Her other hand clutched Mr. Bunbun tightly to her chest.
"Where are we going?" she asked, curiosity sparking, her pout forgotten. "To tell everyone? We should start with the loud one, Elder Feng! He'll appreciate my genius properly!"
"No," Lin Feng said, leading her out of their courtyard and onto the mist-wreathed path that climbed the mountain. The morning air was crisp, carrying the scent of pine and cold stone. "We are seeing Elder Lan."
"Elder Lan?" Meixiu's nose scrunched. "But she's so… silent. She'll just stare at me. I need applause, A-Li! Validation! Maybe a parade?"
Lin Feng's thumb traced a slow, absent arc across the back of her hand. "Your foundation was just remade. It needs to be checked. Not by an alchemist who reeks of venom and honey, but by a blade that sees the finest flaw in a diamond's edge." He glanced down at her, expression unreadable. "I need to know you are truly okay. No hidden fractures. No unseen side effects."
The raw care in the clinical explanation stole her retort. She fell quiet for a few steps, content to be led, watching their joined hands swing gently between them.
"You worry too much," she murmured at last, resting her head against his arm. "I feel perfect. Better than perfect. I feel… shiny."
"I know," he said, his voice softer now. "But I will worry. It is what I do."
The path was not long, for their courtyard lay just below the apex of the Veiled Silence Peak, a secluded offshoot granted to Elder Lan's direct disciple. The vibrant life of the lower sect felt a world away. With each step upward, the air grew sharper, thinner, the greens of the mountain fading to the stark, beautiful severity of its highest reaches. The silence here was deeper, a sacred hush even Meixiu felt compelled to respect.
She squeezed his hand as the final bend approached. "If she tries to poke me with her swordpin, I'm hiding behind you."
A breath, almost a laugh, escaped him. "Agreed."
They rounded the bend, and the heart of Elder Lan's domain opened before them. The main courtyard of night-dark stone stretched ahead, veiled in its perpetual, shimmering mist that drifted in languid currents across the frozen expanse. Empty, yet the air thrummed with a silent, waiting presence, the very stones seeming to watch their approach.
They had arrived. The sliding door to the central pavilion stood closed, a seamless panel of moon-pale wood, but both knew she was already aware of their presence at her threshold.
She was not waiting in the pavilion, but in the secluded training ground that overlooked the vast valleys below. Elder Lan stood before the ancient banyan tree, her back to them, a figure of absolute stillness against the slow swirl of golden mist. Her bare feet rested on a polished black marble tile, her white robes utterly unmoving, as if she were another blade planted deep in the sacred earth. She did not turn as they approached, but the silence shifted, acknowledging their presence at the edge of the black circle.
Lin Feng led Meixiu onto the mirrored tiles, their footsteps soundless. He stopped a respectful distance away, his hand still holding hers.
"Master."
The single word, spoken in his low, neutral rumble, cut through the stillness. Not a greeting, but a statement of purpose.
Elder Lan turned. The motion was seamless—less a physical movement than a change in the world around her. Her frost-pale eyes swept over them, lingering a heartbeat on their joined hands before rising to Meixiu's face. The dawn light struck the bone-white swordpin in her hair, a shard of absolute cold.
"Is she… stable?"
Her gaze pressed down like weight, not seeing but dissecting, peeling back spirit and will. She did not wait for an answer. One pale hand lifted, a single finger extending toward Meixiu's chest.
A thread of her qi, finer than spider silk and colder than the void between stars, leapt from her fingertip. Not an attack, but a probe—a needle of pure frost intent testing the walls of a newly forged vessel.
Meixiu gasped, not from pain but surprise. Her own energy, a pure and blinding white that radiated a gentle, nurturing warmth, rose instinctively to meet it. Winter touched spring. There was no clash, only a silent recognition. The frost traced her channels, tested her foundation, and found it strong.
Elder Lan withdrew her hand. The test had lasted less than a breath.
"She is unharmed." The words scraped like ice across stone—irrefutable fact. "She has stepped onto the path. The first stage of Meridian Opening." Her impassive eyes flicked to Lin Feng, and in their depths a faint, unreadable glimmer. "Her qi is pure. And strong. Merely… vast for a beginning."
Meixiu's nervous anticipation melted into radiant triumph. She spun toward Lin Feng, Mr. Bunbun squished in the crush of her excitement.
"See! I told you! Pure! Strong! Vast!" She parroted the elder's words with glee, bouncing on the balls of her feet. "You worry too much, you silly boy."
Then her expression shifted, curiosity sparking. She looked from the serene master back to her son, head tilting.
"What about you, A-Li?" she asked, the question bubbling out with innocent bluntness. "What realm are you in?"
Elder Lan's voice cut through the air before Lin Feng could answer, flat and unchanging as ice.
"He has no realm."
The words hung in the sacred silence, stark and absolute.
For a heartbeat, there was only the whisper of high-altitude wind through banyan leaves. Then Meixiu's eyes went impossibly wide. A triumphant grin bloomed across her face, so bright it seemed to challenge the morning sun. She puffed out her chest, clutching Mr. Bunbun like a victory banner, and spun toward Lin Feng.
"Hah!" The sound burst from her in pure delight. "No realm! See? I'm better! I have a realm! A pure, strong, vast one!" She beamed, mischief sparking in every line of her face. "Don't worry, my poor, realm-less A-Li. I'll protect you from now on! Me and Mr. Bunbun will keep you safe from all the big, scary cultivators with their fancy realms!"
Radiant in her triumph, she basked in this reversal of their natural order.
Lin Feng looked down at her, expression unchanging, not a muscle shifting. He let her have her moment, let the laughter echo against the black marble tiles. He waited until her giggles ebbed, his dark eyes holding a patience older than the mountain itself.
Then he spoke. His voice was the same low rumble as always, not boastful, not defensive just fact.
"I've absorbed enough Qi to reach Foundation Establishment."
The air rushed from Meixiu's lungs. Her grin froze, then slowly dissolved into stunned silence.
He went on, gaze steady. "I'm just… waiting."
The words landed with the weight of a falling star.
Meixiu's jaw dropped. Mr. Bunbun dangled forgotten from her hand. She stared at him, mind scrambling to reconcile the paradox—no realm, yet enough power for a breakthrough. Her shiny black eyes, usually brimming with mischief, widened into pure incredulity.
"W–What?!" she stammered, the word cracking in the thin air. "That's not… how does that even work? What are you even waiting for?!"
Elder Lan's gaze stayed fixed on Lin Feng, frost-pale eyes dissecting not the disciple, but the anomaly before her. When she spoke, her voice carried the detached precision of an archivist cataloging a rare, volatile text.
"His Qi does not seek a realm. It seeks a perfect foundation." Each word dropped into the silence like shards of ice. "He aims to bypass the hierarchy entirely, to forge a core without the decay of conventional stages. Such an endeavor is not a path—it is a paradox. For this, his meridians must be tempered beyond possibility. They must become not mere channels, but unbreakable conduits."
Lin Feng stood motionless. The revelation did not strike him as shock, but as the resolution of an equation he had always known. His eyes flickered—not with doubt, but with the focused intensity of a man processing variables written into his very existence.
He did not ask about the destination. He accepted it as immutable. His question, when it came, was not plea but demand, spoken in a low vibration like the calm before a storm.
"The method."
A beat of silence stretched, thinner than the mountain air. Elder Lan's face remained an unbroken mask of frozen certainty.
"Pills and baths are for the weak who struggle to open meridians. You are not weak." Her gaze swept over him, measuring the void-colored energy coiled within. "You are… unfinished. The raw material awaits the forge. The only suitable method is percussive tempering."
The term lingered, heavy, ominous. It spoke not of guidance, but of violent refinement.
Lin Feng's expression did not shift. He absorbed the words—the brutality within them—without a flinch. His stillness was not passive but absolute readiness, the poise of a blade awaiting the hammer.
He met her gaze, black eyes reflecting the cold light of the peak. The only question left was inevitable.
"Define the parameters of the test."
The weight of Elder Lan's pronouncement—of brutal, percussive tempering—hung in the air like the charged pause before a lightning strike. Silence pressed down, broken only by the thin whisper of the mountain wind.
Then, from Lin Feng's side, came the softest, most incongruous sound.
A gasp.
Meixiu's eyes, wide with sudden, mischievous revelation, darted from the lethally serene master to her impeccably stoic son. A giggle slipped free, bright and utterly irreverent, scattering the tension like glass bells in a storm.
She rose on her toes, leaning into Lin Feng's side. Her stage-whisper carried with perfect clarity in the sacred hush.
"Maybe Elder Lan just likes beating up handsome young men… and this is her excuse."
Pulling back, she fixed the master with an exaggerated look of suspicion, as though she had just unmasked some forbidden truth. Mr. Bunbun, dangling loyally from her hand, seemed to share the charge—his lone button eye turned toward Elder Lan in silent, damning agreement.
Elder Lan did not so much as blink. The irreverent jab passed over her like wind over a glacier—leaving no trace, no crack in her composure. Her frost-pale eyes never left Lin Feng, dismissing all else as trivial.
"The Inner Sect Menagerie holds spirit beasts taken from the deep wilds," she said, her voice the scrape of ice on stone. "Untamed, unweakened by breeding. Their power is raw, primordial. You will enter their sanctum. You will not strike to kill. You will endure. Their claws, their weight, their spiritual pressure will hammer your body and meridians like a smith's forge."
A single snowflake drifted between them, crystalline, unbroken. "It will be agony. It is the only way."
Lin Feng did not hesitate. He did not look to Meixiu for comfort, nor to Elder Lan for lenience. Her decree was simply another equation, another path revealed. He nodded once, sharp and final—a pact, not a gesture.
"When do I begin?"
"Ordinary disciples must book days ahead," she replied, her tone as factual as natural law. "But as my disciple, you will enter tomorrow."
At his side, Meixiu's playful smirk faltered, then collapsed entirely. Color drained from her cheeks. The vision of him surrounded by chained, furious beasts—fangs, roars, and crushing blows—rose unbidden in her mind. Her hand clenched his with sudden desperation, ice seeping into her fingers.
Mr. Bunbun was pulled tight to her chest, a makeshift shield against dread. The mischief in her eyes had vanished, replaced by wide, silent fear etched deep into her expression.
Lin Feng sensed it. Without breaking his gaze from Elder Lan, his free arm moved in a slow, deliberate arc. His hand settled on Meixiu's shoulder, steady and unyielding. He drew her close, anchoring her against him.
It was a wordless promise—unshakable, mountain-solid—that even in the face of beasts and agony, he would not falter.
Elder Lan's gaze lingered, frost-pale eyes noting the protective arc of Lin Feng's arm and the way Meixiu had shrunk against him. There was no judgment in her look, only cold assessment.
"You will not waste the day in idle worry," she said, voice cutting through the silence like a blade across ice. "Until tomorrow, you will use the Reflection Pool on my peak. It does not cultivate. It consolidates. Its waters soothe rampant Qi and sharpen the spirit."
From her sleeve, she produced a small pill, plain and weathered like river stone. She held it out. "A Spirit-Settling Agent. It will harmonize the pool's effects. It will cool her exuberance"—her gaze flicked once to Meixiu's face—"and harden your resolve." Her eyes returned to Lin Feng. "Do not expect power. Expect preparation."
Before acknowledgment could pass his lips, Lin Feng moved. In one fluid motion, he bent and swept Meixiu into his arms, practiced and effortless. She settled against his chest with a sigh, arms looping around his neck, Mr. Bunbun wedged between them. There was no strain, only a silent declaration that her comfort outweighed all else.
Her earlier dread, though not gone, was muffled—banked beneath the steady rhythm of his steps and the solidity of his embrace.
Only then did Lin Feng incline his head, the gesture sharp despite the girl in his arms. "Understood," he rumbled. "I will inform Elder Tao she will not attend practice today."
Without another word, he turned from the banyan tree, the Spirit-Settling Agent now a small, weighty promise within his grasp. Each footfall on black marble carried them farther from brutal trials and glacial decrees, and closer to the quiet promise of water and reflection. For now, the path ahead held only silence, and—for a few borrowed hours—peace.
Elder Lan remained motionless, a statue of white jade and winter, watching them depart. Her frost-pale eyes followed Lin Feng's retreating back, the way he bore his burden with unshaken steadiness, devotion honed into habit. The girl—the woman—in his arms was a splash of dark hair against the pale grey of his new robe, the absurd rabbit plush pressed between them, softness clashing with steel.
A breath stirred the frozen air, less sound than the ghost of one.
Young hearts, the thought surfaced in the quiet of her ancient mind, touched faintly by irony. Though she is hardly a young seedling. It was not judgment, nor approval—merely the recognition of a force as perennial and unruly as spring thaw.
Her gaze lingered. On the protective curve of his arm. On the absolute trust in her relaxed form. A rare, fleeting calculation passed behind her eyes, cold and precise as frost etching glass.
I only hope… she remains his pillar. And does not become the crack in his foundation.
The thought froze, sharp as a snowflake's edge. The variables were countless, the path ahead riddled with precipices no mere realm could measure. Her new disciple was a paradox wrapped in enigma, and his anchor was a woman whose depths were hidden beneath laughter and mischief.
At last, Elder Lan turned back to the ancient banyan. The moment of contemplation ended, sealed away like ice over a lake. The future would be faced with strength, not speculation. She shifted her stance. Frost bloomed outward from her feet in intricate, lethal patterns, and the silence filled once more with the rhythm of her training—endless, relentless, as unyielding as the mountain itself.
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