From Zhuge Su Yeon's Perspective
Yeon's study was modest, but precise in its intent. The black wooden walls exhaled the faint scent of spiritual cedar. Well-ordered shelves held only the essentials: scrolls, records, and a few cultivation treatises few would ever understand. Near the window, a stone censer released soft smoke scented with dried lotus and plum roots, filling the air with serene silence.
And there he stood, eyes fixed through the half-open rice-paper window on the eastern side: Zhuge Su Yeon.
A porcelain cup rested in his left hand. The tea—a bitter blend of gray-jade leaves with wild snow petals—cooled slowly, like everything else around him.
To a casual observer, he was simply gazing at the tranquil scene of the clan's central courtyard. The trees, neatly arranged, swayed under the warm breeze. Clan disciples, barely visible at a distance, carried out their duties with the precision he demanded.
It was a scene of serenity.
But, as always, serenity was only a façade.
Su Yeon was not observing the courtyard.
His eyes, extended through a thread of hidden Qi, reached a distant hill beyond the clan's main barrier.
There, bathed in the midday sun, was Yu Jin.
Seated in cultivation, back straight, hair matted with sweat against his temples, his body wrapped in waves of spiritual heat.
The air around him distorted subtly, refusing to remain normal. Each exhale seemed to provoke a faint tremor in the ground. The rhythm was unstable, raw, inexperienced—but genuine.
A month.
It had already been a month since Yeon realized he was caught in what resembled a cultivation story.
A month since the Empress had dissolved—with imperial elegance and the coldness of a merchant—the betrothal between Yu Jin and the Wu family's daughter.
In the last thirty days, his brother had gone from an ignored shadow to a rising genius.
Unfortunately, just as Yeon had feared.
The cousin who had mocked him publicly—the same one who called Yu Jin a "useless good boy" in clan meetings—was now still picking his teeth out of the bamboo grove, after a beating so decisive that even the garden ants avoided Yu Jin's name.
Another cliché added neatly to his brother's résumé.
And it wasn't an isolated case.
He had begun disappearing for days, slipping into the forest like a disciple on the run.
But none of that impressed Su Yeon as much as a single statistic.
With a slight motion of two fingers, he summoned his golden finger.
The golden panel appeared in the air, silent as thought.
[Family Investment System]
He tapped the Members tab.
And then, without hesitation, the name:
Zhuge Yu Jin
The window loaded faster this time.
The data, as always, came with locks.
But one line…
The system displayed freely.
Cultivation: Body Refinement – Level 7
A month ago, his brother had been at Level 1.
Now… Level 7.
An advance that, for ordinary cultivators, would have taken at least four years.
For Yu Jin, it had been only one month.
Only cultivation.
Alone, shirtless beneath the sun.
With no resources from the clan.
Classic protagonist talent.
Su Yeon lifted the cup to his lips.
The tea was now cold.
With a calm sigh, Zhuge Su Yeon turned his gaze away from the hill. The system's panel faded like mist cut by a blade, and his eyes shifted to the opposite direction—toward the heart of Gray Sky City.
From here, even at such a distance, his spiritual senses—subtle and piercing—easily reached the city's outer limits.
And there, among blue-tiled rooftops and polished stone streets, he saw her.
Zhuge Yui Lan.
She walked with measured steps.
Her light-blue robes bore delicate embroidery of waves and the Zhuge clan's swan crest.
"Standard behavior," Su Yeon thought, watching.
But even in that calm setting, something unsettled him.
Yui Lan was nothing like Yu Jin. She didn't return bloodied, didn't crush cousins, didn't make the sun itself seem smaller around her.
And yet…
Three elders of the clan's medical wing had reported "unexpected" improvements among elderly patients.
Old men with irreversible diagnoses now walked with steadier steps. One, who had barely been able to sit upright, had spent an entire morning painting calligraphy on his veranda, his hands trembling less than they had the previous spring.
Coincidence?
Yeon no longer believed in coincidence.
Every one of them had been visited by Yui Lan… "out of curiosity." A few questions, perhaps a pulse check.
No visible technique.
And yet, they improved.
"Two hundred thousand points…" he murmured, reopening the system with a brief gesture.
Zhuge Yui Lan
The profile loaded quickly, as if the system had resigned itself to the fact that Su Yeon would keep returning to it.
The visible information was scarce.
Cultivation: Body Refinement – Level 8
His brows furrowed slightly.
"From the third… to the eighth," he thought aloud, the words nearly lost in the incense haze.
Not as explosive as Yu Jin, who seemed intent on storming the heavens in a single month.
But still, entirely abnormal.
Su Yeon's gaze slid to the "Spiritual Profession" entry.
The cost remained:
▸ Spiritual Profession – Cost: 200,000 points
He didn't bother unlocking it.
It wasn't necessary.
Yui Lan was a spiritual doctor.
The system was merely pricing the degree of her development.
There was no longer any doubt.
With a slow gesture, he set the cup upon its polished stone stand.
Then he sat.
The amber-hardened spiritual wood chair creaked softly beneath him. Before him, the white-jade desk reflected the filtered light of the rice-paper windows. To his left, an old scroll. To his right, an unused brush. In the center, nothing—like a stage awaiting the next act.
Su Yeon laced his fingers before his face and closed his eyes.
The clan, perhaps, saw his siblings' recent growth as nothing more than the late blooming of two scions of the main line.
But Yeon saw the narrative of a larger story being written.
Cultivation in this world was not so simple.
A child's meridians only completed their natural formation at nine years of age. Only then could cultivation begin without compromising vital flow.
Even the most ambitious clans respected this limit.
Even Yeon had respected it.
The great sects, in all their immortal arrogance, accepted disciples only from the age of fifteen. And even then… with clear requirements.
Body Refinement – Level 7.
That was the minimum to avoid being dismissed as trash.
And even the most respected geniuses of those sects—the children of elders, the protégés of ancient masters—rarely surpassed Spiritual Refinement before the age of twenty.
Of course, time itself meant little to cultivators.
To cultivators, age was an illusion.
To common folk, fifty years was half a lifetime. To a cultivator, it was merely the first step beyond dust.
At the Spiritual Refinement Realm, natural life expectancy stretched to 180 years, sometimes 200 if the body was tempered carefully. At the Spiritual Condensation Realm, that limit rose to 300 years, even without pills or longevity arrays.
At that point, aging itself slowed—youth eternal, if one reached such levels at the proper age. Though, of course, the world was still full of ancient cultivators roaming about.
But it was at Golden Core that the rules of time began to bend.
There, living five centuries was no longer just a dream.
And if the core was pure, well-cultivated, refined with circulation techniques…
time became an ally that walked in soft steps.
His younger siblings were only seventeen. For now, their cultivation bases still aligned with the world's standards. But if they continued advancing at such a pace… Yeon wondered how far they would reach. And how many problems their protagonistic brilliance would bring him.
Not that he intended to simply sit and watch. He had forged his own plans in the past thirty days.
And soon, it would be time to put them into practice.