Through the eyes of Zhuge Su Yeon
Zhuge Su Yeon didn't need to be there to listen.The conversation in the garden reached him clearly.
The nickname "ice block" that Yui Lan gave him seemed almost fair.
It was true—he would give anything to be asleep right now. Asleep... or cultivating in peace, letting night drape the city in black ink without human voices scratching its surface. That would be good. Almost perfect.
But one detail made it impossible: his siblings.
And, of course, the System.
A single thought was enough to summon the translucent screen before his inner vision, etched in fine lines of golden light.
[ Family Investment System ]
Current Points: 18,300
These were the fruits of an entire month of missions—hard-won rewards.Eighteen thousand points.Not much... in fact, almost nothing.
Insignificant, compared to what tomorrow would bring.
If everything went as planned—and since he was following the exact script fate seemed intent on writing—there was no reason to think anything would go wrong.Everything would flow perfectly.Perfectly... as planned.
Or so he predicted.
The screen shimmered softly, as if a golden thread bled into the dusk. At its center, an icon shaped like a rising sun appeared above a thin line, and a name unfolded in elegant strokes:
Martial Technique: Morning Dawn LightElement: LightGrade: Earthly – IntermediateFunction: Attack / Purification
Su Yeon arched a brow slightly.A light-element technique. Simple, direct... useful.
The description opened before his eyes:
"The Morning Dawn Light condenses luminous Qi at the cultivator's chosen point—palm, fist, or blade—and releases it in a swift beam, sharp as the first clarity that cuts the night. The radiance pierces spiritual defenses and corrodes corrupted Qi, dispelling illusions and shadow entities. The denser the darkness, the sharper the strike."
Execution was almost elegant: aligned breathing, Qi coursing through the upper meridians, and a brief visualization of the horizon—not as it was, but as it should be—bathed in soft gold promising a new beginning. Qi gathered like morning dew, then expanded in an arc of clear light, swift enough to deny counterattacks.
Su Yeon felt a rare flicker of approval.This was not a technique to win crowds with spectacle... but one to cut, purify, and end battles with the efficiency of a clean strike.And deep down, there was something poetic in wounding with the first ray of a day the enemy would not live to see.
Yeon did not lack martial techniques—that was as solid a fact as the walls of the pavilion.The Zhuge clan's arts, though limited to the spiritual level, were all open to him without restriction. And in near-methodical diligence, he had tested many.The problem was that none felt... right.
In the end, he confined himself to using only the strongest ones. It had sustained his martial prowess until now, let his foundation grow steadily... but left his martial path stagnant.
The System, in this regard, was the answer to an old itch.Here, it didn't matter what technique existed—if it existed, it could be found. One only had to search.
And he had searched.Not only to arm his ten prodigies, but for himself—for that strike, that feeling that could serve as a thread for his own martial path.
When his eyes fell on Morning Dawn Light, recognition was immediate.It wasn't just efficiency. It was the right feeling. The blade he had always sought.
From there, his search gained direction: the Light element.This was what drew him most.
But as always, fate delighted in showing up only to create obstacles. Light techniques weren't just rare.They were brutally rare.
Across the entire System, after browsing mentally through more entries than he could count, he had found only three.This one—the lowest—was Earthly/Intermediate.The next climbed to Celestial/Initial.And the last... Celestial/Perfect.
Which presented a resource problem.Earthly/Initial techniques were cheap. So cheap he had distributed them to his young prodigies, their prices ranging between 200 and 2,000 points.
Considering that in the White Flame Empire, few capital families even had access to an Earthly/Initial technique—and still treated it as a clan treasure—that said much about how remote and forgotten this corner of the world truly was.
However... even the smallest leap, from Initial to Intermediate, sent prices soaring.Techniques at that tier ranged from 8,000 to 20,000 points.
Morning Dawn Light stood at the peak: 18,000 points. One of the most expensive.
And so, Yeon faced a simple—yet profoundly irritating—decision:Spend, and be left almost bankrupt......or hoard, and remain stagnant.
At first, he had not decided.The tournament wasn't over, and he had time to analyze every detail, calculate every purchase, and acquire only what was absolutely necessary... later.
But the day insisted on bringing more surprises than he had forecast.
First, the elder of the Dark Sun Sect appeared in the martial arena.
Then, Yui Lan—like someone stumbling upon a stray cat—ran into a poison cultivator of utterly unknown origin.
Yeon would not be surprised if, tomorrow, after Yu Jin's completely "unexpected" victory, some great power descended from the heavens to defend him from the threatening elder of the Dark Sun Sect.In fact... that would be the ideal scenario.He could simply watch it all unfold from afar, relaxed, like a spectator reclining in his chair, enjoying the play.
But if fate refused to play that card, then he would act.
The elder himself was no real problem. Spiritual Condensation—the third great realm of cultivation—and only a beginner at that. He was two whole realms beneath Yeon, little more than an ant.Even so... if he acted, he would not do it halfway.
He wanted certainty.The certainty of a clean job.
That everything would be resolved in a single strike, with no need for ridiculous further displays of power.
And for that, he needed the right blade.
With a mental touch, Morning Dawn Light ceased to be just a name glowing on the System's interface and became his.
Drawing a deep breath, he stood.His body moved with the tranquility of one unhurried, yet each step carried intent.
He merely intended to take a night stroll—nothing extraordinary, just enough to "find" an Earthly/Intermediate martial technique.Nothing more.Just another small miracle of the System, disguised as a casual coincidence.
In truth, he still didn't know what tomorrow would bring.But he knew one thing: if fate chose to act... so would he.And when he did, he would have the perfect blade.
As for learning a new martial technique overnight... in the end, that wasn't really a problem.Whether by his spiritual potential or the martial physique he bore, everything about his talent was simply absurd.
So absurd that even with the System explaining, he still couldn't fully quantify it.