The bamboo rifle lay across Kael's lap, silent and unfinished.
He sat beneath the same grove where he had vanished days before, the Turtle Breath still pulsing faintly in his lungs. But breath alone was not enough. Silence was not enough. He needed fire without sound. Death without trace.
He needed bullets.
Not metal. Not forged. Not carried.
Qi.
He inhaled.
Not for concealment—but for compression.
His dantian stirred. Threads of spiritual energy coiled, resisting shape. He guided them—not with force, but with memory. The weight of a bullet. The curve of a chamber. The recoil of a kill.
He pressed the qi into his palm.
It flickered.
He pressed harder.
It cracked.
He whispered.
It held.
A sphere of condensed qi hovered above his hand, trembling. It was imperfect. Too light. Too unstable. But it was a beginning.
Kael placed it into the bamboo chamber.
The rifle pulsed once.
Then slept.
He tried again.
Ten times.
Thirty.
Each bullet failed. Dissolved. Shattered. Screamed.
He did not flinch.
He did not speak.
He did not stop.
On the thirty-seventh attempt, the qi bullet held.
It sank into the chamber.
The bamboo whispered.
Kael exhaled.
He had created his first round.
Not from metal.
From resolve.
From breath.
From silence.
He would refine it.
He would multiply it.
He would never run out again.
The Silent Chamber had begun.