The carved lines across the pale sphere stopped writhing and clarified.
Five strokes revealed themselves.
Thin.
Slightly curved.
Uneven in spacing, as though shaped by hand rather than symmetry.
A blossom.
Not ornate.
Not elaborate.
Five rounded petals etched into the trembling surface of his soul, each stroke formed of fine grey light — sharp at their edges, like a blade drawn with restraint.
Almost like Yue Lin's dagger.
They did not overlap perfectly.
They did not mirror one another.
They felt… natural.
At the center, a small hollow circle remained untouched.
Empty.
And within that emptiness, a faint crimson glow pulsed softly.
The pain did not vanish instantly when the shape finalized.
The raw tearing sensation dulled into a deep ache — the kind left after bone is set back into place.
It faded.
Slowly but surely.
Until the pale sphere that was his soul no longer trembled randomly. The chaos had structure now.
The blossom lay over him like an imprint pressed into soft clay — inseparable.
And from within that blossom Riven felt something like life.
As if he could speak to it if he really wanted to.
Then the void shuddered.
Pressure returned — not from within this time, but from outside.
The endless darkness trembled as if struck by distant thunder.
The Mind Palace quaked.
Riven quickly pulled his mind out from the Mind Palace, checking what was happening outside.
And what he saw was qi.
Massive.
Overwhelming.
It rushed toward him like a flood breaking through a dam.
And then the torrent hit.
Qi crashed into him from every direction, slamming through his meridians with none of the restraint it had shown before.
His meridian network flared white-hot as the flood poured inward, rushing toward his dantian like rivers converging into a basin already filled.
He reacted instantly, quickly guiding it in five cycles, compressing it slightly, to prevent a clash with the five cycle qi in his dantian.
But as he kept guiding more and more refined qi into his dantian, he quickly ran into a problem.
The new influx collided with the boundary.
Pressure spiked.
If he allowed it to continue unchecked, the outcome would be simple.
Overflow.
Rupture.
Death.
Riven forced himself into focus.
There was only one way out of this.
He'd have to compress the qi in his dantian further, all while at the same time refining the ever incoming qi from outside to prevent a clash.
Normally that'd be impossible for him.
Compression demanded total focus. Absolute mental dedication. A cultivator could not divide their will between multiple refinement processes without losing control.
But something was different now.
The Mind Palace.
Even though he had withdrawn from it, it remained open — a silent expanse behind his thoughts. His awareness felt… wider.
Deeper.
He felt like he could do it.
Control multiple refinement processes at once.
And in reality he didn't have any other chance.
As no matter what he tried, the outside qi kept entering his body.
Guided by the formation to improve the inheritors cultivation.
He clenched down on his control.
The five-cycle core inside his dantian spun tightly, dense and stable. That was his foundation. But right now it was about to collapse.
There was no more space for it to expand.
The five condensed layers tightened inward, guided into his meridian network, before following a certain path.
Six.
The original core shrank slightly as density increased, freeing a sliver of space.
At the same time, he intercepted the incoming flood before it could crash into the dantian. He began refining it from the very first cycle — forcing it through separate circulation routes again and again before allowing even a thread of it near his dantian.
One compression.
Two.
Three.
The incoming qi was thick. Resistant. Saturated with residual power from the ritual.
Four.
Five.
He guided the newly five-times-compressed influx into the space freed in his dantian.
Meanwhile his original core kept being compressed.
Seven compressions.
It screamed in protest, the density becoming suffocating even to his own senses.
Eight compressions.
The original core shrank further, its rotation slowing as density increased, each layer folding inward under immense pressure.
Nine.
Meanwhile his dantian started to get fully filled with the newly five-times-compressed influx.
There was no pause.
No reprieve.
The formation continued pouring qi into him.
He couldn't let it rest there or his dantian would overflow and rupture.
He made a decision, guiding it out.
Now he was maintaining three processes at once.
The original core—
Still compressing inward.
The stored five-cycle influx—
Being guided through extended routes, beginning further compression.
And the nonstop incoming qi—
Forced into its first cycles of refinement the moment it entered.
Ten compressions.
The original core trembled violently.
One more and he would cross into Mid Inner Condensation.
The secondary influx reached six compressions.
Seven.
The fresh incoming stream reached three.
Four.
His thoughts stretched thin.
The Mind Palace gave him breadth — but not infinite capacity.
Eight compressions in the secondary stream.
Five in the new influx.
The original core—
Strained at the edge of collapse.
He pushed.
Ten stabilized.
He attempted eleven—
And everything wavered.
For a fraction of a breath, one of the streams faltered.
The secondary compressed qi brushed too close to the core.
Pressure detonated outward.
His meridians spasmed.
Focus shattered.
He was about to lose it.
About to fail.
And then—
Something cool washed over his mind.
Not qi.
Not thought.
From the depths of the Mind Palace, an immaterial force expanded outward.
Like invisible hands steadying a spinning structure.
The chaos in his thoughts smoothed.
The fractures in his control sealed.
Soul force.
He felt it clearly now — a subtle, stabilizing presence reinforcing his will without replacing it.
With that support, he seized the moment.
The original core—
Eleven compressions.
The boundary shattered.
Mid Inner Condensation.
But the soul force did not retreat.
It pressed gently, insistently.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
The core became something else entirely — compact beyond reason.
He guided the thirteen-times-compressed core fully into the center of his dantian.
Then turned to the secondary stream.
With the increased capacity of Mid Inner Condensation and the stabilizing influence of soul force, he pushed it further.
Nine.
Ten.
Eleven.
Twelve.
Thirteen.
One by one, the refined layers folded inward until they matched the density of the core.
He absorbed them.
Integrated them.
All while continuing to refine the last of the incoming qi.
The torrent weakened.
The stream thinned.
He compressed the final influx through cycle after cycle until it too reached thirteen.
Then drew it inward.
His dantian filled completely.
Qi the size of a small melon, thirteen times compressed, rotated steadily within him.
Dense.
Heavy.
Perfectly balanced.
The flow from the formation stopped.
No more qi entered.
He did not need more.
There was no space for more.
And for the first time since the ritual began—
Everything inside him was still.
For a long moment, Riven did not move.
Then—
He exhaled.
It left him in a slow, controlled breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding for minutes.
His eyelids lifted.
The chamber returned.
The blood-lit glow of the formation was fading now. The once-blazing grooves dimmed to a dull crimson pulse before slowly draining of color. The air no longer trembled with pressure.
Silence reclaimed the statue's head.
His body felt… different.
Heavy, yet light.
Every movement of qi inside him was smooth, obedient. The thirteen-times-compressed sphere rotated with quiet authority in his dantian, dense enough that even its idle motion carried weight.
Strength filled his limbs.
His thoughts were clearer than they had ever been.
A faint thread of something subtle receded inward, withdrawing from his awareness like mist pulled back by the tide.
Soul force.
Not infinite.
Not something to wield carelessly.
It felt like a reservoir hidden behind thought itself — drawn upon instinctively during crisis, now settling back into the depths of his Mind Palace.
Deep within, the five-petal blossom rested upon his soul.
The thin grey petals no longer writhed.
The crimson center pulsed faintly.
The awareness brushed against it once—
And withdrew.
He lowered his gaze.
The formation was almost completely dark now.
The ritual was over.
His eyes shifted.
To where she lay.
The surge of advancement, the intensity of survival, the overwhelming flood of qi—
All of it receded.
Reality returned in its place.
And reality was wrong.
There was no body.
No pale stillness.
No breathless form on cold stone.
Where Yue Lin had been—
Only her clothes remained.
The red fabric, darkened and stiff in places, collapsed in on itself as if whatever had filled it had simply… vanished.
Her dagger lay atop the folds.
And beside it—
A ring.
Resting where her hand should have been.
The grooves beneath were dry now.
Empty.
As though nothing had ever flowed through them.
The chamber felt vast.
Vacant in a way that pressed against his ribs.
His gaze did not blink.
Did not move.
For a long second, his mind refused to assemble what his eyes were seeing.
Then he stretched out his hand.