The week before the Inner Sect Exam was a blur of calculated savagery. Irelion treated his own body like an enemy soldier, a thing to be broken down and rebuilt into something useful. Time was a weapon, and sleep was a surrender he could not afford.
Every night, he'd return to the grotto. The Moonpetal Herbs were a fuel and a torment, each dose a fresh wave of agony that threatened to tear his young body apart. He didn't fight the pain. He focused it. He took the searing fire in his meridians and sharpened it into a blade, using it to carve new, wider pathways for his Qi. He gritted his teeth until his jaw ached, the taste of blood a constant companion. The face of Lyanna, his Third Sword, smiling peacefully amidst the rubble of her own sacrifice, was the image he held behind his eyes. He wasn't just cultivating; he was punishing himself, trying to outrun the memory of the gentle soul he'd led to slaughter.
By the fourth night, he had smashed through two more stages.
Mortal Realm, 6th Stage.
The monstrous pace of his advancement did not go unnoticed.
"Vance."
The voice was calm and steady, cutting through the pre-dawn gloom as Irelion slipped back toward the barracks. He turned. Standing there, his arms crossed, was Elder Brother Kai, a senior outer disciple who served as the barracks prefect. Kai had a reputation for being a stickler for rules, with eyes that missed nothing.
"You keep strange hours," Kai said, his gaze sharp and analytical. He took in Irelion's disheveled state—the dirt under his nails, the faint scent of cave dampness clinging to his robes, the bone-deep weariness in his posture that warred with the vibrant Qi now flowing through him. "And your cultivation… it has improved. Dramatically."
Irelion's face remained a blank mask. This was a new variable, an unexpected complication. "I find the night air helps me focus."
Kai took a step closer. He wasn't aggressive like Jin, but his scrutiny was a different kind of threat. "Focus? You look like you've been wrestling badgers in a ditch. Three stages in less than a week. Disciples talk. They say you stumbled upon some kind of treasure." He lowered his voice. "Treasures found on sect grounds are meant to be reported, Vance. For the good of all."
It was a veiled threat, a clumsy attempt at extortion.
A cold, humorless smile touched Irelion's lips. He met the prefect's gaze, and for a moment, the weary twenty-year-old vanished, replaced by the Saint of Swords who had stared down gods. "Elder Brother Kai, are you accusing me of theft?"
The shift in his demeanor was so sudden, so absolute, that Kai took an involuntary step back. The pressure in the air had changed. The boy in front of him suddenly felt... dangerous.
"Of course not," Kai stammered, flustered. "I am merely concerned for your well-being. Such rapid advancement can be unstable. It can damage one's foundation."
"My foundation is my own concern," Irelion said, his voice flat and dismissive. He started to walk past him. "Thank you for your... concern."
He left Kai standing in the pre-dawn chill, his mind reeling.Irelion walked to the abandoned corner of the training yard, his mind already working through possibilities. His body was weak. His techniques were inaccessible. But war had taught him that swords weren't the only weapons that mattered.
A memory surfaced, sharp and vivid. The Siege of Crimson Fortress. Ravenna—his Fourth Sword, all passion and fire—had turned a desperate defense into a breakthrough with nothing but crude explosive talismans and reckless audacity. She'd grinned at him through the smoke, her face blackened with soot, holding up a small cloth bundle.
"Who needs fancy sword techniques when you can just blow a hole in their face?" she'd laughed.
He'd dismissed it as inelegant at the time. Brutish. Beneath a Saint's dignity.
Now, that "inelegant" knowledge might be all that kept him alive.
He stared at his trembling hands. They couldn't channel Saint-level Qi. They couldn't execute divine techniques. But they could mix powders. They could tie knots. They could build what his meridians could not.
The thought settled in his chest like a cold stone. He was no longer a swordsman. He was a survivor. And survivors used every tool they had.
The encounter had confirmed it: his secret was a leaking ship, and people were starting to notice the water pooling at their feet.
His body could take no more of the herbs. The final three days were a different kind of torture. Three days. Three nights. The blade, the basics, the body's slow, agonizing surrender to his soul's demands. He spent the nights in the deserted training grounds, his cheap iron sword a familiar weight in his hand. He didn't practice the divine techniques that slept in his soul. He practiced a thrust. A parry. A downward slash.
Again and again.
He drove his body with the merciless precision of his soul's memory. His mind saw the perfect, economical movement. His body, clumsy and weak, tried to obey. The disconnect was a constant, grinding frustration. Sweat poured from him, stinging his eyes. His muscles screamed, his joints ached, but he didn't stop. He was forcing forty-seven years of experience into a body that had only known twenty.
Finally, the morning of the seventh day arrived. The day of the Inner Sect Entrance Exam.
Irelion stood before a basin of water, staring at his reflection. The face staring back was a stranger's. Young, plain, unremarkable. But the eyes were ancient. They were pits of old sorrow, of battles fought and lost, of loves gained and incinerated. He was a ghost in a stolen body.
He had reached the 6th Stage. He had honed his control over this new, fragile power. But he knew, with a certainty that chilled him to the bone, that it was not enough.
Today, he had to see her. He had to stand in the same arena, breathe the same air, and pretend he didn't feel the phantom heat of her death. His plan wasn't just to be a ghost anymore. It was to be a coward. He would fail the exam so spectacularly that no one, not even a curious prodigy or a suspicious prefect, would ever look at him twice again. It was a tactical retreat, a maneuver of a desperate general. His plan wasn't just to be a ghost anymore—he would become a coward. To save her, he first had to become nothing..
He took a deep, shuddering breath. It was time to face the sun.