POV: Vik
First, we reached the halls of Great white and from there, I took everyone back into the safe space of Anonymous Hall
The spatial aperture sealed behind us, depositing us straight onto the warm, polished floor of the Anonymous Hall.
Plop.
I set Chintu down on the woven reed mat near the doorway. The moment his stubby green feet touched the floor, the three-foot toddler-lizard gave his swollen belly two satisfied, hollow thumps, opened his snout wide, and let out an enormous, sulfurous yawn that sent a single golden ember tumbling onto the floorboards.
"Mind the mat, lizard," Lu Xiaoran sighed, hastily scuffing his boot over the spark before leaning his scabbard against the umbrella stand. He collapsed into the nearest low-slung cane chair with the dramatic groan of a man whose bones had turned to lead. "I smell like three generations of bad decisions and boiled swamp cabbage. Master, please tell me we aren't planning to go back down into that ditch before sunrise."
"Nobody is going into any ditches, Xiaoran," I said mildly, loosening the high collar of my scholar coat and rolling my cuffs back with practiced symmetry. "And if you intend to sit on my cushions in those mud-caked traveling trousers, you will find yourself scrubbed down with lye and a horsehair brush alongside the laundry."
Xiaoran bolted upright like he'd been jabbed with a needle, sheepishly glancing down at the brown spatter on his hem.
Pushpa slipped off my shoulder with liquid grace, landing soundlessly on the tea table. She stretched her spine into an elegant crescent, gave her left paw two methodical licks, and cast a look of haughty, unmitigated contempt at Xiaoran's boots before curling into a tight black knot directly atop my favorite leather ledger.
Across the room, Roman was already busying himself without being told. The massive man set the Ivory Cleaver into its wall rack with the gentle touch of a mother laying down an infant, then ambled straight to the corner water basin. He hauled two cedar buckets from the indoor well, set a copper kettle onto the stove embers, and began slicing dried lotus root onto a chopping block. His rough, scarred hands moved with the rhythmic, peaceful domesticity of someone who treated meal preparation with the exact same gravity as parrying a warhammer.
Lina was perched on a low stool beside the medical partition, checking the pulse of the rescued rogue cultivator.
"His meridians are resting comfortably, Master," Lina reported, adjusting her wire spectacles with her pinky finger. "The wood root took to the salve. He's sleeping soundly now. He shouldn't even have a fever when he wakes."
"Good," I replied, taking a seat at the low square table opposite Pushpa. "Keep him hydrated with mild barley broth once he opens his eyes. A man who nearly had his foundation extracted from his navel requires quiet digestion, not heroic elixirs."
Once he gets well, teleport him back to any hospital in some city away from West Oak City, make sure he didn't able to see your faces and anything about Anonymous Hall or Great White.
I had another great White let him wake up and before he woke up Roman and Lu Xiaoran will wear green skin suits, making them look like aliens it would be best to make him believe that aliens rescued him, even if someone questions him he will just say what he saw.
System: "Host, all of your ideas are just too bizarre just like you."
Vik: "System, sometimes people have to take bizarre actions, as they say; sometimes reality is stranger than fiction."
I turned my head toward Noah.
He was still standing near the entryway, his dark hood pulled down, holding the cleansed, inert jade dragon tablet in his hands. His posture was stiff, like an iron stake driven into the earth. The adrenaline of watching his ancestral hall get gutted by a prehistoric saurian was finally leaching out of his blood, leaving behind the hollow, bruised exhaustion that always follows an unspent reckoning.
"Sit, Noah," I said, pointing toward the empty rush mat across from me.
Noah hesitated for a fraction of a second, then stepped forward and sat down, resting the cool green jade on the polished wood between us. His crimson eyes remained lowered, tracing the grain of the timber.
"Master..." Noah began, his voice tight, rough at the edges. "Ruby... she's down there right now. Her army is gone. Her mind is frantic. If we struck while she was disoriented, before she could re-establish communication with the Heavenly Sword Pavilion..."
"And then?" I asked, leaning back against the wooden bolster. "You march into the manor, draw your blade, and trade blows with a 5th-circle mage possessing a transmigrator's system?"
"I have the Chaos Titan marrow," Noah murmured, his fists clenching on his knees. "The Nirvana technique burned my weakness away. I am not the boy who lost that duel."
"You are at the 3rd Level of Qi Refinement, Noah," I stated, my tone dropping all its playful lightness, becoming as cool, flat, and immovable as a bedrock shelf.
The room grew very quiet. Xiaoran stopped fidgeting with his sword tassels, and even the rhythmic thump-thump of Roman's cleaver against the cutting board paused for half a beat.
"You have a peerless body-refining technique and an ancestral marrow rebuilt with primordial vitality," I continued, looking directly into his crimson pupils through my gold-rimmed lenses. "That makes you durable, it makes you solid, and it ensures you will not shatter when the wind blows. It does not make you an immortal executioner."
I tapped the empty jade tablet with my index finger.
"A Chosen One's greatest weapon is not her skill; it is her narrative momentum. As long as her system perceives an active crisis, it manufactures emergency solutions. If you engage her now, while your cultivation is merely at the Qi Refinement stage, you are gambling your life on the hope that your anger burns hotter than her cheat codes. That is not strategy, Noah. That is vanity."
Noah took a slow, shuddering breath, his jaw tightening until the tendon along his cheek showed white. "Then... what am I to do?"
"You will cultivate," I said plainly. "You will sweep the courtyard in the mornings. You will chop spirit pine with Roman. You will assist Lina in cataloging the alchemical reagents we retrieved. And you will sit in meditation until every drop of residual turbulent Qi in your marrow is forged into a flawless, uncrackable foundation."
I leaned forward, my slit yellow eyes fixing him to the floor.
"Hear this clearly, Noah. You will not lay a single finger on Ruby, nor will you step within five miles of West Oak City's upper district, until your Dantian breaks the ceiling and enters the Golden Core Realm. When you can walk up to an opponent and crush their barrier not with frantic fury, but with the casual weight of an absolute, mathematically undeniable hierarchy—that is when you take the stage."
Noah stared at me, the turbulent storm behind his crimson eyes slowly freezing into a deep, crystalline lake of stillness.
He didn't argue. He didn't plead for vengeance. He simply placed both palms flat on the reed mat, bowed his forehead until it touched the wood, and let out a long, quiet breath that seemed to carry the last remnants of his teenage recklessness away.
"This disciple obeys," Noah whispered. "I will not step onto that stage until my Golden core is formed."
"Good," I said, a soft, approving warmth returning to my face. "Now go wash the sewer mud out of your hair. Roman is making lotus soup, and I will not have my hall smelling like an unwashed garrison."
"Yes, Master." Noah stood up, picked up his jade memento, and walked toward the wash chambers with his shoulders set, his stride lighter than it had been in months.
I turned back to the table, looking at Xiaoran and Roman.
"That goes for the rest of you as well," I noted, watching Xiaoran's shoulders instantly drop. "Roman, your Ivory Cleaver has re-awakened, but your kinetic redirection still loses four percent of its torque on the backswing. You will drill the first seven forms fifty times each evening. Xiaoran, your wind-blade steps are too flashy; you are wasting thirty percent of your breath on dramatic whistling. Silence the blade, or I will have Chintu sit on your chest during your morning katas."
Chintu, hearing his name, let out an enthusiastic, high-pitched "chirp!" from his corner and rolled onto his back, wagging his tail.
Xiaoran sighed miserably, rubbing his face. "Yes, Master... no whistling."
Once the disciples had dispersed to their respective chores and the gentle clinking of porcelain and ladles began drifting from the kitchen, I rose from the table.
With Pushpa draped comfortably across the nape of my neck as a familiar, warm fur stole, I walked down the quiet corridor, and thinking for a bit, I decided to head towards my room."
I sat cross-legged on the hemp mat, resting my hands lightly on my knees.
Pushpa hopped down, walked three tight circles near the burner, and curled herself into a sleek black ball, her tail wrapping over her nose as she drifted into a light doze.
'System,' I thought, closing my eyes and letting the noise of the physical world fade into a distant hum.
System: "Host, I know you want me to help in that Prana thing, but sorry to say I don't know anything about Prana energy, heck I don't even have any clue that such energy existed before you told me about it."
Vik: "System, I am not asking for your help, I already achieved a mastery on Prana now I think my Prana energy is on level where my other power system can be in sync with it."
For months, my external cultivation had appeared modest, deceptive, and tightly constrained.
When I first integrated the vast, primordial sea of Prana into this vessel, the violent clash between this world's orthodox mana laws and the boundless blueprint of life itself had created an energetic bottleneck. It was like pouring an entire ocean into an exquisite porcelain flask—to prevent the flask from shattering into cosmic dust, I had been forced to compress my energetic presence, binding my active meridians and operating under heavy, self-imposed seals.
To ordinary cultivators, to the Heavenly Sword Pavilion's tracking arrays, and even to Ruby's scanning interface, I registered as little more than a frail, unranked scholar who dabbled in trivial herbalism.
I took a slow, deep breath, drawing the cool air of the sanctum down into my lower abdomen.
Within my sea of consciousness, the heavy, invisible iron chains that had held my core in stasis began to dissolve.
It was not an explosion. It did not produce the dramatic, earth-shaking shockwaves that mortal cultivators bragged about when breaking through a bottleneck. True power does not shout; it merely exists.
Hummmmm.
A pale, emerald-gold light, so fine and dense it looked like spun liquid glass, blossomed from the center of my chest.
It washed through my three hundred and sixty major acupoints, completely synchronizing the boundless vitality of Prana with my innate foundation. The energetic seals peeled away one by one, like old parchment flaking into the wind, revealing the ancient, abyssal depth that lay dormant beneath.
The physical room around me began to subtly warp.
The air molecules within three feet of my sleeves ceased their thermal vibration, hovering in absolute, crystalline suspension. The dust motes floating beneath the skylight froze mid-air. The boundary between the physical space of the room and the infinite voids between dimensions grew paper-thin, vibrating in silent, harmonious reverence around my fingertips.
The Void Traveling Realm.
The peak state I had once mastered—the realm where a cultivator ceased to be bound by the physical curvature of single worlds, where stepping across tens of thousands of miles was no more difficult than turning a page in a library book—had fully, seamlessly returned to my grasp.
And this time, it was anchored by the inexhaustible, primordial root of Prana. It was no longer just an empty space of cold, hollow vacuum; it was a living void, capable of giving birth to life or swallowing an entire narrative whole.
I slowly opened my eyes.
Behind the clear glass of my spectacles, my pupils had narrowed into two razor-thin, brilliant emerald slits, glowing with the quiet, ancient intellect of a serpent that had watched stars ignite and die.
The spatial distortion around my sleeves smoothed out, vanishing back beneath the plain linen of my scholar robes until not a single ripple of energy remained visible to the mortal world.