Rian gasped, bolting upright in his bed. His chest heaved as if he had just surfaced from drowning in a deep, stagnant ocean.
The room was pitch dark, the heavy silence of the Zhou Manor pressing in against the windows. It was the hour of the ox—deep into the night, when the guards were most tired and the shadows most long.
He wiped his forehead. His hand came away slick, but not with the cold, clammy sweat of fear. It was a thick, black, oily substance that smelled pungent—like burnt rubber and ammonia. The impurities. The Mother's breath in the dream hadn't just spoken to him; it had triggered a purge.
Rian didn't waste a second panicking about the eldritch nightmare he had just escaped. Panic was inefficient. Panic burned calories and clouded judgment. Instead, he pulled his legs under him, assuming the lotus position. He closed his eyes, his breathing shifting instantly from erratic gasps to a slow, rhythmic cycle.
He remembered the Matriarch's lesson. It wasn't a spiritual teaching; it was a business strategy. Don't fight the asset. Merge with it. Hostile takeovers only fail when the culture clashes.
He turned his focus inward, visualizing his own anatomy. There, clinging to the walls of his meridians like frost on a windowpane, was the residue of the Heart-Stopping Orchid. It was a jagged, icy blue sludge—a biological liability that was slowly depreciating the value of his life.
A normal cultivator would use their Qi to flush it out, treating it as waste. Rian did the opposite.
He opened the gates of his Dantian. "Acquire," he commanded mentally.
He pulled the poison in. He dragged the toxic sludge away from his extremities and into the core of his energy center. It burned. It felt like swallowing razor blades made of dry ice. But Rian didn't flinch. He spun his raw, unrefined Qi around the toxin, creating a centrifuge.
He ground it down. Crunch. He could feel the chemical bonds shattering in his spiritual vision. The poison tried to resist, tried to freeze his core, but the Nether Spider's nature was to consume. The blue sludge collapsed under the pressure. It didn't disappear; it restructured. The icy blue turned into a deep, malevolent violet. It merged with his blood, darkening it. His Qi became heavier, colder, and infinitely more viscous.
Purge complete, Rian exhaled, a plume of frost visible in the dark room. Asset assimilated. Toxicity converted to capital.
He opened his eyes. For a brief second, the irises were not human; they were faceted, glowing with a faint, violet luminescence before fading back to dark brown.
Ping.
A vibration. It rippled through the air, touching the tiny, invisible hairs on Rian's arms. Rian froze. His new senses were screaming. The room wasn't just empty space anymore; it was a grid of tension lines, and someone had just stepped on one.
The air pressure shifted subtly. The dust motes dancing in the moonlight were disturbed by a foreign breath. He looked up, staring at the wooden ceiling. He couldn't see through it, but he could feel the stress on the beams.
Weight: Approximately 75kg, Rian calculated instantly. Stealth Technique: Standard. Soft-soled boots. Weight distribution favors the toes. Heart rate: 58 BPM. Slow. Controlled. Professional.
An assassin.
Rian's lips curled into a cold, bloodless smile. First Mother, he thought, staring at the darkness. You are truly risk-averse. You exiled me to a death camp, you stripped me of my dignity, but you still sent a cleaner to ensure the job is done tonight. You really don't want to pay that severance package.
He didn't move. On the nightstand lay the steel sword his father had given him. Rian ignored it. Reaching for steel would make the sound of rustling fabric. It would alert the intruder. Besides, steel was crude. Steel was for soldiers. Rian was a Weaver.
He lay back down, pulling the blanket up to his chin. He adjusted his breathing, forcing it to sound shallow and rhythmic—the breathing of a defenseless, sleeping boy.
Creak.
Above him, a single roof tile was silently slid out of place. A sliver of pale moonlight cut through the darkness, illuminating the dust on the floor. A figure dressed in tight black leathers peered down through the gap. The assassin was hanging upside down, bracing himself against the rafters. In his hand was a slender bamboo blowpipe.
Silent. Clean. No marks. The assassin looked down at the sleeping boy. He saw the relaxed posture. He saw the "useless" Nether Spider bloodline lurking in the boy's aura. An easy mark, the assassin thought. A waste of a midnight trip.
The assassin inhaled deep into his diaphragm, preparing to blow the dart.
Now.
Rian's hand, hidden under the blanket, flicked a single finger. He didn't shoot a chaotic web. He concentrated all his newfound Qi, all the assimilated poison, into a single point.
Thwip.
A sound softer than a page turning. A single thread shot upward. It was invisible in the dark, thinner than a human hair, but with the tensile strength of piano wire. It was infused with the Heart-Stopping Orchid Qi Rian had just cultivated.
It passed through the gap in the tiles. It struck the assassin in the small patch of exposed skin between his mask and his collar.
The thread didn't just pierce the skin; it dissolved into the bloodstream instantly. It delivered a concentrated, hyper-accelerated dose of the very poison that was meant to kill Rian, now amplified by the Nether Spider's enzymatic breakdown.
The assassin's eyes went wide behind his mask. He tried to exhale the dart. His diaphragm paralyzed instantly. The air was trapped in his lungs. He tried to grab his throat, to claw at the sting. His arms went limp, dangling uselessly.
The poison he had come to deliver was a crude tool compared to the ancient toxicity Rian had just refined. It froze the nerve endings in a microsecond.
Thud.
Gravity took over. The body slipped from the rafters and fell through the weakened roof section, crashing onto the floor of Rian's room with a heavy, wet sound. The blowpipe clattered across the stone.
The assassin twitched once. His eyes stared up at Rian, filled with confusion and terror. He tried to speak, to ask how, but his heart had already turned to ice. Twice. Then, absolute silence.
Rian sat up slowly, the blanket falling from his shoulders. He looked at the twisted corpse on his floor with detached interest, like an accountant looking at a balanced spreadsheet.
"Return to sender," he whispered into the dark.
[DIVINE OBSERVATION LOG: ENTRY #006]
Observer: High God of Vengeance Subject: The Anomaly (Rian) Action: Self-Defense / Asset Liquidation
COMMENTARY: Irony. It is the sweetest flavor in the universe, and tonight, I am feasting. The assassin was sent to finish a job started by the Heart-Stopping Orchid. He died by the essence of the Orchid, delivered by the victim.
Standard vengeance is messy. It involves screaming and sword fights. This? This was efficient. Rian has turned the concept of "Revenge" into a Closed-Loop Recycling System. Nothing is wasted. Not the poison. Not the opportunity. Not even the murder weapon. He took the liability (the poison in his blood) and converted it into a capital asset (a weapon) to eliminate a threat.
I shudder to think what he will do with the body.
[END LOG]