Xuanye's cultivation room was small, cramped, and barely deserved to be called a room.
Damp stone walls. A single oil lamp. One straw mat. No formations. No qi-enhancing tools. The sect provided such spaces not for growth—but to ensure low-ranking disciples did not interfere with others.
Xuanye sat cross-legged and closed his eyes.
He did not absorb qi immediately.
Instead, he observed.
The qi around him flowed as usual—calm, obedient, stable. No turbulence. No pressure. If Elder Mo Yunqiu had not died yesterday, today would have felt perfect.
That was what unsettled him.
He began cultivating using the standard method. Inhale. Absorb qi. Circulate slowly. Settle it into the dantian. A cycle he had repeated thousands of times.
This time, however, he deliberately paused slightly longer at each stage.
The qi did not resist.
His dantian did not suffer damage.
His body offered no warning.
Xuanye opened his eyes.
"There's nothing wrong," he murmured.
And that was the problem.
He tried again—this time a bit faster. The qi remained obedient. Circulation stayed stable. It even felt… more efficient.
This method was not forbidden. Not innovative. Not dangerous.
Yet yesterday, someone had died because of "persistence."
Xuanye stopped cultivating.
He stared at the stone floor before him, at a small crack that had never been repaired. It posed no danger. Affected no structure. Yet it remained.
Because the crack did not spread.
The understanding surfaced without warning.
The issue was not error.
Nor failure.
It was direction.
Xuanye took out a thin notebook from his sleeve. He did not write new techniques. He did not draw formations. He wrote only a single line:
If the world judges persistence, then stagnation may be a form of safety.
He closed the notebook and sat down again.
This time, he cultivated worse than before. Slower. Less efficiently. He allowed a bit of qi to leak. Let his breathing fall out of perfect rhythm.
And for the first time since yesterday—
There was no sense of pressure.
Xuanye opened his eyes, feeling something unfamiliar.
Not relief.
Not fear.
But the realization that progress might not be this world's goal.
And survival…
might mean deliberately walking in the wrong direction.