Volume 2, Chapter 66: The Iron and the Anchor
My right knee popped loudly when I stood up from the rock. Getting old is a terrible joke, especially when you technically don't age. The woods behind the Anito Academy were dense, smelling of wet pine needles and old earth. It was a good place to hide from the noise of the city.
Yuhao was currently walking into a tree.
He bounced off the thick bark, rubbing his forehead with a groan. His eyes were wide, and the pupils were dilating rapidly. Ever since the incident in the courtyard yesterday, his body had been trying to catch up with his brain. The newly formed Spiritual Soul Core had shattered his previous limits, flooding his meridians and pushing his Soul Power straight from Level 72 to Level 77 in a single night.
It was a beautiful thing to watch. But it also meant his senses were dialed up so high that the sound of a falling leaf probably felt like a thunderclap.
"You are overcorrecting," I said, leaning against a low branch. "Your Spirit Eyes are seeing the energy of the roots under the dirt, but your feet still need to walk on top of the grass. Stop trying to process everything."
"I can't turn it down, Professor," Yuhao gritted out, squeezing his eyes shut. "The core is pulling in too much information. It feels like my skull is vibrating."
"That is because you are floating," a quiet voice said.
Wang Qiu'er was sitting on a fallen log a few paces away. She watched him with those steady, unblinking pink eyes. The faint golden light of the Auspicious Beast lingered around her like soft sunlight. She stood up and walked over to him, her golden hair catching the morning sun breaking through the canopy.
She reached out and grabbed his bare forearm.
Yuhao let out a sharp breath, his shoulders instantly dropping. The erratic twitching in his eyes stopped.
"Better?" she asked.
"Yeah," he whispered. "It's quiet when you touch me."
"Good. Keep holding onto her," I instructed, pulling a small silver pocket watch from my coat. "You two are going to walk the perimeter of the clearing. Blindfolded. Yuhao, you use your Spirit Eyes to map the terrain. Qiu'er, you are the anchor. If he starts floating into the sensory static, you pull him back with your physical weight. Don't let go of each other."
They nodded. Yuhao tied a strip of black cloth over his eyes, leaving his hand firmly wrapped around Qiu'er's arm. They started moving slowly through the brush, learning to trust the solid connection between them.
I turned my attention to the girl sitting cross-legged on the grass. Xiao Xiao had her dark bamboo flute resting across her lap. Beside her, the faint ghostly outline of the Three Lives Cauldron hovered in the air. The Nine Phoenix Dancing Flute and the cauldron were her twin soul spirits — quiet but powerful tools of the Phoenix Hall.
"The Seven Tone Chaos Nirvana isn't a song," I told her, my tone entirely serious now. "If you try to play it like a sheet of music, you will just make pretty noises. The world is full of pretty noises. What Chen Feng brings is silence. Absolute, heavy silence."
Xiao Xiao looked up at me. "How do I fight silence, then?"
"You don't fight it. You fill it," I explained. I crouched down, picking up a handful of dirt. "The first tone is the Foundation. It is the sound of dirt settling. It is the sound of a stone staying exactly where it is. I want you to play a note that makes the air feel heavy. Your cauldron is the hammer. Your flute is the nail. Drive the sound into the ground."
Xiao Xiao brought the flute to her lips. She closed her eyes. A low, vibrating note hummed through the clearing. It didn't sound pretty. It sounded like a heavy wooden door slamming shut in an empty hallway.
The leaves around us stopped rustling. The air grew perfectly still.
"Hold it," I said, watching the green outline of her cauldron solidify. "Learn the weight of that note. You'll need it."
And right on cue, a black feather dropped from the canopy above.
I caught it before it hit the ground. It dissolved into a small burst of gray mist, leaving behind a tightly rolled piece of parchment in my palm. The Shadow Sentinels.
I unrolled it, reading the short, panicked scrawl. My lazy grin vanished.
"Class is over," I announced, standing up quickly.
Yuhao pulled down his blindfold. Qiu'er didn't let go of his arm. "What's wrong?" he asked.
"The Hall of Execution just issued an emergency draft for all available high-tier combatants," I said, walking toward the path leading back to the school. "We are going north. Back to the red clay."
The Red Dirt
The border town looked exactly the same as it had a month ago, and entirely different.
The red clay was still there, caking the boots of the retreating local garrison. But the sky above the town wasn't blue. It was a sickly, bruised purple. The air smelled of burnt iron and sour blood.
We stood on the ridge overlooking the valley. Yuhao, Qiu'er, and Xiao Xiao were geared up, the tension radiating off them in waves.
"There's no silence here," Yuhao muttered, his third eye opening. The violet light of the Gaze of Openings swept over the town below. "It's loud. The energy down there is completely chaotic. It looks like broken glass."
"Chen Feng is done erasing things," I said, pulling my coat tighter against the cold wind. "He's replacing them now."
Down in the main street of the town, things were moving. They weren't human. They weren't normal soul beasts either.
They looked like wolves, but their bodies were wrong. The flesh was stripped away in places, replaced by heavy forged iron plates. Pale green fire burned in their eye sockets. Their joints didn't bend naturally; they moved with a sharp, mechanical twitch that made my skin crawl.
"Iron-Bone Husks," I said quietly. I knew the design. I had seen early versions of it centuries ago, locked away in forbidden texts. "He's taking dead soul beasts and stuffing cold gears and artificial soul batteries into their chests. He is manufacturing an army that doesn't feel pain or fatigue."
"How many?" Xiao Xiao asked, her grip tightening on her flute.
"Too many for the garrison to handle," Yuhao said, stepping forward. His Level 77 soul power flared, a massive wave of pure, heavy pressure that made the loose rocks around us rattle. "We have to break their line before they reach the civilian shelters in the south."
"You have your anchor, Yuhao," I said, pointing down the hill. "Go see if it holds in a storm."
Yuhao didn't hesitate. He leaped down the steep embankment.
Qiu'er was right beside him, her golden spear materializing in her hand as the light of the Auspicious Beast flared around her. They hit the valley floor together, kicking up a massive cloud of red dust.
The pack of Forged Husks turned toward the noise. Ten of the metallic beasts charged, their iron claws tearing deep gouges into the dirt.
Yuhao didn't draw a weapon. He raised his right hand. The new density of his Soul Core pulsed.
"Xiao Xiao! Foundation!" he yelled back.
From the ridge above, the heavy, slamming note of the Nine Phoenix Dancing Flute echoed through the valley. The giant green illusion of the Three Lives Cauldron slammed down into the center of the town.
The air instantly became incredibly heavy. The charging beasts slowed down, their mechanical joints grinding against the sudden, massive gravity pressing down on them.
That was all the opening Yuhao and Qiu'er needed.
They moved with the exact same rhythm they had practiced in the woods. Yuhao stepped into the pocket of the leading beast, his palm striking the iron plating on its chest. He didn't try to break the metal. His Level 77 spiritual power found the exact frequency of the artificial battery inside the beast.
He sent a pulse of cold, hard energy straight into it. The beast froze.
Before it could recover, Qiu'er spun past Yuhao, her shoulder brushing against his back. She drove her golden spear completely through the beast's neck, pinning it to the red earth.
"One down," she said, her breath completely steady.
"Keep the pace," Yuhao replied.
They tore through the pack. It was a brutal, beautiful dance. Yuhao used his massive spiritual pressure to disrupt the forged beasts' internal rhythms, creating tiny fractions of hesitation. Qiu'er exploited every single gap, her golden power shattering iron plates and crushing bone.
Every time Yuhao's senses threatened to overwhelm him with the sheer volume of combat data, he reached out and touched Qiu'er's shoulder or caught her hand in a brief pass. The physical contact grounded him instantly, draining the static from his mind. Bai Xue, the Ice Jade Swan, stirred quietly in his spiritual sea, helping him keep his mental sea calm.
I watched them from the ridge. A group of local guards had gathered near me, staring down at the fight in absolute awe.
"Who are they?" a wounded captain asked, holding a bloody rag to his arm.
"They are the new rule," I said, not taking my eyes off the valley. I let a confident smirk cross my face. It was the face of a man who held all the cards. "And they hit very, very hard."
Down below, the final Forged Husk lunged at Yuhao from behind.
He didn't even turn around. Qiu'er stepped into the beast's path, catching its iron jaw with her bare hand. She twisted her hip, using its own momentum to flip the massive creature onto its back. Yuhao simply dropped his heel onto its exposed chest, the sheer weight of his Level 77 soul power crushing the artificial battery beneath the ribs into dust.
The town fell silent again. This time, it wasn't a void. It was just the quiet aftermath of a victory.
Yuhao stood in the center of the street, breathing hard. His uniform was stained with red clay and black oil. He looked at his hands, marveling at the sheer stability of his new core. Then he looked at Qiu'er.
She was covered in dust, but she looked like a goddess of war. She met his gaze and gave a small, rare smile.
"The anchor holds," she said softly.
I walked down the hill, my boots crunching on the loose gravel. The fight was won, but the real problem was lying in pieces all around us.
I kicked the shattered chassis of one of the beasts. Dead iron and dead flesh. Chen Feng was mass-producing these horrors, which meant he had a factory somewhere deep in the Abyss.
"Clean yourselves up," I told them as they gathered around. "We won the skirmish, but the war just got a lot uglier."
I looked out toward the northern horizon, where the purple bruises in the sky were slowly spreading. The quiet times were definitely over.
End of Volume 2, Chapter 66