The dust cloud appeared above the treeline a full two minutes before the noise reached us.
I was standing on the cracked stone of the outer courtyard, watching the morning sun burn the mist off the valley. I had just declared that we were going to rebuild the sect. I had felt, for approximately forty seconds, a profound and genuine sense of purpose.
Then the mountain began to vibrate.
It wasn't an earthquake. It was the synchronized, rhythmic marching of heavy leather boots on stone, amplified by the deliberate, aggressive projection of hostile spiritual energy.
Thirty men walked through the ruined archway of the Azure Void Sect.
They wore the dark red, scale-patterned silk of the Crimson Scale Sect. They didn't look like common scavengers or debt collectors. They moved in perfect, rigid military formation. The air in the courtyard instantly grew thick, heavy, and violently hot, smelling like baked iron and sweat.
Zhou Bao, who was still holding his roll of fresh bandages by the stone well, made a sound like a stepped-on dog toy and dropped the linen straight into the mud.
I didn't move. My left leg, still screaming from the torn muscle, wouldn't have let me run anyway. I folded my hands behind my back, drawing on the absolute bottom reserves of Wei Liang's impenetrable mask of boredom.
The man leading them didn't look like a warlord. He looked like a wealthy merchant who was deeply tired of dealing with incompetent employees. He had a neatly trimmed beard, heavy jade rings on three fingers, and a posture that expected the physical world to get out of his way.
Elder Zhao Feng.
The man who had crippled the body I was currently wearing.
But I wasn't looking at him. I couldn't. My eyes, my instincts, my entire central nervous system was pinned to the man standing slightly behind Zhao Feng's right shoulder.
He was entirely unremarkable. Thin. Graying hair. Plain brown robes.
But looking at him felt like staring directly into the sun. The pressure rolling off his skin wasn't hot or cold; it didn't feel like majestic spiritual authority. It just felt like sickness. A heavy, sickening radiation that made the roots of my teeth ache instantly. I swallowed, and my saliva tasted entirely like copper.
"Nascent Soul Stage One," Old Geezer's voice whispered in the dark corners of my skull. It was the quietest I had ever heard the ancient god. The simmering arrogance was completely gone. "An Imperial enforcer. Zhao Feng brought him to ensure there is absolutely no ambiguity about your survival odds."
I have zero Qi, my brain calculated frantically, the panic making my fingers numb. I have a crying teenager, a girl obsessed with soil pH, and two women who hate me. Thirty Core Formation cultivators and a Nascent Soul. My teeth hurt. Why do my teeth hurt?
Zhao Feng stopped ten feet away. He looked at the ruined main hall. He looked at Zhou Bao crying quietly by the well. He looked at me.
His eyes were incredibly sharp. He was doing the math. He saw exactly what this place was—a hollowed-out graveyard.
"Sect Master Wei," Zhao Feng said. His voice was smooth, carrying the practiced, corporate patience of a man negotiating the price of a dying horse. "You are looking remarkably vertical for a man whose meridians I shattered."
I kept my chin level. I let my eyes glaze over slightly, focusing on the empty air just past his left ear, as if he were a particularly boring tax document.
"Elder Zhao," I replied. The aristocratic baritone held perfectly steady. I was immensely grateful to the dead man whose vocal cords I was hijacking. "You are tracking mud onto my stones."
Zhao Feng chuckled. It was a dry, utterly humorless sound.
"Let us dispense with the martial theater," Zhao Feng said, adjusting one of his heavy jade rings. "I am here on a formal territorial visit. Your sect is defunct. You have no elders, no resources, and no standing. I am absorbing the Azure Void lands into the Crimson Scale territory. You will surrender the deed and the mountain by the end of this month, or my people will return and dismantle this ruin with you inside it."
It wasn't a threat. It was an administrative notice of annihilation.
The courtyard was dead silent. The oppressive, suffocating weight of the Nascent Soul enforcer's aura pushed down on my shoulders, trying to physically force my knees to buckle. My torn left thigh throbbed in agonizing, rhythmic time with my racing heart.
Month's end, I thought, my mind racing. I don't have a month. The Heavenly Dao executioner gets here in eight weeks. I don't have time for local real estate disputes.
I looked past Zhao Feng, at the thirty armed cultivators waiting to slaughter us.
"I'll give you the same deadline," I said.
The words hung in the thick, hot air.
For two full seconds, nobody moved. Then Zhao Feng let out a loud, genuine bark of laughter. Several of his disciples behind him smirked, shaking their heads at the sheer, delusional arrogance of a crippled sect master issuing demands to an army.
"You will give me—" Zhao Feng started, smiling widely, showing his teeth.
Crunch.
It was a very soft sound. The sound of a silk slipper stepping onto frozen grass.
Shen Yuebing walked out from the deep shadow of the main hall.
She didn't look at Zhao Feng. She didn't draw a weapon. She simply walked to my right side and stopped. She folded her pale hands in front of her pristine white robes.
The ambient temperature in the courtyard plummeted so violently that the sweat on the faces of the Crimson Scale disciples instantly stopped gleaming, turning cold and clammy on their skin. My own breath plumed white in front of my face.
Zhao Feng's smile died.
His eyes snapped to her. He hadn't known she was here. The intelligence reports hadn't placed the Glacier Sect's legendary Core Formation Stage Seven prodigy in a ruined courtyard in the middle of nowhere.
Before Zhao Feng could even process the visual confirmation of the Glacier Sect emblem hanging from her sash, a heavy, iron-shod leather boot slammed into the dirt on my left.
Luo Yanfen marched out from behind the training posts. She crossed her arms tightly over her chest, digging her fingers into her dark leather armor. She didn't look at me. She glared directly at Zhao Feng with amber eyes that looked like a starved hawk deciding which piece of meat to rip off first.
The Foundation Stage Nine aura rolling off her wasn't refined. It was pure, explosive heat. It smashed directly into the heavy pressure of the Crimson Scale disciples, creating a static, shimmering distortion in the air right between our factions.
I was standing exactly between them. My right side was freezing numb. My left side felt like it was pressed against an open furnace door.
I didn't blink. I didn't turn my head.
Inside, my nervous system was currently attempting to set itself on fire. What is happening. They are standing next to me. I didn't ask them. Why are they standing next to me? Keep staring straight ahead. Do not look at them. If I look at them, he'll know I didn't plan this.
Zhao Feng looked at Yuebing. He looked at Yanfen. Then he looked back at me.
I was standing between them, hands still clasped loosely behind my back, looking incredibly, impossibly bored.
Zhao Feng's jaw tightened. The veins in his neck stood out sharply against his silk collar. His eyes darted from the Glacier Sect emblem to the Crimson Phoenix armor, then to his Nascent Soul enforcer, and finally back to me.
In the second row of the Crimson Scale formation, one of the younger disciples suddenly frowned. The boy turned his head, staring hard at the deep shadow cast by the ruined archway near the wall. He squinted. He paused for two full seconds, his hand drifting toward his sword hilt. He sensed something. But there was nothing there.
He shook his head and looked back forward. He was right to look.
Zhao Feng stared at me, trying to pierce the unfathomable, empty void of my expression. He was trying to figure out how a crippled ghost had manipulated two major powers into acting as his personal bodyguards without saying a single word.
"Month's end, Sect Master Wei," Zhao Feng said. His voice was no longer smooth. It sounded like grinding glass.
He turned sharply on his heel. He didn't issue an order. He just walked away.
The thirty cultivators fell in line behind him, their heavy boots kicking up the dust as they retreated down the mountain path. The Nascent Soul enforcer lingered for a fraction of a second longer, his dead eyes sweeping over Yuebing and Yanfen, before turning and following his employer.
I watched them go. I waited until the dust cloud disappeared completely below the treeline.
Then my lungs finally remembered how to process oxygen.
Before I could even exhale the shaky, ragged breath, the cold, clean interface of the system panel snapped open behind my optic nerve.
[ SOUL CULTIVATION BOND ARRAY — STATUS UPDATE ]
[ Resonance ACCELERATED ][ Target: Luo Yanfen — Stage 0.6 / 5.0 ]
[ Target: Shen Yuebing — Stage 0.5 / 5.0 ]
[ Trigger Event: Shared Trial / Unprompted Alignment ]
[ WARNING: HEAVEN DETECTION LEVEL — ELEVATED ][ Tier 2 Monitoring Formation Deployed ]
The phantom spike behind my ear throbbed.
"Hmm," Old Geezer murmured in the dark. He didn't sound angry. He sounded genuinely, profoundly intrigued. "Interesting. They moved without being asked."
I didn't answer him. I was too busy trying to keep my locked knees from giving out entirely.
The courtyard was incredibly quiet. The oppressive heat of the army was gone, leaving only the sharp chill of Yuebing's proximity and the faint smell of ozone and ash from Yanfen.
Neither woman looked at me. Neither of them acknowledged what had just happened. They were staring straight ahead at the empty gate.
I cleared my throat. It felt like swallowing sandpaper.
"...Thank you," I said quietly.
Yuebing didn't respond. She simply turned, her white robes rustling like dry snow, and walked back toward the main hall without a single word.
Yanfen stayed planted for a second longer. I could see the tips of her ears turning a violent, aggressive red against her fiery hair.
"Don't make it weird," Yanfen snapped. Her voice cracked slightly on the last syllable.
She spun around, intentionally stomping her heavy boots against the cracked stone, and marched furiously toward the training yard, radiating a heat that had absolutely nothing to do with combat.
I stood alone in the center of the courtyard.
The adrenaline crash hit me like a physical blow to the back of the neck. My hands were shaking so badly I had to clench them into fists to hide it from the empty air. I tasted copper again.
I looked down at the dirt, breathed out, and realized I had bitten through the inside of my own cheek.