"What am I going to get Kim Yuna for Valentine's Day?" Leo asked.

  Tom opened his mouth.

  "Maybe you could get her a light pink Birkin," Vivian said, without looking up from her tablet. "You can't get another divine beast leather one, obviously. But the regular one should still work for Kim Yuna."

  She ran her fingers along the strap of her own bag. "I love mine. I'm sure she would appreciate it."

  Leo pulled out his phone. Typed in Hermès Birkin. Scrolled to the price.

  He counted the zeros. Counted them again.

  "That's too expensive."

  "Is it?" Vivian tilted her head. "It's okay. I can front the money. Then you can tell her it's a gift from both of us."

  Tom stepped in. "Yuna probably has every Birkin she wants. Her family could buy Hermès." He turned to Leo. "She'd probably appreciate something handmade. Something personal. That's more her style."

  Leo's expression, which had been merely concerned, shifted to something approaching dread. Ordering a gift off a website was one thing.

  Making something with his hands for Kim Yuna was another.

  "Handmade," Leo repeated.

  "Handmade," Tom confirmed.

  "Maybe," Vivian said, still 'helpful', "you should just skip school altogether around Valentine's Day. Avoid the whole situation."

  Leo laughed. "I like that advice." He nodded. "Thanks, Vivian. You always got my back."

  "Always," Vivian smiled.

  Tom looked between them but said nothing.

  Leo pushed his tray aside. "What's the plan with the transport team? Are we still running missions?"

  Tom leaned back. "We all earned more than enough merits from the last run. Saving thirty thousand lives, the partial credit for the six Nascent Soul kills. Everyone's covered. We all bought draft exemptions for everyone we could."

  "So we're done?"

  "For now. We're not sure what's next. But the military's going to need us again if the mountain domain lords start hitting convoys. Matt's spending all his time learning the tether repair systems so we're not dependent on outside technicians."

  "I'm currently looking for the best field medic we can recruit. We want the best for you, Leo."

  Leo turned to Vivian. "Are you planning on going back into the Catacombs?"

  Vivian finally looked up from her tablet. She adjusted her glasses.

  "Why wouldn't I? Someone has to watch the other end of your tether."

  "Vivian." Leo placed a hand over his heart. "I'm so glad you're here. You're my most reliable partner."

  Vivian's face went pink. She ducked behind her tablet, but the grin was visible above the edge of it.

  Leo pulled out his copy of the Heart of Flesh and slid it across the table. "I've been trying to cultivate this. Dao heart technique. Take a look."

  Tom picked it up. His brow furrowed. He flipped through it a few times, then set the manuscript down.

  "I have no idea what any of this means."

  "I don't either."

  "Leo." Tom folded his hands on the table. "Maybe you should go to more classes. Stay in school for a while."

  "Stay in school?"

  "You've been running Catacombs missions and playing Flying Aces for Yale. You've been off track from normal life for months." Tom gestured around the dining hall. To the students eating lunch.

  "Maybe it would help to just be a regular student for a bit. Go to lectures. Do homework. Eat lunch here every day. Ground yourself."

  Leo considered it. It sounded like a good idea.

  Then a thought occurred to him.

  "If I'm at school every day, I'll be here for Valentine's Day."

  Tom paused.

  "Although," Leo said slowly, "maybe doing something meaningful for Valentine's Day would actually help with the dao heart cultivation. The Heart of Flesh talks about connecting with people. Maybe..."

  Under the table, Vivian kicked Tom in the shin. Hard.

  "Ow." Tom grabbed his leg.

  Leo looked over. "You okay?"

  "Fine. Leg cramp." Tom straightened up, rubbing his shin. His eyes flicked to Vivian for a fraction of a second.

  "Actually," Tom said, his voice slightly strained, "that sounds too abstract. You'd be trying to force a cultivation breakthrough through a Valentine's Day gift, and that's setting yourself up for failure."

  "You think so?"

  "Definitely. You should do something more direct and practical instead." Tom spoke a little faster now.

  "Go to Yale. They'll have classes and seminars on dao heart cultivation. Coach Williams could probably find you a private tutor. That's way more productive than trying to figure out the Three Talents by making Kim Yuna a handmade card."

  Leo turned the idea over.

  "I like that idea," Leo said. "Way better. I'll head to Yale, focus on the cultivation training there." He looked at Tom, then at Vivian. "Just make sure you don't tell Kim Yuna where I am."

  "We will hide your location very well," Vivian said. The tablet was perfectly positioned to hide whatever expression was behind it.

  "Thanks. You guys are the best."

  Leo's phone buzzed against the cafeteria table. He glanced down. A message from Mike.

  Leo pushed his chair back. "Sorry guys, I've got to go. I'm going to be busy for a while."

  "Everything okay?" Tom asked.

  "Yeah, just something I've got to handle. Can you guys tell my teachers I'll be out for a while?"

  Tom stared at him. "Leo, I'm sure they won't mind. I don't even think most of them believe you exist."

  Leo looked a little worried. "I feel like it isn't good that I'm skipping this much school. I feel like I'm missing something important."

  Vivian reassured him. "Don't worry. If anything important comes up, we'll let you know. You don't need to come back till Homecoming."

  "Thanks, Vivian. You always got my back!"

  Leo left his food unfinished, grabbed his bag and headed for the door. Tom rubbed his shin under the table and said nothing.

  ---

  Azure Profound Continent

  Leo logged in and found Arthur hunched over a flat stone he'd repurposed as a workbench. Five empty merit stamps were already lined up in a neat row. Arthur was working on the sixth, his tongue poking out of the corner of his mouth.

  Arthur looked up at Leo.

  "Deity Transformation," he said, tapping the side of the jade with one finger. "Do you know what a Deity Transformation merit stamp looks like? I don't. I bet nobody has seen one. Because nobody is stupid enough to go anywhere near a Deity Transformation profundity."

  "I just need one kill," Arthur continued. "Even partial. This stamp goes from 'crazy foreigner who doesn't speak the language' to 'Godkiller.' You know what kind of face that's worth? I don't. But soon we'll all find out."

  Mike walked up holding a mysterious-looking compass, ready to correct the delusional old man.

  "Arthur, you can't kill a Deity Transformation entity. You're Foundation Establishment."

  "We got the swords, and we got hundreds of shells. I'll make godkillers of us all! Kevin will be jealous."

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  "Our swords and shells are only Gold Core power. Deity Transformation Monarchs are two full realms above that. We'll be lucky if the Monarch even notices we exist."

  "So we use superior technology."

  "There is no superior technology. On Earth the only thing that can threaten a Deity Transformation is the Great Atomic Qi bomb. Do you think we can just make a few on our own? How are we even going to enrich the uranium? By hand?"

  Arthur kept carving. "Then we send Kevin back. Have him annoy that thing to death."

  Leo sat down across from him. "I thought he was getting along with Shen Tianyi? Aren't they still on their way to the central continent to deliver the singular formation?"

  "Tianyi is already regretting bringing him along. Kevin's tried lying about successfully cultivating the Heart of Flesh technique. Tianyi stopped responding to the fool. Kevin took the silence as encouragement."

  Arthur blew another curl of jade off the stamp. "Give it a week. Kevin will drive that Monarch so crazy it'll sever its own karma just to get away from him."

  Mike tucked the compass into his robe. "Let's move. It'll take us two hours to reach it. We'll need to find a new camp after scouting the area."

  They all drew their lifebound flying swords and headed northwest into the deep interior of the Great Divide Mountains.

  When Mike finally called for them to land and switch to walking, the landscape had transformed. The managed forest had given way to raw wilderness. Ancient pines with trunks wider than cars jutted from granite slopes at steep angles, dense undergrowth sprawling untouched beneath them. No trace of human activity.

  Mike and Arthur had scouted this location ahead of time, and they ended up setting up an advance base deep underground, and hid their Otherworldly Demon Summoning formations there for now.

  It didn't take too long, the pair of Adults had long since upgraded from shovels to a true T3 drilling machine. Soon after finishing the base, the left all their valuables there and went off to where the Karma Severing Sect was hidden.

  Leo walked between the two. Something was bothering him.

  "I should send Lord Ironhorn something," Leo said.

  Mike glanced back. "Like what?"

  "I don't know. A gift. A thank you. He helped me a lot with my training, and even gave us the compass. He didn't have to do any of that."

  "Kid," Arthur said, "the man packed us a flying ship."

  "He didn't pack us a flying ship."

  "He would have if you'd asked. I'm sure we could have gotten at least a small T4 one."

  "I didn't even get a chance to meet that man." Mike explained. "I'd only just entered Crimson Lotus City and told the guards why I was there. I was expecting to trade a favor for it, maybe assassinate a problematic enemy. Lord Ironhorn had the compass and map in my hands before I finished talking."

  Leo sighed. "I guess I'll never have a chance to thank him."

  "Leo." Mike stopped walking and turned around.

  "The compass," Mike said, "is not a gift. He's trying to send you away and keep you busy. If he thought it would work, he'd be praying it permanently killed you."

  Leo opened his mouth. Closed it.

  "I still feel like I should thank him for all the help."

  "Thank him from a distance. That's all he's asking."

  "And besides," Arthur added, "once we all earn the Deity Transformation merit stamp, I'm sure he'll see things differently. Maybe you'll be able to invite him along to help him earn his own."

  Leo didn't really know what to think about that, but Arthur had a point.

  They continued northwest. The ravine deepened, its walls climbing higher on either side until the sky was a narrow ribbon of grey above them.

  Arthur noticed it first. "The trees stopped."

  He was right. The pines had thinned over the last half mile, then simply ceased. The ravine walls were bare stone now, the only vegetation a few dried shrubs clinging to cracks in the granite.

  Then the fog rolled in.

  One moment the ravine ahead was visible for a hundred yards. The next, a wall of white stood across their path as if someone had drawn a curtain.

  Mike stopped. The compass needle, which had been drifting lazily, snapped to attention. It pointed directly into the fog and held steady.

  "This is it," Mike said. "The outer boundary of the confounding formation."

  Leo tried his third person perspective. The fog pushed back. His awareness, which normally expanded around his body, hit the white wall and scattered.

  "My divine sense is useless in there," Leo said.

  "Mine too," Mike said. "This formation was laid down after the Karma Severing Sect fell. The whole sect went corrupt. So someone sealed the area off." He gestured at the wall of white. "A confounding formation. Keeps people from wandering in and dying in the profundity."

  "Someone went to a lot of trouble," Leo said.

  "Must have been a joint effort. Probably nobody wants a Deity Transformation profundity sitting on an open road." Mike tapped the compass. "This is keyed to the formation's rotation pattern. All we need to do is follow the needle. If the needle spins, stand still until it settles."

  "What happens if we decide to choose our own adventure?" Arthur asked.

  "Lord Ironhorn noted that we'd walk in circles until we starved."

  "Wouldn't that be wonderful."

  "He wrote that too."

  Arthur drew his La Ferrari Eclipse and tapped it against the ground. "I'll cut a trail. Mark the path in the stone so we can find our way back without the compass song and dance every time."

  He activated his lifebound sword and a thin line of heat shimmered along its length. He pressed the tip to the ravine floor. The stone hissed. A shallow groove, glowing faintly orange, appeared in the rock.

  "Will the formation erase it?" Leo asked.

  "The fog scrambles perception, kid. The rock's still rock." Arthur pointed at the groove with his sword. "This stays. The formation can make you forget you saw it, but if you're dragging your boot along the ground and you feel a groove, you can just follow it. I've done this before."

  Mike nodded. "Smart. Let's go."

  They entered the fog in single file. Mike in front with the compass. Leo second. Arthur at the rear, dragging the tip of his Eclipse along the ground in a continuous, sizzling line. The smell of scorched rock trailed behind them.

  The world shrank to five feet of visibility. The ravine walls vanished. Their footsteps echoed in strange directions, arriving at odd intervals. Sometimes the echo seemed to come before the step.

  The compass needle swung left. Mike followed it. Arthur scored the turn into the stone, cutting a short perpendicular notch at the corner. The fog thickened. Leo felt moisture on his skin. He couldn't tell if it was coming from the fog or his own sweat.

  Arthur didn't speak. For all his bluster, the old man had survived Vietnam and the Catacombs. Maybe even the World Wars, but he wasn't about to let slip his true age. This wasn't his first confounding formation. His eyes moved constantly through the fog, scanning for threats. His sword hand was steady, and the trail behind them grew inch by inch.

  Then the fog began to thin.

  The transition was sudden. The white wall peeled back and daylight flooded in.

  Arthur scored one final mark into the stone. A deep X. The exit point.

  Leo stepped out of the fog and stopped.

  A field of wheat stretched to the horizon, golden stalks rippling under the wind. The sky above was a deep, saturated amber, the last light before the sect froze in time forever.

  The wheat was tall. Each stalk rose to full human height, thick as a wrist, perfectly straight, perfectly spaced. The heads of grain at the top hung swollen and heavy, each one the size of a human head.

  The three of them stood at the edge of the field on a strip of bare earth. Behind them, the fog hung like a grey wall. Ahead, the wheat.

  "Tianyi didn't mention this," Leo said.

  "Tianyi said ruins," Mike said. "We should leave. Right now. We need to set up a camp nearby and gather more information. Maybe enter the formation through another path."

  He turned around. Arthur was already gone.

  Arthur had one hand wrapped around a stalk, bending it toward him, running his thumb along the grain head. His expression was the one he wore when he found something valuable.

  "This is good stuff," Arthur said. He squeezed the grain head and spiritual qi leaked between his fingers, visible as a faint golden mist. "T3. Maybe T4. Feel the density on this."

  "Arthur," Mike said.

  "We don't have anything close to this on Earth. Nobody would waste high grade spiritual qi growing plants." Arthur looked back at them, grinning. "If we can figure out how to smuggle this back to America, we'll be rich. Beats drawing formations any day."

  Mike walked over. He crouched and studied it without touching it. His face changed.

  "This isn't wheat," Mike said.

  "Sure it is."

  "Each stalk is a formation. Complex layered work. Look at the meridian structure running through the stem." Mike pointed without touching. "These are woven. Someone engraved each one of these."

  "Even better," Arthur said. "Means they're meant to be easily harvestable."

  Leo walked up to the nearest row. The stalks towered over him, their heads of grain swaying at his eye level. He stared at the closest one.

  Something about the proportions bothered him. The grain stood as tall as he was, the stalk rising to meet the grain head at roughly his shoulder height. And that head itself, about the size of his own skull, sat where a human head would sit.

  He looked down the row. Hundreds. Thousands. All exactly the same. All swaying in unison.

  "These look like people," Leo said.

  "They're wheat," Arthur said.

  "Just look at them."

  Arthur glanced at the stalks. Shrugged. "Kid, you're letting this place get in your head. Mike, tell him."

  Mike wasn't listening. He had turned back.

  "We need to go," Mike said.

  The fog was gone.

  Where they had entered, there was wheat. The stalks stood tall and golden and silent, packed together in rows that stretched backward to the horizon. The same amber sky hung above them in every direction.

  They were surrounded.

  "The exit," Mike said. "It's gone."

  Arthur pointed with his Eclipse. "It was right there. I marked it."

  "I know."

  Leo turned in a slow circle. Wheat in every direction. The stalks pressed close, their fat grain heads bobbing at eye level, blocking sight beyond a few rows in any direction. The golden light fell evenly across everything, casting no shadows.

  Arthur frowned. He looked down at the Eclipse in his hand, then turned it over. He squeezed the hilt.

  "Something's wrong with my lifebound," Arthur said. "The Eclipse is frozen. Like the qi channels inside it are stuck. Locked in place."

  Mike pulled his own Eclipse from his dantain. He fed his divine sense into the blade.

  "Same," Mike said.

  Leo drew Moonrider. He pushed divine sense through his bond. The connection was there, but the formations engraved in the blade sat inert. Completely still. As if someone had pressed pause on the internal workings.

  Leo switched to third person perspective and inspected the blade. The formations were frozen mid-process. Qi hung suspended, frozen mid circulation.

  He dropped the perspective.

  "Moonrider's the same," Leo said. "The formations are intact but they won't cycle. The qi inside them is just sitting there. Suspended."

  "Can you fly?" Mike asked.

  Leo tried. The sword sat heavy and cold in his grip.

  "No."

  Arthur put his Eclipse back into his dantian. "So we're grounded."

  "In the middle of a Deity Transformation profundity," Mike said. "With no flight, no sword arts, and no exit."

  Arthur scanned the wheat. His eyes moving in quick sweeps across the rows.

  Then Leo heard it. A long, rhythmic whisper. Metal sliding through dry fiber, over and over, steady as a heartbeat. A cutting sound. A gathering sound. Something working its way toward them step by step.

  The stalks around them shuddered.

  Leo squinted through the rows. The wheat blocked everything close, but far in the distance, above the tops of the stalks, something moved. A shape. The outline of broad shoulders. A wide brim sitting low over its head. It moved through the field, and the cutting sound grew louder.

  It was coming for them.

  "Run."