Mingzhi opened his eyes.

  To the onlookers, he had merely closed his eyes for twenty minutes of meditation. To Mingzhi, he had spent hours wrestling with a virtual inferno. His mental energy was frayed, throbbing behind his temples, but his hands were steady. He knew the rhythm of the valve now.

  "Physician Mo," Mingzhi said, his voice flat. "Stand back. Earth Fire splashes."

  He grabbed the iron lever. He didn't pull it; he feathered it, listening to the deep, subterranean hiss of the gas building up below the grate.

  "Now," the Spirit commanded in his mind. "The pressure wave is peaking. Ride it."

  Mingzhi engaged the valve.

  WHOOSH.

  A tongue of yellow flame licked the bottom of the copper cauldron. It wasn't the chaotic roar of a novice; it was a controlled lance of heat.

  Mingzhi moved with mechanical precision. He tossed the Frost-Grass into the crucible. As the delicate ice herbs hit the heat, they threatened to vaporize instantly.

  Insulate, Mingzhi thought.

  He channeled his Earth Qi. It flowed out of his palms, wrapping around the herbs in the cauldron. He wasn't trying to mix with them; he was building a ceramic shell—a kiln within a kiln.

  Inside the shell, the Frost-Grass melted, releasing its blue essence. Outside, the fire raged.

  "Temperature is drifting!" the Spirit barked. "Adjust the valve! A few degrees down!"

  Mingzhi tapped the lever. The flame dipped instantly.

  Physician Mo leaned forward, his eyes wide. He watched Mingzhi’s hands—they weren't moving like a mystic weaving spells. They were moving like a craftsman operating a lathe. Constant, micro-adjustments.

  Inside the cauldron, the essence swirled, thick and potent.

  “It is too dense,“ the Spirit warned. “If you cap it now, it will be a poison pill. Split it.“

  Mingzhi didn't hesitate. He used a sharp pulse of Divine Sense to slice the liquid sphere in two.

  Pop. Pop.

  The tension in the cauldron broke. The two smaller spheres stabilized, spinning rapidly as they solidified.

  Mingzhi cut the fire.

  He tipped the cauldron. Two pills rolled out onto the jade cooling tray. They were white, round, and emitted a faint, chilly mist that curled off the table.

  "Two?" Patriarch Liu gasped.

  Physician Mo picked one up with a pair of silver tongs, examining it. "Impossible... You extracted almost the entirety of the essence? There is barely any waste ash in the cauldron. Almost a hundred percent yield?"

  "Wasting essence is bad," Mingzhi said, wiping soot from his face. "These are High-Grade Ice Gathering Pills. Suitable for the first stages of Cloud Gathering."

  He didn't stop. He threw in the other herbs next.

  He repeated the process. Heat. Insulate. Split.

  Twenty minutes later, four distinct piles sat on the tray. Ice pills for Liu Feng. 2 pills for Cloud Gathering 1 and 2.

  Mingzhi stood up, his knees cracking. He swept the pills into porcelain bottles and tossed the bottle to the Patriarch.

  "The payment is settled," Mingzhi said. "Let's see the patient."

  The sickroom was no longer frozen, but it was still cold. Liu Feng sat up in bed, looking at his hands. The skin was pale, almost translucent, and his veins showed a faint blue spiderweb pattern beneath the surface.

  When Mingzhi entered, Feng looked up. The boy’s eyes were terrifyingly sharp—the eyes of a survivor who had looked death in the face and eaten it.

  "Young Master Mingzhi," Feng said, his voice deeper than before.

  Mingzhi walked to the bed. He didn't offer comfort. He placed a finger on the boy's forehead.

  "Your body is a battlefield right now," Mingzhi stated. "You have the Ice Constitution, but you don't know how to drive it. If you get angry, you'll freeze your own blood. If you panic, you'll shatter."

  "Teach me," Feng said.

  "I can teach you an Ice Cultivation Manual, and a few useful techniques," Mingzhi said. "But I can’t stay by your side, you’ll have to train alone."

  Mingzhi projected a thought into the boy's mind—the chants of techniques the Spirit had dug up from the Compendium's archives.

  It was for building a solid foundation, so that he can always control the ice element.

  "Use this when the cold tries to take over," Mingzhi instructed. "And take one pill at the low and high of Cloud Gathering Level 1 and 2. No more. Your body needs to harden before it can grow."

  Feng closed his eyes, memorizing the chants. When he opened them, he bowed from the waist. "I will remember."

  Patriarch Liu stepped forward, looking at his son with a mixture of pride and worry. He pulled a sealed scroll from his sleeve and handed it to Mingzhi.

  "The Mission Document," Liu Yan said quietly. "As you requested. It states that the mission was completed, the Young Master is cured... but that the his meridian foundation was shattered in the process. He is alive, but a cripple."

  Mingzhi took the scroll. "Good. Let the Zhao family celebrate. Let them think you are weak."

  He turned to leave. "We will go now. Do not send us off with fanfare. We leave as we came—quietly."

  The sun was high as Mingzhi and Rou walked out of the Liu Manor.

  If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.

  At the main gate, the Guard Captain stood at attention. He was the same man who had blocked their path yesterday, the one Mingzhi had diagnosed with a glance. He looked stiff, his left shoulder twitching slightly with the phantom pain of his old injury.

  As Mingzhi passed, he didn't slow down.

  "Captain."

  "Young Mas—"

  Mingzhi’s hand moved in a blur. He didn't strike; he pressed. His index and middle finger, charged with a needle-thin thread of Metal Qi (using the Passthrough method), stabbed into the Captain’s shoulder joint.

  Thwack.

  It wasn't an attack. It was a precision breach. The Metal Qi acted like a drill, shattering the calcified blockage in the Gallbladder Meridian.

  The Captain grunted, stumbling back. A wave of heat rushed down his arm, followed by a blissful numbness.

  "The blockage is shattered," Mingzhi said, walking past him. "Your arm will feel heavy for three hours. Once the numbness fades, the Qi flow will be restored, but only strain it slowly."

  The Captain clutched his shoulder, flexing his fingers. For the first time in five years, the grinding pain was gone.

  He turned to Mingzhi’s retreating back. He didn't say a word—he simply bowed deeply, lowering his head in a silent, martial salute of absolute gratitude.

  "You show off," Rou whispered, nudging Mingzhi as they merged into the street crowd. "That cost him nothing."

  "It bought a favor," Mingzhi replied, his eyes scanning the road ahead toward the city gates. "And in this world, favors are heavier than stone."

  He adjusted his pack.

  "Now... we head back to the woods. I hope our friends enjoyed the wait."

  “Who are you talking about?” Rou whispered, her hand instinctively drifting toward the hilt of her sword.

  Mingzhi didn’t break stride, keeping his eyes on the darkening tree line ahead. “Wang Hu’s lackeys. Li and Zhou. They followed us out this morning.”

  Rou frowned. “They’re still here?”

  “They’re persistent,” Mingzhi said calmly. “They’ll try to ambush us on the way back, likely near the clearing where we fought the Wind-Razor Wolf. It’s far enough from the main road that no one would hear us scream.”

  He glanced at her. “Don’t worry. We aren’t going to fight them.”

  “Then what do we do?”

  “Just follow my lead,” Mingzhi said, a mischievous glint entering his eyes. “And be ready to run.”

  Rou looked at him, then nodded firmly. “I’ll follow your lead.”

  They entered the Whispering Woods.

  Evening was claiming the forest. The canopy of the Hollow-Trunk Ironbarks, already thick enough to strangle the sun at noon, now plunged the path into a heavy, suffocating gloom. The natural bore-holes in the wood caught the shifting winds, creating a low, dissonant chorus—a thousand mournful flutes playing a song of decay.

  At the edge of the wolf clearing, Li and Zhou crouched behind a rot-log, their limbs stiff from hours of waiting.

  “My leg is asleep,” Li hissed, shifting his weight. A twig snapped loudly.

  “Quiet!” Zhou slapped his arm. “They have to come this way. The curfew is in an hour.”

  “Maybe the wolf ate them on the way to the city,” Li muttered nervously, glancing at the darkening shadows. “You heard the roar this morning. Big one.”

  “There is no wolf,” Zhou scoffed, though he gripped his serrated dagger tighter. “That was hours ago. Focus. When they step into the clearing, you break the boy’s legs. I’ll handle the girl.”

  Fifty paces down the path, Mingzhi slowed.

  “Spirit,” he projected.

  “They are ahead,” the Spirit’s voice drifted in, sounding bored. “Two signatures. Heart rates elevated. They are crouching behind the fallen log at your one o’clock. They are practically vibrating with malice. It is pathetic.”

  Mingzhi squeezed Rou’s arm. “Get ready.”

  They stepped into the edge of the clearing.

  Li and Zhou tensed, preparing to spring.

  Suddenly, Mingzhi stopped dead. He looked at the empty air to his left, his eyes widening in exaggerated horror.

  “OH NO! NOT AGAIN!” Mingzhi screamed, his voice cracking with feigned terror.

  Li and Zhou froze in the bushes. Again?

  Mingzhi didn’t wait. He stomped his foot.

  Earth Tremor.

  He didn’t aim for an attack; he aimed for maximum displacement. He channeled a pulse of Earth Qi into a patch of dry, loose silt he had noted earlier.

  WOOSH.

  A massive, choking cloud of brown dust exploded into the air, obscuring the path and the clearing in a thick, blinding fog.

  “ROU! RUN!” Mingzhi shouted, grabbing her hand. “IT’S THE PACK! RUN BACK TO THE LIU MANOR! WE NEED BACKUP!”

  He dragged Rou not back toward the city, but sideways—diving through the wall of dust and scrambling into the vine-covered cave where he had broken through earlier that day.

  They slid into the darkness behind the curtain of leaves, pressing themselves against the cold stone wall.

  Outside, chaos erupted.

  “The Pack?!” Li yelped, leaping up from his hiding spot, his face pale. “Did he say Pack?!”

  “I can’t see!” Zhou coughed, waving his dagger blindly in the dust cloud. “He said they’re running back to the Liu Manor! They’re going for guards!”

  “If they get the Liu guards, we’re dead!” Li panicked. “We have to stop them before they reach the city!”

  “Chase them!” Zhou roared, sprinting out of the clearing and out of the woods, toward the city, away from the Sect. “Don’t let them talk!”

  Li scrambled after him, the two of them thundering down the path, chasing ghosts.

  Inside the cave, Mingzhi and Rou held their breath until the heavy footsteps faded into the distance.

  Then, Rou slid down the wall, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulders shook.

  “You…” she gasped, looking up with tears of laughter in her eyes. “You are terrible.”

  Mingzhi smirked, dusting off his robes. “I am efficient. They get a workout, and we get a clear path.”

  They waited five minutes to be safe, then stepped back onto the quiet path. They walked the rest of the way to the Sect in peace, the sounds of the forest seeming less ominous now that they were laughing.

  By the time they reached the stone steps leading up to the plateau, evening had fully set in.

  They stopped to catch their breath, and for a moment, the view silenced them.

  The Azure Cloud Mountain earned its name at twilight. As the sun dipped below the horizon, the residual heat of the day clashed with the rising cold of the peaks. The eternal mist that shrouded the upper sect caught the dying light—deep purples, bruising indigos, and streaks of gold—while the Spirit Qi naturally congregating around the mountain infused the fog with a faint, bioluminescent blue glow.

  It looked as if the mountain was wearing a crown of shifting, living auroras. The white jade pagodas of the Inner Sect floated within this sea of azure light like islands in the sky, distant and untouchable.

  “It’s beautiful,” Rou whispered, staring up at the glowing peaks. “Sometimes I forget… we really made it here.”

  “We’re at the bottom,” Mingzhi said softly, looking at the golden light of the Core Peak far above. “But we’re climbing.”

  They entered the main gate, flashing their tokens to the bored night guards, and headed straight for the Mission Hall.

  The hall was quieter now, the frantic energy of the day replaced by the scratching of quills and the low murmur of exhausted disciples.

  Mingzhi walked up to the counter. The Deacon—the same older man with spectacles who had warned him off—looked up. He saw the stamped scroll in Mingzhi’s hand. He saw the signature of Patriarch Liu.

  His glasses nearly slid off his nose.

  “You…” The Deacon took the scroll, reading it twice. “You completed it? The Liu Heir is cured?”

  “We were lucky,” Mingzhi said quickly, putting on a humble, tired expression. “The physicians had already done most of the work. They just needed… a fresh pair of hands to help with the final decoction. We just followed orders.”

  “Luck or not,” the Deacon muttered, stamping the completion form with a heavy thud. “A hundred points is a hundred points. Plus fifty for the assistant.”

  He transferred the points to their jade tokens.

  Mingzhi didn’t hoard the points. He turned immediately to the Exchange Counter.

  “I need materials,” he told the clerk. “Five ounces of Star-Silver Sand. Three vials of Spirit-Mercury. And a set of Blank Array Flags.”

  Rou stepped up beside him. “And I’ll take ten Low-Grade Water Spirit Stones.”

  They left the hall heavy with loot.

  At the fork in the path, they stopped. To the left lay the comfortable, lantern-lit dorms of the Outer Sect. To the right, the dark, descending path to the Waste Sector.

  “Rest well, Rou,” Mingzhi said. “Stabilize your new level.”

  “You too,” Rou said. She hesitated, then smiled. “Today was… fun. In a terrifying way.”

  “We survived,” Mingzhi corrected. “That’s what matters.”

  He watched her walk away until she was safe in the light, then turned and descended into the gloom.

  The smell of sulfur greeted him like an old friend. The silence of the Waste Sector wrapped around him.

  He reached Hut 404 and barred the door with the heavy ironwood plank.

  He sat in the center of the room. He didn’t light a candle. He simply emptied his Eye Space onto the floor.

  The Star-Silver Sand glittered in the dark. The Spirit-Mercury swirled in its vials. The Blank Flags waited to be inscribed.

  “Spirit,” he whispered.

  “I am awake,” the Spirit’s voice rasped in his mind.

  “No more distractions,” Mingzhi said, his eyes reflecting the cold light of the mercury. “No more lackeys. No more patients.”

  He closed his eyes.

  “Let the grind continue.”