The Gathering Storm

  Before returning to the war chamber, Lay had taken a solitary journey beyond the sect's walls. She ime—not just to gather supplies, but to retrace the memories of her past life, to ensure her uanding of the terrain was not clouded by fwed recolle.

  Her steps were measured, deliberate. She pressed her fingers against the cold stone of the valley's edge, feeling the jagged texture beh her fiips. This pce had once been a battlefield, one she had walked before, though not in this lifetime. The echoes of old flicts rang in her mind, guiding her sight as she assessed every inch of nd.

  She moved toward a narrow crevice between two t cliffs, running her hand over the rough surface. A bottleneck. If the enemy came through here, it would be their grave.

  In the distance, an a riverbed stretched beh the mountain pass, now dried and cracked. She k, scooping the coarse dirt between her fingers. This terrain is unstable. If we set cultivators that has enough firepower here, a trolled colpse could sever their formations.

  Her mind crafted pns as she walked—some she would share with her sect, others she would keep to herself. What they don't know, they 't betray. Even those she trusted most could bee liabilities if their minds were too burdened with the full weight of her strategy.

  Then, as she reached a small outcrop shrouded in wild thorns, she noticed it.

  led between the roots of a gree y a sialk of Bloodveil Orchid—a rare herb potent enough to paralyze a warrior in moments. She crouched, running her fingers along its crimsoals, memories flooding back. A on hidden in nature. If the boy fails to obtain the requested poisons, this will suffice. If not for Shen Mu, then for another tingency.

  She plucked it carefully, st it within her satchel before making her way back.

  Before she could take aep, something iirred—a sensation she had never sciously tapped into. A slow, deliberate inhale, and suddenly, she could feel it. Qi. It was faint, but present, like a slow-moving current runnih her skin. She had heard of cultivation, seen it practiced, but she had tempted it herself. This body, new yet familiar, was reag to the flow of energy around her.

  Lay closed her eyes, allowing the sensation to deepen, trying to uand what it meant. She focused on eling the energy, attempting to guide it through her fiips. There was no instru, only instinct. She extended her palm toward a tree, releasing a faint pulse of energy.

  Nothing.

  She frowned, recalibrating, then turned her focus to a nearby boulder. This time, she pushed harder, willing the energy outward. A dull thud echoed as the stone barely shifted.

  Lay sighed. Pathetic.

  Theurned away.

  Master Daokan stood at a distance, his form partially cealed by the shadows of the t trees. He had been Lay's as in silence, his aged eyes narrowing as he watched her movements. To her, he was nothing more than a flicker in the er of her vision, a silhouette swallowed by the night. She had no time to pay him any mind—there was a war to win, and distras had no p her thoughts. The elder cultivator had been walking the outskirts of the sect grounds when he sensed an unfamiliar ripple in the flow of qi. Drawn to the anomaly, he followed it to the clearing where Lay had trained.

  At first, he had dismissed her efforts—her qi reserves were pitifully low, almost negligible. Any ordinary cultivator would have struggled to influence even a leaf with such a minuscule pool of energy. A, what she had truly done defied expnation. How could someoh barely any qi cause such devastation? The logical clusion was that her teique was not one of overwhelming power, but of something far more insidious—precisioru that took root within, unseen until it was too te when he saw the tree she had barely touched moments ago was now bed from the is veins crumbling into rot. Even the air around it felt… wrong.

  His breath hitched. This was no ordinary qi manipution. This was something far more sinister.

  "Internal destru… but not like anything I've seen before," he muttered. His firembled slightly as he k beside the tree, pressing his palm against its surface. The moment he made tact, a faint pulse of residual energy shed at his senses, sharp and invasive. He withdrew his hand quickly, uled.

  "This is not normal," he whispered.

  Master Daokan had seen tless forms of qi cultivation in his lifetime, had fought warriors who bent energy to their will iraordinary ways. But this… this was different. This was not the destru of force, but corrosion from within. A silent, creepih. The worst kind of power—ohat gave n before it was too te.

  He turned his gaze toward where Lay had disappeared, his expression grim. If she did not uand what she had just done, if she did not learn to trol it…

  The sequences could be terrifying.

  Master Daokan exhaled slowly, his breath shaky. Without taking his eyes off the corrupted tree, he subtly gestured with two fingers. Hidden within the darkness, two figures shifted—the disciples he had brought with him, silent and unseen until now.

  "Find out everything you about her," he whispered, his voice barely audible. "But do not alert her. Not yet."

  The two figures vanished as quickly as they had appeared, slipping into the night like ghosts. Daokan remained for a moment longer, his expression grim.

  Whatever this was, whatever Lay-Meilin had bee—he o uand it before it was too te. "The sect must be warned… but how do you warn them of something you don't even uand?"

  The Engineer's Dilemma

  Hundreds of miles away, Emery Voss hunched over his workbench, frustration simmerih the surface. The test firearm prototype y disassembled before him, a reminder of his stalled progress.

  Flintloo, too insistent. Matchloo, too slow. Percussion caps? Too advanced for the materials avaible.

  He sighed, rubbing the bridge of his his is absurd. If only I had the resources, I could revolutionize warfare."

  Theopped himself. No. Warfare is not my goal. The engine is. His focus had drifted too far into the realm of destru. His true purpose was not battle—it rogress. Quiet, iable progress.

  A voiterrupted his thoughts. "Losing your mind again, Emery?"

  He looked up to see Callum Renshaw, his assistant, leaning against the doorway with a knowing smirk. Callum, a man of logid quick wit, had an uny ability to keep Emery grounded.

  "Not losing my mind," Emery muttered. "Just recalibrating."

  Callum strode ng at the sketches. "You're stu ignition meisms again?"

  "Among other things," Emery admitted. He tapped a separate blueprint—a rough sketch of the chalkboard device he was designing for effit aking. "This will work. The firearm? Not yet."

  Callum raised an eyebrow. "Then why not shift your focus? You're not building an army, Emery. You're building the future."

  Emery exhaled, nodding. "You're right."

  Yet, even as he redirected his thoughts, another problem weighed heavily on his mind. His chalkboard iion was nearly plete—but something else had surfaced.

  A separate message had arrived from his informants, bearing news not of sce but of war. The flict between the Silver Lotus Sed the Crimson Serpe was reag a critical point, but his work was not as extensive as Zafira's. What he did know, however, was troubling. The Serpents were moving in ways that defied ventional strategy. Someone—perhaps Shen Mu himself—ting.

  A carrier pigeon had returned, a ied securely to its leg. Emery retrieved it, reizing the seal of one of his informants. He unfolded the part with careful fingers, sing its tents. His breath hitched.

  Someone—somewhere—had supposedly discovered the ws of tinuity.

  That shouldn't be possible. He had only begun theorizing about such cepts himself. No one else should have even sidered it, let alone found proof.

  His fiightened around the part. "Who…? And how?" His mind raced through possibilities. A hidden schor? An unknow? Or... something else entirely?

  Callum crossed his arms. "You're still stu that report, huh?"

  Emery handed him the paper. "Someone cracked the ws of tinuity before I could even solidify the theory. It's impossible."

  Callum skimmed the text, lips pursed. "Maybe not impossible. Just improbable. You wao track this down?"

  Emery nodded. "Yes. Get me every record, every rumor. And while you're at it, check with Zafira—see when 'that' is arriving. We'll soohan expected."

  Callum grinned. "Got it. But if I find something ridiculous, you owe me a drink."

  Emery smirked. "If you find something at all, I might owe you more than that."

  As Callum left, Emery turned back to his work, his thoughts ed by possibilities. If someone had truly discovered the ws of tinuity, thehing—sce, teology, even the foundations of this world—was about to ge.

  And Emery inteo be at the ter of it.

  The Midnight Battle Begins

  The moment had arrived.

  Lay stood at the highest baly of the main hall, the cold night air brushing against her face. Below her, the warriors of the Silver Lotus Sect stood in formation, their eyes locked on the darkness beyond the valley. The sound of distant marg reverberated through the air, a steady drum of impending flict.

  A young disciple rushed toward her, bowing deeply. "Lady Meilin, the poison has been successfully mixed and delivered."

  Lay nodded. "Good, Bao. Now prepare the sedative tingency. If this battle extends beyond five minutes, we may o escate."

  Bao hesitated. "Five minutes, my dy? That seems—"

  "If it takes lohan that, it means their numbers are far greater than expected." Lay's gaze hardened. "In that case, we move to Pn C. The boulders."

  She had only mao spend a few hours ensuring their pt along the cliffs, hastily coordinating with the few cultivators she had to move the boulders into position. It was a sloppy job, rushed and imperfect, but it would have to suffice. If the enemy was te to outmahey would be crushed beh the weight of the mountain—or so she pnned.

  Bao nodded swiftly and vanished into the shadows, carrying out his new orders.

  Lay desded from the baly, making her way toward the war chamber where the remaining elders awaited. The moment she entered, murmurs filled the room—doubt and unease lingered in their expressions. "We need a fallback if Pn C fails," one of the elders stated. "What if they break through before the boulders drop?"

  Lay exhaled. "Then we fall back to the northern ridge and use the terrain to create a bottleneck. I already stationed cultivators there for reinfort."

  Her father, Lin Wuye, watched her carefully before speaking. "That is only half of the truth, isn't it? You have a true pn beyond these tingencies. What is it?"

  Lay met his gaze, weighing her words carefully. "If they push us too far, we lure them into the abandoned rui of the valley. The structures there are unstable. If we bring them down at the right moment, it will cut their forces in half."

  A sileretched in the room before an elder finally muttered, "Risky."

  "Necessary," Lay tered. "We ot afford to lose this battle. We must trol the flow of the fight, no matter the cost."

  Lay inhaled deeply, her inner clock ting each sed as she watched the battlefield below. Five minutes. No more.

  The Serpent's Perspective

  Shen Mu stood at the front of his formation, the st of damp earth thi the midnight air. The oppressive silence was uling, broken only by the faint rustle of armor and the muted shuffle of his soldiers' boots.

  He had anticipated resistance, but something about this battle felt wrong. There were no torches lit along the enemy's walls, no frantic shouting of orders—only the cold, whispering wind.

  Shen Mu smirked. Are they hiding in fear?

  His forces advanced cautiously. He had devised multiple pns for breag the Silver Lotus Sect's defenses, yet none had ated for this eerie absenmediate resistance. A feint? A retreat? Or are they setting a trap?

  Then, as they reached the valley's entrance, he saw it—a lone figure standing at the ter of the open terrain.

  One cultivator.

  He blinked, uain. Is this a bluff? An envoy? A fool? His instinct screamed at him, but before he could act, the lone figure raised an arm.

  A deafening rush of wind exploded across the battlefield.

  Gale Severance.

  The gust struck with the force of a colpsing storm, tearing through the first wave of his soldiers, sending them sprawling backward. Shen Mu's eyes widened as he steadied himself, struggling to maintain bance.

  Then came the shadows.

  Figures darted betweerees and ridges, striking with impossible speed before vanishing once more into the night. The battle had begun—not as an open csh, but as a massacre of precision.

  Guerril warfare.

  Shen Mu gritted his teeth. So this was their game.

  In just thirty seds, his perfeation was already starting to unravel.

  The enemy was drawing closer.

  Shen Mu sneered as he observed the eerie silence ahead. Cowards. Was this how the once-respected Silver Lotus Seteo fight? Hiding in the shadows, refusing to face him with honor? He gritted his teeth, the thought igniting a simmering fury within him. War was meant to be a csh of wills, of strength against strength. Not this. Not tricks aion.

  A, as he scoffed at their cowardice, an uling thought slithered into his mind, ohat mirrored the mind of his unseen oppo. He's probably thinking this is dishonorable.

  Lay, watg from above, smirked. But honor never won a battle!

  A cold wind swept past her, and at that moment, a nearby bird let out a startled cry before taking off frantically into the night. Even nature itself seemed to shudder at her expression.