Pov: Vik
The three holographic screens hovered quietly in the warm air of the main hall, casting a soft blue reflection across my stoneware soup bowl.
On the left feed, the righteous sword prodigy Ye Xiao was cutting across the western mountain ridges on a streak of silver sword-light. At his current speed, he still had three hundred miles of rugged terrain to cross before reaching the outer walls of West Oak City. On the center feed, the gaunt Gu Master's thirty-meter centipede was slithering steadily out of the southern swamps of Blackwater Province, accompanied by a low-hanging fog of blood-locusts—roughly eight hundred miles away. And on the right feed, the black-haired monster summoner's mountain behemoth was lumbering across the northwestern plains, each heavy step shaking the camera relay woven into Luther's silk collar.
None of them would reach the city gates until tomorrow evening at the earliest.
I set my empty soup bowl down on the spruce table, wiped the corners of my mouth with a linen handkerchief, and tapped a finger against the armrest to minimize the three video feeds into a tiny corner icon.
[System: Host, you just minimized the greatest three-way protagonist trainwreck of the century! Aren't you going to watch their travel progress?! What if one of them stumbles into an ancient ruin on the roadside and levels up twice before getting to the city?!]
'If a Chosen One trips over a rock on the highway and finds a supreme inheritance, watching him on a monitor isn't going to stop it, chatbot,' I replied mentally, leaning back into the cushions while my hand rested lightly on Pushpa's sleeping back. 'Besides, staring at three angry teenagers running across a map for twenty-four hours is terrible for a scholar's eyesight.'
[System: You are in the Void Traveling realm! Your eyesight can track a dust mote from fifty miles away!]
'It is the principle of the thing,' I corrected mildly. 'When you put a stew on the stove to simmer, you don't stand over the pot screaming at the carrots to cook faster. You put the lid on, lower the heat, and let time do the work.'
Pushpa let out a tiny, muffled mrrp in her sleep, stretching her front paws out over my knee before curling her tail tighter around her nose. She was completely dead to the world, thoroughly satisfied after her steamed perch and her earlier country walk.
I carefully slid my hands under her warm, furry belly and lifted her up to my shoulder without waking her. She automatically draped herself around my collar like a heavy velvet scarf, her chin settling into the hollow of my collarbone.
Standing up from the table, I strolled out of the main hall and stepped onto the open veranda overlooking the central courtyard of Anonymous Hall.
Night had fully settled over the sealed expanse of the Great Fire Forest. Above the towering, ninety-meter-tall canopies of the spirit trees, the sky was a deep, cloudless indigo, dominated by the massive purple planet that hung alongside Blue Star's silver moon. Because there were no insects or nightbirds in this forest, the quiet was so profound that you could hear the gentle lap of water against the edges of the artificial pond and the soft rustle of leaves ninety meters overhead.
Down by the edge of the illuminated courtyard, the night was far from idle.
I walked slowly down the wooden steps, my hands clasped loosely behind my back, and paused near the stone lantern by the pond.
Twenty paces away, inside a localized gravity ring Lina had marked out on the flagstones, Noah and Lu Xiaoran were standing back-to-back. Neither of them was swinging a weapon or throwing flashy elemental spells. Instead, both of them held low, unmoving horse stances while wearing heavy iron-linked vests that hummed with five times normal planetary gravity.
Sweat dripped steadily from Lu Xiaoran's chin, his white hair clinging to his forehead as the Chaos Titan circulation caused faint, icy mist to rise from his shoulders.
"Hey... new guy," Xiaoran muttered through clenched teeth, his knees trembling a fraction of an inch as the gravity array pulsed. "How are you not shaking right now? You're only at the third level of Qi Refinement... My legs feel like they're being chewed on by Chintu."
Speaking of Chintu, the chubby three-foot-tall baby T-Rex was currently sitting right on top of the gravity array's central emitter node like an oversized green paperweight, happily gnawing on a leftover piece of iron-bark root while watching the two boys suffer.
Noah didn't turn his head. His crimson hair hung damply over his shoulders, and his red eyes were half-closed, fixed on the dark water of the pond ahead.
"Because you are fighting the weight, Senior Brother," Noah replied, his voice low and measured, matching the slow, rhythmic cadence I had taught him at dinner. "Every time the array pulses, you flare your Qi to push back against the air. Master said our marrow is the bedrock. The earth doesn't push back against the mountain sitting on it; it just lets the weight settle through it."
Lu Xiaoran blinked, his brow furrowing as he listened. Slowly, he stopped flaring his frost aura. He exhaled a long breath, loosened the rigid tension in his shoulders, and let the five-fold gravity sink straight down through his spine and into the flagstones beneath his boots.
The violent trembling in his calves stopped almost immediately.
"Huh," Xiaoran breathed out, a faint, grudging smirk tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Not bad, junior brother. Maybe you aren't just a pretty face with a tragic ex-fiancée after all."
"And maybe you aren't just a loudmouth who relies on wind steps, Senior Brother," Noah answered evenly, though the corner of his own mouth lifted by a millimeter.
I watched the two of them from the shadow of the stone lantern, a quiet smile warming my eyes behind my gold-rimmed lenses.
When I first pulled Lu Xiaoran out of this forest, he was a broken, bitter kid drowning in hatred for Lin Chen. When I pulled Noah out of that cruiser's engine room, he was a humiliated prodigy drowning in shame over Ruby. Left to the original script of this world, both of them would have died as nameless stepping stones to make two sociopathic "heroes" look glorious.
Now, here they were, standing shoulder to shoulder, sharpening each other in the quiet of the night.
"Good form, both of you," I said, stepping out into the lantern light. "Drop the gravity array by half and do twenty minutes of slow breathing to cool your meridians. If you over-compress your joints on the first night, Roman will have to waste good medicinal herbs on your knees tomorrow."
"Yes, Master!" both boys called out, visibly relieved as Lina—who was sitting cross-legged on a nearby boulder with an ice pack balanced on her sore thighs and a wrench in her hand—tapped her brass console to power down the gravity ring.
Chintu let out a disappointed little "chirp" as the humming beneath his bottom stopped, then waddled over to rub his scaly green snout against my shin. I reached down and gave his thick skull a fond pat before glancing toward the far side of the pond.
Over on the wooden dock extending into the water, two figures were sitting side by side with their feet dangling above the surface.
Roman had taken off his kitchen apron. Across his broad knees rested the Ivory Cleaver—the four-foot celestial ivory scepter with the fierce lion head that we had bought back from the train exhibition. He was holding a soft cloth soaked in spirit-oil, methodically polishing the weathered dark-iron rings along the shaft with slow, rhythmic strokes.
Beside him sat Old Uncle Han, wrapped in a thick wool blanket, a cup of warm herbal tea held between his gnarled, scarred hands. Even though the old retainer's eyes were milky and blind, his head was tilted toward the scepter, listening to the soft shhh-shhh of the oiled cloth sliding over the ancient ivory.
"That sound..." Uncle Han murmured softly as I walked up the wooden planks of the dock. "Is that a heavy war-scepter, Master Roman? By the ring of the iron bands, it sounds like dwarf-forged work from the old frontier arenas."
Roman's massive hand paused for a beat on the lion's mane. His purple eyes reflected the moonlight rippling across the pond.
"It is," Roman said quietly. "A very old friend. I let it go a long time ago because I thought I needed gold more than I needed my past. My Master reminded me today that a man shouldn't leave his purpose gathering dust in someone else's glass case."
Uncle Han smiled, the deep wrinkles around his blind eyes softening. "Your Master is a wise man. When the young lord's father was still alive, he used to say that a warrior's weapon remembers the oath it was forged for, even when the warrior himself grows tired."
"He isn't tired anymore," I said mildly, stepping onto the dock as the wooden planks creaked softly beneath my boots.
Uncle Han immediately tried to rise to bow, but I rested a gentle hand on his wool-draped shoulder to keep him seated.
"The night breeze by the water is cool, Elder Han," I said, looking out across the mirror-like pond where the reflection of the giant purple planet floated among the stars. "How is your chest feeling?"
"Better than it has in twenty years, Benefactor," the old man replied, his voice thick with emotion. "When I was locked in that dungeon under the manor, listening to those poor souls screaming in the vats, I truly believed the Bloodborn name had ended in darkness. Hearing the young lord's voice tonight—steady, calm, without the reckless arrogance of his youth—this old servant could close his eyes right now and face the ancestors with a smile."
"Keep your eyes open for a few more decades," I chuckled softly. "Noah is terrible at managing household ledgers, and Lu Xiaoran thinks financial planning means robbing corrupt governors. Once we clean out West Oak City, someone with actual common sense will need to oversee the estate."
Uncle Han let out a raspy, heartfelt laugh, bowing his head over his teacup.
I turned my gaze to Roman. As my Prana perception brushed past the Ivory Cleaver on his lap, I also felt the faint, cold pulse coming from the spatial pouch at his waist—the Cursed Ring of the Sea God that had been sitting dormant in his possession ever since I first scanned his status. Ever since we crossed into the Western Continent, that broken ring had been giving off a very faint, rhythmic vibration, like a compass needle slowly realizing it was getting closer to its pole.
Roman noticed my glance. He didn't say anything aloud, not wanting to worry the old man beside him, but he gave me a slow, steady nod. There was no fear in his purple eyes anymore—only the quiet patience of a man who knew his own reckoning with the Western Sea would come in due time, and who knew he wouldn't be facing it alone.
"Get some sleep soon, all of you," I said, turning back toward the warm lantern light of the residential pavilion while Pushpa purred softly against my neck. "Tomorrow will be a quiet day of training and tea. And by tomorrow night... the guests we invited to West Oak City will finally start knocking on Ruby's door."