The moment the shimmer of the Ancestral Gate's defensive barrier sealed behind Chief Disciple Xiaoru and her witnesses, the fatigue Lian Chen had worn like a cloak dissolved. He maintained his seated posture for another hour, allowing his spiritual essence to cycle through the Silent Siphon a dozen more times. Each cycle was a small, defiant victory, the Obsidian Bead humming with steady, silent power, preparing for the impossible leap to Stage 6: Focus.
He had six days of uninterrupted cultivation, and a precious piece of paper—the official, sect-sanctioned requisition for Calm-Heart Herbs—the cover for his grand deception.
The need to leave, however, was immediate. While the Ancestral Gate provided high-purity Mountain Core Qi, the Bead's demands were becoming complex. The vast spiritual resource it required for the next breakthrough needed the purity of the Mountain Core, but it also required a catalyst: a minute amount of exotic, non-elemental essence to stabilize the impending fusion of his spirit and will. That catalyst was not found in raw Qi; it was stored in the Sect Resource Pavilion.
His three-day rotation was officially complete, though Xiaoru had demanded he remain. He was now expected to take a short, necessary recovery period, fetch his approved spiritual dampeners, and return. The perfect window of opportunity.
Lian Chen slowly withdrew his hands from the Seal. The sensation was like peeling skin from ice. He straightened, feeling the sheer, terrifying purity of his Stage 6: Awareness state clash violently with the chaotic, lower-grade world outside the cavern.
He stepped out of the gate and into the dim, familiar stone corridor, the lone guard—the muscular disciple Hu who had recorded the requisition—immediately snapping to attention.
"Disciple Lian Chen," Hu said, his voice holding the low, polite contempt reserved for the permanently crippled. "Your watch is formally over. Chief Disciple Xiaoru has ordered you to collect your herbs and rest. You are to report back in twenty-four hours to begin the extension rotation."
"Understood," Lian Chen managed, his voice still rough, playing the part of the exhausted, dedicated failure.
The moment he passed through the exterior array into the open air of Azure Peak, the true effect of his new spiritual stage hit him. His consciousness, now a multi-layered sensor, processed the world not as simple sights and sounds, but as a vast, complex flow of energies.
The air thrummed with thousands of intersecting low-grade spiritual currents from the surrounding disciple dormitories. He could perceive the faint, pulsing array lines woven into the stone pathways—primitive, protective spells that seemed screamingly obvious to his senses. Every casual conversation, every stray thought from nearby disciples, registered as discordant, distracting noise. The standard cultivators of the Qingyun Sect seemed spiritually deaf and blind, moving through a world brimming with silent, hidden power they could not perceive.
He clamped down on his senses, forcing his mind to filter the noise. He needed to appear weak, not like a terrifying spiritual anomaly. The path to the Resource Pavilion was well-trodden, leading down the middle slopes of Azure Peak.
The Sect Resource Pavilion was a squat, square building of iron-grey stone, protected by layers of heavy-duty, commercial-grade defensive arrays—designed to prevent large-scale theft, but not subtle, digital manipulation. The entire operation was overseen by Elder Zhou, a perpetually bored cultivator of the Nascent Soul Realm (Stage 7), who had been relegated to inventory control after failing to achieve the coveted True Spirit Realm (Stage 10) breakthrough.
Lian Chen pushed open the heavy wooden door. The Pavilion was filled with the scents of hundreds of stored herbs, minerals, and refined pills. A thick, oppressive layer of low-grade spiritual energy—the accumulated residue of countless cataloged materials—hung in the air.
Elder Zhou was slumped behind a tall counter of polished dark wood, reading a pulp-fiction martial arts scroll, a cup of cooling tea at his elbow. He barely glanced up as the door chimed.
"Disciple," Zhou's voice was a tired monotone. "Your Sect ID and request log."
Lian Chen approached, placing his Sect ID token and the official requisition slip onto the counter. The slip, detailing the order for a month's supply of Calm-Heart Herbs, was approved by Chief Disciple Xiaoru and validated by the guard Hu.
Elder Zhou slid the documents across the counter and scanned the slip with a grunt, his spiritual sense briefly touching the paper. His gaze lingered on Lian Chen, the contempt flickering momentarily into surprise at the sheer exhaustion reflected in Lian Chen's features.
"Lian Chen, the cripple, is it?" Zhou muttered, half to himself. "Stuck on Ancestral Gate duty. Fitting. You require enough Calm-Heart for ten talismans. A pittance."
He activated a small, automated storage array behind the counter. A few moments later, a small, silk-wrapped parcel appeared. It contained the dried, pale-green leaves of the low-grade herb.
"Here. Sign the log, and be gone. The next rotation begins soon."
This was the critical moment. Lian Chen did not reach for the herbs. He maintained his posture, his expression one of polite, struggling humility.
"Elder Zhou," Lian Chen began, keeping his voice subdued, "I apologize for taking up your time, but the Chief Disciple's order was meant to address a matter of urgency. The Mountain Core Qi turbulence is... catastrophic for my injured meridians. The Calm-Heart herbs are the standard solution, yes, but they only provide a weak, delayed buffer."
Zhou sighed, rolling his eyes as if Lian Chen was yet another complainer. "They are the cheapest Grade One dampeners, Disciple. What do you expect?"
"Purity, Elder," Lian Chen whispered, leaning slightly closer. "Not volume, but purity. The Bead—the scar on my Dantian—is highly sensitive to raw elemental chaos. Even the most carefully refined Calm-Heart Talisman still has minute traces of water-elemental impurities. The turbulence in the cavern turns those impurities into a spiritual poison for me."
He was speaking absolute truth about his own system's requirements, but presenting it as the flaw of his 'crippled' Dantian.
Lian Chen then moved to the bluff. "I require a temporary spiritual filter that contains zero elemental affinity to stabilize my flow for the extended rotation."
Zhou snorted. "Such a thing exists, but it's an exotic material, not a low-grade herb. You are asking for a Star-Dust Shard."
The name struck Lian Chen's internal core like a chime. Star-Dust Shard. Non-elemental, purified essence—perfect for the Obsidian Bead's catalyst. The Bead had silently transmitted the required signature months ago, and Lian Chen had instantly recognized it from his past life's memory.
"The Shard is reserved for advanced formation masters and alchemy," Zhou continued dismissively. "It costs more than ten thousand units of low-grade spiritual currency. Your meager allotment of Calm-Heart herbs is worth less than fifty."
"I do not need ten thousand units' worth, Elder," Lian Chen said, his tone shifting to one of practiced, humble desperation. "I only need enough to coat my primary acupuncture points—a single sliver, perhaps a tenth of a unit. A fraction of what you allocate to the advanced disciples."
He reached into his sleeve and pulled out a small, intricately carved jade bottle—a relic from his former wealth. "Elder, I am not without manners. I have secured this bottle of Dew of the Azure Sky. It is a low-grade, yet rare, spiritual wine, reserved only for True Disciple banquets. It provides a unique, smooth spiritual relaxation. Please, accept this as a gift for your kindness."
Elder Zhou's eyes, which had been half-lidded with boredom, snapped open. The Dew of the Azure Sky was highly coveted for its smooth taste and rarity, a luxury few Nascent Soul cultivators could casually acquire. It spoke volumes of Lian Chen's past life, subtly reminding Zhou that this 'cripple' was once one of the sect's elite.
Zhou glanced around the empty pavilion, his boredom warring with temptation. Trading a negligible sliver of a high-grade material for a valuable, untraceable luxury gift—and one that was easily justified as a negligible inventory error—was a common practice among minor elders.
"A tenth of a unit of Star-Dust Shard, you say?" Zhou mused, picking up the jade bottle. He uncorked it, taking a deep, satisfied whiff of the fragrant essence. He nodded slowly. "The inventory log is... complicated. A small sliver might be recorded as dust wastage. Very well, Disciple. I am performing this act out of pity for your permanent ailment."
He vanished behind the counter into the main storage chamber.
Act IV: The Digital Larceny
While Elder Zhou was out of sight, Lian Chen had his second, and most crucial, objective.
His Stage 6: Awareness focused instantly, not on the lingering spiritual scent of the herbs, but on the massive, complex array woven into the Pavilion's central structure—the Resource Index Array. This array managed every item, every transaction, and every shelf location in the entire building. It was the nerve center of the Pavilion's security and inventory.
Lian Chen directed his entire spiritual consciousness toward the array's main core, a faint, crystalline node pulsing softly within the stone counter.
He did not attack the array. That would be madness, instantly alerting Elder Lin. He simply read it.
His Awareness allowed him to perceive the structure of the array's code—the flowing spiritual energy lines were akin to a massive, complex blueprint. He began to passively trace the connections, map the flow of information, and identify the key junctions where the inventory logs were stored and updated.
It was spiritual espionage on a level the Qingyun Sect had never conceived. He wasn't cracking the code; he was memorizing the architecture. His Spirit Refinement mind, now infinitely faster and more stable, absorbed the entire Resource Index Array blueprint in a torrent of silent, flowing data.
He focused on three critical pieces of information:
The Master Lock: The exact location and key phrase of the hidden sub-array that controls the main vault.
The High-Grade Inventory: The location codes for the highest-tier spiritual items (Pills, Array Cores, True Immortal Essences) that would be vital for his later stages.
The Glitch Point: A subtle, intermittent flaw in the array's code—a spiritual 'bug' that Elder Zhou, in his laziness, had never bothered to fix—that would allow a future, untraceable, bulk transfer of spiritual currency.
The total information transfer took precisely fifty-three seconds. It felt like hours of study, yet the entire blueprint of the sect's wealth management system was now imprinted flawlessly into his mind.
Lian Chen instantly retracted his spiritual consciousness, returning his focus to the small, dried herbs on the counter, his face returning to the mask of exhaustion just as Elder Zhou reappeared.
Zhou's demeanor was slightly better, the scent of the Azure Sky Dew faintly clinging to his robes. He held a small, crystalline sliver—no larger than Lian Chen's thumbnail—glowing with a pale, neutral light. The Star-Dust Shard.
"Here," Zhou said, handing the shard over. "This is highly concentrated and fragile. Use it wisely, Disciple. And do not come back asking for more. You have pushed my good faith far enough."
Lian Chen took the shard and the herbs, tucking them away safely. He bowed low, showing the perfect blend of gratitude and subordination. "Elder Zhou's kindness will not be forgotten. I pray my flaw does not inconvenience the Ancestral Gate any longer."
"Go," Zhou waved him away, already picking up his pulp-fiction scroll.
Lian Chen signed the log, his signature shaky, as if from fatigue. He then walked out of the Resource Pavilion, the Star-Dust Shard now pressed close to the Obsidian Bead, which pulsed with a tiny, anticipatory heat.
He had not just survived the deadline; he had turned the sect's surveillance system into his cultivation guide, their punishment into a resource generator, and their lazy inventory elder into a compliant supplier. He had secured the catalyst and the blueprint for his greatest heist.
As he began the climb back up Azure Peak, the cold realization settled: he was no longer a crippled disciple fighting for survival. He was a silent ghost, a virus in the system, preparing to hollow out the heart of the Qingyun Sect from within.
He returned to the Ancestral Gate, ready for the next three days of uninterrupted, high-speed ascension. His target was Stage 6: Focus. His method was the Silent Siphon. His enemy was the endless, terrifying demand of the Obsidian Bead.
The single Star-Dust Shard was more potent than a hundred low-grade spiritual stones. As soon as Lian Chen was back within the Ancestral Gate, his hands firmly on the Seal, the Bead consumed the Shard instantly. The catalyst was now in place.
Lian Chen resumed the Silent Siphon with renewed ferocity. The raw, turbulent Mountain Core Qi flowed, was stolen, was refined into pure Azure Essence, and was now fed into his Dantian along with the stabilizing catalyst.
The countdown to the next breakthrough had truly begun. The purification of the Spirit Refinement stage now accelerated dramatically. Lian Chen could feel his fragmented Will being woven together with the nascent Spirit within his Dantian. The process was agonizing, feeling like two halves of his soul being forcefully merged, but the speed was unmatched.
He was sitting on a mountain of power, and he had just acquired the map to the entire treasury. The next breakthrough was no longer a question of if, but when he would force the heavens to yield.