Ye Lan woke before dawn.
The air in his chamber was still and cold, the spirit lamp in the corner burning with a soft, steady flame that cast long shadows across the stone floor. Outside, frost clung to the eaves of the Inner Sect's rooftops, and the mountain peaks stood like silent sentinels against a sky fading from indigo to pale gray. There was no sound, no birds, no wind, not even the distant clang of the Outer Sect's labor bells.
He sat up slowly, the thin blanket falling from his shoulders. His hair white since birth according to Ye Lan's memory, long and unbound spilled over his back like a frozen river. He ran a hand through it. His hair had grown while he was in the Azure Grotto
He rose, washed his face with water drawn from the well outside his door, and dressed in the plain gray robes of a new Inner Sect disciple.
A knock came at the door.
"Disciple Ye Lan," a young voice said from the other side. "Elder Yong Mo Han summons you to the Plum Courtyard."
"I'll be there," Ye Lan replied.
He stepped outside. The path to the Plum Courtyard ran between rows of Inner Sect residences, each built of dark wood with tiled roofs and carved stone gates bearing the same crescent-sword emblem that marked his own neck. Warm light spilled through latticed windows, carrying with it the faint scent of incense. Disciples moved in silence, their footsteps echoing softly along the clean stone road that wound deeper toward the heart of the sect.
He found Yong Mo Han beneath the plum tree, its branches heavy with pale blossoms that scattered faintly in the breeze. The elder stood with his back to him, black robes untouched by wind or dew, as though even the summer air hesitated to disturb his stillness.
"You're late," Han said without turning.
"I wasn't late," Ye Lan said. "I came as soon as possible."
Han let out a deep, genuine laugh, the sound rolling through the courtyard like distant thunder. "I know. I was testing your awareness. If you'd apologized for being late when you weren't, I'd have you scrubbing stones for a week."
Ye Lan gave no reply.
Han finally turned. His eyes were sharp—gray, steady, and cold as rain-washed stone. "You've stabilized at the ninth stage of Qi Condensation. Your meridians flow cleanly, and your dantian spins without disturbance. Good."
He paused, his gaze steady. "Now, you must choose your path. Which combat art will you cultivate?"
Ye Lan didn't answer right away. His thoughts turned inward, sifting through everything he knew—plain, unguarded, and sharp as steel laid bare.
He quickly went through Ye Lan's memories.
"Fire qi—strong, but too forceful for a neutral root. It refines slowly and risks backlash if pushed too far.
Water qi—fluid, steady… but more suited for healing than battle.
Earth qi—solid, dependable, yet sluggish.
Wind qi—swift, unpredictable, difficult to control once it surges.
Lightning qi… precision and timing above all else. It isn't about brute strength—it strikes in the instant between thought and motion. One bolt can lock the nerves, shatter qi flow, stop a heart. But it's dangerous. You need at least thirty percent control to start, forty to stay alive. Without mastery, it turns inward and burns you from the inside out.
My root, Neutral Heavenly, seventy-three percent purity. That means every wisp of qi I pull in, gets purified by seventy-three percent before it even touches my dantian. Not bad… no, far from it. But it also means each cycle gives only half a percent in base progress. Multiply that by the purification rate—0.5, then by 0.73, again by 0.73... about 0.26 percent per day. Not fast. But not weak either.
To reach forty percent absorption stability, I'd need around a hundred and fifty cycles, give or take. Still, that's only a rough count. Heavenly Roots don't move linearly; they snowball. The second month always refines faster than the first, and by the third, the qi starts to flow on its own, like a current feeding itself.
And the Azure Grotto… with its density and natural resonance, it'll cut that time. Maybe eighty, ninety days at most. Three months if I pace myself. Two if I push."
He drew a slow breath.
Han's eyes narrowed, a faint glimmer of amusement in their depths. A small smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.
"Lightning," the elder said, before Ye Lan could open his mouth.
Ye Lan froze, a flicker of surprise crossing his face. "He read me."
Han studied him for a moment, eyes narrowing in quiet thought. Then he gave a short hum. "You're not the type for brute strength or slow defense," he said at last. "Your gaze keeps shifting. You'd choose something precise." He tilted his head slightly. "Lightning, I'd wager."
Only then did caution flare in Ye Lan's mind. He saw everything. Guessing was one thing, but that kind of precision? Impossible under normal circumstances.
"Don't tell me there's some bullshit qi technique that can read minds." Ye Lan thought rapidly.
"Thought wasn't abstract; it was process. Every emotion, every decision, came from electrical impulses firing through neural pathways. If qi could enhance muscle contractions and strengthen cell regeneration, it might also interact with those same impulses, resonate with the brain's spiritual activity. In theory, a cultivator with refined perception could detect the micro-fluctuations in spiritual current caused by thought patterns, not the words themselves, but intent, tone, focus. The same way a physician could infer a heartbeat's rhythm from a pulse, they could infer thought from spiritual resonance. It would require monstrous precision, but this world thrived on impossibility."
That was enough to make him cautious. He needed mental noise, something dense yet harmless, to drown out any pattern that could be interpreted. He filled his mind with trivial details boiled turnips, Qiu's boots on stone, the smell of damp wool, the weight of a cracked stone. Familiar sensory fragments that meant nothing when linked together.
He avoided anything from earth, the other life. If someone truly could read intent from qi fluctuations, even a flash of foreign thought could expose him. Different memories, alien logic, anything that didn't fit this world's framework, It would stand out like fire in darkness. No, he couldn't risk it.
Better to clutter his mind with ordinary static, safe, meaningless, local. If anyone tried to peer into his thoughts again, all they'd detect was bullshit without pattern.
Han tilted his head slightly, watching Ye Lan's distant stare. "What are you doing, boy? Trying to count the dust on the ground?" His tone held a mix of confusion and mild irritation.
Ye Lan lifted his head and met the elder's gaze. "My affinity is for lightning is zero due to my heavenly spritual essence root," he said evenly. "I'll need to enter the Azure Grotto."
Han raised an eyebrow, a faint trace of surprise crossing his face. "You want to return to the Azure Grotto already? It's only been a day since your last cultivation." He sighed, then gave a short nod. "Very well. The grotto will test your control, but if that's your choice, I'll see it arranged. You'll cultivate there in seclusion, servants will deliver your meals daily, nothing more. Focus on your progress. Don't step out until your qi reaches forty percent."
Ye Lan bowed. "Understood."
Han turned to leave, but his steps slowed. For a brief moment, he glanced back at Ye Lan. Those eyes—dark, soulless, calm in a way that shouldn't belong to someone his age. A faint crease formed between his brows, though he said nothing. Then he turned away and walked on.
Then he was gone.
The Azure Grotto wasn't a cave. It was a sealed chamber carved into the mountain's core, its walls engraved with suppression runes to contain qi overflow and its floor etched with grounding arrays to anchor spiritual flow. The air inside was dense and silent, heavy with stillness. The door—a slab of spirit-infused basalt—closed behind him with a deep, resonant thud that left the chamber in complete darkness.
He stepped inside.
The passage sloped downward, the stone walls damp with condensed qi that shimmered faintly at his touch. No spirit lamps burned—light came from the runes themselves, etched into the walls in fine, flowing patterns that pulsed with quiet, rhythmic luminescence. When Ye Lan stepped into the chamber, the world seemed to contract. The air was thick, almost liquid with energy. Every surface—wall, floor, even the basalt door—hummed softly, the arrays resonating in harmony to trap every wisp of escaping qi. It wasn't a cave, but a crucible: silent, suffocating, and alive with restrained power.
Ye Lan found a raised dais of obsidian at the chamber's heart, etched with ancient containment runes now faded to near-invisibility. He sat cross-legged, closed his eyes, and began.
He cleared his mind and sat.
The first cycle was agony.
Lightning qi surged into his meridians like molten wire, searing pathways still unaccustomed to its bite. His Neutral Root filtered it, but slowly—73% purity meant 27% of every bolt fought to escape, lashing back against his dantian. He endured, cycling breath after breath, compressing the refined essence into a golden core that spun faster with each revolution.
Days blurred. Servants came at intervals he could no longer measure, leaving food and water in silence before the basalt door sealed again. He ate only enough to keep the body functional, his focus never breaking from the current that moved beneath his skin. Sleep became unnecessary—the grotto's qi fed what his body could not.
The air was thick with energy, each breath a trial of endurance. The pressure in his meridians built slowly, testing the limits of control. Pain became rhythm; breath became measure. Hallucinations flickered at the edge of vision—distractions of light and memory—but he dismissed them as reactions of overstressed nerves.
In the fevered haze of his hallucinations, a girl shimmered into existence within the corridors of Ye Lan's mind: a small, heartbreakingly pretty thing with porcelain skin stretched taut over delicate bones, wide violet eyes already brimming with tears, and soft silver hair that spilled like liquid moonlight over her narrow, trembling shoulders. She looked no older than ten, barefoot in a tattered white shift stained with old grime, knees drawn to her chest on the cold, unforgiving stone of his imagined chamber. Her breath hitched in shallow, wet hiccups that echoed inside his skull like dripping water in a tomb.
Ye Lan knew her for what she was—a splinter of his fraying sanity, a ghost of memory or trauma, conjured by exhaustion and heat-sickness. He did not hate her. But she was noise. And noise was death to cultivation.
"Disperse," he commanded inwardly, voice calm, edged with the stillness of deep meditation.
She flinched—but remained. Her lower lip quivered, split at the corner. A fresh tear carved a slick path through the dust on her cheek.
"They hit me," she whispered, voice trembling like a snapped string, "Mother with the belt until my back peeled open… Father with his fists until my teeth cut my tongue… please, don't let them hurt me again…"
Her words slithered through his focus, unraveling the threads of his qi. He tried again—deeper this time—drawing from the marrow of his discipline, shaping emptiness into a blade to cut her away.
*You are not real. You do not belong here. Dissolve.*
She let out a keening whimper, louder now, raw and wet. Her fingers dug into the stone. Her sobs grew—not quieter, but *hungrier*, as if feeding on his attention.
That settled it.
Within the theater of his mind, Ye Lan rose. Not in rage.
He stepped forward and drove the edge of his foot—not with fury, but with absolute, focused intent—straight into her temple, just above the zygomatic arch, where the temporal bone shielded the delicate folds of the brain's language and memory centers. He struck with all the force of a Qi Condensation Realm cultivator.
The girl went utterly still. Her body did not vanish. It did not dissolve into mist or fade like a dream. It remained—slumped against the stone, limbs slack, head tilted at an unnatural angle, violet eyes wide open but vacant, no longer pleading, no longer weeping. The silver hair lay tangled in the dust around her. The illusion had been shattered from within, not erased, but "ended."
He had not banished her. He had killed her.
And though her form lingered like a stain on the floor of his consciousness, it made no sound. It offered no plea. It was merely a hollow shell now, inert, harmless.
Silence rushed in.
Ye Lan knelt, brushed imaginary dust from his sleeve, and settled back into lotus position.
His breath slowed. Qi flowed through his meridians, unbroken, undisturbed. The chamber of his mind was no longer pure emptiness—but it was obedient.
Cultivation resumed.
He meditated deeper, mind narrowed to a single axis: draw, refine, circulate, release. Lightning qi coursed through his meridians like molten wire—burning, searing, yet illuminating every path within him. His heartbeat became the measure of refinement, each pulse engraving clarity into the pain.
Progress was mercilessly precise.
Day 1: 0.4%
Day 10: 5.1%
Day 30: 18.7%
Day 60: 33.2%
His meridians widened, tore, and mended, each scar a mark of tempering rather than damage. The lightning no longer raged against him; it bowed, as if acknowledging kin. By the eighty-third dawn—though he'd long ceased to count the sunrises—the final cycle settled into stillness.
40.1%.
He opened his eyes. The grotto's storms had quieted, as if in deference. His white hair floated weightless, each strand tipped with faint static. He rose, legs steady despite months without use, and walked out. The fissure sealed behind him with a sigh of thunder.
---
Elder Han waited beneath the plum tree, unchanged by the passing seasons. Ye Lan studied the branches with a clinician's precision; the chlorophyll had faded, veins browned, and the sap flow clearly slowed. He inhaled, noting the dryness in the air and the faint chill that clung to his breath. "When I entered the grotto, it was summer, he thought, eyes tracing a golden leaf drifting to the ground. It's autumn."
"You emerged," Han observed.
"40.1%," Ye Lan said. His voice carried a faint electric rasp.
Elder Han stood beneath the plum tree, silent and composed. The courtyard was still except for the slow fall of golden leaves.
"Then today," he said, his tone calm but firm, "you learn the Lightning Sword."
He drew a simple iron practice sword and tossed it to Ye Lan. The moment Ye Lan caught it, faint sparks flickered along the blade before fading away.
"The Lightning Sword isn't about power," Han said. "It's about control. Lightning is chaos. You can't force it—you have to guide it."
He unsheathed another sword and took position. His stance was steady, movements sharp and measured.
"Watch."
Han inhaled, and the qi around him began to move. It flowed from within, down his arm, and into the blade. Then he struck. A clean bolt of lightning shot across the courtyard, hitting an obsidian pillar with a sharp crack. The stone smoked but didn't break.
He lowered the sword. "The key is the Veil Pulse. Before you strike, wrap your arm in a thin layer of qi. It redirects the current and keeps it from burning you. It's not a shield—it's part of the technique."
Ye Lan nodded.
"Now do it," Han said.
Ye Lan took a slow breath. The grotto had tempered him well—pain and precision had replaced doubt. He drew qi from his dantian; it carried a faint blue shimmer, alive with a steady pulse.
He guided it to his hand, feeling the energy press against his skin. He adjusted his flow slowly, like taking a pulse, matching rhythm and pressure until it balanced.
The Veil formed—a thin, steady layer of qi wrapping his forearm.
He thrust forward.
Lightning burst from the blade, bright and sharp. It struck the same pillar, scattering dust as a small crack ran through the stone.
Ye Lan lowered his sword, breathing heavily. His arm tingled, but his skin was unmarked.
Han walked to the pillar, inspected the damage, and turned back to him. "You formed the Veil Pulse on your first attempt," he said. "Too much energy, but good control."
Ye Lan nodded. "The grotto forced me to adapt."
Han gave a short nod. "You'll train here at dawn and dusk. If you falter, correct it yourself. No one else will."
"Understood."
When Han left, silence settled over the courtyard again. Ye Lan looked down at his hand. No burns—only faint blue lines of qi beneath the skin. He summoned the Lightning Sword again; this time the Veil formed easily, flowing like breath.
Because his root was pure—tempered by the grotto's storm—it didn't resist the lightning. It moved with it.
Ye Lan lowered the sword. The morning light glimmered off the frost-covered stones, carrying a faint scent of ozone.
He took position again.
And began the form once more—