Ling Feng stopped at the edge of the jade dais and looked at her.
Up close, Mei Suyao's presence was even more gentle than he had expected.
The Immortal Bone within her shone faintly beneath skin white as snow, a subtle, sacred radiance that turned the simple act of standing still into something transcendent. The Dao fragrance around her flowed like mist over a river at dawn—soft, embracing, without a single jagged edge.
She regarded him without arrogance, without the condescension so many so-called prodigies wore like armor. Her gaze was clear, calm, carrying only mild caution and a quiet, honest interest.
"Fellow Daoist," she said.
Her voice was as soft and clear as spring water pouring into stone basins, flowing naturally through the vast square. "Do you have something to say?"
Ling Feng smiled.
"Your Dao is beautiful," he said. "Your control is refined. I can see why they praise you."
A faint murmur rippled through the gathered sea of cultivators.
"That's only natural. Goddess Mei is untouchable..."
But Ling Feng did not stop.
"But," he went on, "it's still missing something."
Silence fell like a dropped curtain.
Mei Suyao's eyebrows moved by the smallest fraction.
"Oh?" she asked. "And what does Fellow Daoist think it lacks?"
Around the square, countless cultivators bristled.
"How dare he—"
"Such arrogance. Does he think he is an Immortal Emperor?"
"The Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao was left behind by Immortal Emperor Xiu Shui himself. What 'lacking'…"
Chi Xiaodie's gaze sharpened. She had grown up hearing of Eternal River School's glory, of Mei Suyao's name echoing across the Eastern Hundred Cities. Even she felt a flicker of indignation on Mei Suyao's behalf.
On the viewing platform, ministers, clan heads, and old ancestors frowned. Some narrowed their eyes; some sneered; a few, the truly experienced, leaned forward with interest instead.
Ling Feng seemed not to notice any of it.
He looked once at the endless sea of faces, then back at Mei Suyao.
"Your fragrance guides people along the river," he said calmly. "But the river still has banks. It still flows according to the land laid out by others. You show them a beautiful path through their shackles."
He paused.
"You don't show them how to break the shackles themselves."
His tone wasn't mocking, wasn't sharp.
It was simply stating a truth.
Mei Suyao's pupils contracted by a hair's breadth.
"Then Fellow Daoist knows how to break them?" she asked.
Ling Feng's smile crooked at one corner.
"Know?" he said. "I've been chewing on shackles since I got here. Kind of my hobby."
The words were light, but the casualness only made them more jarring.
He turned away slightly, lifting his hand as if brushing dust from the air.
"In any case," he continued, lazy voice carrying clearly over the square, "everyone already lined up and sat down. Be a shame not to give them something extra, right? Consider it… a little rude guest gift."
A few people choked on their breath.
"Rude… gift?"
"Who talks like this in front of Goddess Mei…"
On the dais, Mei Suyao's Immortal Bone flickered.
She watched him, poised between the instinct to step in and the curiosity to see just what he thought he could do in front of her Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao.
Ling Feng closed his eyes.
...
Within his inner void, the Chaos Emeralds rose.
Green for space, red for power, yellow for energy, cyan for time—four cores spinning in slow, unhurried harmony. They were like four miniature suns orbiting an invisible axis, each connected to an ocean of strength that did not belong to this world, to this Heaven, or to the Old Villainous Heaven's river of fate at all.
The Primal Chaos Genesis Physique flowed in silence, his body and soul half-fluid, half-solid, perfectly matched to the strange essence pulsing from those crystals. Emotions around him—shock, awe, irritation, curiosity, longing, frustration, desire—rose like mist from a sea of hearts and were swallowed whole.
Fear.
Hope.
Regret.
Obsession.
All of it dissolved into pure, colorless power and streamed into the Emeralds.
The green core hummed, folding the space of his inner void tighter, the square and sky above Lion's Roar capital pressed into a clear diagram in his mind.
The red core throbbed, sharpening his will into something that could smash through any obstruction.
The yellow brightened, threads of energy perception stretching out through tens of thousands of meridians below.
The cyan slowed everything, stretching each breath, each heartbeat of the world.
Ling Feng breathed out.
"Chaos Fragrant Dao," he thought.
There was no incense. No petals. No gentle curl of smoke from a jade burner.
The air itself changed.
At first, it was subtle—a faint, metallic tang, like the smell before a thunderstorm, mixed with the warmth of freshly brewed tea and the dryness of old paper, left too long on a scholar's desk.
Then, layer by layer, it unfolded.
For some, it smelled like the first time they stepped onto a cultivation path: that dizzy mix of fear and exhilaration when they touched Spirit Energy for the first time and realized the world was larger than they had believed.
For others, it was the scent of blood clinging to armor, of rain on trampled earth, of the harsh breath taken after surviving a battle they should have lost.
For a few, it was the faint warmth of someone they cared about standing just within arm's reach—a fragrance they'd never quite forgotten, no matter how many years had passed.
It was not one scent.
It was everyone's.
Chaos did not impose a single image.
Chaos mirrored.
The Dao resonance that followed did not gently brush against meridians, did not politely knock at the edges of their comprehension.
It crashed in.
It dove into their cores, into the murkiest corners of their Dao hearts, grabbed onto their deepest, most stubborn shackles—the doubts they never voiced, the fears they covered with pride, the compromises they convinced themselves were "necessary"—and squeezed.
The world of stone and banners and jade pavilions dissolved.
In that instant, tens of thousands of cultivators found themselves in other places.
Standing before doors.
Staring at chains.
Walking along walls.
Each vision was different.
...
A young archer from a minor sect saw the sneering faces of his elders, the way they had patted his shoulder and said, "You're diligent, but average. In the Eastern Hundred Cities, that's already not bad."
He saw himself bowing, smiling, saying "yes" and "thank you" as he swallowed the bitter taste in his throat for ten long years.
The fragrance coiled around that memory, bright and sharp. It burned the voices to ash and left behind a simple question in his heart:
Do you accept this?
The answer rose like a roar.
The shackles on his Fate Palace cracked.
A middle-aged elder, hair already threaded with white, saw the decades he had spent hiding behind responsibilities. Sect affairs. Family matters. Promises to juniors, to his clan, to his ancestors.
"I am too old to reach Ancient Saint," he had told himself. "Guarding the foundation is also a kind of contribution."
The fragrance cut through the excuses like a sword through rotten rope, revealing the raw, almost childish desire he had buried: he still wanted to rise.
His Dao foundation trembled. Something long petrified began to move again.
Chi Xiaodao found himself waist-deep in a swamp.
This swamp was his life.
Years of effort, of hammering at bottlenecks, of being stuck in place despite all his sweat and all the resources Lion's Roar Gate had poured into him. Every step he'd taken had sunk into this mire until he could hardly remember what a firm path felt like.
Now, from the dark water, a massive golden turtle rose.
Its shell glowed with the same lines as the Chi Clan's ancestral crest, each pattern a path his clan had once failed to walk. The swamp receded under that light. The path ahead was steep and rocky, but it was solid ground.
He lifted his foot.
He stepped forward.
Li Shuangyan felt the chill of jade.
Her Pure Jade Physique shone with flawless clarity, every line of her Dao like a mirror that reflected heaven and earth without stain. That perfection, however, carried risk—perfection became brittleness; crystal could shatter.
She saw, in the fragrance-born vision, a version of herself who had chosen to remain untouched. Untouched by love, by bonds, by anything that could "stain" her.
That Shuangyan stood alone on a high peak, sword in hand, undefeated and unapproachable. Around her, there was only wind. No voices. No warmth. No Ling Feng. No sisters.
She raised her sword in the vision and brought it down.
The flawless, isolated image split apart like glass struck by lightning.
Cracks ran through that false perfection and fell away, revealing a Shuangyan whose jade brilliance now held a faint, warm glow—imperfections, hairline fractures that had been filled with something living.
Her heart steadied.
Her Dao became more complete, not less.
Chen Baojiao saw a battlefield.
But the battlefield was made of her own expectations.
She had always charged ahead, laughing loudly, throwing herself into fights and into life with an almost reckless gusto. She had never shown weakness, never leaned on anyone, because the pride in her chest told her that the tyrannical valley spring in her body must always surge forward, never ebb.
She watched herself in moments she hadn't wanted to think about: sitting alone after a battle, fists clenched, wanting to talk to someone about the fear that had bloomed when she thought she would lose; watching Ling Feng walk away to some new storm, her heart tight with worries she had laughed off.
The fragrance flicked her forehead—light, teasing, but undeniable.
It made her watch every moment she had pretended not to need anyone.
Then it poured power into her Immortal Springs.
The springs roared, chaos energy swirling through them. If someone struck her with overwhelming might, the force would no longer merely be endured—it would drop into those springs, be ground apart, and be reborn as a ferocious counterattack, doubling as cultivation fuel.
A silent voice seemed to echo in her heart:
You can be strong and still be held.
Xu Pei's storm was already waiting.
Whirling clouds of violent energy, jagged lightning of self-doubt, the fear of failing the people she wanted to protect. She had always been afraid of exploding out of control and hurting those she cared about.
Now, within the storm's eye, Chaos sat.
A figure she could not quite see—formless, shifting—sat cross-legged in the heart of the tempest and simply… stayed.
It did not disperse the storm or suppress it.
It just would not be moved.
Gradually, the violent winds curved around that still point. What had been chaotic began to follow rhythm. What had been random destruction shaped itself into rotating layers, each one feeding the next.
The clouds did not vanish.
They settled.
Bai Jianzhen stood in an endless field of blades.
Swords were thrust into the ground in every direction, points aimed at the sky. Her path had always been straight: be the sword, cut the enemy, ignore everything else. Feeling was a distraction. Attachment was a weakness.
One sword stood apart, rusted and alone, its edge dulled from cutting nothing but empty air.
Another sword stood among many, its sheath nicked and worn, its grip wrapped and rewrapped by hands that were not its own. That blade had split open enemies, but it had also been unsheathed for the sake of others, stained by their blood and their tears.
The fragrance brushed her Dao heart.
Bai Jianzhen clicked her tongue.
She dismissed the first without hesitation and reached for the second.
Chi Xiaodie saw Lion's Roar.
Not the banners and polished armor on the surface, but the long decline stretching back generations. The bargains behind the throne. The hidden hands that had quietly divided her life into portions and written the script before she was old enough to read it.
In that vision, she stood in the center of the imperial palace.
Chains ran from her wrists and ankles to a hundred directions: sects, clans, ministers, old monsters, foreign lineages, even the will of her own royal ancestors.
The Chaos fragrance did not ask her permission.
It burned the chains one by one.
Not gently.
Each one tore away a piece of flesh from her Dao heart. Each breaking hurt.
But when the pain faded, she was still standing.
Alone, yes.
But with both hands free, if she dared keep them that way.
Her heart pounded.
Her eyes, in the real world, trembled.
...
On the dais, Mei Suyao's eyes flew wide.
The Immortal Bone in her body—this supreme treasure that had set her above all other geniuses in the current era—hummed like struck glass. For a fleeting instant, it felt… small.
Not in power.
In perspective.
Her Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao traced the grand flow of existence. Beginning and end could exist at her whim; she could wash away dust and show mortals and cultivators alike images of the grand Dao, ease their confusion, soothe their hearts.
The fragrance Ling Feng had released did not trace anything.
It grabbed the source inside each person and shook it until they could no longer look away.
If Alaya was a river that accepted all streams, flowing gently to the distant sea—
Then this Chaos Fragrant Dao was a sudden storm that fell upon the entire valley at once, turning all those streams into raging torrents and forcing them to carve new paths or break their banks.
In distant training fields outside the capital, cultivators paused mid-practice.
In quiet courtyards, in teahouses where old cultivators were chewing on memories instead of pills, in remote pavilions where hidden experts watched the event through treasures, people suddenly raised their heads.
A faint scent brushed their noses.
Their hearts skipped.
Some barrier they had quietly accepted as "impossible for now" suddenly felt just a bit thinner.
Later, rumors would spread.
They would say that, on that day, the entire Eastern Hundred Cities trembled under a strange fragrance, and that countless youths took their first true step toward their own Daos.
Those rumors would be exaggerated.
But not by much.
On the dais, Ling Feng opened his eyes.
He clapped his hands once.
The sound was crisp, almost casual.
The fragrance shattered like glass.
The visions vanished. Swords, swamps, palaces, chains, storms—everything broke apart and dissolved. The world of stone steps, banners, and jade pavilions snapped back into place.
Cultivators found themselves seated in the square again, hearts pounding like war drums, clothes damp with sweat, qi roaring in their meridians like rivers in flood season.
Then the after-effects hit.
Some felt their cultivation surge, half a small realm stepped in a breath; others felt bottlenecks they had slammed against for years suddenly crack.
A few particularly stubborn or twisted Dao paths groaned under the forced correction. Their owners coughed blood, faces pale, as years of warped cultivation were abruptly straightened. Even they, though, could not deny the newfound stability in their cores.
"My bottleneck—"
"I… I broke through…?"
"I was stuck at peak Royal Noble for thirty years…" A middle-aged elder with white at his temples pressed a shaking hand against his chest, feeling his newly stabilized Fate Palace quiver in joy. "Thirty years—"
A young girl with sweat beading on her brow stared at her hands, feeling the circulation of a second Fate Palace completing itself as if it had been waiting just beyond reach.
"I only needed one more month. Just one more month and I would have broken through," a proud genius muttered hoarsely. "But I… I was preparing my heart for three more years of suffering…"
No matter how they tried to explain it, no matter how they struggled to describe what had just happened, all their scattered thoughts kept circling back to one figure.
Unconsciously, the sea of gazes converged.
On the jade platform, beside Mei Suyao, it felt—for that moment—as if there was only one person standing there.
Ling Feng.
His robe fluttered lightly in the lingering Dao breeze, dark hair tied back in a simple cord. He did not radiate blinding light. There were no dragons or phoenixes crying above his head. He simply stood there, shoulders loose, eyes half-lidded, as if he had just finished stretching after a nap.
And yet.
In the eyes of everyone below, the goddess who had stood alone on the dais a short while ago had become the background.
The center of the world had shifted.
Ling Feng chuckled softly under his breath.
He turned his head, looking at Mei Suyao from closer than most men would dare.
Up close, she remained composed on the surface. Her bearing was still tranquil, still dignified. But the Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao surrounding her had not yet fully settled. Wisps of Dao fragrance lingered like pale mist, and that mist was still quietly recoiling from the storm he had dropped on the entire city.
Her Immortal Bone's brilliant glow had drawn inward, as if retracting to reevaluate the world it thought it understood.
"So, Mei Suyao," Ling Feng said lazily. "Want to keep going?"
His tone was casual, almost joking, like he was asking whether she wanted to play another round of a board game instead of trading grand Daos in front of an entire region.
Mei Suyao blinked once.
That simple question snapped her from the momentary daze. The calm lake of her gaze rippled. She slowly shook her head, the corners of her lips curving with a trace of helplessness that only those very near could see.
"There is no need," she said softly. "This dao preaching… ends here."
Her voice drifted clearly through the square, supported by the lingering might of her Dao.
A ripple of disappointment and confusion swept through the crowd.
"Ends… here?"
"But I feel like I'm on the verge of—"
"Goddess Mei, perhaps—"
Some bolder cultivators began to rise, cupping their fists, wanting to ask for more guidance, more words, anything that might push them from this thin edge into a true breakthrough.
Ling Feng's eyes slid toward them.
He smiled.
"Alright," he said, voice light but cutting through the noise as sharply as any imperial decree. "Free show is over. If you didn't get it, that's on you. Buzz off."
The words were modern, crude by the standards of this world, dropping into the refined atmosphere like a stone into a tranquil pond.
Countless mouths fell open.
Even Mei Suyao's lashes trembled once.
But the Dao pressure beneath his easy tone was real.
Those who had half-risen felt, for a breath, as if a great mountain had settled lightly onto their shoulders—not crushing, but immovable. It was a reminder: taking advantage of another's dao preaching was already a great blessing. Demanding more was greed.
They hesitated.
Then, one by one, they bowed toward the dais.
"Many thanks, Goddess Mei, for preaching the Dao."
"Many thanks to Fellow Daoist as well…"
Voices overlapped, echoing against the walls of Lion's Roar capital.
On the high platform, the Lion's Roar Royal Lord watched with narrowed eyes. Usually bright and confident, his gaze now held a tangle of emotions—shock, gratitude, a thread of fear, and something else that even he might not have realized was expectation.
"This generation…" he murmured under his breath. "Truly, the era does not lack monsters."
Soon, the packed square turned into rivers of people, then streams, then scattered drops.
Sect masters whispered to their disciples. Emissaries of great powers quietly memorized Ling Feng's face. Some old ancestors' eyes gleamed with killing intent, already calculating how much trouble such a man might cause in the competition for Heaven's Will. Others licked their lips at the thought of recruiting him—or at least of keeping him from becoming an enemy.
But none of them dared act here, in Lion's Roar's imperial capital, under the watch of so many eyes.
In the open space before the dais, only a few remained.
Li Shuangyan, Chen Baojiao, Xu Pei, Bai Jianzhen.
Chi Xiaodao and Chi Xiaodie.
And Mei Suyao, still standing on her jade platform, looking directly at the man who had just casually shaken an entire region's Dao hearts.
....
Up on the dais, Mei Suyao—who had been the desired center of the Eastern Hundred Cities, the goddess countless cultivators traveled across mountains just to glimpse—found herself, for once, on the other side of the gaze.
She did not speak immediately.
Her Dao heart was not so fragile that a single clash would shake it from its foundation. She was the prime descendant of Eternal River School, the only one in the current era to possess an Immortal Bone, a Heaven's Will contender nurtured by three Immortal Emperors' legacy.
But she was not arrogant enough to pretend nothing had happened.
She had always known she would stand at the peak of her generation, shoulder to shoulder with names like Jikong Wudi. Wherever she went, her dao preaching made places lively; elders smiled kindly upon her, juniors gazed at her with worship.
Today, for the first time, she had the distinct feeling of being the one listening to a dao preaching, rather than the one giving it.
She inclined her head slightly.
"Fellow Daoist's Dao…" she said slowly, "is truly extraordinary."
Her words were not empty politeness. Mei Suyao was not the type to flatter without reason.
Ling Feng shrugged as if it were nothing more than a passing comment about tea.
"It's alright," he said. "Just a bad habit. I see shackles, I start itching to break them."
Mei Suyao's eyes flashed faintly.
Her fingers tightened inside her sleeve, hidden from all but the closest observers.
She hesitated.
Then finally gave voice to the question that had been lingering since that storm of fragrance had swept through the city.
"Just now," she said, tone a shade quieter, "that Dao you used… it shook everyone's hearts, pulled out their fears and desires, then used them as keys. It did not guide them along an already-drawn path."
Her lashes lowered slightly.
"It forced them to stand before their own truth."
She paused.
"Is it not too… harsh?"
Ling Feng tilted his head.
"Harsh?" he repeated. "Mm. Depends how you look at it."
He spread his hands.
"My power just makes it easier for people to see the truth," he said, tone still lazy, but his eyes sharpening for a brief beat. "If the truth breaks them, then their path was garbage to begin with. Better to break now than at Heavenly King or Godking, yeah?"
The blunt words dropped like stones onto the jade floor.
Chi Xiaodie's eyebrows jumped. Chi Xiaodao's fingers tightened around his saber hilt.
Even a few elders still lingering within earshot winced slightly, instinctively wanting to rebuke him for his irreverence—yet unable to deny the logic behind it.
Mei Suyao fell silent.
She looked at him carefully.
In that instant, she understood at least one thing very clearly: this man was not "kind" in the way most people meant. He did not comfort. He did not cushion. He saw where things would crack sooner or later… and simply moved the moment forward.
Yet the Dao resonance from earlier had not been twisted or malicious. It had been vast, clear, untainted by pettiness.
He did not break things because he enjoyed destruction.
He broke what could not hold, so that what could hold might stand taller.
"…In that case," Mei Suyao said softly, "your Dao is indeed more direct than mine."
A faint self-mockery flickered at the corner of her lips.
"The Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao traces the grand flow and washes away dust," she murmured, almost to herself. "But I still… avoid cutting too deep."
Ling Feng grinned.
"Hey, there's nothing wrong with that," he said. "Your path is gentle. People like gentle. It's like tea poured just right. Mine is more like…"
He made a little tossing motion, as if upending a cup.
"Strong liquor poured straight down the throat."
He flicked his fingers.
"If they choke, that's on them."
Mei Suyao stared at him for a moment.
She had heard many metaphors in her life. More than one Virtuous Paragon had used flowery language to describe the Dao before her. Immortal Emperor Xiu Shui's legacy spoke of beginning and end, of fragrance that lingered from primordial start to eternal finish.
This was the first time anyone had compared Immortal Emperor-level merit laws to… tea and cheap liquor.
A tiny, unexpected laugh escaped her.
It was only a breath of sound, smothered almost as soon as it left her lips—but it was real.
She realized she had laughed, and her composure wavered for a heartbeat.
Her gaze slipped sideways.
Li Shuangyan was watching from below with an amused, hooded look, as if quietly pleased but not surprised that he could make even a goddess of the Eastern Hundred Cities laugh.
Chen Baojiao wore a grin like she had just caught someone doing something scandalous in broad daylight.
Xu Pei's eyes were bright, full of curiosity and a pride that said, That's my man.
Bai Jianzhen's face was impassive as ever, but her fingers tapped once, almost inaudibly, on her sword hilt.
Farther back, Chi Xiaodie's stare was sharp as a blade. Chi Xiaodao's mouth still hung open a little.
Ling Feng felt all those feminine gazes converge on his back like arrows.
He coughed lightly.
"Anyway," he said, tone turning easier again, "this was fun. Let's call it even for today. You gave them pretty pictures, I shook them up—good combo, right?"
Mei Suyao's brows knit by a trace.
"'Even'?" she repeated.
"Mm." Ling Feng nodded. "We'll meet again."
His eyes held hers for a long breath, the lazy amusement in them giving way to something deeper, heavier.
"When the fight for Heaven's Will heats up," he said, voice dropping half a register, "I'll show you properly."
His lips curved, not in arrogance, but in a certainty that came from somewhere far beyond this era.
"Why I think 'competing' for it is kind of ridiculous."
Mei Suyao's heart skipped.
Competing for Heaven's Will… ridiculous?
That was the dream countless geniuses had staked their lives on, the path Immortal Emperor lineages carved into the bones of the Mortal Emperor World. It was also the center of her cultivation, of all the expectations Eternal River, and the legacies of Xiu Shui, Nu Zhan, and Guan Feng had placed upon her.
"You…" she began.
Ling Feng just smiled.
"We've got time," he said. "No need to rush."
He stepped back off the jade dais, movement smooth and relaxed, as if he were simply leaving a teahouse after finishing a decent cup.
"For now," he called over his shoulder, "enjoy the aftertaste. That's the best part."
Mei Suyao watched his back as he descended, the figures of Li Shuangyan, Chen Baojiao, Xu Pei, Bai Jianzhen, and the Chi siblings naturally shifting around him, each revealing their own relationship with this infuriating, impossible man.
Conflicting emotions churned quietly in her chest.
Curiosity.
Irritation.
A faint, unwilling admiration.
And beneath all of that, an unfamiliar feeling she did not care to name yet.
She lowered her lashes, hiding the complexity in her eyes, and let the last traces of the Alaya Heavenly Fragrant Dao fade around her.
"Very well," she murmured under her breath, unheard by the crowd, but carried clearly to Ling Feng's ears by the lingering resonance between their Daos.
"This Mei… will wait and see."