The full moon was a cold, silver eye watching the Azure Cloud Sect. For Jiang Yi, it was a timer. The hunger had grown from a complaint to a persistent, gnawing agony. Every breath felt like it consumed the minuscule supply of azure Qi he had cultivated. He knew he had one chance.
He spent the day moving slowly, feigning exhaustion, hoarding every crumb of energy. By the time the moon began its ascent, he had secured a single, rusted iron rod—a crude pry bar stolen from the maintenance shed—and dressed in the darkest clothes he owned.
The clock struck midnight.
Jiang Yi launched himself from the shadows of the servant barracks.
Spider Step.
His feet barely touched the ground. The movement was effortless, a silent, gliding sprint. He felt less like he was running and more like he was sliding across an invisible slick surface. The guards who patrolled the inner perimeter were seasoned, but they focused on sound and shadow. Jiang Yi produced neither. He was a whisper of movement, a ghost that hugged the walls and darted between the moonlight and the deep shade.
The North Tower was a desolate, looming structure—a monument to past glories and forgotten secrets. Unlike the well-maintained main halls, this tower was quiet, its stone walls covered in lichen, its windows dark. It housed only old archives, dusty storage, and the remnants of previous sect leaders.
He reached the base of the tower and scaled the outer wall. His newfound physical strength and agility made the climb little more than a challenging exercise. His fingers gripped crevices with the tenacity of iron hooks.
Level Seven.
He landed silently on the stone balcony. The heavy, bolted door leading to the sealed section was imposing, secured with a thick, antique brass lock.
Jiang Yi inserted the tip of the iron rod. In the past, he couldn't have managed the leverage, but the million catties of strength pulsing through his Body Tempering realm muscles made the brass feel like thin clay.
Clink. The lock snapped with a dull, muffled sound.
He eased the door open and slipped inside. The air was stale, cold, and tasted of ancient dust and ozone.
He was in a long, dark corridor. This was the wing sealed by Elder Fang ten years ago.
At the far end of the corridor, where the shelves of scrolls should have begun, stood the true barrier. It was invisible, but the moonlight filtering through a high window caught the boundary, making it shimmer like thin, agitated heat haze.
It was the remnants of a formidable Qi Formation. It wasn't meant to kill, but to deter and warn. Touching it would set off a loud spiritual alarm that would summon the nearest Elder in minutes.
Jiang Yi approached slowly. He could feel the energy radiating from the barrier—a complex web of spirit threads designed to reject foreign Qi.
He pressed his right palm flat against the shimmering air.
The barrier instantly pushed back, a sudden surge of cold pressure that sought to analyze and expel him. If he had possessed normal, chaotic Qi, the formation would have rejected it violently and triggered the alarm.
But Jiang Yi's Qi was not chaotic.
It was the azure liquid—purified, condensed, and unnatural. It was so flawless, so fundamentally different from the Qi that built the formation, that the seal didn't know how to categorize it. It registered the Qi, not as a threat, but as an impossible void.
The mark on his palm pulsed rapidly, drawing the azure liquid from his dantian. The sphere's essence, perhaps recognizing the formation as a low-grade use of the energy it craved, reacted.
Hiss.
A faint, ozone scent filled the air. The shimmering barrier began to crackle and dim exactly where his palm touched it. It wasn't being broken; it was being devoured—the sphere was subtly absorbing the residual energy of the ancient formation.
The resistance lasted only three seconds. The formation let out a soft, mournful whine, and the shimmering ceased, leaving a narrow, hand-sized gap in the air where Jiang Yi's palm rested.
He quickly pulled his hand back, watching as the gap began to slowly seal itself again. He had maybe twenty breaths before the integrity was fully restored.
Slipping through the closing gap, Jiang Yi found himself inside Level Seven's inner storage area.
The shelves here were not for scrolls but for heavy, specialized tools: bronze compasses, mercury baths, formation platters, and ancient-looking mechanical apparatuses. The place was a workshop, not a library.
The Qi-Gathering Formation Blueprint wouldn't be on a shelf. The voice he had overheard said the "old man hid it well."
His eyes, enhanced by the breakthrough, scanned the room. The scent of ozone was fading, but his body was screaming for energy. He had drained his dantian to breach the barrier.
He had to find the blueprint now. Every second he stayed here, the risk of discovery increased exponentially.
He swept his gaze across the room again, looking for any imperfection, any pattern that broke the dust layer.
His eyes snagged on a massive, heavy bronze pillar in the center of the room. It looked like a support, yet its base was cleaner than the rest of the floor. And there, etched faintly into the bronze near the base, was a single, stylized character: Hao.
It was the character for 'vastness' or 'grandeur.' It seemed out of place.
Jiang Yi approached the pillar, using his iron rod to scrape the dust away from the base. He noticed a minuscule seam, nearly invisible, where the pillar met the stone floor.
With a final desperate burst of strength, he pushed the rod into the seam and leveraged his weight.
The stone foundation beneath the pillar groaned. The air filled with the rasp of ancient metal sliding on metal. The massive bronze column shifted, revealing a hidden compartment built into the floor.
Inside the compartment, nestled on a bed of faded silk, was a small, tightly rolled scroll of jade-colored paper, glowing faintly with soft green light—a genuine artifact, not just parchment.
The Qi-Gathering Formation Blueprint.
As Jiang Yi reached for it, the sound of hurried, light footsteps echoed from outside the sealed wing. Someone had noticed the ripple of the fading barrier