The suite at the Hotel Diamond was a testament to how far mortal ingenuity had come in mimicking the comforts of the immortal world.
Located on the forty-second floor, the room offered a panoramic view of the capital through floor-to-ceiling sheets of glass that possessed clarity rivaling high-grade crystal. The air was purified and temperature-controlled by mechanical systems hidden within the walls, humming with a vibration so subtle that only a cultivator could detect it. Silk draperies, woven by machines in Qinghe City, hung with a precision that human hands rarely achieved.
Wei Jin lay in the expansive bed, the sheets tangled around his waist. Shen Ruyi rested against him, her head pillowed on his chest, her fingers tracing idle patterns through his hair. The intimacy was surreal, a juxtaposition of eras and realities that Wei Jin's iron mind was still processing.
Here he was, one hundred fifty-nine years old, a Nascent Soul patriarch, lying with a woman who had been a wife for seven centuries before he was even born.
Shen Ruyi's crimson robe lay discarded on the floor, a pool of bright color against the plush carpet. Her skin was cool to the touch, her spiritual presence retracted so completely that she felt almost mortal, though Wei Jin knew that a single thought could unleash power sufficient to level the building.
"So," she murmured, her voice vibrating against his ribs. She sounded content, the tension of their initial negotiation replaced by the languid ease of the morning after. "What did she agree to?"
Wei Jin didn't need to ask who 'she' was. The shadow of Lin Mei had hung over their union from the moment he accepted Ruyi's proposal.
"Lin Mei will remain my only wife," Wei Jin said, his voice steady. He felt Ruyi's fingers pause in his hair, then resume their rhythm. "That is the boundary. It is non-negotiable. You will be recognized as an official partner—acknowledged within our circles, respected as an ally of the highest order, and treated with the dignity your cultivation and history demand. But the title of wife, and the primacy of that bond… those belong to her."
"And not to be shared?"
"Not to be shared."
Shen Ruyi let out a long, theatrical sigh—a sound that managed to convey disappointment, amusement, and a cynical acceptance of reality all at once. She shifted, propping her chin on his chest to look up at him. Her eyes, ancient and dark, searched his face.
"How stingy," she teased, though there was a glint of something sharper in her gaze. "I admit, I am a jealous woman, Wei Jin. Seven hundred years of marriage teaches you to guard what is yours. But… I suppose it will do."
"You accept the terms?"
"I accept them. For now." She traced the line of his jaw. "Perhaps her jealousy is justified. If I had found a partner like you seven centuries ago, I might not have wished to share him either. There is a solidity to you, Wei Jin. A density of purpose that most men lack."
Wei Jin caught her hand, stopping her exploration. "Tell me the truth, Ruyi. Why me? Why this? You are a mid-level Nascent Soul cultivator. You have the wealth of an ancient elder at your disposal. You could have your pick of the empire's elite, or remain solitary and powerful. Why demand 'replacement' from the man who killed your husband?"
Shen Ruyi's expression shifted. The playful seductress vanished, replaced by the weary, incredibly old entity that lived beneath the beautiful skin. She rolled onto her back, staring up at the ceiling where a mortal-made electric chandelier hung like frozen ice.
"Other cultivators?" She laughed softly, a dry sound. "I have known them all, Wei Jin. For centuries. I have watched the so-called geniuses of the great sects rise and fall. I have seen the arrogant young masters become bitter old men. They are predictable. Their ambitions are small—power, territory, face. They play the game the way it has always been played."
She turned her head to look at him again.
"You are unique. You are doing things that should be impossible. The city you built—Qinghe—it is an anomaly. The innovations you enabled, the way you navigate the currents of this changing world… it makes the heart of a bored old widow flutter."
"You want excitement?"
"I want survival," she corrected sharply. "And I want relevance. The future has become more uncertain than you think, Wei Jin. I feel it in the shifting of the qi, in the tremors of the earth. The mortal weapons, the mushroom cloud you spoke of, the shifting alliances, the ancient forces stirring in response to your liberation work… chaos is coming. A storm such as we haven't seen since the ancient war."
She sat up, the sheet falling to her waist, unashamed and imposing.
"My late husband… he was clever, but he was trapped in the past. He tried to survive by hiding, by stealing lives to extend a stale existence. You? You are building the future. I want to cling to someone with vision. Someone who sees the storm approaching and builds shelters rather than merely hoping it will pass."
She leaned over him, her hair creating a curtain around their faces.
"I am direct, Wei Jin. I invest in assets that appreciate. And you… you are the most valuable asset I have seen in a millennium."
Wei Jin appreciated the cold pragmatism beneath the warmth of her body. It was a language he understood. She wasn't looking for a replacement lover; she was looking for a replacement anchor in a world that was coming unmoored.
"Then we have an accord," Wei Jin said.
"We have an accord." Shen Ruyi leaned down, kissing him deeply—a gesture that felt less like romance and more like a seal on a blood pact. "Welcome to my life, Wei Jin. Try not to die as inconveniently as my last husband. It is terribly tedious to be a widow twice."
—————
The Year of Integration
Returning to Qinghe City with Shen Ruyi was a diplomatic maneuver more complex than any negotiation with the imperial court.
Wei Jin brought her not to the main family residence, but to a secluded, elegant pavilion in the western district of the compound—a structure originally built for visiting dignitaries but upgraded with formations that could support Nascent Soul cultivation.
The meeting between Lin Mei and Shen Ruyi was a moment of silence that seemed to stretch for eternity.
Lin Mei, sixty years old in appearance but carrying the grace of a Late Golden Core cultivator, stood in the garden. She wore simple blue robes, her hands stained with soil from her herb garden. Opposite her stood Shen Ruyi, radiating the effortless, terrifying glamour of a Nascent Soul powerhouse, dressed in crimson silk that cost more than a mortal village earned in a year.
"So," Lin Mei said, her voice calm, her gaze unflinching. "You are the partner."
"And you are the wife," Ruyi replied, her tone respectful but carrying the weight of her superior rank. "He speaks highly of you. It is annoying."
Lin Mei's lips quirked in a small, sharp smile. "Good. He should."
There was no battle, no explosion of qi. Just a mutual, silent measurement of boundaries. Lin Mei possessed the unshakeable confidence of a woman who knew she held Wei Jin's heart and history. Shen Ruyi possessed the power and resources that the family desperately needed for the next stage of their survival.
They would not be friends, perhaps not for a long time. But they would be allies.
With domestic stability tentatively established, the real work began.
Shen Ruyi proved to be exactly the resource Wei Jin had calculated she would be. She didn't just bring herself; she brought the accumulated hoard of a husband who had lived for thousands of years by stealing bodies and hoarding secrets.
In the months that followed, Wei Jin's cultivation chamber became a laboratory of ancient and forbidden knowledge.
"You cultivate like a machine," Ruyi observed one afternoon, watching Wei Jin cycle his qi. She sat on a cushion nearby, sorting through a pile of jade slips she had pulled from her storage ring. "It is efficient, yes. Terrifyingly so. But it lacks… flavor."
"Efficiency ensures survival," Wei Jin replied without opening his eyes. "Flavor is a luxury for those who don't have enemies."
"My husband had enemies. He survived by being adaptable, not just efficient." She tossed a jade slip to him. He caught it out of the air. "Read this. It is a fragment of a soul-nourishing technique from the era before the war. It is incomplete, but the principles of 'Spirit Resonance' might help you smooth the edges of your Azure Soul Refining Method."
Wei Jin scanned the slip. His iron mind dissected the information instantly, the Reasoning Cycle pattern spinning up to integrate the new data.
It was brilliant.
The Azure Soul Refining Method, which the panel had deduced, was a brute-force approach to soul strengthening—effective, but strenuous. This fragment described a way to use the natural resonance of the universe to vibrate the soul into a higher state of density, reducing the strain significantly.
"Useful?" Ruyi asked, knowing the answer.
"Very."
"Good. Now, drink this." She placed a vial of shimmering, violet liquid on the table. "Void Essence. Extracted from the space between realms. It helps the Nascent Soul expand its perception capabilities. My husband was saving it for his next breakthrough, but… well, he won't be needing it."
This became the pattern of their year. Wei Jin provided the structure, the systematic optimization, and the drive. Ruyi provided the raw materials, the lost history, and the intuitive leaps that only an ancient perspective could offer.
[Azure Soul Refining Method - Current Efficiency: 82%]
Three months in. The combination of Void Essence and the Spirit Resonance principles pushed the method forward by leaps and bounds.
[Azure Soul Refining Method - Current Efficiency: 94%]
Nine months in. Wei Jin and Ruyi spent weeks in deep meditation, their spiritual energies linking in a dual-cultivation practice—not of the flesh, but of the spirit—that allowed him to borrow her experience to stabilize his own volatile soul energy.
It was during these sessions that Wei Jin truly understood the value of her alliance. She wasn't just a resource; she was a guide. She had watched a Nascent Soul cultivator operate for centuries. She knew the pitfalls, the instabilities, the mental traps that awaited those who touched the divine.
"Careful," she whispered into his mind during a particularly intense session. "You are pushing the expansion too fast. Your soul is strong, Wei Jin, but it is young. It has not hardened yet. Let it breathe."
He adjusted, slowing the intake, allowing the Azure energy to settle and crystallize.
[Azure Soul Refining Method - Current Efficiency: 99%]
Eleven months. They were close.
The world outside continued its rapid transformation. The empire was uneasy; the threat of atomic fire kept major conflicts at bay, but the tension was palpable. Wei Feng reported increased activity on the borders. Wei Lan was constantly upgrading the city's formations to shield against radiation and thermal shock.
Wei Jin remained in his chamber. The final step required total focus.
He needed to integrate the method fully. To take the manual process that required his conscious will and encode it into his spiritual instinct, making it as automatic as breathing.
On the last day of the year, under the light of a winter moon, it happened.
Wei Jin sat alone. Ruyi had stepped out to guard the perimeter, sensing the critical moment.
He gathered the totality of his understanding—the logic of the panel, the ancient wisdom Ruyi had shared, the structural integrity of his six patterns. He pushed the Azure Soul Refining Method through the final optimization loop.
A click. A hum in his soul. A sensation of a heavy gear finally locking into place and beginning to spin on its own momentum.
[Azure Soul Refining Method - Current Efficiency: 100%][Status: AUTOMATED]
The manual method dissolved from his conscious burden. The technique began to run itself, a perpetual engine of soul enhancement operating in the background of his being.
Wei Jin opened his eyes. The world seemed to pause.
His spiritual reserves were full to bursting. His understanding was absolute. The Azure Soul Refining Method, now perfect, was already processing the Void Essence residues in his system, converting them into pure soul force.
The barrier to the Mid-Level Nascent Soul, which usually took centuries to erode, felt thin as paper.
"Time to ascend," he whispered.
—————
The Mid-Level Breakthrough
The breakthrough was not violent. It was not the earth-shattering struggle of his Golden Core formation. This was the difference between a dam bursting and a tide rising.
Wei Jin closed his eyes and simply… allowed it to happen.
His Nascent Soul—the miniature, spiritual reflection of himself seated within his dantian—inhaled.
The energy of the universe rushed in. The formations Wei Lan had built around the compound flared, drawing qi from miles around. The spirit stones piled in the room turned to dust in seconds, their energy consumed instantly.
Inside him, the Nascent Soul grew. Its features became more distinct, losing the vague blur of the early stage and taking on the sharp definition of Wei Jin's own face. The spiritual substance that composed it densified, shifting from a gaseous-liquid hybrid into something that felt solid, real, eternal.
The six patterns integrated into the soul began to glow.
The Optimization Spiral spun faster. The Perception Lens widened. The Poison-Medicine Mastery deepened. The Iron Mind Fortress thickened. The Unity Stream flowed with greater volume. The Reasoning Cycle accelerated.
And then, a snap. A feeling of expansion that transcended physical space.
His perception exploded outward. He saw Qinghe City not just as shapes and lights, but as a complex web of life forces, intentions, and causalities. He felt the heartbeat of his family members scattered across the compound. He felt Ruyi standing on the roof, her crimson robes fluttering, her aura a sharp blade guarding him.
Mid-Level Nascent Soul.
The power coursing through him was terrifying. If Golden Core was a lake, this was an ocean. The ability to manipulate the laws of the world—to fly without swords, to shift matter, to crush minds—was now his command.
His ability to protect his family had not just increased; it had multiplied exponentially.
But as the energy stabilized, something else happened.
A vibration started at the base of his soul. A resonance that wasn't coming from the cultivation technique, but from the thing that had been with him since he was six years old.
The Panel.
[SYSTEM UPDATE INITIATED]
The text burned itself into his mind's eye, brighter than he had ever seen it.
[DETECTING SOUL DENSITY THRESHOLD MET][INTEGRATING NASCENT SOUL ENHANCEMENT][BOOTING NEWLY FORMED SOUL INTERFACE]
Wei Jin grabbed the edges of his meditation mat. This was new. This was painful.
The panel had always felt like an overlay—a tool sitting on top of his vision. Now, it felt like it was weaving itself into him. Wires of conceptual light drilled into his Nascent Soul, connecting the reasoning power of the system directly to the spiritual essence of his being.
It was invasive. It was intimate. It was completing a circuit that had been waiting for a power source strong enough to sustain it.
The pain vanished as quickly as it had arrived, replaced by a sensation of cold, absolute clarity.
The text reformatted, shifting from the blocky characters of the past into fluid, elegant script that seemed to flow like liquid metal.
[CULTIVATION SYSTEM v3.0 - SOUL INTEGRATED]
The list of methods scrolled past, confirming their status.
[Automated: Golden Flow Essence Circulation (100%)][Automated: Subtle Mind Fortress (100%)][Automated: Clear Heart Radiance (100%)][Automated: Azure Soul Refining Method (100%)]
And then, a new section unfurled at the bottom, glowing with a pulsing, golden light.
[NEW FEATURE UNLOCKED][SIMULATION CHAMBER]
[Description: Utilizes the user's Soul Power and Reasoning Cycle to project potential futures based on known variables. Allows for risk-free experimentation, combat simulation, and causality analysis. Warning: Consumes significant Soul Force.]
Wei Jin stared at the words.
Simulation Chamber.
For decades, he had lived with the paralyzing fear of making the wrong choice. The fear that a single misstep would lead to the destruction of his family, the annihilation of his city, or the end of the peace he had fought so hard to maintain. He had relied on caution, on preparation, on paranoia.
Now, the system was offering him something else.
It was offering him the chance to live through the mistakes without paying the price. To see the consequences of a war before it started. To fight a battle and die, only to wake up and try again.
To answer the questions of life and death by experiencing them, over and over again, until he found the path that led to survival.
He focused his attention on the new line of text.
Activate.
The world dissolved into white light.
—————
End of Chapter Two, Book Four