Three suns had passed since the extraction of the Earth's Marrow.
In the quiet corners of the Ancestral Hall, the air was changing. It no longer smelled of damp earth and rotting wood. Instead, a metallic sweetness—the scent of the deep earth after a thunder-strike—clung to the pillars, a byproduct of Li Fan's constant, vibrating breaths.
Jing'er had changed the most. Her skin, once sallow from malnutrition, now glowed with a faint, porcelain-like translucence. When she moved, there was a sharpness to her gestures, a feline grace that suggested the "Hidden Dragon" within her bone-marrow was beginning to stir.
Li Fan sat on the Thousand-Step Stairs, his eyes closed. In his vision, the Mirror of Resonant Fate was no longer just a scroll. It was a window.
[RECURSIVE DIVIDEND: ARCHAEOLOGICAL SHIFT]
[TEN THOUSAND YEARS HENCE: THE RUINS OF THE SUNSET FORGE HAVE SURVIVED]
Li Fan could feel the shift. Before, the future Sunset Mountain was a wasteland of rubble. Now, because he had begun the "Inverse Smelting" in the Present, a section of the future mountain had been preserved by a Legacy Resonance—a warping of the Great Path's fabric created by the accumulated weight of his techniques.
If I continue, Li Fan mused, the future ruins will contain the very artifacts I am refining today, but aged and evolved by ten millennia of low-Qi pressure.
A sudden, heavy vibration in the earth snapped his eyes open.
It wasn't a resonance he had created. This was the coarse, chaotic pressure of a 5th-Layer Qi Condensation expert. It was loud and arrogant.
At the foot of the mountain, a procession appeared.
Leading them wasn't Scar-Face Ma. It was a man on a black stallion, wearing robes of iron-gray silk and a belt of heavy jade. This was Master Iron-Throne, the leader of the Iron Fist Hall.
Ma followed behind him, looking pale and nervous.
Li Fan stood up, brushing the dust from his robes. He signaled to Jing'er to stay inside.
"The Master of the Iron Throne," Li Fan called out, his voice carrying down the stairs with an effortless clarity. "I see the Sunset Nectar has agreed with you."
Master Iron-Throne halted his horse. He looked up at the boy-Sect Leader, his eyes narrowed. He had consumed the single jar of wine three suns ago. It had not just strengthened his Qi; it had burned like a divine fire, clearing his meridians of years of coarse residue. He was now at the peak of the 5th Layer, nearing the 6th.
But he was also suspicious.
"Boy," Iron-Throne rumbled, his voice echoing against the cliffs. "The Nectar was real. But its origin is impossible. That liquid wasn't 'found' in an old pit. It was extracted."
He dismounted, the weight of his 5th-Layer pressure causing the gravel beneath his boots to grind into powder.
"There are rumors in the valley," Iron-Throne Continued, walking up the stairs. "Rumors that the Sunset Sect has found a new way to 'smelt the trash'. Ma tells me you spoke to the mountain."
Li Fan didn't flinch as the man's aura washed over him. To a normal mortal, it would have felt like standing before a tidal wave. To Li Fan, who was using the future's Stellar Depths breathing, it was just... noisy.
"Ma speaks too much," Li Fan replied. "And the Master of the Iron Throne thinks too little. If I could 'smelt trash', would I be sitting on a crumbling throne, begging for a moon's grace?"
Iron-Throne stopped three steps below Li Fan. He reached out and gripped the stone banister. Under his hand, the moss-covered granite shattered.
"Do not play the fool with me, Li Fan," the Master hissed. "The Nectar was too clean. Too efficient. It is the work of a Grandmaster of Alchemy, or... something else."
He leaned in, his coarse Qi flaring. "I want the method. Not just a jar. The method. Give it to me, and I will make the Sunset Sect a subsidiary of the Iron Fist Hall. You will have food, oil, and protection."
Li Fan looked at the man. He saw the greed, but he also saw the fear. Master Iron-Throne realized that if Li Fan did have a new method, he was a threat to every Power in the region.
"And if I refuse?" Li Fan asked softly.
"Then I will burn this mountain," Iron-Throne growled. "I will search the ash for the secrets you hide."
Li Fan smiled. It was a cold, razor-sharp expression that made Scar-Face Ma shiver from the bottom of the stairs.
"Then burn it, Master," Li Fan said. "But know this: the Pillar of Reclaiming requires a resonance that only my blood can provide. If I die, the fire dies with me. And you will be left with nothing but a 5th-Layer cultivation that will plateau in a moon, back to the coarse sludge you were before you tasted my honey."
The Master's face turned purple. His fist tightened until the stone banister turned to dust.
"You dare threaten me?"
"I dare tell you the truth," Li Fan said. "I have a month of Nectar already refined. I can give it to you. Every sun, a jar. Until you reach the 7th Layer. In exchange, the Iron Fist Hall becomes our shield, not our predator."
Iron-Throne stared at him. The silence on the mountain was absolute, broken only by the whistling of the wind.
"You would use me as your dog?" the Master whispered.
"I would use you as my foundation," Li Fan countered. "And you will use my Nectar to become the King of the Valley. Is that not a fair trade for a pile of weeds?"
The Master of the Iron Throne looked at his own hands, feeling the refined warmth still hum in his veins. The logic was irresistible.
"A jar every sunrise," Iron-Throne finally said, his voice low and dangerous. "And if a single day is missed... I will brand your heart."
Li Fan bowed, his eyes shadowed by the setting sun. "The Sunset Sect keeps its word. We have ten thousand years of history to maintain."
As the procession turned to leave, Li Fan looked up at the sky.
[RECURSIVE Resonance COMPLETE]
[DIVIDEND: THE IRON FIST LEGACY HATH BEEN ALTERED]
In his vision, the future ruins shifted again. The "Slumbering Fortress" was no longer guarded by ghosts. There were shadows of iron-clad sentinels in the year 10,000—the remnants of the very men he had just bribed.
He wasn't just saving his sect. He was building his own future army.