Kael learned quickly that time behaved differently depending on how it was used.
Most disciples treated it as something to be spent—hours burned in loud training sessions, days consumed chasing visible improvement, months gambled on breakthroughs that promised speed over certainty. They rushed because they believed time was an enemy.
Kael treated time as a resource.
One that compounded.
The outer disciple schedule of the Azure Pillar Sect followed rigid patterns. Dawn drills. Midday labor or instruction. Afternoon cultivation. Evening freedom. The structure was meant to enforce discipline, but in practice it created blind spots—periods where oversight thinned, formations shifted, and resources redistributed automatically rather than consciously.
Those blind spots interested Kael.
He positioned himself within them.
He rose before the bells, as he had the previous days, but now with a different objective. His body had stabilized enough that basic movement no longer threatened regression. Meridian integrity hovered just above the threshold the System considered safe for sustained activity.
Not progress.
Maintenance.
He stepped into the courtyard while the air was still cool and sparse with qi. The formations beneath the sect pulsed faintly, drawing energy inward from the surrounding peaks. At this hour, the flow favored intake over circulation—a preparatory phase most disciples wasted sleeping.
Kael did not.
He stood still near the eastern edge of the courtyard, where stone met soil and the formation lines bent subtly to accommodate terrain. The qi density here was marginally lower than at the center, but the turbulence was reduced. Cleaner flow. Fewer impurities.
He breathed.
Not deeply. Precisely.
Qi slipped into his body in thin strands, guided along the safest routes. He did not circulate it fully. He let it settle, testing how long it could remain without agitation.
[System Note: Passive retention efficiency increased by 1.6%.]
A small number.
Acceptable.
By the time other disciples arrived, stretching and talking loudly, Kael had already completed his objective. He moved away without drawing attention, blending into the background as naturally as he had learned to do in another life.
Invisibility was not absence.
It was camouflage.
Morning drills came and went.
Kael participated only as much as required. Enough to avoid reprimand. Not enough to be noticed. He adjusted movements to minimize strain, letting others exhaust themselves in displays of force that impressed no one who mattered.
An elder watched from the sidelines, eyes sharp, but his attention gravitated toward louder disciples—those who struck harder, shouted louder, pushed themselves to visible limits.
Kael did not register.
Good.
After drills, assignments were posted.
Kael scanned the list quickly.
Herb terraces again.
Predictable.
Outer disciples were rotated through low-value tasks unless they distinguished themselves. Kael had done the opposite—deliberately.
The terraces offered three advantages: diluted medicinal qi, minimal supervision, and time.
Time without interruption.
He worked slowly, hands steady as he loosened soil around spirit-leaf sprouts and trimmed dead growth from vine-like herbs that clung to trellises. Each movement followed a rhythm aligned with breath and intent, allowing ambient qi to seep inward without active effort.
The System remained silent.
Which meant nothing exceeded acceptable variance.
Hours passed.
Around midday, he noticed a shift.
The qi in the terraces thinned slightly, drawn away as the sect adjusted formations for afternoon instruction. Most disciples would not notice. The change was subtle, gradual.
Kael did.
He stopped working and sat on a low stone wall, closing his eyes.
Instead of drawing qi inward, he released a fraction—just enough to test the environment's response. The ambient flow adjusted around him, seeking equilibrium.
There.
A minor eddy formed near the base of the terrace wall, where two formation lines intersected imperfectly.
Not a flaw.
A compromise.
The formation had been modified over generations. Each adjustment introduced tiny inefficiencies. Individually meaningless. Collectively exploitable.
Kael marked the location mentally.
Not now.
Later.
By the third day of repeating this routine, patterns solidified.
Certain elders passed the terraces at predictable times. Resource deliveries followed fixed routes. Qi density peaked in overlooked areas during transitional periods—early morning, late evening, moments between oversight.
Kael did not act on any of it.
He recorded.
[Observation Log: Environmental efficiency margins identified.][Recommendation: No immediate action. Accumulation phase incomplete.]
He agreed.
Acting too early created noise. Noise invited scrutiny.
Scrutiny consumed time.
That evening, back in his quarters, Kael assessed his internal state.
Meridians remained stable. The wind-metal imbalance persisted, but at a reduced amplitude. Micro-corrections applied during passive absorption had prevented accumulation without requiring active circulation.
Progress without strain.
He laid out his medicinal supplies and adjusted tomorrow's dosages downward by a negligible amount. His absorption efficiency had increased; excess intake would now create waste.
Waste led to imbalance.
He slept lightly.
The following days reinforced his conclusions.
Other disciples advanced.
One broke through to the Seventh Layer with the aid of pills, his celebration loud enough to echo through the courtyard. Kael watched from a distance, noting the uneven qi compression, the slight tremor in the disciple's lower dantian.
A future problem.
Another disciple attempted to imitate a technique beyond his layer and tore a minor meridian. He was taken away by stewards, pale and shaken.
Immediate failure.
Both outcomes were treated the same by the sect: acknowledgment, then indifference.
Kael internalized the lesson.
The sect rewarded visible results, not sustainable ones.
That meant its systems were optimized for short-term output.
Which meant long-term inefficiencies were everywhere.
On the sixth day after his return to the courtyard, Kael made his first adjustment.
Small.
Almost trivial.
He altered his work schedule by less than half an hour, arriving at the terraces just after a routine inspection rather than before. The change placed him alone during a narrow window when oversight was minimal and qi flow stabilized after formation recalibration.
He sat at the base of the terrace wall where the eddy formed.
He did not cultivate.
He listened.
Qi moved differently here—not denser, but smoother. Less interference. Fewer competing flows. It reminded him of optimized systems he had studied long ago, where reducing friction mattered more than increasing input.
He adjusted his breathing and posture to match the ambient rhythm.
Qi entered.
Stayed.
[System Note: Environmental synchronization achieved.][Passive absorption efficiency increased by 3.4%.]
Kael opened his eyes.
This was not a breakthrough.
No visible change occurred. No aura flared. No sensation of power surged through him.
But the cost-to-gain ratio had shifted.
Slightly.
Permanently.
He left the area exactly when his usual schedule dictated, ensuring no pattern deviation could be observed. To anyone watching, he had done nothing differently.
Which was the point.
That night, Kael reviewed the implications.
If such margins existed here, they existed elsewhere. Training grounds. Storage areas. Even living quarters. Systems designed for thousands inevitably favored averages over outliers.
Kael was an outlier.
Not in strength.
In behavior.
[System Note: Host behavior diverging from population mean.][Risk assessment: Low visibility, low immediate return, high long-term benefit.]
Acceptable.
He lay back on the mat, staring at the ceiling, thoughts ordered and quiet.
He was still among the weakest in raw power.
Still overlooked.
Still behind those who chased speed.
But the gap between effort and return was narrowing.
Not because he worked harder.
Because he wasted less.
In a world where cultivation failures often took years to manifest, Kael's advantage would not be obvious until it was irreversible.
By then, correction would be impossible.
He closed his eyes.
Tomorrow, he would observe a different route.
Another margin.
Another small, compounding gain.
Immortality, he was beginning to understand, was not achieved by climbing faster.
It was achieved by never slipping.
And Kael Ardyn had learned how to remove friction from every step.