For the next few days, everything appeared peaceful.
But Seo knew better.
Peace, in her experience, was rarely permanent. Most of the time, trouble didn't announce itself — it arrived at their doorstep before they even realized it existed. Her spiritual radar had limits; anything beyond its range was invisible to her. If danger approached from miles away, she wouldn't know until it was too late.
That thought unsettled her.
While she wrestled with the problem of information gathering, her companions trained relentlessly. They all understood that danger was inevitable, and none of them wanted to become her burden.
The five sisters progressed at a terrifying pace. They had fully mastered the manual Seo gave them. They were no longer assassins, they were shadows.
Choi and the others were no less diligent. Choi immersed himself in the Pink Blossom Sword Arts, while Ling, Su, and Bai cultivated the Drifting Moon Sword Style. Seo had chosen their techniques carefully, matching each one to their constitution and long-term path. She would never allow a flawed foundation to block their future ascension.
One afternoon, Seo sat in her usual rocking chair, deep in thought.
How could she gather intelligence from the capital while remaining completely undetected?
She considered Meihua. But the spiritual mark she once left on her had long since faded. Unless she flew the letter directly — and risked exposure — that path was closed.
She chuckled at the absurdity of it… then abruptly stopped.
A thought struck her.
What if she built a drone? a drone could easily gather information and given cloaking capabilities could expand its range of use.
In a normal world, that would be madness. But this world mocked physics and logic. With spiritual connection arrays and radar runes, flight over miles was entirely possible.
The idea was simple in theory.
The execution? Not so much.
She visualized blueprints in her mind, calculating materials, structural load, rune placement, and energy distribution. Then she opened her spatial storage and retrieved the necessary resources.
Using spiritual modeling, she crafted the exterior shell from a rare metal native to this world — iron-like in appearance but possessing an absurd melting point and extreme density. With knowledge from her previous life and long nights spent in university laboratories, she ran controlled experiments until she managed to mold it perfectly.
The finished exterior looked like something ripped from a hyper-advanced civilization.
Now came the real challenge.
Electricity was easy to substitute — a high-level spirit stone would serve as a long-term power source.
But the chip?
The operational core?
She could inscribe command runes, yes. But no ordinary material could withstand the strain of multiple runic arrays layered together. Under pressure and temperature variation, most substances shattered or exploded.
So she returned to her alchemical pavilion.
Test after test failed.
Alloys burst apart. Materials cracked under spiritual compression. Some disintegrated entirely when layered with more than five arrays.
The difficulty only thrilled her more.
This — this was living.
Failure. Adjustment. Retesting. Improvement.
After an entire week of relentless experimentation, she succeeded.
By subjecting gold, spirit stones, and iron to extreme heat and pressure in precise ratios, she created something entirely new.
A transparent cube that emitted a faint golden glow.
Impossible in most circumstances.
But this wasn't most worlds.
Her blood boiled with excitement.
When her companions saw it, they were stunned. The five sisters, trained assassins familiar with every material registered by the Bureau of Scholars, searched their knowledge and found nothing.
It did not exist.
They turned to her in unison.
"What is it?"
Seo smiled slightly.
"I'll name it Nyxium."
Immediately, a system notification rang out.
[Ding! Host has created a material unknown to this world. Title gained: Creator. Title gained: Spiritual Engineer.]
A quiet sense of accomplishment washed over her.
With Nyxium as the core substrate, she carved over twenty runic arrays onto a chip-sized fragment. Tiny spherical crystals were embedded along the drone's exterior as sensory nodes. Using spiritual energy, she fused every component — hardware, energy source, and core — into a unified structure.
The spirit stone hummed.
The drone buzzed to life.
It possessed attack protocols. Defensive barriers. Cloaking arrays. Projection capabilities. Communication functions. Surveillance enhancement.
Now only control remained.
She retrieved the projection material Meihua once recommended — the one capable of manifesting spiritual energy as a screen. After enclosing it in Nyxium and linking it to the core through spiritual threads, the system synchronized perfectly.
She pressed the glowing cube.
A screen formed midair.
Live feed.
Clear. Wide-range. Responsive.
She focused her thoughts — and the drone shot into the sky.
Her companions stared upward in disbelief.
None of them had ever seen such a creation.
Seo folded her arms, trying to suppress the smug satisfaction rising in her chest.
With this, she could scout distant territories, monitor threats, and eliminate the risk of being caught unaware.
For once, danger would not reach her doorstep first.
She would see it coming.
Okay but real talk — this is a major evolution point for Seo. She's no longer just adapting to the cultivation world. She's reshaping it.