The world beyond the inn was a shock of green and life. The Verdant Canopy Forest thrummed with an aggressive vitality. Sunlight dappled through leaves wider than cartwheels. The air smelled of damp earth and the sweet ozone of ambient energy. Exotic, shimmering birds flitted past. Smaller creatures—a fox with crystalline fur, a six-legged lizard that phased in and out of sight—scurried in the undergrowth. Infant Milky Beasts, their power palpable but contained.
As they walked, Madame Su broke the rhythmic quiet. "While we move, I want you to try something different. Do not attempt to open it. Just… sense it."
She looked at Gen. "Gen, sense the Second Acupoint. The Sea of Manipulation. It lies below your navel. Feel for it as a space that wants to shape the world, not just endure it."
She turned to Liang. "Liang, sense the First Acupoint. The Root of Reinforcement. It lies at the base of your spine. Feel for it as a foundation, a source of solidity you have been building without."
Gen frowned. "Sense the Sea? But we're still solidifying the First Wheel at the Root. Isn't that jumping steps?"
"Knowledge is not a staircase," she replied. "It is a map. You do not have to walk to a place to know it exists. Sense it. Know it is there."
Liang's eyes widened slightly. This was different. She wasn't asking him to chase another advanced concept, but to find the very foundation he lacked. He closed his eyes as he walked, turning his senses inward, away from the chaotic swirl of Creation at his Heart, downward, seeking a point of stability, of pure, simple strength.
Gen did the same, searching his lower dantian for the subtle, shaping potential of the Sea.
After a quarter-hour, Liang let out a soft, surprised breath. It was faint, like a single, steady heartbeat at the edge of a noisy room. But it was there. A dim, warm, solid pulse at the base of his spine. The Root. The door everyone else had opened first. For him, it was a locked room he'd never found the key to, and now he'd finally found the wall it was in. A profound sense of relief, of a missing piece located, washed over him.
"I… I feel it," he whispered.
Gen's eyes snapped open. He had felt nothing but the familiar, roaring furnace of his own Root point. The Sea remained a theoretical concept, a blank space on his map. A flicker of frustration crossed his face, quickly masked by a scoff. "Lucky guess. That's your missing piece, not a new step."
Liang just nodded, a small, real smile on his face. He had found the starting line.
The failure ignited Gen's stubbornness. For the rest of the day's march and into their evening camp, he sat apart, eyes closed, brow furrowed, trying to will the sensation of the Sea into existence. He cycled his Qi, pushed his awareness, but found only the boundless, reinforcing energy of the Root. It was like trying to hear a whisper while standing in a forge.
"Gen, you should rest," Liang said as night fell. "You can't force it to appear."
"I'm not forcing it," Gen snapped, not opening his eyes. "I'm focusing. It's there. I just have to find the right angle." His flaw was stark in the firelight: the refusal to acknowledge a limit, to accept that some things couldn't be taken by sheer force of will.
He tried until exhaustion claimed him, with no success.
---
It was Liang, his senses subtly broadened by touching his Root, who felt the shift the next morning—a sudden drying of the air, a concentration of predatory heat ahead. "Gen," he hissed, stopping. "Something's—"
A low, rumbling growl vibrated through the forest floor.
From behind a stand of colossal trees, it emerged. It was the size of a large wolf, its fur silvery-white streaked with patterns like black, smoldering embers. Its eyes were pools of molten orange. From its slightly parted jaws, wisps of pale blue flame escaped with each breath. A Flaming Moon Tiger—but an Infant. Yet, its aura was dense, a pressing heat that made the sweat evaporate from their skin.
It moved not with the clumsy play of a cub, but with the lethal focus of an apex predator. Its gaze locked on Gen and it flowed forward, a streak of silver and blue flame, claws like curved sabers extended.
"LEFT!" Liang shouted again, that same instinctual burst of spatial awareness. Gen jerked aside. The claw whistled past, close enough to singe the hair on his arm. They scrambled, putting distance between them and the beast.
Madame Su stepped between them and the creature, her hands raised but not yet striking. She studied it, her face pale. "An Infant," she said, her voice tight. "But… at the peak of its Infant stage. It's a Third Wheel equivalent. Almost equal to me in raw power."
She looked from the beast back to the deep forest, confusion and dread in her eyes. "Infant Milky Beasts range from First to Third Wheel strength. But one this powerful, this close to adulthood… it should be deep in the heart of the forest, near the lairs of its elders. Not here on the fringe. Only First or early Second Wheel Infants should be here. Something is wrong."
Gen's eyes, wide a moment before, now blazed. The frustration from his failed meditation found a perfect, violent outlet. "An opportunity," he breathed, a fierce grin spreading. "A real fight. To learn."
Madame Su hesitated. Her eyes darted from Gen's determined face to Liang's nervous but resolved one, then to the tiger, which paced with low, rumbling growls. The risk was immense. A Third Wheel beast was no training dummy; a single mistake could be fatal. But sheltering them forever would make them weak. The world outside was full of wrongness now. They had to learn.
With a slow, reluctant exhale, she stepped back. "I will not intervene unless your lives are forfeit. This is your path. Walk it."
The tiger's flames roared up, forming a magnificent, terrifying mane of blue fire. Gen settled into his stance, golden light glowing dully beneath his skin—the raw, unpracticed precursor to the Eternal Body's First Door. Liang closed his eyes, reaching inward for the empty Kalash.
The tiger lunged.
Gen didn't retreat. He met the charge, his reinforced body a blur. He sidestepped the leading claw, the heat searing his robe, spun inside the beast's guard, and slammed a Jingdao-hardened fist into its ribcage. A solid thump echoed, and the tiger grunted, stumbling a step. It was like punching a furnace.
Liang's hand shot out. He couldn't summon an element, but he pushed the concept of the Kalash as a weapon. A shimmering, semi-transparent outline of a large jar materialized in the air and flew at the tiger's head.
The tiger swatted it aside with a contemptuous paw. The jar-construct shattered into dissipating light.
"More focus, Liang!" Madame Su's voice was sharp from the sidelines. "The Kalash is a vessel! You are throwing the idea of a vase! Fill it with intent!"
The beast's molten eyes narrowed with annoyance. It shook itself, and its body seemed to expand, muscles coiling with greater power. Then it blurred. Not with speed, but with afterimages. It disappeared from Gen's front and reappeared beside him, a clawed paw already in a sweeping arc.
THWACK!
The blow connected with Gen's crossed forearms. The sound was of a bell being struck. He was lifted off his feet and hurled backwards, crashing through a bush. Pain, bright and shocking, lanced up his arms.
Before he could hit the ground, the tiger was there again, below his trajectory, maw gaping wide, blue fire gathering in its throat for a point-blank incineration.
Gen's heart hammered, a drum of pure danger. His mind went white, then crystal clear. Air. He couldn't fly. But he could Reinforce. As he fell, he kicked out violently, not at the beast, but at the air itself. He poured Jingdao into the space around his foot, creating a momentary, solidified pocket of dense atmosphere.
His boot thumped against the invisible platform. It shattered instantly, but it gave him purchase. He twisted violently in mid-air, the jet of blue flame searing past his leg, singing his pants and blistering his skin. He landed in a rolling crouch, breathing hard.
"Liang! NOW!" he roared.
Liang, seeing his friend almost cooked, felt a surge of desperate clarity. Not an idea. A need. Earth. Stability. To stop the charge. He thrust both hands forward, picturing not a jar, but the Kalash tipping over, emptying not water, but the essence of the forest floor.
A ripple shot through the earth. From the ground in front of the tiger, a thick, crude wall of compacted soil and rock erupted, two feet high.
The tiger, focused on Gen, slammed into it. The wall shattered, but it broke the beast's momentum.
Enraged, the tiger planted its feet. It threw its head back and roared, and from its maw erupted not a stream, but a Gale of Flame—a swirling, horizontal tornado of blue fire that screamed toward them, wide enough to engulf them both.
Gen saw it coming. His battered arms rose. That arrogant, defiant core in him ignited. I can take it. My body is my weapon. I'll reinforce through it!
He took a step forward, ready to meet the inferno head-on.
A grey blur shot past him.
"Meryl's Wall!"
Madame Su's voice was a whip-crack of power. She appeared beside the flame, her hands weaving. The air to the side of the fire-gale thickened, shimmered, and then curved. The catastrophic stream of blue fire hit the curved barrier and was deflected upwards, screaming harmlessly into the canopy, setting the high leaves ablaze.
In the sudden, ringing silence and the drizzle of ash, Madame Su turned. She walked up to Gen and knocked him sharply on the back of the head.
Thwock!
"Ow! What was that for?!" Gen yelped.
"For being a proud fool," she said, her voice flat with fear and fury. "Your body is a treasure, not a shield for a star's heart! You are not your father yet!" She glared at Liang. "And a wall of dirt against that? You have a vessel of infinite potential. Start filling it!"
She stared them down. The Infant Flaming Moon Tiger, its grand attack deflected, seemed to reassess. With a final, frustrated snarl, it turned and vanished into the deep green.
"We move," Madame Su said, her tone leaving no room for argument. "You are alive. You have learned you still have everything to learn. That is the only victory today."
She turned and walked, not waiting for their response. Gen and Liang exchanged a glance—bruised, burned, but alive—and followed.
Madame Su walked ahead of them, her back straight, her pace unyielding. She did not look back at the boys. She did not need to. The image of Gen stepping toward that wall of fire was burned into her mind—reckless, proud, magnificent, and doomed.
She had seen genius before. She had watched them fall, one by one. Pride before the plummet. Confidence before the crack.
Not this one. Not him.
Her hands, hidden in her sleeves, clenched into fists. A vow, silent and absolute, took root in her chest. The Immortal had trusted her with his son. She would not fail that trust. Her methods would harden. Her lessons would cut. She would push until he understood—that his body was not a weapon to be spent, but a temple to be fortified.
Behind her, Gen stumbled on a root, cursed softly, and kept walking. He did not see the set of her shoulders. He did not know the promise being forged in the silence between them. Nor just how far his reckless journey will take him.
The forest swallowed them whole.