Gen pushed himself up from the floor, the taste of blood sharp and metallic in his mouth. He wiped his nose and ears on the sleeve of his white robe, leaving dark smears. His heart still hammered against his ribs, a frantic drumbeat echoing the silent, crushing gaze of the chained thing in that barren realm.
He stared at the scroll where it had fallen. It looked harmless now. Just old leather and cryptic ink.
He wouldn't be able to learn it in one day. He'd known that. But he had barely seven days to get a basic mastery before he had to beat the crap out of Li Chen. The vision wasn't a lesson; it was a warning. A sign of the cliff's edge. He couldn't afford to look down. He could only climb.
Before he tried to touch that power again, he needed a foundation. Something real. Solid.
He left the pavilion, the cool evening air of the Salvaged Peaks a shock against his feverish skin. He didn't go to find Liang or Lorel. He went back up the mist-wreathed path to Varja's isolated pavilion.
***
The scene was exactly the same. The vast, open-sided building, the dizzying drop into mist. In the center of the empty wooden floor, Varja moved.
It was the same impossibly slow, deliberate sequence. The shift of weight, the turn of the hips, the raise of a scarred forearm. The air thickened and whispered around him. It was as if he hadn't moved, hadn't even breathed, since Gen had left days before. Time held no meaning for the Pillar.
Varja had been clear: he wouldn't teach. But Gen didn't need teaching. He needed to *understand*. What was it that made Varja so strong? It wasn't just about knowing more Wheels. His mastery of each one was profound, deep enough to warp the space around his very body. Gen needed to see that depth, to feel its edges.
First, Gen sat on the wide wooden steps. He watched.
He saw the way the dense field around Varja wasn't a shield or an attack. It was a *consequence*. It was the world reacting to the sheer, focused mass of the Pillar's being, a gravity born of perfected **Jingdao** influencing the very air through a subtle, monumental application of **Shidow**. It was two Wheels woven so tightly they became a single, immutable law: *Here, I am. Therefore, all else is slow.*
The next few days passed in a brutal, focused rhythm.
Each evening, Gen would come and observe Varja, carving the sight and the feeling of that dense, slow space into his mind, deepening his visceral understanding of what **Jingdao** and **Shidow** could truly be.
The rest of his time, he spent in his pavilion, wrestling with the **God Asylum**. He never went back to that barren realm. He categorized the vision as a one-time event, a psychic shock from first contact. Now, the only thing he felt was the Qi he tried to trap. He focused on the first step: using **Shidow** to sense, then gently influence, the spiritual pressure of an object. A cup. A floorboard. His own hand.
Once, trembling with a mix of dread and desperate curiosity, he tried it on Varja.
He had been observing for hours. He focused on the Pillar's immense, placid aura, visualized the first sigil, and pushed his will forward with a feather-light touch.
The effect was instantaneous. The dense field around Varja didn't break. It *recoiled*.
It was like poking a sleeping mountain with a needle. The mountain didn't wake up, but the ground under the needle erupted. A silent, concussive wave of pure, condensed Qi slammed back along Gen's own energy thread. It didn't hit his body; it hit his Sea Acupoint, the source of his **Shidow**.
He was blasted off his feet, skidding across the polished wood until he hit a pillar with a bone-jarring *thud*. Blood trickled from his nose anew.
Varja had not stopped his practice. His placid eyes hadn't flickered. But a low rumble emanated from him. "Do not disturb the process."
Gen picked himself up, wiping his face, a wild grin breaking through the pain. He hadn't died. He'd gotten a reaction. Data. "Understood," he rasped.
After that, Varja seemed to permit the attempts. As long as Gen did not disrupt the flow of his movements, he could use the Pillar as a living, breathing, impossibly difficult training dummy. Each failure resulted in a powerful backlash, a whip-crack of wild Qi that left Gen bruised, bleeding from small capillaries, and his channels screaming. He didn't stop. Varja's Qi was a raging sun, and he was trying to build a cage for it with threads of silk.
He didn't meet with Liang, Lorel, Chubbs, or even Madame Su. The only thing that mattered was progress. It was as if Varja's own diamond-hard determination was leaching into him through the shared, silent air of the pavilion. If a Pillar of his strength and level was training this hard, how could he, Gen Jiang, ever think of slacking off?
Seated in a painful lotus position, his body a tapestry of fresh aches and old bruises, he practiced again. And again.
***
Things went like this until, on the seventh day, a maid came to the pavilion.
She bowed with deep respect towards the two figures—the unmoving mountain and the battered, blood-streaked young man meditating stubbornly at its base. "Esteemed Pillar," she said, her voice soft but clear in the heavy air. "It is time."
Gen opened his eyes. A slow smile spread across his face, cracking the dried blood at the corner of his mouth. He stood up, his body protesting with a symphony of pops and aches as he stretched his arms overhead, then bent forward, touching his toes. This news only meant one thing.
Today was the last day of the year. After today, they would have only four years left to defeat all five Divine Generals… plus Zeph.
The pressure was a cold stone in his gut. The excitement was a hot, buzzing current in his veins. He hadn't slacked off. Not for a second.
Varja was not disturbed by the news. He simply stopped his movement, the dense field evaporating with a soft sigh of released pressure. He looked at the maid, then at Gen. "Finally," the Pillar rumbled, a hint of something like anticipation in his stone-calm voice. "My body has been itching all this time."
The maid bowed again and left.
Varja turned and walked into the interior section of the pavilion. Gen followed, his steps light and familiar. Over these days, he had become accustomed to Varja's rhythms, even serving him wine—which the Pillar consumed with the same focused gravity he applied to everything.
Inside, Varja settled onto a large cushion, assuming a perfect lotus position with a fluidity that belied his size. He picked up a waiting cup of dark wine from the low table and swallowed it in one smooth, deep motion.
Gen knelt on a cushion opposite. "Esteemed Pillar," he asked, "how do you feel about the fight? And… which Divine General will you face?" He remembered the five towering figures, with Zeph taking the lead, making six.
Varja set the empty cup down with a soft *click*. "It does not matter who it is. I will deal with it."
But in his eyes, placid yet depthless, it was clear he knew. He simply wasn't telling.
*He has grown a great deal in these past days,* Varja thought, observing the young man. *His talent for the Wheels is undeniable. As is his hard work. No wonder the Immortal dared to place so much fate on his shoulders.* A faint, inward smile touched the Pillar's spirit. *But will it be enough to bear the weight of a Damocles?*
"Go and get ready with your friends," Varja said aloud, his voice a low rumble. "I promise you one thing. You will definitely enjoy the show."
Gen's smile widened, fierce and bright. "With what I have seen of you, there is no way you can lose. The Divine Generals are powerful indeed, but the Unbreakable Varja cannot lose."
Varja laughed, a short, genuine sound like bedrock cracking. "Indeed." His gaze held a flicker of approval. "I grow more fond of you from day to day." He waved a massive hand. "Now go."
***
Gen left the pavilion, the cool air feeling newly invigorating. He moved to his own quarters. He washed the blood and grime from his face, changed into a clean, simple white robe—this one of slightly finer weave, a subconscious nod to the occasion. He didn't know why, but his heart thrummed with a pure, sharp excitement for the coming fight.
He found them waiting in a central courtyard—Liang, Lorel, and Chubbs.
Each of them stood with a profound, sharpened aura. Liang's energy was coiled and watchful, a quieter intensity than Gen's own. Lorel held herself with a new, quiet firmness. Chubbs puffed out his chest, his usual theatrics tempered by a hard-earned solidity.
They had all been working.
Madame Su appeared behind them, her grey robes pristine, her expression unreadable. "The fight will take place in the central arena of the Li Family," she stated. "Let us go."
Gen met Lorel's eyes for a moment. He saw her own nervous excitement, and a shared, unspoken understanding flashed between them. He nodded, turning to lead the way.
"It's time," he said.
The word hung in the crisp mountain air, heavy with seven days of blood, fear, and relentless progress, and with the terrifying, exhilarating promise of the violence to come.