The extra set of footprints was melting into the mud, losing its sharp edges in the July heat.
Li Hao stared at the wet impression. He didn't bend down to examine it. If someone capable of walking without displacing the air was currently watching him, bending over meant exposing the back of his neck. He kept his posture straight. His right thumb was still numb from Shen Yuebing's freezing aura.
"Five presences," Old Geezer's voice scraped across the inside of Li Hao's skull, completely ignoring the mystery of the footprints. The ancient god didn't sound panicked. He sounded annoyed. "Core Formation Stage Three. Coming up the mountain path. They are not bothering to suppress their auras."
Li Hao blinked. The sweat from the sudden humidity stung his eyes. "More debt collectors?"
"Vultures," Old Geezer sneered, dropping the word like it tasted foul. "A local minor sect, presumably. They smell the blood from your predecessor's defeat. They want the copper wire from the walls and the spirit stones from the shrine before Crimson Scale formally claims the territory."
"I don't have any copper wire."
"They will settle for your head on a spike." A heavy, suffocating pause. "You have exactly thirty seconds before they walk into this courtyard and realize you cannot generate a single spark of Qi."
Li Hao looked around the ruined courtyard.
Zhou Bao was still passed out cold by the stone well, a soft, dusty puddle of cheap robes. Li Hao had no weapon. His meridians were dead tissue. He couldn't cast a shield. If a Core Formation cultivator punched him in the chest, his ribcage would disintegrate into bone shrapnel.
He looked down at his silk shoes.
The ground where Shen Yuebing had stood was turning into dark, slick mud under the morning sun. But beneath that thin layer of mud, the porous stone itself had been fundamentally altered by the passive aura of a Core Formation Stage Seven prodigy. The ambient temperature right here, in this specific five-foot radius, was aggressively, unnaturally wrong.
If I run, my unreinforced hamstrings will tear, Li Hao's brain supplied, highly unhelpful. If I stay, I am going to be beaten to death by men who steal copper wire.
He didn't run. He walked to the exact center of the courtyard. He placed his shoes precisely over the spot where Yuebing had stood the longest. The cold bled through the thin soles of his footwear instantly, making his toes ache.
He adjusted his dark sleeves. He waited.
They came through the shattered archway like they owned the dirt.
Five men in mismatched leather armor. They didn't look like majestic cultivators; they looked like bandits who hadn't washed in a week. The man in the front carried a heavy iron mace. He smelled intensely of sour sweat and old grease.
The leader looked at the collapsed roofs. He looked at the unconscious Zhou Bao. Then he locked eyes with Li Hao.
"Vault keys," the greasy man grunted. No theatrical monologue. No grand declaration of intent. Just the blunt, ugly reality of a robbery. "Hand them over, or we start taking fingers."
"Atrocious footwork," Old Geezer noted clinically in Li Hao's mind. "But fast enough to tear your spine out before you can blink."
Li Hao didn't move. He drew on the absolute bottom reserves of Wei Liang's inherited arrogance, locking his jaw, letting his eyes turn into dead, black glass.
"You're standing on my stones," Li Hao said.
His voice was a low, bored baritone. It sounded completely detached from the reality of the threat.
The greasy man barked a harsh laugh, gripped his mace with both hands, and lunged.
Core Formation speed wasn't a joke. The man covered twenty feet in a blur, the heavy iron mace swinging in a brutal, horizontal arc aimed directly at Li Hao's ribs.
Li Hao didn't try to block. Blocking would kill him.
Instead, Wei Liang's lifetime of drilled, repetitive muscle memory took over—a purely physical reaction devoid of Qi. Li Hao pivoted sharply on his left heel, dropping his center of gravity by exactly two inches, twisting his torso sideways.
The spiked mace whistled past his chest. The wind pressure alone made Li Hao's eyes water. A sharp, tearing pain flared in his left thigh—an unreinforced muscle tearing slightly under the sheer physical torque of the dodge.
The scavenger's momentum carried him forward. His heavy leather boot planted firmly on the paving stones right where Li Hao had just been standing.
Right where Shen Yuebing's residual Absolute Ice Domain had sunk deep into the rock.
The mud on the surface provided zero friction. The magically frozen stone beneath provided even less.
The scavenger's lead foot shot forward like it had been greased. With his heavy upper body twisting violently from the missed swing, the sudden, total loss of footing was catastrophic.
SNAP.
It sounded exactly like a thick branch of celery breaking in half.
The man didn't even have time to scream. His knee buckled backward under the massive, uncontrolled weight of his own momentum. He slammed temple-first into the unforgiving stone edge of the courtyard border, sliding into a messy, groaning heap in the dirt.
He didn't get up.
Li Hao hadn't touched him. He hadn't raised his hands. His dark robes simply settled back around his legs.
The remaining four scavengers froze.
They looked at their leader, twitching in the dirt with a leg bent at a biologically impossible angle. They looked at the mud. Then they looked at Li Hao, who was currently staring at them with a terrifyingly blank expression.
To low-tier thugs who barely understood high-level laws, the math was horrifyingly simple. The Sect Master hadn't moved. He hadn't generated a visible Qi shield. He had just stood there, and their boss's leg had exploded.
Invisible domain, their widened eyes screamed. He laid a trap.
"Kill him!" the man on the far left yelled, his voice cracking with sudden panic.
Two of them rushed forward simultaneously from the flanks.
Li Hao's heart hammered against his ribs so hard it physically hurt. His left thigh was burning. He couldn't pivot again. His body wouldn't move fast enough.
The scavenger on the right swung a short sword. Li Hao took a single, deliberate half-step backward, letting the man overextend over the icy patch. The man slipped instantly, flailing wildly to keep his balance, his sword carving uselessly through the empty air.
But the man on the left was coming too fast. He wasn't aiming for the ice. He was aiming straight for Li Hao's blind spot, a heavy iron ring glinting on his fist.
Li Hao braced for the impact that would shatter his jaw.
It never arrived.
The man on the left suddenly jerked sideways. It was an incredibly unnatural movement. His leading ankle snapped inward, as if it had caught on a thick, invisible wire pulled taut across the dirt. There was nothing on the ground but flat earth, yet the scavenger pitched forward violently, his face colliding with the heavy stone edge of the water well.
There was a sickening crunch. The man slumped to the ground, out cold, spitting a broken tooth into the weeds.
Li Hao didn't flinch, but his mind raced. He didn't slip on the ice. He tripped. On nothing. Something tripped him.
He filed the information away immediately. He couldn't afford to break character.
Two men down. One flailing in the mud trying to regain his footing. The remaining two thugs near the broken archway had stopped dead in their tracks, their weapons shaking in their hands.
The courtyard was dead silent, save for the pathetic groans of the man with the ruined knee.
Li Hao slowly, very slowly, lifted his right hand. He didn't form a fist. He didn't summon Qi. He just raised two fingers, pointing them casually toward the dirt road.
"Leave," Li Hao said.
The thug who had been slipping in the mud scrambled backward on his hands and knees, terror painting his face stark white. He didn't even bother to pick up his dropped sword. The other two at the gate didn't hesitate. They turned and sprinted down the mountain path, their boots kicking up ash, abandoning their leader without a single backward glance.
Li Hao kept his two fingers raised. He counted to twenty in his head.
He waited until the sound of their panicked footsteps faded completely into the distant forest.
By the well, Zhou Bao groaned. The fat disciple pushed himself up on his elbows, rubbing a clump of dirt from his cheek. He blinked blearily at the unconscious man bleeding on the stones next to him, then at the man whimpering by the wall.
Finally, Zhou Bao looked at Li Hao, who was still standing in the center of the courtyard, perfectly composed, not a single hair out of place.
"Master..." Zhou Bao squeaked, his voice thick with sleep and absolute awe. "Did you... you fought five Core Formation cultivators with a cold stare?"
Li Hao lowered his hand. He folded it behind his back.
"That is not quite accurate," Li Hao said softly.
Inside, his nervous system was screaming. It is completely accurate. I stood next to a puddle and let a ghost trip a guy. My thigh is tearing. I am going to throw up.
"Clean up the courtyard," Li Hao commanded, his baritone perfectly steady. "Drag them outside the gate."
"Y-yes, Master!" Zhou Bao scrambled to his feet, energized by the sheer, unadulterated relief of not being murdered.
Li Hao turned around. He walked toward the side of the main hall, leading toward the overgrown wild herb garden. His posture was immaculate. Each step was measured, carrying the weight of an immortal expert returning to his meditations.
He made it exactly past the corner of the stone wall, completely out of Zhou Bao's line of sight.
The moment the wall hid him, Li Hao's knees simply stopped existing.
The adrenaline crash hit him like a physical blow to the back of the neck. His legs folded, his vision swam with black spots, and he pitched forward, collapsing face-first into a dense, overgrown patch of wild mint and damp soil.
He hit the dirt with a heavy thud. It smelled incredibly earthy. He didn't move. He didn't want to move. He just wanted to lie in the dirt and let his heart rate drop below two hundred beats per minute.
"That," Old Geezer noted drily in the back of his mind, "was the most pathetic physical exertion I have ever felt. You tore a muscle taking half a step backward."
"I lived," Li Hao wheezed into the dirt. His cheek was pressed against a cool, broad leaf.
"You survived because a Glacier Sect prodigy has poor Qi control and left a mess on my stones," the ancient god corrected.
"Still counts."
A shadow fell over Li Hao's face, blocking the late morning sun.
Li Hao didn't open his eyes. If it's another scavenger, they can just stab me. I'm not getting up.
"Excuse me," a bright, melodic voice said from somewhere near his left ear. It didn't sound like a scavenger. It sounded like a bell made of warm honey. "You're crushing the spearmint."
Li Hao cracked one eye open.
Kneeling in the dirt next to him was a young woman. She was maybe nineteen, wearing practical, faded yellow robes stained heavily with dark, rich soil at the knees. Her golden-brown hair was tied up in two messy buns, secured with wooden hairpins that looked suspiciously like dried root stems. She had a smudge of dirt across her nose, and her hands were covered in fine, green herbal dust.
She wasn't looking at him with awe or terror. She was looking at his shoulder, which was currently flattened over a patch of green leaves, with an expression of mild, polite distress.
Li Hao lay there, his face pressed into the dirt. He tried to summon Wei Liang's aristocratic dignity. It was difficult to do while eating soil.
"No," Li Hao said softly into the weeds. "I'm thinking."