Thick steam rose from the spiritual bronze cauldrons, filling the large kitchen of the eastern sector with the strong scent of herbal nectar and roasted meat.
Before the main brazier, Hāi'na guided a white jade ladle inside a deep pot, her small face serious as she watched the golden sauce thicken. Around her, more than a dozen servants and cooks moved between the polished stone counters.
"Lower the essence flame of the left cauldron," Hāi'na ordered without taking her eyes from the sauce. "If this broth boils too fast, the Qi of the roots will dissipate before it can infuse. And you in the corner, cut the Dew Lotus leaves on the diagonal, not down the middle, or the fibers will lose their luster before they even leave the kitchen."
"Yes, Lady Hāi'na!" two servants answered at the same time, adjusting the fire beneath the burners.
Hāi'na released the ladle into the air. The utensil continued spinning on its own in constant circles inside the cauldron while she walked to the side counter.
She took a knife with a dragon-bone handle and pulled a basket of millennial blood tubers closer. The moment the edge of the blade touched the ironwood board, her hands turned into a blur.
Chop, chop, chop, chop, chop.
Outwardly, her expression remained stern like that of a general inspecting the troops. Her two short, rounded ears moved in a light rhythm from side to side, following the melody she hummed in silence.
Mhmm-hmm… cut them small… don't leave any peel… mhmm-humm…
In a few breaths, a pile of cubes of identical size covered the board. Without touching the wood, Hāi'na moved her fingers and made the cubes slide through the air in a line until they fell into the boiling sauce without raising a single splash, while the ladle returned to her hand.
She gave the broth three more stirs and raised her chin toward the volcanic-rock furnace at the back of the hall.
"I need the meat now! The Golden Mist Deer haunch is done to perfection!"
Two assistants opened the heavy furnace gate and raised their palms together, bringing the large roasted haunch through the air amid a wave of fragrant heat until it settled on the main platter.
When the sun finally stood directly overhead among the crowns of the Sky-Tree, the dish was ready.
Hāi'na wiped her forehead with the inner part of her sleeve and ran both hands over her apron and skirt, smoothing every fold of the fabric until not a single thread remained out of place. Satisfied, she covered the platter with an insulating crystal dome to retain the Qi of the meat, arranged the bowls of Eternal Flow Jade—special for energy-rich foods—beside it, and gave a light tap to the edge of the floating cart.
She left the kitchen walking along the living-wood corridor with a firm step, the cart sliding silently in the air half a step ahead of her without swaying a single cun.
With the galleries nearly empty at that hour, the melody that had previously existed only in her mind escaped softly from her throat, gentle and cadenced.
"Mhmmm-hmmm… and the rain falls here… mhmm-hm-hummm…"
After walking for longer than an incense stick takes to burn, crossing the internal bridges to the far end of the residential branch, her steps slowed before the reed door of the main room—the chamber Lī'ya had left for him over the past months under the excuse of spending her nights making headway on arrays in the workshop.
The cart stopped on its own in the air beside her. The short ears trembled slightly atop her head, Hāi'na straightened her spine, and knocked three times on the wooden frame.
Knock, knock, knock.
"You may enter, Hāi'na," the grave voice answered from inside.
A small smile escaped the corners of her mouth upon hearing the call. She slid the reed door aside and entered the room with the floating cart right behind her.
The moment she crossed the entrance, her feet froze on the carpet.
In the center of the chamber, the guest she had served every day for three months was neither seated at the table nor reading near the window.
Zhì Yuǎn was suspended in the air half a zhang from the floor, legs crossed in lotus position, shirtless.
The smile vanished from Hāi'na's face at once, replaced by a completely flat expression. She lowered her eyes straight to the tips of her boots and continued to the corner table, making the platters slide from the cart onto the wooden surface with a short gesture of her hand.
"I brought today's lunch, Sir," Hāi'na said, her voice clear as she arranged the jade tableware. "And before you ask, the Young Lady went down early to Elder Vhōl's workshop and informed me she will only return at the end of the week."
She kept her face turned toward the plates, but when she inhaled, she noticed the scent of the room was different.
It was not the aroma of the herbs nor of the roast still sealed beneath the crystal dome. It was the clean, warm, and dense scent that came from his skin in the center of the room, permeating the enclosed air in a way that made her heart beat harder against her ribs.
Unable to help it, her pupils darted to the side.
The light entering through the gap of the veranda traced every line of the broad chest and firm abdomen, where the air of the room rippled against the bare skin. Hāi'na's fingers tightened on the hem of her apron. A sudden desire to take a step to the side and press her palm against that chest just to feel the heat of his muscles crossed her mind.
Hāi'na shook her head sharply.
I am not thinking about that.
"Hāi'na?"
She raised her gaze with a start.
Zhì Yuǎn was already standing on the floor less than two steps from her, wearing only dark trousers as he reached out to touch the top of the crystal dome on the table.
"Do you want some as well?" he asked, giving a low laugh as he lifted the lid and released the hot steam of the roasted haunch.
Hāi'na averted her eyes to the opposite wall, breath short and heat rising up her neck.
"I thank you for the kindness, Sir, but I already ate in the kitchen and need to organize the materials of my Lady's workshop," she said all at once, dipping into a hurried bow before calling the empty cart with a gesture. "Eat while it is hot!"
She spun on her heels, pulled the reed door shut behind her, and left almost running down the corridor, in that accelerated and slightly bouncing step she always used when she was in a hurry.
Near the table, Zhì Yuǎn let out a short laugh watching the reed door slide shut. He pulled a clean tunic from the back of the chair and slipped it on, then removed the wild-maple fox mask from his face, setting it beside the plate before sitting.
He did not reach for the teapot on the other side of the wood. He merely moved his right index finger a few cun through the air.
An invisible thread of the Law of Space, mixed with the flow of the Law of Nature, pulled the teapot by the handle and made it slide on its own until it filled his cup.
Zhì Yuǎn picked up the chopsticks, separated a tender piece of the meat, and brought it to his mouth.
This food keeps getting better and better, he thought, feeling the slice melt on his tongue. I must truly be getting spoiled with this cuisine full of spiritual energy.
The instant he swallowed the first piece, the concentrated heat of the rare beast meat spread through his stomach—and, in response, every pore of his body opened at once.
The air inside the room spun toward him in a silent whirlwind.
During the weeks he had scoured the fifth floor of the library, Zhì Yuǎn had noticed a curious detail in the records of this world. There were dozens of studies on the pores in body-tempering techniques and in the adaptations created by human clans, but all treated the pores merely as passages for expelling impurities from the blood in the early realms. No record mentioned using each open pore as a direct channel of continuous absorption.
Since the first night he had applied Mū'en's notes two months earlier, it had been enough to align his breathing with the rhythm of the branch for the energy of the room to stop dispersing and descend cleanly through his meridians.
That flow, however, still could not unseal his original Dantian. The dark sphere of his Inner Universe remained locked like an immovable rock, even after more than sixty days of being scraped daily by rivers of Qi. To break that crust without waiting years, he would still need the Stone of the Law of Nature that would be contested in two months on the Terrace of Ascension.
For that reason, he had diverted all the absorbed energy into a second Dantian he had formed just below the seal—a provisional foundation that grew day by day thanks to the rare dishes that arrived on that cart.
Zhì Yuǎn cut another piece of the haunch and a half-smile appeared on his face as he remembered what Hāi'na had told him three weeks earlier. According to the maid, Lī'ya had appeared in her mother's pavilion with her ears red to the tips, demanding from Lady Sī'vra an entire batch of rare beast meats and thousand-year roots under the excuse that she needed body-cultivation food to "test arrays."
Zhì Yuǎn took a sip of tea and looked through the open window of the room, where the wind swayed the red leaves outside.
Little by little, the smile on his lips diminished and his gaze grew heavier.
"What are they doing right now?" he murmured to the silence of the room.
------
Far below that realm, at the bottom of a valley covered in mist on the remote borders of the Middle Realm, the translucent structure of the Crystal Dome rested hidden beneath three layers of concealment arrays.
On the rocky peaks surrounding the throat of the valley, ten figures in dark cloaks remained motionless atop the trees and cliffs—slaves in the Immortal Establishment Realm scattered on patrol to ensure that no living soul approached within a hundred li of the perimeter.
On the upper floor of the Dome, the white silk curtains of the main room moved with the breeze.
On the bed at the center of the chamber, Yù Qíng lay still, hands resting on her waist. Her chest rose and fell in regular breathing, but her eyes remained closed in the same sleep into which she had fallen in the Astral Rock valley—on the night when the power that had escaped from her had made Lǐ Jìngzhī sever his finger to flee, but had also reduced to powder the bronze astrolabe they had stolen.
In the hall on the floor below, a large map of the external regions of the continent lay open on the jade table.
Sitting in the seat of honor, Lín Jié ran a fine brush over three points marked in the south of the map, while Mò Yán checked a pile of reports brought by the patrols.
"The two scouts we sent to the ruins of the Southern Sea returned empty-handed this morning," Huáng Bìyù informed, stopping beside the table with arms crossed over her full breasts. "The ancient rift recorded in General Huáng's archives dried up centuries ago. Not even a trace of spatial fluctuation remains in the stones."
Beside her, Qīng Yǔ nodded in silence, holding the search scrolls gathered over the past weeks.
Without Zhì Yuǎn nearby to feed them, all of their cultivation had been practically stagnant since the day of the separation.
"Strike the Southern Sea from the list and have the third-shift slaves double the sweep of the western mountain ranges," Lín Jié said, voice calm and firm. "A continent of this size did not have only one cultivator attempting to force the ascent throughout the ages. There must be another ancient fissure or some forgotten crossing altar left by the dead sects. We will overturn every cun of earth until we find it."
Near the side window of the hall, on a divan lined with cushions, Bái Wǎn sat with her legs drawn up, resting her head on Xú Lán's shoulder while sharing a plate of cut fruit with the Silver Huntress.
Xú Lán held the plate with one hand to make it easier for Bái Wǎn to reach and left her other arm resting on the back of the divan, while on the opposite side Yù Méi was half-reclined, supporting her elbow on the former slave's knee and resting her face in her palm.
Yù Méi's eyes, however, were not on the fruit nor on the map.
She stared at the other side of the carpet, where Mèng Lián had just set a box of commercial records on the end of Mò Yán's table.
"Just look at that innocent act of hers…" Yù Méi murmured, tilting her face so only Xú Lán and Bái Wǎn could hear. "Lánlán, are you really sure that old fox isn't up to something behind our backs? After everything you told me about the filth she did to climb to the top, I don't trust even her shadow now that our husband isn't here."
Xú Lán glanced discreetly at the red-haired woman on the other side of the hall before answering in the same low tone.
"In the past she would already have sold us all out at the first opportunity to save her own skin, Lady Méi," Xú Lán admitted. "But I have been watching her steps every time she leaves to gather information from the mercantile network, as you asked me. So far, she has only been throwing gold and resources into the search for the ancient rifts."
Yù Méi narrowed her eyes even further, ready to spit another acidic comment, but a cold thread of Qi touched her mind.
«Stop staring at the woman as if you were going to tear her throat out in the middle of the room, Méi,» came Mò Yán's voice transmission, dry and direct, without the white-haired diplomat raising her face from the reports on the table. «I know very well the kind of poison that runs in Mèng Lián's head. But that woman has already fallen far too deep into our husband's grasp to ever be cured.»
Yù Méi wrinkled her nose and turned her face toward the table, where Mò Yán turned a sheet of paper without a care in the world.
«The only doubt would be whether she would try to find a way to get rid of us now that he is not nearby to see her,» Mò Yán's voice continued in the youngest's mind. «But as long as she needs our arrays and the strength of the group to open a path to him, she will not pull the rug out from under her own feet. Save that energy for when we find the passage.»
Yù Méi huffed softly through her nose, leaning back against the cushions beside Xú Lán and crossing her arms, while Bái Wǎn offered her a segment of sweet fruit.
Before the main table, Mèng Lián finished delivering the route books of the western domains and made a polite bow to Lín Jié and Mò Yán.
Before turning to leave the hall, however, her scarlet eyes rose in silence to the top of the staircase that led to the closed room on the second floor—lingering there for the span of a full breath before she lowered her head again and disappeared through the door of the Crystal Dome.