The atmosphere was as silent as if the world itself had stopped breathing.

Pieces of stone and splintered wood lay scattered from the far side as Elders Ma, Jun, and Kezan lay in the rubble. Dust hung in the air, weightless, caught in an unnatural wind no one could explain. And at the centre of it all—wreathed in shimmering heat, shadow, and the remnants of something ancient—stood Aaryan.

No… loomed.

His frame trembled. Veins bulged black and purple beneath skin stretched too tight. Fine, angry cracks ran along his arms and collarbones, glowing faintly as if lit from within. Steam hissed from his pores in irregular bursts, carrying the sour tang of expelled impurities. Every breath he took sounded like a furnace struggling to stay lit.

And still—his aura climbed.

From the rubble, Elder Ma hauled herself up, her lips parted in disbelief. "Qi Condensation..." she murmured, voice hollow. "He broke through. How's that possible?"

"His aura is still rising," Jun hissed, shielding his face from the sweltering waves pulsing outward. The air crackled between them, rippling like the surface of disturbed water.

"No matter how he struggles," Kezan rasped, blood on his robes, "the result is fixed. Trash that rushes ahead still breaks under its own weight."

But his eyes didn't match the confidence in his words. None of the elders moved.

The disciples of Cloud Pillar Sect, Crimson Serpent Hall, and Starfall Valley were no better. They huddled near the cliff's edge, shielding their faces from the rising pressure, their bravado crumbling. Some looked ready to bolt. Others forgot to breathe.

Aaryan's Qi flared again—wild, chaotic, and unrefined. It wasn't like the smooth, flowing energy of a trained cultivator. It surged in fits and starts, like a beast gnawing through its cage.

Thin trails of blood leaked from his eyes, ears, and the corner of his mouth. His chest rose unevenly, each inhale a battle. The meridians along his neck pulsed visibly, strained to the brink, and along his arms, faint scorch lines marked where Qi had burned paths where it had no right to be.

His dantian twisted in protest. A colourless, unstable sea of Qi roiled within—unearned and unnatural. Every second felt like walking a thread above molten stone. Pain stabbed through his gut, white-hot and sharp, as if a thousand needles had found his core and burrowed inward.

But still… he stood.

And for one breathless moment, the world slowed.

He could hear the skitter of a pebble dropping twenty paces behind him. He could feel the torn cloth at his elbow shift in a current no one else noticed. Somewhere far above, the faintest chirp of a bird echoed, impossibly clear. The colours around him seemed brighter. Shadows deeper. Every sensation painfully alive.

Then it all warped.

His vision blurred—a dagger hurtling toward him, its tip gleaming with an ancient aura. A man with a blood-soaked, indistinguishable face spoke to him, his words lost in the chaos of the moment. His knees buckled for half a heartbeat—and then locked again, sheer defiance keeping him upright.

Dust spiralled toward him, drawn in by his unstable Qi. Then, just as suddenly, flung outward like shrapnel. The very air warped—hot one moment, icy the next. The ground beneath his feet cracked in a spiderweb pattern, and faint, violet arcs of light flickered at his fingertips.

A breath. A heartbeat. A silence sharp enough to cut.

And then—he opened his eyes.

Still bleeding. Still broken. But steady. Focused.

Aaryan met the gazes of the three elders, his stare cold and eerily calm, like a storm eye after the devastation. The madness of his Qi, the cracks in his skin, the blood pooling at his boots—none of it dulled the steel in his gaze.

Elder Ma flinched. Just a twitch. Barely noticeable—but enough.

A chill ran down all three elders' spines.

He should've collapsed. Should've begged for mercy. Should've burned from the inside out.

Instead, he looked at them like prey.

And they didn't know why their feet refused to move.

Aaryan's stared in silence, a cough of blood slipping past his lips.

The elders exchanged glances, tension sparking between them like lightning.

Then they turned to Aaryan.

"You shouldn't get ahead of yourself," Elder Jun sneered, brushing dust from his sleeve. "So what if you've reached the third stage of Qi Condensation?"

"A forced breakthrough means nothing," Elder Ma added coolly. "We reached qi condensation stage years ago. Our foundations are stable. Yours are… already cracking."

Elder Kezan wiped the blood from his lip, his smile bone-deep and cruel. "In fact, we don't even need to do anything. We can just stand here—and your own body will finish the job. You'll rot from the inside out."

Aaryan didn't respond at first.

He took a step forward—slow, steady—each motion whispering of pain but carried with purpose. Steam hissed from his back. Cracks along his arms deepened. Blood trickled fresh from his nose.

And then he smiled. Crooked. Bloody. Defiant.

"Maybe you're right," Aaryan said, voice dry as parchment. "Maybe all you have to do is wait."

He looked up, meeting their eyes.

"But that would mean I've done what I came to do. Dharun and the others make it out. The Evernight disciples live."

His gaze sharpened, suddenly predatory.

"Too bad I'm not planning to just stand here and let you watch."

In the blink of an eye, he vanished.

Elder Kezan's pupils shrank. "Hmph—fool!"

A thunderclap split the air.

Aaryan's fist crashed against Kezan's with a force that made the ground heave. The shockwave that followed roared like a dragon's cry, tearing clouds apart as it raced through the valley. Mountains trembled. Birds took flight from forests fifty kilometers away.

Elder Kezan's body shot backward, crashing into the rock wall with a deafening crunch. He slid down, leaving a crater behind.

Aaryan staggered back three steps, each step gouging deep imprints into the stone. His chest heaved, and blood sprayed from his mouth—but he didn't fall.

He raised his head. Eyes locked on the next elder.

🔱 — ✵ — 🔱

Far away, down the mountain trail— The Evernight Pavilion disciples stumbled as the echo of the boom reached them like a war drum. The sky itself seemed to shake.

Dharun's foot paused mid-step.

His eyes narrowed. Then widened. His breath caught.

"…That was Kezan's aura," he muttered.

One of the disciples turned back. "Elder Dharun… was that—?"

Dharun didn't answer right away. His gaze was fixed far behind them, toward the battlefield none of them could see.

'I've known that boy was different since the moment he stepped into our sects.'

'Smart. Unpredictable. Reckless. Dangerous. But above all… alive in a way most cultivators forget how to be.'

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'I thought he was a spark worth nurturing. Then a soul worth protecting. Now… he feels like blood.'

He exhaled, the words tasting like iron on his tongue.

As his thoughts churned, his hand shot out like a whip.

Rudra yelped as Dharun snatched the three scrolls from his grip.

"Wha—I was going to give them back—!"

Dharun didn't even glance at him.

"The credit," he said coldly, "belongs to those who earned it. Not to thieves who hid while others bled."

He turned his back on Rudra, expression unreadable.

"I don't know how," Dharun whispered, voice nearly lost to the wind, "but Aaryan… you have to come back alive."

🔱 — ✵ — 🔱

The shattered stone groaned behind them, dust still falling like snow.

Elder Jun and Ma stood frozen—eyes wide, jaws clenched—unable to look away from where Elder Kezan had been sent flying like a ragdoll.

He was their equal.

And yet… Aaryan had crushed him with a single blow.

That wasn't cautious fear anymore.

That was pure, uncut terror.

Jun's face twitched. He stepped back instinctively—but too late.

A blur.

A shadow—

Aaryan reappeared in front of him, his body flickering unnaturally as if space itself bent around him. Jun reacted fast, arm sweeping up in a wild strike laced with streaks of fiery Qi.

Aaryan ducked under it.

Then—

"Now!" Elder Jun cried, as Elder Ma was already behind Aaryan.

Her palm shimmered with dense, rippling water-blue Qi—Azure Flowing Palm. A signature strike of her sect.

She drove it toward his unguarded back.

But Aaryan twisted, too fast, his own fist lashing out—coated not in red, blue, or silver, but that same eerie, colourless qi.

Their strikes collided.

Another boom ripped through the air like an explosion in a vacuum.

Both figures shot backward. Elder Ma skidded across the ground, her feet digging two shallow trenches. Twenty steps.

Aaryan landed ten paces away, stumbling slightly, his right-hand trembling.

Ma's gaze dipped to her palm. Blood welled where skin had split across the impact point. She flexed her fingers, testing sensation, then looked up—calculating now, not shocked.

'He wrapped his fists in Qi... that quickly? No. That wasn't just Qi—it was berserk, unfiltered. And yet he wielded it like thread.'

Aaryan was watching her silently, his expression unreadable. But the tension in his stance said it all. His arm twitched again, his forearm spasming violently, as if something inside had torn.

A strange warmth pooled in his joints—not comforting, but pulsing with threat. His body screamed at him.

But he didn't care.

There wasn't time.

He vanished again—light bending, heat rippling—and reappeared near the battered Elder Kezan, who had just dragged himself upright, blood caked along his temple and lip.

He shouted not just out of strategy, but because Aaryan, for all his strength, wasn't a true Qi Condensation cultivator. He hadn't learned any qi techniques. All he had was his body—and brute force.

It was a desperate, instinctive warning.

Kezan gritted his teeth. "Verdant Fang!"

He thrust his palms forward. A twisting spiral of green, jagged Qi shot out—resembling a wolf's maw made of wood and thorns. The technique wasn't top-tier, but it was fast and vicious, designed to shred defences.

Aaryan didn't flinch.

His left fist smashed into the attack.

Qi shrieked as it met him—shards flying off in every direction—but Aaryan didn't slow. His aura howled louder. His feet cracked the stone beneath. He roared—

And his right fist followed.

The air split.

Kezan's Verdant Fang shattered like brittle glass.

The fragmented force lashed backward into Kezan's own chest. He coughed—hard—and blood sprayed from his mouth in a wide arc as his legs buckled beneath him.

But Aaryan was already standing over him.

Breathing hard.

Veins burning.

Blood on his lip, eyes hollow.

And still—he grinned.

"Next life," he rasped, voice hoarse, "don't get in my way."

The elder's Qi swirled erratically—his qi sea in turmoil, his limbs trembling. He tried to backpedal, eyes wide with dawning horror.

Aaryan raised his fist.

"No—wait—!" Kezan croaked, panic rising like bile.

A trembling shield of green Qi snapped up in front of him—dense, bark-like, edged with thorny ridges.

Useless.

Aaryan's fist came down like a hammer from the heavens.

The shield shattered like dry twigs.

The punch didn't stop.

A heartbeat passed. Then Kezan's head burst like an overripe fruit—blood, brain, and bone spraying across the boulder behind him with a sickening splatter. The elder's body staggered for half a second before crumpling, twitching, staining the ground with viscera and silence.

A final flicker of disbelief remained in his wide, vacant eyes—unwillingness, unacceptance. He hadn't believed he could die like this. Not to this boy.

But belief meant nothing now.

Elder Ma screamed. Elder Jun shouted something incoherent. They moved—but too late. Far too late.

Kezan was already a corpse.

The ground beneath Aaryan cracked again as he stepped back, fists still trembling. A faint steam rose from his arms—his Qi boiling through torn veins.

Jun and Ma stopped in their tracks. They didn't attack. They didn't even speak. Fear, thick and cloying, coiled in their throats.

This wasn't supposed to happen.

It was supposed to be simple.

Three Qi Condensation experts against a single 8th-stage brat. He should've been crushed like an ant.

And yet one of them was already dead.

All around the valley, silence fell.

Everyone had gone stiff. Some rogue cultivators stood rooted in place, faces pale. Even the more arrogant onlookers from small sects now swallowed nervously, their amusement long gone.

The Starfall Valley and Crimson Serpent Hall disciples looked shaken but held firm.

The Cloud Pillar Sect disciples, though—

They stared in horror. That was their elder. Slain before their eyes. By a boy younger than most of them.

No one dared speak.

Until Aaryan did.

He looked at Ma and Jun, his lip bleeding, one eye half-closed from strain.

Then he grinned again.

Ragged. Bloody.

But unshaken.

"One down," he said coldly. "Two to go."

The blood on Aaryan's knuckles hadn't even dried when both Elder Ma and Elder Jun stepped back, arms raised slightly—not in surrender, but in performance.

"Enough," Ma said, voice calm but too smooth. "This… this has gone too far."

"We don't have to continue," Jun added. "There's no more reason to fight. Dharun isn't even the point anymore. Let's just… drop this."

But Aaryan's eyes narrowed. There was no surrender in their stances—only coiled readiness. Their Qi hadn't dimmed, it pulsed tighter than before. They were stalling. Waiting. Hoping his body would give out before their nerves did.

He didn't answer.

He simply moved.

A gust of shattered stone exploded behind him as he surged forward, fist pulled back toward Elder Ma. She gasped, barely blocking with a wave of crashing azure—a defensive technique, Water Shell Spiral. It held for a heartbeat before Aaryan's punch cracked through, sending her staggering back.

Jun retaliated immediately, flicking his wrists to send ribbons of flame arcing toward Aaryan's flank. The young cultivator spun, flames licking his side, and launched a brutal kick at Jun's chest. It struck, forcing Jun to stumble three paces.

They fought like cornered beasts. But Aaryan fought like a storm barely held together.

Ma sent javelins of compressed water through the air—each sharp enough to pierce steel—but Aaryan punched them from the sky. Jun unleashed fire spheres, but Aaryan shattered them with knees and kicks, taking burns with gritted teeth.

But each move cost him.

His bones shrieked with every impact. His blood felt too thick, as if his veins couldn't carry the weight of his own fury. His breath came in short, ragged bursts. Each blink blurred the battlefield just a little more.

And then—it happened.

An opening.

The co-ordination between the two elders slipped.

Aaryan moved faster than his muscles could bear—leapt, twisted, and cocked back a final punch. One that would end this.

But his legs failed him mid-air.

His right side spasmed.

And his arm, instead of flying forward, jerked and buckled.

Jun's eyes widened in shock—and then lit with realization.

He sent a fire-coated palm crashing into Aaryan's chest.

The explosion sent Aaryan flying backward, slamming through two trees and a jagged outcrop. He tumbled, bones cracking, blood splattering in arcs behind him.

He tried to rise.

His elbows gave way.

His lungs rattled. His body screamed. His Qi burned his own meridians—wild, uncontrolled.

He couldn't move.

And then they came.

Jun and Ma walked toward him like gods descending a ruined battlefield. Their breathing was ragged, but their faces were twisted with victorious cruelty.

"So much noise for one rat," Jun said, summoning fire along his foot and kicking Aaryan across the clearing. "How arrogant you were."

"Still think you can fight us?" Ma added, hurling a surge of water that hurled Aaryan into another boulder. His body bounced, limbs folding unnaturally.

The disciples who had watched in silence—now dared to cheer.

"Kill him!"

"Break his legs!"

"Make him kneel!"

Laughter and applause rang across the valley. Even some rogue cultivators joined in—bloodthirsty, drunk on someone else's suffering.

And Aaryan lay there—limp, bleeding, every bone inside him screaming for mercy.

But not a single part of him cried out.

His thoughts churned—not with panic, but clarity.

'I didn't ask for any of this. I never hurt them. Never drew first blood.'

'All I did was fight when they came for me.'

Another cheer rang out.

'And still… they celebrate my death. Like I'm the villain. Like I deserve to be put down just for not dying fast enough.'

A broken laugh tore from his throat, even as blood trickled from his lip.

'So that's what this world is. Mercy is a mistake. Restraint… is weakness. And the only justice is the kind you carve with your own hands.'

Jun stepped forward again, lifting Aaryan by the neck.

"Any last words?"

Aaryan smiled through split lips.

"Yeah…"

But he didn't finish as a fist was slammed into his abdomen, sending him flying again.

In the tomb's inner sanctum, the man stared at the shimmering walls depicting the scenes from outside.

At first, he only watches. Eyes dark, lips tight.

But when the boy's body folds against the boulder—limp, bloodied—his expression fractures.

A breath escapes him. Then a whisper: "Fools."

His fists clenched so tightly, air crackling all around him.

He turned from the shimmering walls, fury bleeding through every step. "If that boy dies…" he growls, voice like stone grinding, "I'll drag your sects into the dirt myself."

Aaryan's body lay still.

His breath was shallow.

His bones—shattered.

Memories flashed in his head—the dusk in the forest, where he was forced to fight the Scorpion-Tailed wolves. Kalyani's laugh beneath the broken shade in Green Veil City. Dharun giving him resources and spatial ring just days ago.

'Will it all end here?

No.

No, it won't.'

The air trembled.

And Aaryan's eyes snapped.

His mouth opened. No words came. Only a roar.

Ancient.

Visceral.

It erupted from his chest like a beast breaking out of a cage. A wave of Qi—no, not just Qi—something deeper—burst from his being. His blood ignited in a lightless flame, and the aura that followed shook the valley like the roar of a forgotten beast.

The elders stopped in place, frozen in sudden fear.

An aura surged out—raw, unformed, boundless.

The boundless aura exploded outward—violent and primal, shaking the earth itself.

Ma and Jun froze, eyes wide, as if caught in the gaze of a predator they couldn't understand.

Inside the tomb, the man blinked in stunned silence, his mouth opening but no words finding their way out.

And far away—across mountains and rivers—a man in a dark cloak sat inside a quiet wine shop, untouched cup before him.

He hadn't spoken in days.

But the instant Aaryan's aura exploded—he looked up.

He stood.

And vanished, leaving no ripple in the air. No trace.

Only the faintest whisper on the wind.

"That's…"

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