The late afternoon sun hung over the Serpent's Nest Pavilion like a heavy coin of gold, casting long, amber shadows across the courtyard. Within the gates, the air was almost viscid, saturated with the residual effects of the Qi Devouring Pill Yin Shen had consumed earlier.
The environment was an alchemist's dream; the spiritual energy didn't just drift—it flowed in visible, undulating ribbons of pale blue and violet, drawn towards the central hall where the "anomaly" resided.
Yin Shen was currently strolling through his new front yard. His midnight-blue robes trailed softly against the pristine marble pathway, which had been scrubbed clean of the previous night's filth by a small army of terrified servants. He moved with a newfound weightiness; every step felt deliberate, his 1st-stage Qi Condensation foundation settling into his bones like cooling iron.
The Chaos Meridian was quiet for the moment, satiated by the torrent of energy it had processed during the dawn breakthrough.
He was contemplating the "Ethereal Beauty Pill" formula he had purchased. It was a strategic asset, a way to build a power base outside the direct martial hierarchy of the Yin Family.
But as he turned to inspect a particularly vibrant Spirit-Gathering Lily, the tranquility of the pavilion was violently punctuated.
SCREECH—!
The sound of iron-rimmed wheels grinding against the jade-paved road echoed through the quiet district. It was followed by the frantic neighing of a spirit-stallion and the heavy clop-clop of hooves coming to a sudden, jarring halt right outside the gates of his residence.
Yin Shen paused, his hand hovering over the lily. His Eye of Insight pulsed instinctively, picking up a chaotic, radiant signature approaching the gate—a ball of energy that felt less like a cultivator and more like a miniature sun with pigtails.
Before he could even process the identity of the intruder, a sound like a thunderclap erupted from the entrance.
BANG!
The heavy, reinforced vermilion doors of the Serpent's Nest Pavilion didn't just open—they were kicked off their latch. The wood groaned, and the silver serpent-shaped knockers rattled so hard, they nearly fell off.
Yin Shen stood frozen in a comedically blank manner, his arm still outstretched toward the flower. He blinked once, then twice, watching a small cloud of dust settle where his grand entrance had just been assaulted. He slowly turned his head toward the perpetrator, his face a mask of dry, deadpan disbelief.
"You know," Yin Shen said, his voice flat and blatantly unimpressed, "those doors were made of century-old ironwood and reinforced with three layers of defensive inscriptions. It's truly a tragedy to see them treated so poorly by a woman who is currently half their size."
Standing in the ruins of the doorway was Yin Yue. Her black pigtails were slightly disheveled from her sprint, and her spirit-wind boots were still glowing with residual energy. Her fair skin was flushed with a mixture of exertion and pure, unadulterated shock.
Behind her, her maid, Xiao Mei, was doubled over, clutching her knees and gasping for air, as if she was one second away from a total physical collapse.
Yue didn't say a word at first. She simply marched toward Yin Shen, her boots thumping loudly against the marble. She reached him and immediately began circling him like a predator—or a very confused bird.
She peered at his silver hair, poked his shoulder, leaned in to sniff his robes, and then circled back to stare directly into his golden eyes. She did this four times, her head bobbing up and down as she examined him from top to bottom.
"Wait, wait, wait," she finally exclaimed, her voice high and breathless. "You have skin! And eyes! And you're... you're actually standing! You're not a ghost! Xiao Mei said you were a 'Sovereign Trash,' but you look more like a 'Shiny Prince'!"
Before Yin Shen could respond to the bizarre nickname, the girl lunged.
"SHEN-ER!"
She wrapped her arms around his waist and squeezed tightly. To an observer, it looked like a sweet, sisterly embrace. To Yin Shen, it felt like being caught in the coils of a mountain-crushing boa constrictor.
CRACK-POP-CRACK!
Yin Shen's backbone went off like a string of ceremonial firecrackers. His eyes nearly bulged out of his head, and the air was forcibly ejected from his lungs in a sharp wheeze.
"Y-Yue... let... go..." he managed to choke out.
He tried to use his newly acquired 1st-stage Qi Condensation strength to pry her off, but it was like trying to move a tectonic plate. Despite his Chaos Meridian and his Divine breathing technique, he couldn't even make her budge an inch.
Her "sweetly" hug was a physical manifestation of a willpower that defied the laws of physics.
"Master! Master, stop! You're killing him! He literally just survived a tribulation!" Xiao Mei, the maid, finally recovered enough to realize her mistress was currently in the process of accidentally committing fratricide.
She rushed forward and, with a Herculean effort that suggested she had dealt with this many times before, managed to pry Yin Yue's arms apart and pull her back.
Yin Shen didn't just step back; he fell dramatically to his knees, his hands planted on the marble as he gasped for oxygen. His silver hair fell over his face, and for a long moment, the only sound in the courtyard was his frantic, wheezing breaths.
"I've fought... on battlefields..." Yin Shen wheezed, his voice sounding like it was being filtered through a bag of gravel.
He looked up at the sky with a blank, comical expression of existential dread. "I've had an Elder... try to rip my throat out. I've survived... nine strikes of Heavenly Thunder. But I never thought... I'd almost be crushed to death... by a Loli."
Yin Yue had the decency to look slightly embarrassed, though the energetic bounce in her pigtails suggested she wasn't truly sorry. She stood there, tapping her fingers together, while Xiao Mei fanned Yin Shen with a silk handkerchief.
"I'm sorry!" Yue chirped, her voice returning to its usual boisterous volume. "I just got so excited! The whole estate is going crazy! They say you broke the stone! They say you reached Qi Condensation! They say you made Elder Yuan eat dirt! Is it true? Did you really reach Qi Condensation? How? Was it a pill? Was it a secret master? Did you find a magic cave? Why didn't you tell me? I could have brought you snacks! Do you need snacks now? I have spirit-peach buns in the carriage!"
Yin Shen felt his brain beginning to fry. The sheer speed of her questions was a different kind of tribulation. It was a mental barrage that his military training hadn't prepared him for. He stood up slowly, dusting off his robes and wincing as his spine clicked back into place.
"One... question... at a time," he groaned.
For the next twenty minutes, Yin Shen found himself subjected to an interrogation that would have made the family's Law-Keeper, Zhao Tie, look like a rank amateur. He had to explain the breakthrough—from attributing it to a "moment of sudden enlightenment and the accumulation of nineteen years of suppressed energy", the confrontation with Yuan Mo, and his move to the Serpent's Nest.
Yin Yue listened with her jaw dropped, her eyes wide with a mixture of awe and protective pride. She interrupted him every three seconds with a
"Wow!"
or a "He deserved it!"
or a "Wait, did you really call him a coward to his face?"
By the time he finished, the sun was dipping lower, and Xiao Mei had finally managed to calm Yue down enough for her to sit on a stone bench.
"I can't believe it," Yue said, her voice finally softening.
She looked at Yin Shen, her playful demeanor shifting into something more somber. "I used to worry about you every night, Shen-er. I thought... I thought you were just going to fade away in that Desolate Courtyard, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. But now..."
She reached into the wide sleeve of her robe and pulled out a scroll. It was wrapped in ancient, charcoal-gray leather and sealed with a wax stamp depicting a broken blade. The aura coming off the scroll was sharp—so sharp that the air around it seemed to shimmer with tiny, invisible cuts.
"I went to the Secret Archive last month," Yue revealed, holding the scroll out to him. "I used all the merit points I'd saved up since I was ten. I was going to give it to you for your twentieth birthday, even if you couldn't use it, just so you'd have something of the family to hold onto."
Yin Shen took the scroll, his fingers tingling the moment they touched the leather.
"It's called [Ruination's Edge]," Yue explained, her voice turning uncharacteristically serious. "It's a High-Mortal Rank technique, but the Elders hate it. They say it's too unstable. It's a Destructive Sword type. The archives say that if someone completely masters it, they can destroy an entire nation with a single strike... provided they reach the Nascent Soul Realm first."
Yin Shen's eyes widened. A "Destructive Sword" type was a rarity. Most sword arts in the Yin Family focused on the 'Serpent' style—fluid, poisonous, and indirect. A destructive type was the opposite; it was about raw, overwhelming annihilation.
To find such a technique in the Mortal Rank was unheard of, usually because the physical body of a Mortal couldn't handle the recoil.
"Yue... this is..." Yin Shen began, genuinely baffled by the gift. In his past life, he knew that "Mortal" rank didn't always mean "Weak." Sometimes it meant "Fundamental."
A technique that could scale to nation-destroying levels at the Nascent Soul stage was a treasure that even the Top Five families would bicker over.
"Don't thank me yet!" Yue retorted, sticking her tongue out. "It's really hard to learn. Even Yin Long tried it once and gave up because it kept making his meridians ache. But you... you have that weird silver energy now. Maybe you can do it."
I looked at the scroll, then back at my sister. The "Loli" who had almost crushed my spine had just handed me a weapon that could potentially change the tide of the Major Awakening.
'System,' I thought, 'Analyze her.'
I focused my Eye of Insight [Level 4] on the energetic girl standing before me.
[Target: Yin Yue]
* Role: Fifth Young Miss of the Yin Family.
* Cultivation: Qi Condensation (Peak 1st Stage / Half-step into 2nd Stage).
* Vein Type: Sun-Spirit Vein (High Grade).
* State: Relieved, Excited, Extremely Protective.
* Observation: Her Qi is incredibly vibrant and dense for her age. She has been hiding the true extent of her cultivation to avoid the political spotlight. Her physical strength is naturally abnormal due to her vein type—roughly five times that of a standard cultivator at her level.
I nearly choked on my own breath.
'Peak Qi Condensation? She was only seventeen, two years younger than me, and she was already on the verge of the 2nd stage. More importantly, her physical strength was a natural abnormality. No wonder my spine felt like it had been through a grain mill.'
While everyone was focused on the "Ice Queen" Yin Xue or the "Heir" Yin Long, the youngest sister had been quietly becoming a powerhouse in her own right.
"What's wrong?" Yue asked, leaning in close. "You have that 'blank' face again. Is your back still hurting? Do I need to squeeze it back into place?"
"NO!" Yin Shen shouted, instinctively jumping back three paces. "No, the back is fine. Perfectly aligned. Better than ever."
He tucked the scroll into his robe, his mind already racing with how to integrate this new art with his Chaos Meridian.
"Thank you, Yue," he said, his voice sincere. "I mean it. You're the only one who didn't wait for a 'Supreme' stone to see me."
Yin Yue beamed, her pigtails practically vibrating with joy. "Of course! You're my brother! Now, enough with the mushy stuff. Xiao Mei! Bring the spirit-peach buns! We're going to have a feast!"
As the girl began to drag her exhausted maid toward the pavilion's kitchen, Yin Shen stood alone for a moment in the twilight of the courtyard. He looked at the broken doors, then at the spot where his sister had been standing.
He had forty-eight hours left. He had a Divine breathing technique, a Chaos Meridian, the Absolute Domination of a king, and now, the Ruination's Edge.
The ancestors were waiting in the Vault, and the family was waiting for a show.
"A destructive sword art that scales to nations," he murmured, his golden eyes flashing with a sharp, lethal light. "I think I know exactly how to use this."
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