The following morning was thick with tension, heavier and more suffocating than the usual humid mist that clung to the lower peaks. The Outer Court hummed with the news of Meng Li's disastrous encounter at the Forbidden Archive Balcony.
Jiang Yi, pale and shaking, meticulously maintained the facade of the sickly, frightened new disciple. He leaned heavily against the dormitory wall, periodically producing weak, rattling coughs—a masterwork of feigned illness. His true core, a dense, humming vortex of Fourth Stage power, felt heavy and full, yet demanding the next, inevitable meal.
The official story, delivered with great authority by a stern Steward Ma (who had been coerced by Meng Li's sheer terror), was that the immense age of the High-Grade Jade Altar had caused a spontaneous spiritual implosion. Meng Li, the brave and diligent Fourth Stage Disciple, had heroically suffered a crippling arm injury while trying to stabilize the volatile Qi, preventing widespread contamination.
Nobody truly believed it. Disciples whispered, staring at Meng Li, whose right arm was now heavily bandaged and encased in a splint carved with low-grade recovery runes. His face was a mask of pale fury and humiliation. He was isolated, consumed by the impossible truth he could not articulate: a waste had stolen his power and broken his body.
Jiang Yi, however, faced a greater danger than Meng Li's hatred. His senses, sharpened by the Fourth Stage breakthrough, could feel it: the passive, distant, yet utterly uncompromising scrutiny of Elder Xuan.
The Elder was not actively searching, but his awareness was a vast, silent lake. Every spiritual ripple Jiang Yi produced felt amplified a thousandfold. The Dust Cloak Method, though a phenomenal defense against peer scrutiny, was now constantly under strain. It was a flimsy veil held up against the sun. If Jiang Yi used the Minor Flow Convergence Array with high-grade intensity again, the resulting momentary flicker would confirm everything to the Elder, resulting in instant capture and interrogation—or worse.
The game has changed, Jiang Yi thought, sweeping a dust-free patch of stone with exaggerated weakness. I cannot rely on scavenging isolated caches anymore. The breakthrough cost too much mental energy, and the resulting Qi flare drew too much attention.
The problem was sustainability. The Fourth Stage of Body Tempering was a threshold; cross it, and the cultivator needed a continuous, massive supply of Qi to refine the body further and prepare for the Fifth Stage. Ordinary cultivation methods would take years; scavenging takes minutes, but the risk was now lethal.
He sat that evening in his cramped dormitory corner, ostensibly reading a common text on herb identification, but mentally engaged in a high-stakes modification of his stolen knowledge: the Minor Flow Convergence Array.
The original Array was a scavenging tool—a spiritual vacuum designed to suck up residual or loose Qi. But what if it were adapted to pull from a sealed, continuous source?
He analyzed the principles of the stolen jade blueprint. The core of the Convergence Array was not its suction, but its purity filter. It created a perfect, localized flow system.
If I can anchor the Array to a stable Qi conduit, I don't scavenge waste. I draw a clean, constant current.
The most reliable, highest-grade source of continuous Qi in the Outer Court was the Spirit Meridian Formations. These were large, stabilized arrays that drew ambient energy from the peaks and piped it through controlled conduits to specific high-level cultivation zones. The energy moved slowly, constantly, and was pre-filtered to prevent instability. It was, in effect, a live power cable.
This required a radical, highly dangerous modification: The Leech Array.
The Leech Array would be a parasitic iteration of the Convergence method. Instead of passively gathering, it would use the Azure Sphere's unique ability to handle volatility to drill a microscopic spiritual siphon directly into a Formation Array's main conduit. This bypass would be invisible, silent, and potentially sustainable, but if the conduit's internal Qi pressure detected the breach, the entire Formation would collapse, sounding an alarm that would summon every Elder on the mountain.
Jiang Yi spent four hours silently perfecting the mental blueprint of the Leech Array. It required unprecedented control—a single hair's breadth of too much force, and he was dead. .
His target was the Lesser Spirit Meridian Peak, a secluded, tiered cultivation platform used by Outer Disciples in the Fifth through Seventh Stages. It was far enough from the main residential area to offer quiet, but close enough to access easily.
Crucially, the Peak was powered by a minor, three-point Iron-Weave Stabilization Formation, a low-grade, constant-running array designed for simple atmospheric maintenance, not defense. Its weakest point was the main Junction Node—a buried nexus of the three Qi conduits, located just beneath a massive, immovable rock slab near the peak's summit.
As midnight approached, Jiang Yi felt the terrifying, irresistible urge to act. His Fourth Stage core was stabilized, but already demanding more.
He wrapped himself in the darkest, dirtiest robes he could find. He executed the Dust Cloak Method flawlessly, pulling the aura of a sickly, wandering servant over his enhanced body.
Under the cover of a dense, swirling cloud layer, he began his ascent.
The Spider Step was now truly formidable. He didn't climb; he flowed. He scaled vertical rock faces without visible support, moving with the rapid, silent grace of liquid shadow. The Peak's lower slopes were patrolled by only two disciples—a male and a female, both at the Fifth Stage—who preferred chatting at the base camp rather than actual patrolling.
Jiang Yi reached the summit of the Peak undetected. The air was colder here, saturated with refined Qi that felt like a thick, rich wine compared to the thin air of the Outer Court. The main cultivation platform hummed gently.
He found the massive, flat rock slab that covered the Junction Node. It weighed thousands of catties. A normal Fourth Stage disciple could not have moved it without incredible effort and noise.
But Jiang Yi was no normal Fourth Stage. His Azure Qi refinement had given him the raw physical power of a Fifth Stage cultivator.
He knelt, placed his hands on the cold stone, and exerted a measured, silent force. The Dust Cloak remained intact, a perfect spiritual camouflage.
GNNNNNGH.
With a slow, agonizingly quiet grind, the stone slab tilted up just enough for him to slip through the gap and slide into the cramped, subterranean chamber of the Junction Node.
The chamber was small, reeking of ozone and raw energy. Three thick, bronze-carved conduits met in a central basin filled with constantly swirling, luminous Green-Gold Qi. This was the power source for the entire Peak—clean, pure, and overwhelming.
The sheer volume of high-grade Qi caused his azure core to scream with delighted hunger.
Jiang Yi sat directly in the center of the conduits, his back resting against the cold stone, and closed his eyes. This was the point of no return.
He initiated the Leech Array.
He extended a microscopic spiritual filament—a single, perfect thread of azure Qi—from his core. He guided it not toward the Qi basin, which was too obvious, but directly onto the outermost, stabilized shell of the largest bronze conduit.
He needs to bore through the shell without disrupting the massive pressure inside.
He focused the sphere's refinement ability like a jeweler's laser. The azure filament vibrated, boring through the bronze conduit's protective seal. It took five tense minutes, his entire body rigid with concentration, his spiritual presence completely hidden by the Dust Cloak.
Pffft.
The breach was achieved. The spiritual filament was now anchored directly inside the conduit's flow.
The resulting flow was not a torrent, but a steady, massive current. Green-Gold Qi from the Formation conduit flowed directly into the Azure Sphere, which instantly purified it, turning it into dense, boiling azure liquid. The sensation was sublime—an endless, clean stream of the highest quality fuel.
He allowed the process to run for a full ten minutes, an eternity in a risky cultivation session. The power surged, pushing his Fourth Stage core to its maximum capacity, laying the foundational strength for the Fifth Stage breakthrough. He felt his spiritual senses expand further, allowing him to subtly register the movements of the Fifth Stage disciples down the hill.
He extracted the Leech Array filament with surgical precision, sealing the microscopic breach perfectly, leaving no trace. The Bronze Conduit's flow merely stuttered for a fraction of a second—a blip that only the most alert Foundation Master could possibly notice.
He silently pushed the massive rock slab back into place, sealing the Node. He was undetectable, overflowing with high-grade Qi, and had secured a sustainable resource for his future cultivation.
High above, in his cloud-shrouded temple, Elder Xuan frowned. He had been quietly observing the Outer Court. He felt a minute, sudden dip in the Qi flow emanating from the Lesser Spirit Meridian Peak—a consumption rate that suggested a dozen senior disciples had simultaneously achieved a major breakthrough.
Impossible timing, the Elder mused, his eyes narrowing. And yet, there are no alarms. The boy is not just a prodigy. He is an artist. The interest in his eyes deepened, shifting from suspicion to predatory curiosity.