Ren walked at the front.
The swamp light had begun to lean—one of those strange Southern Wilderness "afternoons" where the mist turned a faint gold instead of gray. The color didn't make the place any kinder. Mud sucked at his boots with every step. Vines brushed his shoulders like damp fingers. The air was thick with the sweet-sour stench of rot and wet earth, mosquitoes whining at the edge of hearing.
Behind him, Na Yi and Na Shui followed in single file along the half-solid line of knotted roots he'd chosen as a path.
They were quiet.
Not the brittle, terrified silence from before—no longer prey waiting for the next lash—but not relaxed either. It was the cautious stillness of two people still deciding whether the man who had erased their nightmares in the span of a few breaths… was an even greater nightmare waiting to happen.
Ren let them have that silence for a while.
The Southern Wilderness spread around them in all its ruined grandeur—trees with twisted roots clawing at the sky, their branches draped in pale moss; pools of black water reflecting nothing; strange fungi glowing faintly under roots like buried stars.
Poisonous insects and vicious beasts ruled where refined cultivators had once walked.
Ren glanced back.
Na Shui noticed first. Her gaze skittered away the instant their eyes met, cheeks coloring, fingers tightening on the bone dagger she'd taken from Baldy as if it were the only firm thing in this world.
Na Yi met his eyes head-on—for half a heartbeat—before her gaze slid past him, as if she were examining the way he placed his feet on the roots rather than the man himself.
He smiled.
"You two always this serious on a walk," he asked mildly, voice unhurried, "or is it just me?"
Na Shui jumped, boot slipping in the mud before she caught herself.
Na Yi's step hitched the smallest amount.
"…This is the Southern Wilderness," Na Yi said after a beat, tone calm but tight. "If you relax, you die."
"Mm. Fair." Ren nodded. "But you just watched me turn two Bone Forging devils into fertilizer. At the very least, your chance of being eaten in the next ten minutes went down."
Na Shui made an involuntary sound that might have been a laugh strangled halfway. Her shoulders shook once, then stilled.
Na Yi's lips twitched, then pressed back into a line.
"Senior Ren speaks correctly," she allowed. "But habit is… hard to change."
"Drop the 'senior'," he said. "Makes me sound like I should be sitting under a pine tree giving lectures and drinking bitter tea."
Na Shui blinked at him, thrown by the casual tone.
"But you… you did soul-search those devils, and you spoke of Master's Divine Kingdom like you saw it yourself. That is…"
"Old?" he offered. "Scary? Suspicious?"
Na Shui flailed. "N-no! I—"
"Calm down, Shui," Na Yi murmured.
She didn't raise her voice, but there was a gentleness there that took the sting out of the words. To Ren's ears, their lifelong bond was obvious in that tone alone—the reflexive way Na Shui's breathing eased at the sound of her sister's voice.
He let their little fluster play out, then shrugged.
"Call me Ren," he said. "If you really can't drop honorifics, 'Ren-ge' is fine. I'm not that sensitive."
Na Shui's ears went hot at the reminder of what she'd blurted out earlier in panic.
Na Yi sighed inwardly.
"…Ren," she said, testing the bare name on her tongue like a new ritual. "If you insist."
"I do."
His smile softened. His eyes didn't—they stayed sharp, sweeping the swamp, weighing every rustle and ripple.
"Anyway," he added, "I'm not saying drop your guard. Just… let your shoulders breathe a little. Hatred eats stamina. We'll need all of that when we reach your Master's place."
Na Yi's fingers twitched at the mention of the Sorcerer Holy Land.
"Master's place."
For years, those words had meant stories told by faint firelight: a vast Divine Kingdom that had once filled this land with light; a Sorcerer who walked between life and death; pagodas that judged the hearts of those who entered. Now, her tribe was ash, their Master's symbols scattered and broken. All she had left was that key hanging at her throat and the belief that the Sorcerer still watched.
She glanced at Ren's back.
"You speak as though you will truly take us there," she said evenly. "Not rob us halfway and run off with the key."
"If I wanted your key," Ren said mildly, "you'd have woken up in the pagoda already, wondering when you agreed to open it."
Na Shui stumbled, nearly missing a root.
Na Yi inhaled sharply despite herself.
"…You can do that?" she asked.
"Yes," he said, completely honest. "But I won't. I told you—I'm not interested in stealing your tribe's fate. I'm interested in walking it with you."
Na Shui bit her lip.
"That's… very arrogant, Ren-ge," she muttered.
He chuckled.
"It is," he agreed. "Better than being a coward, though."
Na Yi's eyes lowered.
Coward.
The word pricked at the raw edges inside her—flames devouring the Na Tribe's village, Chi Guda's laughter grinding against her bones, the heat of the brand as she fled with Na Shui while Master's holy symbols burned behind them.
She exhaled, a slow breath that carried more than swamp air.
"Then we must become people who can walk with you," she said quietly. "Otherwise… we will only drag your feet."
Ren looked back again at that, really looked at her.
Resolve.
Not the hot, reckless kind that burned out in a single blaze, but something colder. Carved. A decision made once and then reinforced with every step.
He liked that.
"Exactly," he said. "Which brings us to the main topic."
Na Shui blinked. "Main… topic?"
Ren tapped his chest lightly.
"You've seen a bit of my method," he said. "The way I fight, the way I… erased people like those two devils. That isn't just raw power. It's structure. Arts. Paths. I can't hand you my whole Dao—that would break you, and honestly, it'd be rude to yours—but I can give you tools."
He looked between them, eyes warm, tone matter-of-fact.
"Tools to help you not die in your Master's pagoda. Tools to make sure that when Chi Guda sees you again, it's from the ground."
Na Shui's fingers dug into her palms hard enough to hurt. For a moment, the swamp vanished. All she could see was that man's face, flushed with wine and arrogance, as he laughed over their burning homes.
Na Yi's gaze sharpened until it could have cut bark.
"What kind of tools?" she asked.
He smiled.
"A breathing pattern that makes your body listen better to your will," he said. "A way of stirring true essence that makes every drop heavier, deeper. Something that turns your hatred into fuel instead of poison."
That was, in essence, what the Heretical God Force had been in its original form: an ancient auxiliary technique from the Realm of the Gods, a method to explosively increase strength and true essence at the cost of strain.
Ren's version would be… kinder—to his people.
"Can anyone learn this?" Na Shui asked hesitantly. "Even… even someone like me? Sister is the tribe's witch, but I…"
She trailed off, shame filling the gaps—her slower progress, her clumsy hands in certain rituals, the way elders had clucked their tongues and said, "Na Shui is spirited, but talent… mn…"
Ren gave her a look that made her stomach flip in a way that had nothing to do with fear.
"You're not 'someone like you,'" he said. "You're Na Shui. And yes, you can learn it."
He didn't sound like he was reassuring her.
He sounded like he was stating a natural law.
Na Yi's brows furrowed.
"This art of yours," she said slowly. "Is it evil? Does it burn blood, foundation, lifespan?"
In the Southern Wilderness, plenty of "secret methods" did exactly that—sacrificing bloodline, sanity, or years of life for a short flash of strength.
Ren shook his head.
"If you forced it? Maybe," he said honestly. "If you used it on a body full of impurities, on a soul full of cracks, if you treated it like a shortcut instead of a road, you'd pay a price. But if you walk it correctly… it'll make your foundation stronger. Not weaker."
Na Yi nodded once, unconsciously slipping into the mind of a witch assessing a new ritual.
"Then… we will listen to Ren," she said.
Na Shui jumped.
"E-elder Sister, you agreed that easily—"
"Life-saving grace is not repaid by fear of learning," Na Yi cut in gently but firmly. "If this art is truly as profound as you say, then it is a chance granted by Master's will. If it is a lie, we will die in the pagoda sooner or later anyway."
Ren clapped his hands once, the sound crisp in the muffled swamp air.
"Good," he said. "We'll camp on that dry patch up ahead. I'll need a little time to… polish the art for your use."
"Polish?" Na Shui echoed.
"Mm." He tilted his head. "It's an old treasure. I like to tune things before I hand them out."
He winked.
"Can't give my future comrades anything second-rate, right?"
Na Shui's face went scarlet.
Na Yi coughed lightly and pretended the heat in her ears was from the swamp.
...
The "dry patch" was a slightly elevated mound of black soil and tangled roots, big enough for three people to sit without sinking. Strange phosphorescent fungi glowed faintly at the edges, painting the mist in ghostly greens and blues.
Na Yi and Na Shui settled cross-legged facing each other, backs straight. Sorcery patterns circulated quietly through their meridians as they recovered from the day's walking, witch-lines and tribal breathing methods weaving together.
Ren sat a short distance away on a thick root that jutted out like a rough seat.
He closed his eyes.
Within his Inner World, the Immortal Soul Bone along his spine trembled like a tuning fork, its intricate lines lighting up one by one. Complexity—laws, memories, techniques—flowed toward it like threads into a loom.
The Magic Cube answered that call.
The gray ocean of souls opened around him—fragments of dead masters drifting like broken stars half-buried in fog. Techniques, histories, obsessions, legacies. The Martial World's past, crushed down into nameless, pure information.
He didn't dive like a starving man into food.
He walked.
He had objectives.
"Chaotic Virtues Combat Meridians," he murmured.
The ocean stirred.
A cluster of memories rose at his mental touch: a jade slip's cold surface; lines of script etched with the will to turn flesh itself into a divine weapon; a young boy's heartbeat quickening as he imagined pounding iron trees to dust with bare fists. The essence of the manual flowed with it—a body transformation system originating from the Realm of the Gods, its first layer of Strength Training already far beyond common methods, meant to refine a cultivator's body from mortal flesh all the way to Pulse Condensation.
Ren's consciousness wrapped around that cluster.
The Immortal Soul Bone sang.
Lines of text, diagrams of meridians, notes on force, intent, and bone tempering all unfolded in an instant before him—then were stripped down to their load-bearing beams. Compared to the messy patchwork of many lower-realm methods, this was elegant, almost affectionate in how it treated the human body.
"Good stuff," he said quietly.
Good wasn't enough.
He saw the limits at a glance—subtle inefficiencies where marrow tempering didn't fully synergize with meridian widening; small blind spots where the art assumed a certain level of innate talent or bloodline; places where it leaned too much on external resources instead of recycling internal waste.
Ren began to adjust.
He didn't rip out the spine of the art. He respected its heart—the philosophy of forging the body into a divine weapon—but he rerouted its circulation paths to better match the broader, harsher Dao that flowed through his own Heaven. He bound into it faint principles drawn from the Nine Worlds and Eight Desolates paths he'd walked in another universe—body as vessel, Dao as treasury, every vibration of bone and tendon echoing a greater law.
The first layer's Strength Training no longer just hardened muscles.
It became a process that taught the body to remember force—to store the impression of every perfected movement as a nascent Dao Fruit carved into bone and marrow. A commoner with dull talent could, step by step, engrave those fruits into their flesh—slow at first, then faster as their foundation caught up.
Breaths that would have become waste heat, imperfect circulation that would have dissipated into the air—under his hands, all of it looped back into the tempering process. The gap between "ordinary" and "genius" shrank with each cycle.
He nudged the ratios, adding subtle resonance tricks drawn from his Hell Suppressing Immortal Physique and Ancient Ming Bloodline as optional harmonics instead of requirements. The art would recognize a strong body and scale with it, but it would never reject a weaker one.
He set that modified structure aside, letting it stabilize in the gray sea.
Then he reached for another cluster.
Heretical God Force.
This fragment tasted different. Where Chaotic Virtues felt like iron and sweat, this was lightning trapped in deep water—dangerous and exhilarating. A transcendent auxiliary technique designed to move world laws, compress true essence, and explosively increase power, with layered stages that would tear lesser bodies apart if abused.
Ren's lips curved.
"Fifty percent boost, huh," he murmured. "No wonder he kept throwing himself into danger with that stupid grin…"
He spun the fragment in his perception.
The original design was clever: open special "gates" in the body that allowed true essence to flood the meridians beyond their normal capacity for brief bursts. The cost was hidden damage, wear and tear building with each use.
He added a layer.
An inner governor.
Instead of simply blowing the gates wide and letting the flood crash through, his version shaped the surge into spirals that tempered even as they boosted—like forcing a raging river through a series of refining mills before it slammed into the battlefield.
The first level's amplification went beyond a simple "50%" increase in strength. It became a qualitative shift: senses sharpening, comprehension rising, every breath folding more of the surrounding heaven and earth into the user's spiritual sea instead of letting it slip past. For Na Yi and Na Shui, that meant their ability to grasp the Sorcerer Pagoda's trials would spike whenever they pushed this art—not just the weight of their punches.
Of course, the price remained.
He was ruthless, not indulgent.
Use it too often without proper rest and cultivation, and the body would protest. But with diligent, step-by-step training, the strain wouldn't just be damage—it would become tempering, strengthening channels rather than fraying them.
He left the later evolutions—the Heretical God seeds, the more terrifying permutations—untouched for now. Those involved complex law fusions he wanted to approach with a more mature understanding in this world.
"Foundations first," he said. "Then fireworks."
A faint presence watched him from the edge of the Magic Cube's ocean.
Mo Eversnow.
She floated there like a snowflake suspended in gray water, white dress untouched by the currents, eyes cool and distant. In her long, lonely imprisonment in the cube, she had watched many so-called geniuses fumble in this ocean, grasping greedily at every fragment they could reach until they tore themselves apart.
Ren was neither greedy nor cautious in the usual sense.
He passed through the ocean like a quiet storm, Immortal Soul Bone reducing supreme arts to principles, then rebuilding them—not from arrogance, but from a terrifyingly natural understanding. It was as if the Dao itself had accepted him as a translator between worlds.
Her fingers tightened on her sleeve.
"…Monster," she whispered, voice too soft for anyone but the cube to hear.
There was no hatred in the word.
Only awe—and a sliver of dangerous expectation.
Ren didn't turn toward her.
He felt her gaze. Let it rest between his shoulder blades like a weight—and a promise.
"Watch closely," he said without moving his lips. "This is just the warm-up."
Then he let the Magic Cube dim.
The ocean folded in on itself and vanished.
...
Ren's eyes opened.
The mist hadn't thickened much. Only two incense sticks' worth of time had passed.
Na Yi and Na Shui were still where he'd left them, but their postures had shifted. Na Shui's shoulders sagged a little with fatigue, strands of hair sticking to her cheeks. Na Yi's back remained straight, but her fingers twisted the hem of her torn robe, betraying a tension she didn't show on her face.
Both snapped to attention when they felt his gaze.
"How long was I out?" he asked lazily.
Na Yi hesitated, glancing at the little stick of fragrant wood stuck in the soil.
"…Two incense sticks," she said. "Perhaps a little more."
Not long at all, for someone "polishing" a profound art.
Ren hummed.
"Good," he said. "Then we still have daylight left."
He rose, dusting non-existent dirt from his pants, and stepped closer.
"I'll start with the easier one," he said. "The amplification art. It'll change how your true essence flows when you fight. You'll have to get used to it, but once you do, your bodies will grow faster."
Na Yi's eyes flickered.
"You said before that soul-searching is dangerous," she said quietly. "This will not… harm us?"
"It'll touch your spiritual seas," he answered frankly. "But I'm not here to rummage through your secrets. I'll carve the art into an empty place and leave it for you to cultivate. You'll feel some pressure when it settles, but compared to a Sorcerer trial?" He shrugged lightly. "It's nothing."
The mention of "Sorcerer trial" and "nothing" in the same breath made Na Shui's mouth go dry.
Na Yi took a breath, then nodded.
"Very well," she said. "Please… give us guidance."
Ren smiled.
"Close your eyes," he said. "Keep your minds as still as you can. Think of a calm lake at night. No wind. No ripples."
Na Shui obediently squeezed her eyes shut.
Na Yi's lashes lowered, her breathing long and even, witch's discipline settling over her.
Ren lifted his hand.
A filament of Dao-essence unfurled from his fingertip—thin, clear, laced with the refined structure of his modified Heretical God Force. To any master of this world, it would've been incomprehensible: a law that turned the concept of "explosive power" into a disciplined, self-tempering spiral.
He touched Na Yi's forehead.
Her spiritual sea shuddered.
Within her inner world, a lake of true essence spread beneath a dim sky. Sorcerer symbols flickered like distant stars over the water's surface. At the center, the faint shadow of a stone pagoda lay half-buried in fog, like a memory of a temple she had never seen with her eyes.
A streak of light descended.
It didn't smash into the lake. It hovered above it for a breath, then unfolded into a circular pattern—six rings nested within each other, each line marked with tiny characters pulsing with the meanings of "force," "heat," "control," "limit."
Na Yi's soul instinctively drew back.
Ren's presence was there before that recoil could become rejection—a steady, warm weight behind the pattern, saying without words: This is safe. This is yours. Walk it; do not fear it.
The rings sank.
Ripples spread across the lake, trembled… then stilled.
Na Yi gasped quietly and opened her eyes.
Ren's hand was already resting against Na Shui's brow.
Her spiritual sea was smaller, wilder. Where Na Yi's lake was calm, hers had little waves from unspent emotion, the water splashing against its banks. Ritual symbols danced around its edges like fireflies instead of fixed stars.
The pattern sank there too.
She trembled, shoulders shaking, but didn't pull away.
A moment later, he withdrew his hand.
"It's in," he said simply. "Now the hard part."
Na Shui swallowed.
"Th-that wasn't the hard part?" she squeaked.
He grinned.
"That was me being nice," he said. "The art exists in you now. But it's like having a manual written into your soul. You still have to read it and practice."
Na Yi exhaled slowly, centering herself.
"Then… how do we begin?" she asked.
"Follow my breathing," he said.
He sat down cross-legged opposite them, hands resting loosely on his knees.
"Inhale," he said. "Draw true essence up from your dantian, but don't let it rush. Imagine it flowing along your spine like warm water. Feel the rings I placed in your spiritual sea. Let the essence brush the first one."
They tried.
Their original circulation patterns got in the way at first—tribal methods, old habits of sorcery, little flares of witch-symbols and ritual breath.
Ren's voice cut through gently whenever they drifted.
"Too fast, Shui. Slow it down. Anger is fine, but anger needs a container."
"Yi, you're holding back. You can't approach this like a prayer. It's not meant to be worshipped—it's meant to be used."
Time blurred.
Mist drifted. Somewhere distant, something large splashed in the swamp and went quiet again.
True essence looped again and again through newly opened channels, brushing the first ring of Heretical God Force each time. With every pass, the ring shaved off impurities, smoothed a meridian, widened a place where energy tended to snag.
Na Shui gritted her teeth until sweat beaded on her brow.
Na Yi's lips turned pale, but her eyes never opened, all her focus locked inward.
At some point, Na Yi's breath changed.
Ren's head tilted slightly.
There.
In her spiritual sea, the first ring lit.
Slowly, like a millstone pushed by new workers, it began to turn. True essence flowing along it was no longer just "there"—it compressed, densified, took on a faint heat that wasn't ordinary fire but the concept of "more."
Na Shui's followed a few breaths later—hers a little rougher, the ring wobbling like a wheel on uneven ground, but turning nonetheless.
Ren nodded once.
"Stop," he said quietly.
Both sisters opened their eyes, blinking, pupils dilated.
The world slammed back into them—the smell of rot and fungus, the humid weight of the air, their own exhausted bodies.
Except… those bodies felt different.
Na Shui's heart pounded against her ribs.
"I… I feel… strange," she whispered.
Na Yi's gaze went distant.
Her true essence had always been a thin river, carefully guided along well-worn channels by witch rituals. Now it felt like a deeper stream, fuller, pressing harder against its banks. Her senses sharpened—the rustle of distant insects, the faint shift in Ren's breathing, even the subtle tension in her sister's shoulders.
She flexed her fingers.
Power coiled there, denser, obedient.
"It is…" She searched for words. "As if my body had been sleeping before. Now it has… woken up."
Ren smiled.
"That's the first level," he said. "Only a rough grasp, but enough for a test."
"Test?" Na Shui squeaked.
He rose smoothly and jerked his chin toward the shadow-thick trees beyond their little mound.
"There's a beast watching us from that direction," he said. "Peak Viscera Training. Good tempering stock. We'll say hello."
Na Yi stiffened.
"How do you know—"
"Because it's drooling," he said cheerfully. "Come on. What better way to learn than hitting something that wants to eat you?"
...
Three steps beyond their camp, the swamp changed.
The roots thinned. The water between them turned from murky green to a nearly black mirror. The smell of rot deepened, overlaid with a metallic tang that made the tongue prickle.
Ren waved the sisters to a stop atop a broad root and didn't bother lowering his voice.
"Alright, friend," he called, amused. "You've been eyeing us for a while. Might as well show yourself."
The surface of the black water bulged.
Bubbles rose and burst with wet pops. Then the water exploded outward as something massive surged up from the depths—a swamp lizard the size of a small hut.
Scales black and slick with muck clung to its body like plates of wet stone. Mud oozed from the gaps between them. Its eyes glowed a faint, murky red, like embers buried under ash. When its jaws opened, rows of crooked teeth gleamed with a sheen of corrosive mucus, threads of acid drool hissing where they fell and burned tiny holes into the roots.
The air seemed to retreat from in front of it.
Na Shui's breath hitched. The pressure of a peak Viscera Training beast wrapped around her like a wet blanket—heavy, suffocating.
Na Yi stepped half a pace in front of her sister without thinking, voice low.
"Stay behind me, Shui."
Ren clicked his tongue softly.
"Na Yi," he said. "You go right. Na Shui, left. Don't think about killing it with sorcery symbols. Just… trust your bodies. Let the art do some of the thinking."
They stared at him as if he'd asked them to grow wings.
The swamp lizard roared.
Its tongue lashed out like a barbed whip, spraying a fan of oily water and corrosive saliva. The sound was less a roar and more a long, grinding bellow, like rocks being crushed in its throat.
Na Yi's body moved before her mind caught up.
Her foot stepped to the right, true essence surging through freshly widened meridians. The turning ring in her spiritual sea shone brighter for an instant, compressing the flow. Her muscles responded—not with the strained burst of a desperate dash, but with crisp, controlled power.
She vanished from where she'd been standing.
To Na Shui's eyes, her sister blurred, reappearing at the beast's right flank like a shadow peeled off the air. Her bare hand, wrapped in a thin film of compressed true essence, struck at the lizard's foreleg.
There was no flashy light, no roaring flames.
Just impact.
Bang.
Bone cracked like a snapped tree trunk. The massive limb buckled, its joints screaming. The swamp lizard's bulk lurched, half its body crashing back into the black water with a wet, sucking sound and sending a wave of mud and filth surging across the roots.
The mound they'd camped on shuddered. Fungus-lights flickered. Water splashed up in dirty arcs.
Na Shui stared, stunned, splattered with droplets.
"That…"
"That felt good," Na Yi muttered under her breath, shock and something like fierce satisfaction burning in her calm eyes.
The beast shrieked.
Its tail whipped around like a felled tree, cutting through air and water alike with a howl. The very wind groaned. If that hit, bones would powder.
Na Shui's body moved.
Fear, admiration, and fresh anger twisted together into a sharp point and dropped into the spinning ring in her spiritual sea. True essence jumped, the ring speeding up. Heat spread along her limbs—not a burn, but a tight, focused warmth.
Her feet pounded against slick roots.
She leapt.
For a moment, caught between root and air, she felt the world slow. Her body grew light, her senses crystalline. She could see each drop of filthy water flung up by the beast's tail, each trembling vein on its scaled neck.
The tail carved a murderous arc beneath her.
Na Shui's small body curled mid-air, spine flexing, the modified Heretical God Force guiding her like an invisible hand. She brought her bone dagger down toward the thick scales at the base of the beast's neck.
She didn't have Na Yi's precision yet.
Her angle was a little off; her grip too tight.
The blade bit anyway.
Crack.
Scales shattered. The bone dagger drove through mud-slick armor and into spine. A sickening crunch followed. The swamp lizard convulsed once, its roar cutting off in a wet gurgle.
The glow in its eyes dimmed.
Its bulk tumbled sideways like a felled tree, half its body collapsing into the swamp with a thunderous splash. Waves of black water slammed into the surrounding roots, sending smaller creatures scurrying through the muck. Acidic drool hissed as it hit the water's surface and was diluted.
Na Shui landed in an ungainly roll, splashing through shallow water, mud streaking her face and hair. She came up sliding on her knees, dagger still clutched in a death grip, eyes wide and unfocused.
"I— I killed—" she stammered, voice shaking.
Na Yi stood a short distance away, chest rising and falling, arm tingling from the earlier strike. Her heart pounded, but not from fear—for the first time in a long time, it sounded like a battle drum instead of a funeral bell.
Her true essence, that thin river she'd always carefully guided, now surged like a deeper stream. The remnants of the beast's aura, the pressure it had exerted, didn't just fade. The ring in her spiritual sea caught a trace of that pressure and fed it back into her meridians as tempering.
She realized it consciously and felt her breath catch.
"This power…" she said slowly, almost to herself, eyes still on the corpse. "Is still just the first level?"
Ren watched them from a nearby root, hands tucked into his sleeves, weight relaxed. Mud splashes dotted his boots. The wind stirred his hair; his eyes remained calm.
He smiled.
"For you two?" he said. "You haven't even gotten a proper grip on the first level. What you used just now is the very edge of it. Your meridians are still adjusting. If you tried to push harder now, you'd hurt yourselves."
He tilted his head toward the fallen beast.
"But step by step, it'll grow. And your comprehension will grow with it. That's the fun part."
Na Yi didn't miss that last word.
Comprehension.
For a witch whose path depended on deciphering the Sorcerer Pagoda's trials, the promise of sharpened understanding—even more than brute force—was intoxicating.
She closed her eyes for a moment, feeling the echoes of that brief clash settle into her bones, into the rings in her spiritual sea. The memory of the movement, the weight of the beast's leg, the angle of her strike—all of it began to engrave itself as a faint "fruit" in her body.
Na Shui's knees gave out.
She dropped back into a sit in the mud, laughter bubbling up out of her in small, disbelieving bursts. Her hands shook around the dagger.
"I… I did it," she said, as if afraid the world would correct her. "I really…"
Ren hopped lightly down from his root, boots splashing in the shallow water, and walked over. The swamp lizard's corpse twitched once, then stilled as his aura brushed over it, suppressing any lingering instinct.
He crouched, ran a hand along a cracked scale, then straightened and looked at the sisters.
"See?" he said softly. "You weren't 'weak.' You were just using tools that weren't made for what you needed."
Na Shui looked up at him, mud streaks on her cheeks, eyes bright.
Ren reached out and flicked a clump of mud off her forehead.
"You did good, Shui," he said, tone casual, warmth tucked under it. "That leap was ugly, but the courage was clean. We'll fix the form later."
Na Shui's face went crimson under the dirt.
Na Yi's gaze grew more complicated.
Ren laughed. "But this is only the first gift."