The Youming had no ground. No sky. No reference points by which a mind could orient itself.
Cang Lin had learned that lesson centuries ago, during his nascent soul breakthrough. Now, on his fourth journey into the void, the formless darkness felt almost familiar. Almost comfortable.
Almost.
Time moved strangely here, stretching and compressing in ways that defied even his ancient understanding. He had been fighting for what felt like three days. Perhaps four. Long enough for exhaustion to creep into his projected soul, but not so long that his breakthrough had stalled.
He was winning.
The thought brought a flicker of satisfaction as he tore through another of the formless monsters. This one had tried to drain his life force, wrapping shadow-tendrils around his spiritual form. A Jade Qilin's soul was not so easily consumed. His horn, manifested in pure spiritual energy, pierced the entity's core. It dissolved with a sound like tearing silk.
Forty-seven, he counted. Forty-seven of these things, and still they come.
He had heard the warnings, of course. Every cultivator who attempted a soul-realm breakthrough knew that something waited in the darkness. The ancient texts called them heart demons, inner tribulations, manifestations of one's own flaws. Cang Lin had believed that once. Had prepared for a battle against his own doubts and fears.
What he'd found instead were monsters.
They were not born of his psyche. They were not reflections of his inner weakness. They were hunters, drawn to his breakthrough like sharks to blood in water. Some tried to consume him. Others whispered bargains, offering power in exchange for... something. He had stopped listening after the first few. One had attempted to possess him outright, forcing its way into his consciousness with tendrils of pure corruption.
He had killed them all.
This is why geniuses die, he realized. Not because they lack talent. Because they shine too brightly, and the darkness notices.
Another entity materialized from the void. This one was different from the shadow-drainers and the whispering bargain-makers. It moved with predatory intelligence, testing his defenses, probing for weakness. Cang Lin met it with four thousand years of combat experience. His spiritual form blazed with the accumulated power of a Demon Sovereign at the absolute peak of soul formation.
The entity lasted longer than the others. Almost a full minute of combat before his horn found its core.
Forty-eight.
His breakthrough was progressing. He could feel it, the transformation building in his soul like pressure before a storm. A few more days. Perhaps a week. Then he would emerge as a Demon Saint, the first of his clan to ever achieve such heights.
Xuan Ying would choke on his own shadow when he sensed it.
The thought of his rival brought a grim smile to Cang Lin's spiritual form. The Nether Shadow Clan had contested Jade Qilin territory for millennia. Xuan Ying was cunning, patient, always watching for weakness. But he was also a coward. He would never attempt the Saint breakthrough himself. Too afraid of what waited in the darkness.
And rightfully so, Cang Lin admitted. But I am not him. I am...
The thought stopped.
Something had changed in the Youming.
Cang Lin turned, his senses extending into the formless void. The other entities, the ones still circling at the edge of his awareness, had stopped moving. The shadow-drainers. The whisperers. The possessors. All of them, frozen in place.
No. Not frozen.
Fleeing.
They scattered like prey animals before a forest fire, vanishing into the deeper darkness with desperate speed. In seconds, the void around him was empty. Silent. Still.
Cang Lin had not felt fear in over a thousand years.
He felt it now.
What could frighten things that exist only to hunt?
The answer came from everywhere and nowhere. Reality itself began to blur at the edges of his perception. Not darkness. Not shadow. Something worse. Something that made darkness look like light by comparison.
It did not attack.
It simply... was.
And where it was, other things weren't.
Cang Lin watched a portion of the void unmake itself. Not dissolve. Not collapse. Simply cease to exist, as though it had never been. The absence spread like a stain, eating through the fabric of the Youming with patient inevitability.
His horn blazed with every scrap of power he possessed. Four thousand five hundred years of cultivation. Peak soul formation. The accumulated might of the Jade Qilin bloodline.
The attack passed through the spreading absence and vanished. Not deflected. Not absorbed.
Erased.
For the first time in his long existence, Cang Lin understood what he was facing. Not a monster. Not a tribulation. Not even a predator in any sense he could comprehend.
This was entropy given form. The end of meaning. The thing that waited at the edge of existence itself.
And it had noticed him.
I was so close, he thought, and the regret was sharp and sudden. A few more days. A week at most. I was so close.
The absence reached him.
Cang Lin, Demon Sovereign of the Jade Qilin Clan, who had ruled the northern Blackwood for over four millennia, who had crushed armies and broken rivals and built a legacy that should have lasted ten thousand years more, opened his mouth to roar one final defiance.
The sound never came.
He simply stopped.
And in the world beyond the Youming, fifteen years after a child's birth had lit a beacon that drew monsters from between dimensions, the Jade Qilin Clan lost its ancestor.
Wang Ben woke to screaming.
Not the screams of pain or terror, but the sharp, rhythmic calls of formation horns. Three short blasts. Pause. Three short blasts. The pattern repeated, cutting through the pre-dawn darkness with mechanical urgency.
Beast tide. The walls had been breached, or breach was imminent.
He was moving before his mind fully caught up, throwing off blankets and reaching for the sword beside his bed. The Body Tempering Pill churned in his gut, a constant low burn that had become familiar over the past day. His muscles ached with the deep soreness of forced growth, but they responded faster than they had yesterday. Stronger.
[STATUS UPDATE]
[Body Tempering Pill absorption: 12.7%]
[Physical enhancement: +23% baseline]
[Current cultivation: Body Refinement Stage 6 (advancing)]
[Note: Combat exertion will accelerate absorption rate]
Wang Ben pulled on his outer robe and grabbed the Golden Bell Shield Talisman from his nightstand, tucking it into his belt. The horns continued their relentless call as he stepped into the corridor.
His mother was already there, Wang Chen bundled in her arms. The baby was crying, startled by the noise.
"Where's Father?" Wang Ben asked.
"Already gone." Li Mei's face was pale but composed. "He left for the walls an hour ago. Said the elders sensed something wrong with the formation readings."
An hour ago. Before the horns. His father had known something was coming.
"Get to the inner compound shelters. Stay with the other families."
"Ben'er..." She caught his arm as he turned to leave. "Be careful."
He met her eyes. Nodded once. Then he was running.
The Wang Clan compound was organized chaos. Cultivators streamed toward the main gates, some still fastening armor, others clutching weapons with white-knuckled grips. Wang Ben fell into the flow, weaving through bodies until he spotted a familiar face.
"Zhao Yu!"
His friend turned, relief flashing across his features. Zhao Yu looked different than he had two days ago. Harder. The expedition had carved something into all of them.
"Wang Ben. Thank the ancestors." Zhao Yu fell into step beside him. "Have you heard?"
"Just the horns."
"Northern wall. The scouts came back twenty minutes ago, the ones that came back." Zhao Yu's jaw tightened. "They're saying it's not like any tide they've seen. The beasts... they're not behaving right."
Wang Ben's steps slowed. "Not behaving right how?"
"I don't know. The runner just said the elders looked scared." Zhao Yu shook his head. "When have you ever seen Wang Hao look scared?"
They reached the assembly point near the main gate. Wang Hao was already there, barking orders at a cluster of junior cultivators. The twins, Wang Jun and Wang Xiu, stood at his shoulder. Sun Bao arrived moments after Wang Ben, breathing hard.
Their team. All six of them, still alive.
Wang Hao spotted them and gestured sharply. "With me. We're assigned to the northern wall, section seven. Move."
They moved.
The streets of Redstone City had transformed overnight. Civilians hurried toward the inner districts, clutching children and valuables. City guards directed traffic at major intersections, their voices hoarse from shouting. Somewhere in the distance, Wang Ben heard the deeper boom of defensive formations activating.
The northern wall rose before them, a massive structure of spirit-reinforced stone that had protected the city for centuries. Cultivators lined its top, spread across the battlements in clusters of color. Wang Clan gray. Huo Clan crimson. Xue Clan deep red, almost black. Even Dao Clan blue, their numbers thin but present.
Wang Ben climbed the access stairs two at a time, his team close behind. When he reached the top and looked out over the Blackwood Forest, he understood what Zhao Yu had meant.
The beasts were wrong.
A tide should have been a wave. A mass of bodies pressing toward the walls, driven by hunger or territorial instinct or the strange madness that sometimes gripped beast populations. Wang Ben had studied the records. He knew what to expect.
This was not that.
The beasts came in scattered groups, bursting from the treeline in ragged clusters. They ran with the desperate speed of prey, not the focused aggression of predators. A pack of Thornback Boars crashed through the undergrowth, and Wang Ben watched them veer away from the walls before correcting course, as if the city was the lesser of two terrors.
Behind them came Shadow Hares, dozens of them, their usually cautious nature abandoned in blind panic. They ran directly toward the walls without any attempt at evasion or concealment.
And behind them came the Ironback Boars, the Dusk Stalkers, the Shadowfang Wolves. Not hunting. Not organized.
Fleeing.
[OBSERVATION: Beast behavior patterns anomalous]
[Analysis: Subjects display flight response, not aggression]
[Assessment: Beasts are fleeing FROM something, not attacking toward target]
[Implication: Unknown threat in forest interior driving migration]
"What in the eighteen hells..." Wang Hao breathed beside him.
An Ironback Boar slammed into the base of the wall, not attacking the stone but simply... stopping. It pressed against the barrier like a child hiding behind its mother's legs, sides heaving, eyes rolling with terror. More beasts piled up behind it.
They weren't trying to breach the walls.
They were trying to get behind them.
"They're scared," Wang Ben said quietly. "Something's hunting them."
Wang Hao turned to look at him. "What could scare an entire forest?"
Wang Ben had no answer. But deep in the Blackwood, something pulsed.
He felt it before he understood it. A pressure that had nothing to do with physical force. It pressed against his chest, squeezed his heart, sent ice flooding through his veins. His knees buckled. He caught himself on the battlements, gasping for air that suddenly felt too thin.
Around him, cultivators staggered. Zhao Yu dropped to one knee. Sun Bao doubled over and vomited. The twins caught each other, faces gray. Even Wang Hao, peak late-stage qi condensation, swayed like a man struck by an invisible blow.
The beasts below went silent. Every creature, from the smallest hare to the largest boar, froze in absolute stillness.
Then, as one, they screamed.
The sound was not natural. Hundreds of throats releasing terror in a single unified cry that echoed off the walls and seemed to shake the very air. It lasted three heartbeats. Then the beasts fled in every direction, trampling each other in their desperation to escape.
The pressure vanished.
Wang Ben clung to the battlements, his heart hammering against his ribs. His hands were shaking. He hadn't felt fear like this since... since the wolf. Since he'd faced death with nothing but a broken sword and desperate hope.
[ALERT: Anomalous physiological response detected]
[Analysis: Physical symptoms consistent with exposure to extreme-range spiritual pressure]
[Estimated pressure class: Sovereign (Soul Formation equivalent or higher)]
[Estimated distance to source: 200+ km (deep Blackwood Forest)]
[Pattern assessment: Predatory strike signature, not territorial display]
[Note: Analysis based on Host physical response, not direct detection]
[WARNING: Threat level exceeds all local defensive capabilities]
Wang Hao straightened slowly, his face the color of old ash. He looked out at the forest, then back at the other cultivators on the wall. Most were still recovering. Some hadn't risen at all.
"What..." Sun Bao croaked, wiping his mouth. "What was that?"
No one answered.
Because no one knew.
The tide continued, but the character of it had changed.
The beasts no longer pressed against the walls seeking shelter. After that pulse of pressure, they scattered in every direction, some fleeing back toward the forest, others running parallel to the walls, a few attempting to climb the stone in blind panic. The cultivators on the battlements found themselves facing not a coordinated assault, but a desperate chaos of terrified animals.
It should have been easier. It wasn't.
A cornered beast was more dangerous than a hunting one. Wang Ben learned that lesson in the first hour.
The Shadowfang Wolf came over the wall in a blur of dark fur and snapping jaws. It had climbed the bodies of smaller beasts piled against the base, scrambling up the stone with claws that left gouges in spirit-reinforced rock. Wang Ben saw it crest the battlements, saw its eyes roll with mindless terror, saw it lunge for the nearest warm body.
Him.
He moved on instinct. The sword Zhao Daniu had forged sang from its sheath, catching the wolf's lunge and turning it aside. The beast crashed into the stone beside him, already twisting for another attack. No calculation. No pack tactics. Just pure animal fear transformed into violence.
Wang Ben's blade found its throat before it could rise.
[Combat engagement: Shadowfang Wolf (Rank 1, late-stage)]
[Result: Terminated]
[Body Tempering Pill absorption: +0.3% (combat acceleration)]
[Current absorption: 13.0%]
He didn't have time to process the notification. More beasts were coming.
The morning became a blur of blood and steel.
Wang Ben fought alongside his team, their formation holding through sheer familiarity. Wang Hao anchored the center, his qi condensation cultivation allowing him to handle the larger threats. The twins worked the flanks with coordinated precision. Sun Bao provided ranged support, his qi techniques thin but accurate. Zhao Yu fought at Wang Ben's shoulder, the two of them covering each other's blind spots.
They killed Rank 1 beasts by the dozen. Thornback Boars. Shadow Hares. Dusk Stalkers. Creatures that should have been dangerous became almost routine when they attacked without coordination or strategy. The wall ran red with blood.
But the Rank 2s were different.
An Ironback Boar smashed through a section of battlements three positions down from Wang Ben's team. He heard the crash of shattering stone, the screams of cultivators caught in the collapse. The boar was massive, easily twice the size of the one they'd killed during the expedition, and it moved with the desperate strength of a creature that had nothing left to lose.
Wang Hao was already moving. "Hold position! I'll—"
"No." Wang Ben caught his arm. "Look at its eyes."
The boar wasn't attacking the fallen cultivators. It was trying to get past them, to get deeper into the city. When a wounded Xue Clan disciple grabbed its leg, it kicked him aside almost absently, not even bothering to finish the kill.
"It's still running," Wang Ben said. "From whatever's out there. It doesn't care about us."
Wang Hao stared at him for a long moment. Then he looked back at the boar, which had already crashed through a market stall and was disappearing into a side street.
"Let it go," Wang Hao decided. "Focus on the ones that are actually fighting. Someone else can handle it later."
It was the right call. Wang Ben knew it was the right call. But watching a Rank 2 beast rampage through the city streets felt wrong in a way he couldn't articulate.
The pressure pulsed again.
This time Wang Ben was ready for it. He braced himself against the battlements as the wave of dread washed over him, keeping his feet through sheer determination. The sensation was weaker than before, more distant. Whatever was happening in the deep forest, it had moved further away.
Or perhaps it had simply finished what it was doing.
[ALERT: Secondary pressure event detected]
[Intensity: 73% of initial event]
[Assessment: Source has either moved or target was eliminated]
[Note: Insufficient data to determine which]
The beasts screamed again. Fewer this time. Many had already fled beyond sensing range.
By midday, the tide had begun to ebb.
The flow of beasts from the forest slowed to a trickle, then stopped entirely. Scattered creatures still roamed the streets, lost and confused, but the desperate mass migration was over. Cultivators began organizing hunting parties to clear the remaining threats while others tended to the wounded.
The cost became clear as Wang Ben surveyed the walls.
Bodies lay where they had fallen. Most wore the gray of Wang Clan or the crimson of Huo. A few Xue Clan disciples. Even fewer Dao. The beasts had killed without discrimination, and the defenders had paid in blood.
"Seventeen confirmed dead," Wang Hao reported, his voice flat with exhaustion. "Another thirty wounded, twelve of those critical. And that's just our section."
Wang Ben did the math. Seven sections on the northern wall. If the casualties were similar across all of them...
"The other walls?" he asked.
"Eastern took light damage. Southern and western barely saw any action. Everything came from the north." Wang Hao wiped blood from his face with a rag that was already soaked red. "Whatever's out there, it's north of us. Deep in the Blackwood."
A commotion near the main gate drew their attention. Cultivators were gathering, voices raised in alarm. Wang Ben caught fragments of shouted conversation.
"—found him outside the walls—"
"—barely recognizable—"
"—Elder Liu—"
Wang Ben's blood went cold.
He was moving before he consciously decided to, pushing through the crowd until he reached the center of the gathering. What he saw there made his stomach turn.
Elder Liu lay on a stretcher, and for a moment Wang Ben didn't recognize him. The peak late-stage foundation establishment cultivator's robes were shredded, soaked with blood that was still wet. Deep puncture wounds covered his arms and torso, the flesh around them blackened as if burned. His face was a mask of frozen terror, eyes wide and staring at nothing.
He was dead.
"Serpent," someone said. "Look at the wounds. Poison Marsh Serpent, late-stage at least."
"What was he doing outside the walls during a beast tide?"
"He was assigned to the eastern section. Someone said they saw him flee over the wall when the serpents came with the tide."
"Flee? A foundation establishment elder?"
"He looked terrified. Like he recognized them."
Wang Ben stared at the body, his mind racing. Elder Liu. The man who had watched his family for years. The man his father had warned him about. The man who had been responsible for the warning formation that failed the day Wang Ben faced the Jade Snow Wolf.
Dead. Killed by a serpent.
[OBSERVATION: Subject Liu Mingde deceased]
[Cause of death: Poison Marsh Serpent venom + physical trauma]
[Wound pattern analysis: Multiple attackers or sustained assault by single attacker]
[Note: Serpent species matches eggs stolen from nest in earlier incident report]
[Assessment: Insufficient data for complete analysis]
[Recommendation: Observe reactions of other clan members]
The System's clinical analysis barely registered. Wang Ben was watching the faces around him. Some showed grief. Others, surprise. A few...
A few showed something that looked almost like relief.
"Search his body." The voice cut through the murmuring crowd like a blade. Grand Elder Wang Feng pushed his way forward, his scarred face grim. "Standard protocol for a cultivator killed outside the walls during a crisis."
"Grand Elder, surely that's not necessary—" one of the Xue Clan representatives began.
"It is protocol." Wang Feng's tone brooked no argument. "Or does the Xue Clan have some objection to standard security measures?"
The Xue representative fell silent.
Wang Ben watched as two Wang Clan disciples searched Elder Liu's robes. They found the usual items. Spirit stones. A damaged communication talisman. A small jade container of pills.
Then one of them pulled out a leather pouch, and his expression changed.
"Grand Elder. You should see this."
Wang Feng took the pouch. Opened it. His face, already grim, turned to stone.
He reached inside and pulled out a medallion. Even from where Wang Ben stood, he could see the symbol engraved on its surface.
The blood-red blade of the Xue Clan.
The crowd went silent.
"There's more," the disciple said quietly. "Letters. Payment records. Dated back... back almost ten years."
Ten years. Before Wang Tian's fall.
Wang Ben felt the pieces click into place with horrible clarity. Elder Liu. Xue Clan. The sabotaged refinement that had destroyed his father's cultivation. It had never been an accident.
It had been assassination.
And the assassin had finally met his end, not at the hands of justice, but in the jaws of a beast whose offspring he had murdered to set another trap.
Karma, Wang Ben thought, and the word tasted like ash in his mouth. This is what karma looks like.
The aftermath of Elder Liu's death consumed the next several hours.
Wang Feng ordered Liu's body secured and the evidence preserved. The Xue Clan representatives protested, demanded their own investigation, threatened consequences. Wang Feng ignored them all. When Patriarch Wang Tiexin arrived, flanked by the other Wang Clan elders, the protests died in the Xue delegation's throats.
Wang Ben watched from the edges of the crowd as the political storm began to form. He should have felt something. Satisfaction, perhaps, at seeing his father's saboteur exposed. Relief that the man who had tried to kill him was dead.
He felt nothing but a hollow exhaustion.
"Wang Ben."
He turned to find Zhao Yu at his shoulder, face pale beneath the dried blood.
"Your father's here. He's looking for you."
Wang Tian stood near the main gate, still wearing the robes he'd worked in all night. His eyes found Wang Ben across the crowd, and something passed between them. An understanding that words couldn't capture.
Wang Ben made his way through the press of bodies until he stood before his father.
"You're unhurt," Wang Tian said. Not a question.
"A few scratches. Nothing serious."
Wang Tian nodded slowly. His gaze drifted to where Elder Liu's covered body lay, then back to Wang Ben. "I heard. About what they found."
"Ten years of letters. Payment records." Wang Ben kept his voice low. "He was working for the Xue Clan before your... before what happened to you."
His father was silent for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was carefully controlled. "I always wondered. That morning, something felt wrong. The foundational herbs didn't smell right. I told myself I was being paranoid."
"You weren't."
"No." Wang Tian's hands clenched at his sides. "I wasn't."
The horn calls started again before either of them could say more. But these weren't the three-blast beast tide warning. This was a single, sustained note that rose and fell like a scream.
Breach. Something had broken through.
The One-Eyed Ironclad Bear came through the northern gate like a landslide given flesh.
Wang Ben saw it from the wall and couldn't process what he was seeing. The beast was massive, easily fifteen meters at the shoulder, its hide covered in overlapping plates of bone-like armor that gleamed dull gray in the afternoon light. One eye socket was a ruined mess of scar tissue. The other burned with something that might have been pain, or rage, or simple animal desperation.
It moved wrong. That was what struck Wang Ben first. A creature that size should have moved with the confident power of an apex predator. Instead, it lurched and stumbled, favoring its left side where dark blood matted its armored hide. It crashed through a merchant's stall without seeming to notice, sending debris flying in every direction.
[THREAT ANALYSIS]
[Species: Ironclad Bear (variant)]
[Rank: 4 Peak (Core Formation 9, half-step Mortal Shedding equivalent)]
[Status: Severely wounded, exhausted, starving]
[Behavior: Flight response, not aggression]
[Assessment: Subject is refugee, not attacker]
[Note: Wound patterns suggest conflict with superior predator]
[WARNING: Wounded Rank 4 beast remains extremely dangerous]
A core formation equivalent beast. In the middle of Redstone City.
Cultivators scattered before it, those with any sense of self-preservation fleeing to side streets and rooftops. The bear didn't pursue them. It barely seemed to see them. It simply kept moving, deeper into the city, as if some instinct was driving it to find shelter.
"It's running," Wang Ben breathed. "Even that thing is running."
Beside him, Wang Hao's face had gone the color of old bone. "Rank 4. We don't have... the City Lord is only mid-stage core formation. Patriarch Xue is early-stage at best. Who can..."
The answer came in a blur of motion.
Three figures descended from the inner city, moving with speed that Wang Ben's eyes could barely track. Huo Zhenyang, Patriarch of the Huo Clan, City Lord of Redstone. Xue Kuangdao, Patriarch of the Xue Clan. And between them, a woman Wang Ben didn't recognize, wearing robes of deep crimson trimmed with gold.
Late-stage core formation. At minimum.
"Reinforcements from Crimson Bastion," Wang Hao said, relief flooding his voice. "Thank the ancestors."
The three core formation cultivators hit the bear simultaneously. Huo Zhenyang's flames wrapped around its head, blinding its remaining eye. Xue Kuangdao's blade techniques carved bloody lines across its flanks, targeting the joints between armor plates. The woman from Crimson Bastion struck with a spear technique that punched through the beast's shoulder with a crack of shattering bone.
The bear roared. The sound shook the walls, rattled shutters, sent lesser cultivators stumbling. But it was a roar of pain and confusion, not defiance. The beast that should have been an apex predator was too wounded, too exhausted, too broken by whatever it had fled from to mount a real defense.
It died in pieces.
The three core formation cultivators took it apart with methodical precision, each strike calculated to weaken without triggering a death-rage. When the final blow came, the bear simply collapsed, its one eye finally going dark.
Wang Ben watched it fall and felt something cold settle in his chest.
What could do that to a Rank 4 beast? The question echoed in his mind, unanswerable. What's out there that can wound something like that and send it fleeing for its life?
[OBSERVATION: Rank 4 beast displayed behavior consistent with territorial displacement]
[Prior wounds indicate conflict with predator of equal or greater rank]
[Assessment: Unknown threat in deep Blackwood exceeds Rank 4 classification]
[Note: Insufficient data for further analysis]
[Recommendation: Avoid deep Blackwood until threat is identified]
The recommendation was unnecessary. Wang Ben had no intention of going anywhere near the deep forest. Not after what he'd felt today. Not after watching a core formation equivalent beast die like a frightened animal.
Evening found Wang Ben on the walls again, too exhausted to move, too wired to sleep.
The city had begun to settle into an uneasy calm. Hunting parties still roamed the streets, clearing out the last of the scattered beasts. The wounded were being treated. The dead were being counted. And in the clan compounds, Wang Ben knew, the political reckoning was only beginning.
Below him, a group of Huo Clan elders had gathered near a watch fire. Their voices drifted up to where he sat, fragments of conversation carried on the evening breeze.
"...never felt anything like it. That pressure..."
"The City Lord won't speak of it. Did you see his face when it happened? I thought he was going to collapse."
"Whatever's in that forest, it's beyond us. Beyond any of us."
"We stay out. Let Crimson Bastion handle it. Let the Domain Lord deal with whatever's killing beasts that could massacre our entire city."
"And if it decides to come here?"
Silence. No one had an answer for that.
Wang Ben closed his eyes and let the words wash over him. The core formation elders, the strongest cultivators in the city, and they were just as lost as everyone else. They'd felt the pressure from over two hundred kilometers away and it had nearly brought them to their knees.
A soul formation class entity. A Demon Sovereign, if the ancient classifications held true. Fighting something. Hunting something.
And they were nothing but insects caught in the shadow of titans.
"You should rest."
Wang Ben opened his eyes to find Zhao Yu settling onto the wall beside him.
"Can't," he admitted. "Every time I close my eyes, I feel it again. That pressure."
"Yeah." Zhao Yu was quiet for a moment. "My father used to tell stories about the deep Blackwood. Said there were things in there that could eat cities. I thought he was exaggerating."
"He wasn't."
"No." Zhao Yu shook his head slowly. "He wasn't."
They sat in silence as the stars emerged overhead, two young cultivators on the edge of something vast and terrible that they couldn't begin to understand.
Wang Ben found his father in the family quarters an hour before midnight.
Wang Tian sat alone in his workshop, the door open, a cold cup of tea forgotten on the workbench beside him. He was staring at nothing, his expression distant.
"Father?"
Wang Tian blinked, focusing on his son. "Ben'er. You should be sleeping."
"So should you."
A ghost of a smile crossed his father's face. "I suppose I should." He gestured to a cushion nearby. "Sit. There's... there's something I need to tell you."
Wang Ben sat.
"The investigation is already moving quickly," Wang Tian said. "Elder Liu's correspondence implicated him directly in my... in what happened to me nine years ago. He substituted a key foundational herb in my Grade 7 refinement attempt. The one that caused the backlash."
Wang Ben nodded. He'd expected as much.
"The Patriarch has declared the Xue Clan officially implicated. He's demanded an explanation from Patriarch Xue, and formal compensation." Wang Tian's voice was flat, reciting facts. "It won't come to war. Not now, not with the beast tide barely ended. But the political balance in this city has shifted. The Xue Clan will be paying for this for decades."
"And you?"
Wang Tian was silent for a long moment. When he spoke again, his voice was different. Softer. More uncertain.
"Nine years. For nine years, I believed I had failed. That my ambition had exceeded my skill, and I had paid the price for it." He looked at his hands. "I rebuilt myself from that belief. Learned to live with lesser goals. Accepted that I would never be what I once was."
"But you are," Wang Ben said quietly. "You're already past where you were before."
"Yes." Wang Tian's hands clenched. "And that's what I can't... I don't know what to do with this, Ben. Anger? I should feel anger. Relief? Vindication? I feel all of those things and none of them seem adequate."
He met his son's eyes.
"A serpent killed him. The same kind of serpent whose eggs he used to try to kill you. He died because of his own cruelty, not because of justice. Not because the truth came out. If not for a beast's vengeance, he would still be walking free, and I would still believe I had destroyed myself through my own weakness."
Wang Ben had no words of comfort. There were none that would fit.
"The universe is not fair," he said instead. "It doesn't give us the endings we want. But it gave you the truth. That has to count for something."
Wang Tian studied him for a long moment. Something shifted in his expression.
"When did you become so wise?"
Wang Ben almost laughed. Something vast stirred behind his thoughts, knowledge and understanding that he couldn't explain and didn't fully comprehend himself.
"I don't know," he said honestly. "But I'm trying to use it. Whatever it is."
His father nodded slowly. "Then keep using it. Whatever advantage you have, whatever secrets you're keeping, use them. The world we live in... after today, after what we all felt from that forest... I think we're going to need every advantage we can find."
He reached out and gripped Wang Ben's shoulder.
"Rest. Tomorrow, we start rebuilding. All of us."
Wang Ben returned to his room as the city finally fell into exhausted silence.
His body ached. His mind churned with everything he'd seen and heard and felt. Something flickered at the edges of his thoughts, an echo of cold void and ancient darkness, knowledge that shouldn't be his yet somehow was.
A Demon Sovereign had died. An ancient power had been erased from existence. And in the aftermath, a war had begun that would reshape the entire region.
He was a mid-stage body refinement cultivator. A speck. An insect.
But he had knowledge that no one else possessed. A System that analyzed what others could only fear. And a family that was finally, after nine long years, beginning to heal.
[STATUS UPDATE]
[Body Tempering Pill absorption: 18.3%]
[Physical enhancement: +31% baseline]
[Current cultivation: Body Refinement Stage 6 (mid-stage, advancing)]
[Projected advancement to Stage 7: 4-6 days]
[Note: Absorption rate exceeded projections due to combat stress]
Wang Ben lay back on his bed and stared at the ceiling.
Somewhere in the deep Blackwood, something terrible was hunting. The beasts had fled before it. The cultivators feared it. Even the core formation experts who ruled this city had no answers.
But answers existed. Somewhere in the fragments of memories that weren't his own, in the vast database the System was slowly rebuilding, there were answers. He just had to survive long enough to find them.
One step at a time, he told himself. Survive first. Grow stronger. Find the truth.
And maybe, somehow, find a way to stop what's coming.
Sleep came slowly, but when it came, it was deep and dreamless.
For now, that was enough.
END CHAPTER 21