Dawn of the third day brought fire.
Wang Ben woke to the distant thunder of techniques clashing, the compound walls trembling with impacts that shook dust from the ceiling. He was on his feet before he was fully awake, instincts born of two days of battle overriding the exhaustion that had dragged him into unconsciousness only hours before.
The mercenaries had begun their main assault.
He reached the command post as the sun crested the eastern wall, painting the sky in shades of blood and gold. The formation array on the central table flickered with activity, blue and red markers dancing in patterns that told a story of desperation.
"They're pushing on three fronts," Elder Wang Hui reported, his voice tight. "Northern gate, western approach, and the secured eastern compound we took on the first day."
"The eastern compound?" Wang Ben moved to the array, studying the positions. "That's where our supply lines run."
"Exactly. They're not trying to take it back. They're trying to cut us off from it."
Wang Ben traced the attack patterns with his finger. The mercenaries weren't fighting like the Xue Clan regulars. They weren't probing or testing. They were committing everything, burning through resources at a rate that couldn't be sustained.
Unless they didn't need to sustain it.
"They're trying to end this today," he said.
Wang Hui's expression confirmed it. "The Grand Elder is engaging their lead cultivator at the western gate. The Patriarch is holding the northern approach. If either falls..."
He didn't need to finish the sentence.
The western gate was chaos given form.
Wang Ben had been ordered to stay at the command post, to continue feeding observations to the coordinators. He'd lasted less than an hour before the reports became too fragmentary, too delayed to be useful. He needed to see.
He found a vantage point on the inner wall, high enough to observe while staying clear of the techniques that screamed through the air below. What he saw made his blood run cold.
Grand Elder Wang Feng was losing.
The mercenary leader was a mountain of a man. Wang Ben couldn't sense cultivation directly, but he could see the way cultivators on the walls flinched when the mercenary unleashed techniques, the way even foundation establishment elders gave ground. Mid-stage core formation, but fighting like someone with decades of battlefield experience. He moved with the casual confidence of someone who had killed cultivators far stronger than his current opponent appeared to be.
Wang Feng fought with everything he had. Techniques blazed from his hands, formations sprang to life beneath his feet, defensive barriers flickered and reformed with desperate speed. But every exchange pushed him back another step. Every clash left him a little slower, a little weaker.
This is wrong, Wang Ben thought. Wang Feng is mid-stage core formation. This mercenary is the same level. The gap shouldn't be this wide.
[OBSERVATION: Grand Elder Wang Feng - combat output inconsistent with known cultivation level]
[Analysis: Power output approximately 23% below expected parameters for mid-stage core formation]
[Hypothesis: Deliberate suppression OR prior injury affecting performance]
[Note: Unable to determine which without additional data]
The System's analysis matched his own instincts. Something was wrong with the Grand Elder's performance. He was fighting like a man holding back, or a man already wounded.
Neither option was good.
Below, the mercenary leader pressed his advantage. A massive technique gathered in his hands, spiritual energy condensing into something that made the air itself scream.
"Your clan's reputation exceeds its reality," the mercenary called out, his voice carrying across the battlefield. "I expected more from the famous Wang Feng."
Wang Feng's response was lost in the roar of techniques, but Wang Ben saw him stumble. Saw the defensive formation around him flicker.
Saw the killing blow begin its descent.
No.
Wang Ben's hand went to his chest, where the Golden Bell Shield Talisman waited. Too far. Even if he could reach the Grand Elder, the talisman couldn't block a core formation attack. He was body refinement. He was nothing in this fight.
He could only watch.
The mercenary's technique fell like divine judgment, a pillar of compressed force that would crush Wang Feng into nothing, that would—
Wang Feng moved.
Not a dodge. Not a desperate block. Something else entirely. The air around him changed, power expanding outward in a wave that made the mercenary's attack shatter like glass against stone.
The pressure that followed made Wang Ben's knees buckle. Made the cultivators on the walls gasp and stagger. Made the mercenary leader's confident smile freeze, then crack, then shatter into something very close to fear.
"You—" the mercenary started.
"I grew tired of pretending," Wang Feng said. His voice was calm. Almost gentle. "The Xue Clan based their calculations on intelligence that was... outdated."
He stepped forward. The ground cracked beneath his feet.
"I am not mid-stage core formation. I haven't been for some time."
Five nights ago, in the quiet hours before dawn, Wang Feng had sat in Wang Tian's eastern workshop.
The younger man's hands were steady as he prepared the Coldvein Lotus solution, the same technique that had healed his own meridians weeks before, now adapted for a different purpose. Not healing, but enhancement. Not repair, but transformation.
"This will hurt," Wang Tian had warned.
"I've survived worse." And he had. The miasma that should have killed him in the Blackwood thirty years past. The decades of watching the clan decline while enemies circled. The guilt of what he'd asked Wang Tian to sacrifice for the clan's survival.
Physical pain was nothing.
The treatment had taken three nights. Wang Tian worked without rest, burning through the clan's reserves of Coldvein Lotus, the precious flowers that Wang Ben had helped secure at the auction. Each application sent ice through Wang Feng's meridians, cold so intense it felt like fire.
And when it was done, when he finally stood on the morning of the fourth day, something had changed.
"No longer mid-stage," Wang Tian had said, examining him with the careful eye of a master alchemist. "Solidly late-stage now. Perhaps peak, if you push."
"Will the Xue Clan's spy know?"
"Wang Rui left three days before your treatment began. His masters will base their calculations on your old strength." Wang Tian's eyes had held something cold. Something that reminded Wang Feng, uncomfortably, of the boy who had once defied Elder Liu to save his crippled father. "Let them discover their error on the battlefield."
Patriarch Wang Tiexin had gone next. Then the senior elders. Wang Tian worked through the final days of the grace period like a man possessed, treating cultivator after cultivator while his son trained with the Dao Clan heir.
"The clan will owe you a debt it can never repay," Wang Feng had told him.
Wang Tian had only shaken his head. "The clan gave me a son. A wife. A purpose when I thought I had none. This is not debt. This is family."
Now, on the third day of war, that family's secret was about to become very, very public.
Wang Feng advanced, and the mercenary leader retreated.
It was the reverse of everything that had happened moments before. Each step the Grand Elder took, the mercenary matched with a step backward. Each technique Wang Feng unleashed, the mercenary barely blocked.
"Late-stage," the mercenary breathed. "You're late-stage core formation. How? Our intelligence was clear—"
"Your intelligence was what we wanted it to be."
Wang Feng's next technique didn't give the mercenary time to respond. A formation materialized beneath his enemy's feet, arrays of binding force that the man shattered with brute power but not before losing precious moments of reaction time. Wang Feng was already moving, already striking, already demonstrating the gap between mid-stage and late-stage that the mercenary had thought he understood from the other side.
One realm stage. In the higher realms, one stage could mean decades of additional cultivation. It could mean the difference between victory and annihilation.
The mercenary fought well. Better than well. He was clearly experienced, clearly dangerous, clearly someone who had maximized every advantage his mid-stage cultivation could offer. But Wang Feng had been fighting since before this man was born. Had survived wars that made this clan conflict look like a children's game.
And now, finally, he was fighting without chains.
The end came swiftly. A final exchange of techniques, a moment where the mercenary overcommitted to an attack he thought would land, and Wang Feng was inside his guard. A palm strike to the chest. A formation activating around the mercenary's feet, locking him in place for the crucial half-second.
The second palm strike shattered something in the mercenary's chest. He went to his knees.
"Tell your employers," Wang Feng said, looking down at his defeated enemy, "that they miscalculated."
The news spread through the battlefield like wildfire.
Wang Ben watched from the walls as the momentum shifted, as the alliance forces that had been giving ground suddenly found new strength. The mercenaries weren't broken, not yet, but their confidence was. Their leader had fallen. The enemy they'd been hired to destroy was stronger than promised.
And then word came from the northern gate.
Wang Ben heard it from a messenger who arrived breathless on the wall, shouting the news to anyone who would listen. The Patriarch had been struggling against a mercenary captain for the better part of an hour. Wang Tiexin was older than Wang Feng, less martially inclined, more focused on formations and clan politics than direct combat. Against a dedicated fighter, he should have been losing.
He had been losing. Right up until the moment news of Wang Feng's victory reached him.
Then everything changed.
"The clan's secret," the Patriarch had declared, loud enough for the surrounding cultivators to hear, "was not a single breakthrough. It was a restoration."
The mercenary captain barely had time to understand before the Patriarch demonstrated the difference between early-stage and mid-stage core formation. The fight lasted less than a minute, or so the messenger claimed.
[ANALYSIS: Wang Clan power structure reassessment required]
[Previous data: Patriarch early-stage core formation, Grand Elder mid-stage core formation]
[Updated data: Patriarch mid-stage core formation (confirmed), Grand Elder late-stage core formation (confirmed)]
[Probability of additional hidden advancements among Wang Clan cultivators: 78%]
[Note: Frost Meridian Enhancement technique (Coldvein Lotus soak) appears to have been administered clan-wide]
Wang Ben stared at the System's analysis, pieces falling into place. His father's cryptic words the night before. The Grand Elder's strange underperformance in the early fighting. The confidence that had lurked beneath the war council's worried calculations.
"The elders prepared for this. More than the Xue Clan knows."
His father had done this. Not just treating Wang Feng and the Patriarch, but an entire clan's worth of cultivators. The Coldvein Lotus technique that had healed Wang Tian's meridians weeks ago, turned into a weapon of strategic deception.
The Xue Clan had based their entire war plan on intelligence that was weeks out of date. They'd hired mercenaries to tip a balance that had already shifted. They'd committed everything to a battle they had already lost.
Wang Ben should have felt relief. Joy, even. Instead, he felt something colder settle in his chest.
If this is the hidden strength... what are we still afraid of?
Shen Ruoxi's warning echoed in his mind. Something is coming. Something that will make today's fighting look like children squabbling over toys.
The mercenaries weren't the real threat. The Xue Clan wasn't the real threat.
Something else was.
The tide turned completely by midday.
With both their core formation anchors defeated, the mercenary company began to retreat. They were veterans; they knew when a commission had become unwinnable. Better to retreat, regroup, and renegotiate than to die for employers who had given them bad intelligence.
The Xue Clan forces, watching their hired saviors pull back, began to waver. Some held their positions. Others, seeing the writing on the wall, simply stopped fighting. By the time the sun reached its zenith, the morning's desperate three-front assault had become a rout.
Wang Ben found his father in the eastern workshop.
Wang Tian sat on the floor, back against the wall, looking more exhausted than Wang Ben had ever seen him. Empty vials surrounded him, the remnants of the Coldvein Lotus solutions he'd prepared for who knew how many treatments.
"You knew," Wang Ben said.
"I knew."
"All those nights you worked late. The 'meditation sessions' the Grand Elder was taking. The Patriarch's 'retreat for contemplation.'"
"All treatments." Wang Tian's smile was thin. "The clan's entire foundation establishment and above. Anyone whose meridians could handle it."
"How many?"
"Seventeen." Wang Tian closed his eyes. "Seventeen cultivators, enhanced beyond their previous limits. The Patriarch up a full stage. The Grand Elder the same. Six elders with lesser but still significant improvements. The rest..." He shrugged. "Minor enhancements. Strengthened foundations. Faster recovery."
"And you did this alone."
"Your mother helped with preparations when she could. And you—" Wang Tian opened his eyes, meeting his son's gaze. "You gave us the time. The counterintelligence operation. The false information fed to Wang Rui. Every day the Xue Clan waited, believing they understood our strength, was another day I had to work."
Wang Ben sat down beside his father. The workshop smelled of lotus flowers and exhaustion, of sacrifice and family.
"You saved the clan."
"We saved the clan." Wang Tian's hand found his shoulder. "You with the counterintelligence work, buying us time. Me with the only gift I have left. Your mother with her courage. The Grand Elder with his willingness to deceive even his own forces." He laughed softly. "It took all of us."
"The war isn't over."
"No. But today we proved something. To the Xue Clan. To the city. To ourselves." Wang Tian's grip tightened. "The Wang Clan is not a wounded wolf waiting to die. We are still dangerous. We can still fight."
Wang Ben wanted to believe him. Wanted to let the day's victory wash away the fear that had been building since Shen Ruoxi's warning.
But he couldn't shake the feeling that this was just the beginning.
"Father," he said slowly. "The Xue Clan's external funding. The Crimson Bastion connection. Whoever is backing them... they won't stop because we won one battle."
"No. They won't."
"So what comes next?"
Wang Tian was quiet for a long moment. When he spoke, his voice was heavy with the weight of experience.
"That depends on how desperate our enemies become. We've just proven we're stronger than they expected. That means they'll either cut their losses... or escalate to something we haven't seen yet."
Something that will make today's fighting look like children squabbling over toys.
"Get some rest, Father," Wang Ben said, rising. "I think we're going to need everyone at their best."
"Where are you going?"
"To find out what the Xue Clan does next."
He found Zhao Yu in the recovery area again, this time sitting upright and looking almost healthy. His friend's face broke into a grin when he saw Wang Ben approach.
"Did you see it? The Grand Elder's fight?"
"I saw."
"Late-stage core formation! This whole time, he was—" Zhao Yu shook his head in wonder. "Everyone's talking about it. The whole compound. The Patriarch too. How did they—"
"My father." The words came out quiet but steady. "The Coldvein Lotus treatments. He's been doing them for days. Weeks, maybe."
Zhao Yu's expression shifted from excitement to something deeper. "Your father healed their meridians? Like he healed his own?"
"Better than his own. Enhanced them." Wang Ben sat on the bench beside his friend. "He's been working himself to exhaustion every night while the rest of us prepared for war in other ways. And today, all that work paid off."
"Your family," Zhao Yu said slowly. "First your father's alchemy. Now this." He shook his head. "A year ago, people whispered that the Wang Clan was finished. That you were all just waiting for the Xue Clan to deliver the killing blow."
"And now?"
"Now?" Zhao Yu laughed. "Now people are whispering that the Wang Clan was playing dead. That you've been hiding strength this whole time, waiting for the right moment to reveal it."
"Is that better or worse?"
"Better. Much better." Zhao Yu's smile faded slightly. "But it also means you're a threat now. A real one. Whatever the Xue Clan was planning, whatever their backers wanted... they won't just walk away from this."
Wang Ben nodded. He'd reached the same conclusion.
"The mercenaries are retreating. The Xue Clan's regular forces are in disarray. But their external backing..."
"Still unknown."
"Still dangerous."
They sat in silence for a moment, letting the weight of the day's events settle over them. Victory, yes. But not the end. Never the end.
"What happens tomorrow?" Zhao Yu asked finally.
Wang Ben thought of his father's words. Thought of Shen Ruoxi's warning. Thought of all the pieces that still didn't quite fit together.
"I don't know," he admitted. "But I intend to be ready for it."
That night, as the compound celebrated their unexpected triumph, Wang Ben stood on the outer wall and watched the distant Xue compound.
No signal fires burned there tonight. No messengers rode out seeking reinforcement or retreat. The compound sat in darkness, licking its wounds, contemplating its failures.
What will you do? he wondered. When your mercenaries abandon you. When your allies see your weakness. When the strength you thought you had proves insufficient.
Will you surrender? Will you negotiate?
Or will you do something desperate?
The wind carried no answers. Only the distant sounds of celebration from below, and the cold certainty that this wasn't over.
Somewhere in that dark compound, the Xue Clan was making decisions that would shape the rest of this war. Somewhere beyond the city walls, powers Wang Ben didn't fully understand were watching and calculating.
And somewhere in the shadows of the city, Shen Ruoxi waited for the entertainment she'd promised herself.
Something is coming.
Wang Ben stayed on the wall until the stars wheeled overhead and the celebrations faded into exhausted sleep. He stayed because he knew, with a certainty that came from dreams he couldn't recall and instincts he couldn't explain, that the third day's victory was not an ending.
It was a provocation.
And whatever came next would make today look like a preliminary bout.
END OF CHAPTER 43