The assault continued through the night.
Wang Ben lost track of time somewhere in the darkness, his awareness narrowing to the array's feedback mechanisms and the steady drain of qi from his reserves. Wang Tian had switched to active support during the seventh stretch, his foundation establishment cultivation providing a secondary power source that kept the formation work running when Wang Ben's own reserves threatened to fail.
Four entities pressed against the barriers. Four different approaches to the same goal. The Wangliang's shadows reached and retreated, testing the anti-deception protocols. The Taotie's hungry void pulled at the array's edges, seeking any weakness in the satiation countermeasures. The Hundun's contradictions pressed against the logical anchors, trying to dissolve the reality that kept Ruoxi's consciousness stable.
And the Tianma waited.
[ARRAY STATUS: Extended operation]
[Integrity: 78.4%]
[Power consumption: Critical - dual operator sustainment active]
[Entity assault: Coordinated, persistent]
[Subject breakthrough status: Approaching critical crystallization phase]
The crystallization phase. Wang Ben had read about it in the Chen Database fragments, the moment when a mortal shedding cultivator's consciousness either transformed into nascent soul or shattered into nothing. Everything before was preparation. Everything after was result. The crystallization itself was the instant of truth.
Through the array's feedback, he could see Ruoxi's spiritual projection reaching toward something beyond his perception. Her light had stabilized since the Identity Affirmation Protocol came online, but shadows still circled at its edges. The Tianma hadn't given up. It had simply changed tactics.
"You're so close."
The entity's voice was softer now, almost tender. It spoke as if to a friend, a confidant, someone it had known for centuries.
"Can you feel it? The transformation waiting for you? The power you've worked eight hundred years to achieve?"
Wang Ben watched the array's monitoring functions for any sign of renewed corruption. The Tianma wasn't attacking directly. It was simply... present. Waiting for the moment when Ruoxi's defenses would be weakest.
"You could have it all. The nascent soul crystallization. The transcendence. And freedom from the exhaustion that has haunted you for decades."
The breakthrough chamber had become a battlefield of invisible forces.
Wuyan hadn't moved from his position across the room, but his attention remained fixed on his sister's motionless form. The ancient cultivator's earlier threat still hung in the air, his promise to find out what Wang Ben truly was, but for now that investigation had been set aside. The immediate crisis demanded focus.
"She's close," Wuyan said quietly. "I can feel her cultivation shifting."
Wang Ben didn't respond. He could see more than Wuyan could sense through the array's feedback. Ruoxi's consciousness was extending toward something, stretching beyond the boundaries that had contained it for eight centuries. The nascent soul realm existed somewhere in that direction, a state of being that transcended mortal limitations.
But reaching for it meant leaving herself vulnerable.
"Let me help you."
The Tianma's voice carried genuine emotion, something that might have been compassion in a being capable of understanding what compassion meant.
"The crystallization hurts. I've watched so many fail because they couldn't endure the pain of transformation. But I can ease that pain. I can guide you through the moment of becoming."
[ALERT: Entity making renewed psychological contact with subject]
[Subject's spiritual projection showing signs of strain]
[Assessment: Crystallization attempt beginning]
Wang Ben strengthened the Identity Affirmation Protocol, pushing more qi into the resonance patterns that reminded Ruoxi who she was. But he couldn't fight her battle for her. The array could protect her body, could anchor her consciousness, could affirm her identity. The actual choice of what to become had to be hers.
"You've been so strong for so long. Don't you want to rest? Don't you want someone else to carry the weight, just for a moment?"
Through the array's feedback, Wang Ben glimpsed something he shouldn't have been able to see. A fragment of Ruoxi's awareness, filtered through formation circuits never designed for this kind of perception.
She was tired.
The Tianma wasn't lying about that. Eight centuries of existence, eight centuries of being the predator, the dangerous beauty, the ancient power that played with lesser beings. She had worn those masks for so long that they had become her face, and she didn't remember what lay beneath.
But the entity was wrong about what she wanted.
The offer came wrapped in understanding.
Shen Ruoxi stood at the edge of transformation, her consciousness stretched between what she had been and what she might become. The nascent soul realm waited ahead, a vast darkness full of potential and danger. Behind her, the mortal world she had dominated for centuries. And beside her, something that wore kindness like a mask even more convincing than her own.
"You don't have to pretend anymore."
The Tianma's presence was warm, welcoming, impossibly sympathetic. It knew her exhaustion because it had watched her for longer than she could imagine. It knew her fears because it had studied the shape of them in every cultivator who had ever reached this moment.
"The predator can be real. Not a performance. Not protection. Just who you are, completely and forever."
The offer was seductive because it was honest. She was tired of pretending. Tired of wearing masks that cut into her soul. The predator persona had protected her from a world that would destroy vulnerability, but protection came with a cost she had been paying for centuries.
"Accept me," the entity whispered. "Let me complete you. And you will never have to pretend again."
For a moment, she wavered.
The crystallization pain was beginning, the agony of consciousness trying to transform into something greater. Every instinct screamed to find relief, to accept any help that might ease the suffering. The Tianma was offering exactly what she wanted: an end to the exhaustion, the masks, the endless performance of being someone she wasn't sure she had ever been.
But.
There was a but.
Because the predator wasn't who she was. Not really. It was who she had become, who she had chosen to become, but the choosing was the point. She had built that mask herself, stone by stone, over eight centuries of survival. It was hers. And giving it to something else, letting something else make it real and permanent, would mean losing the only thing that had ever truly belonged to her.
Her choice.
"No."
The word rang through whatever space existed between flesh and transcendence, and the Tianma recoiled.
"What?"
"I said no." Shen Ruoxi gathered her consciousness, drew it back from the edge of surrender, and faced the thing that wanted to complete her. "The masks are mine. The exhaustion is mine. The choice to keep wearing them is mine. And I will not give that to you."
"But you're tired..."
"Yes." She didn't deny it. Couldn't deny it. "I'm tired. I've been tired for longer than most cultivator bloodlines survive. But the tiredness is still mine to bear. The burden is still mine to carry. And I would rather spend another eight centuries exhausted than spend eternity as something that chose for me."
The Tianma's warmth turned cold.
"You don't understand what you're rejecting."
"I understand exactly what I'm rejecting." Ruoxi turned toward the nascent soul realm, toward the transformation that waited with all its pain and danger and possibility. "I'm rejecting completion that comes from outside. I'm rejecting freedom that someone else defines. I'm rejecting the easy path that erases everything I've chosen to be."
She reached for the crystallization.
"If I'm going to become something new, I'll do it myself. On my terms. With my masks, my choices, my exhaustion included."
The pain hit like dying.
Wang Ben saw the moment through the array's feedback, a burst of light so intense that the formation circuits nearly overloaded.
Ruoxi's spiritual projection blazed, not with the gentle glow of maintained consciousness but with the searing brilliance of transformation. The shadows that had circled her edges were burned away, driven back by something that came from within rather than from the array's protection.
She had chosen.
[CRITICAL EVENT: Nascent soul crystallization in progress]
[Subject's consciousness undergoing fundamental transformation]
[Entity response: Withdrawal detected - all four manifestations retreating]
The Tianma's presence faded first, pulling back from the inner perimeter with what might have been disappointment or might have been something beyond mortal understanding. The Hundun's contradictions dissolved. The Taotie's hunger retreated to wherever hungry voids went when their prey proved indigestible. The Wangliang's shadows melted into ordinary darkness.
"The entities are withdrawing," Wang Ben reported, his voice hoarse from the long vigil. "All of them."
Wuyan didn't respond. His attention was fixed entirely on his sister, on the transformation happening within the array's protection.
The crystallization took longer than Wang Ben expected. The fragments he had read described it as instantaneous, a single moment when consciousness either became nascent soul or didn't. But Ruoxi's transformation unfolded in stages, each one visible through the array's feedback as a different quality of light.
First, the projection condensed. Eight centuries of spiritual cultivation compressed into something denser, more fundamental than mere consciousness. Then it began to change, the light taking on qualities that the array's formation circuits couldn't properly interpret. Colors that weren't colors. Dimensions that existed sideways to normal reality.
[TRANSFORMATION STATUS: In progress]
[Duration: Extended - subject appears to be incorporating rejected corruption patterns into nascent soul structure]
[Analysis: Subject is transforming on her own terms, as stated]
[Warning: This is unprecedented. Outcome uncertain.]
Wang Ben watched, helpless to do anything but maintain the array's protection while something beyond his understanding happened inside it.
"She's doing something different," he said. "The crystallization isn't following normal patterns."
"Ruoxi never followed normal patterns." Wuyan's voice was soft, almost gentle. "She always had to do everything her own way."
The light pulsed. Condensed. Transformed.
And then, between one heartbeat and the next, it was over.
Shen Ruoxi opened her eyes.
The meditation chamber came into focus slowly, as if the world itself needed time to adjust to what she had become. The formation arrays hummed around her, golden light fading as the need for protection diminished. Wang Ben stood at the chamber's edge, exhausted and pale, his qi reserves visibly depleted. Wang Tian supported his son with one hand, his own cultivation signature steady despite the long night.
And Wuyan.
Her brother stood across the chamber, his expression unreadable, his cultivation signature still completely hidden. But something in his posture had changed. The careful control had slipped, just slightly, revealing the ancient cultivator who had watched over her for nearly three thousand years.
"Ruoxi." His voice was steady, but she heard what lay beneath. Relief. Concern. The fear he would never admit to feeling.
"Brother." She rose from the meditation platform, and the movement felt different. Lighter. More fundamental. As if she had spent eight centuries wearing weights she hadn't known she was carrying, and now those weights were simply... gone.
[TRANSFORMATION COMPLETE]
[Subject Shen Ruoxi: Nascent Soul Stage 1]
[Physical status: Stable]
[Spiritual status: Integrated - subject's chosen identity preserved through crystallization]
[Note: Subject's nascent soul structure incorporates elements of resisted corruption, transformed into additional spiritual defense]
Wang Ben stared at the System's assessment, not quite believing what he was reading. She had incorporated the Tianma's corruption attempt into her transformation, not by accepting it but by rejecting it so completely that the rejection itself became part of her nascent soul.
She had used the entity's attack to make herself stronger.
"The array held." Ruoxi's voice was different too, carrying harmonics that hadn't existed before. "Your design saved my life, little formation master."
"You saved your own life." Wang Ben's response came automatically. "I just built the walls. You had to fight what came through them."
"A technicality." She smiled, and it was the predator's smile he had come to know, but there was something else beneath it now. Something that hadn't been visible before. "The first favor is complete."
Wuyan moved, crossing the chamber to stand before his sister. For a long moment, neither of them spoke. Then the ancient cultivator reached out and touched her shoulder, a gesture so rare that Wang Ben felt he was witnessing something private.
"Welcome back," Wuyan said.
"I never left." Ruoxi covered his hand with hers. "I just... became more of what I already was."
The siblings stood together in the aftermath of transformation, and Wang Ben felt the weight of the first favor lifting from his shoulders. He had built an array to protect a mortal shedding cultivator during nascent soul breakthrough. That array had held against four Youming entities, including one that exploited a gap in the design.
And Shen Ruoxi had survived.
[FIRST FAVOR: Complete]
[Wang Ben's debt to Shen Wuyan: Reduced from 3 favors to 2 favors]
[Note: Second and third favors remain undefined. Subject Shen Wuyan has indicated intent to investigate knowledge source.]
The dawn was breaking beyond the eastern windows, pale light filtering through the mountain fog. The longest night of Wang Ben's life was finally over.
But Wuyan's words from the darkness still echoed in his mind.
I don't know what you are, Wang Ben. I don't know where your knowledge comes from. But I'm going to find out.
The first favor was complete. The debt was reduced.
But the investigation was just beginning.
END OF CHAPTER 83