The road narrowed as Li Yun moved farther from the Black Crane Sect's shadow.
Low hills rose ahead, their slopes scarred by old excavation pits and collapsed spirit veins. The air carried a faint metallic tang—residual Qi that never fully dispersed. Places like this attracted trouble.
And trouble had already noticed him.
Li Yun slowed his pace, senses extended. The world pressed in gently now, no longer testing him with sudden spikes but with a constant awareness—eyes tracking from afar, intentions brushing against his aura and pulling back.
They're counting, he thought. Waiting to see how long I last.
The First Week
The first challenge came quietly.
At dusk on the second day, Li Yun entered a narrow ravine where the wind funneled sharply, distorting sound. He felt the formation activate an instant before it closed.
Stone pillars erupted from the ground, forming a crude sealing array. Chains of light snapped into place, cutting off retreat.
"Not bad," Li Yun said calmly.
Four cultivators stepped out from concealment. None hid their auras.
Two at Qi Condensation Late Stage.
Two at Foundation Establishment — Early Stage.
One of them smiled thinly. "Unanchored Stone," he said. "You're expensive."
Li Yun didn't answer.
He stepped forward.
The array tightened—then failed.
His Qi pressed outward in a steady, grinding wave, misaligning the formation nodes. One pillar cracked, then another.
The fight ended quickly.
One Foundation Establishment cultivator escaped, wounded.
The others did not.
Li Yun dismantled the array and walked on.
The Second Week
The world adapted.
Direct attacks stopped.
Instead, obstacles appeared.
Towns closed their gates early when he approached.
Trade caravans rerouted.
Prices doubled, then tripled.
Not hostility.
Avoidance.
Li Yun slept outside city walls and cultivated beneath open sky, Qi cycling evenly through his body. His half-step realm grew denser, not by advancement, but by repetition—pressure layered carefully upon pressure.
Each night, he tested the boundary.
Each morning, it held.
The Third Week
On the seventeenth day, he met resistance that did not retreat.
A group waited for him at a river crossing—seven cultivators in coordinated formation, robes marked with different insignias. Not a single faction.
A coalition.
Their leader spoke openly.
"You don't belong anywhere," she said. "That makes you unstable."
Li Yun stepped onto the river stones.
"Then don't stand near me," he replied.
They attacked together.
Qi techniques overlapped, refined and practiced, designed to overwhelm through coordination rather than raw force.
Li Yun felt pressure—real pressure—for the first time since leaving the sect.
He bled.
He adapted.
He broke the formation by targeting timing rather than power, slipping between techniques, disrupting rhythm. When the last cultivator fled, the river ran red.
Li Yun sat on the bank afterward, breathing steadily.
This is the cost, he thought. Visibility.
The Fourth Week
By the fourth week, rumors shifted.
He was no longer described as reckless.
He was described as persistent.
People stopped testing him casually.
Challenges became deliberate.
Planned.
Li Yun felt the difference immediately.
He began moving less predictably, altering routes, doubling back, spending days in desolate areas to let pressure dissipate. His Qi control sharpened under constant awareness, reactions becoming instinctive.
Half-step Foundation Establishment no longer felt unstable.
It felt loaded.
A Message Without Words
On the twenty-eighth day, Li Yun found a marker stone placed deliberately at a crossroads.
No seal.
No name.
Just a single line carved deep:
ONE MONTH REMAINS.
Li Yun stared at it for a long moment, then erased it with a touch.
The World Tests Patience
The fifth and sixth weeks blurred together.
Li Yun fought twice more.
Once against a lone Foundation Establishment cultivator who wanted his reputation.
Once against a beast mutated by broken spirit veins.
Both times, he prevailed.
Both times, he felt the boundary strain.
Not from weakness.
From readiness.
His Qi pressed inward after each fight, dense and insistent, trying to lock into a higher structure.
Li Yun resisted.
Not yet, he told himself.
Too many eyes.
A Shift in Tone
By the seventh week, something changed.
Pressure didn't lessen—but it sharpened.
Encounters stopped being probes.
They became appointments.
People waited where he would pass.
Times were chosen deliberately.
Witnesses were absent.
Li Yun understood.
Someone is organizing this.
He welcomed it.
The Eighth Week
On the fifty-sixth day, Li Yun reached a barren plateau where the wind cut low and constant. He felt the presence waiting for him long before he arrived.
Huo Sen stepped out from behind a fractured stone pillar, spear resting against his shoulder.
"You're still alive," Huo Sen said.
Li Yun nodded.
"Barely."
Huo Sen smiled faintly.
"Good. That means you didn't hide."
Li Yun studied him.
"You came early."
Huo Sen shrugged. "The world's getting crowded."
A Conversation, Not a Duel
They didn't fight.
They sat on opposite ends of the plateau, wind pulling at their robes.
"You're close," Huo Sen said. "Too close to linger like this."
Li Yun didn't deny it.
"If you advance now," Huo Sen continued, "you'll draw attention you can't outrun."
"And if I don't?" Li Yun asked.
Huo Sen's eyes sharpened.
"Then someone will force it."
Silence stretched.
Li Yun exhaled slowly.
"So the question is where," he said.
Huo Sen nodded once.
"There are places where advancement is… tolerated."
Li Yun stood.
"Show me one."
Toward the Next Threshold
They didn't travel together.
Huo Sen walked ahead, far enough to avoid association.
Li Yun followed at a distance.
The land shifted subtly as they moved eastward—Qi growing denser, less chaotic, layered with old formations half-buried by time.
Li Yun felt it.
A place that doesn't care who advances, he thought.
He closed his eyes briefly, steadying his breath.
Three months, he reminded himself.
I'm still standing.