The Singing Steelbloom was a patient screaming in a locked room. Lin Feng's task: build a better room.
Yan Meixiang's visit had injected a shot of pure adrenaline into his work. The resonance chamber was no longer an abstract puzzle, it was a lifeline. He spent the remaining hours of daylight in the scrap yard with a feverish intensity, his Conscious Focus partitioning his mind to near-breaking point.
Layer One: Physical Design. The chamber needed to be acoustically perfect. Not for sound, but for spiritual vibration. He settled on a design resembling a double-layered flowerpot. The inner layer would be thin, resonant White Iron, shaped to cradle the bloom's base and stem. The outer layer would be Singing Sandstone, carved with channels to dampen chaotic harmonics and direct specific frequencies. Between the two layers, he would suspend a thin film of Liquid Mercury not as a solid, but as a constantly shifting, self-leveling fluid that would absorb destructive interference and unpredictably reflect constructive waves back into the system. It was an insane idea. Mercury was toxic, reactive, and nearly impossible to control spiritually. That's why he needed it: chaos as a tuning element.
Layer Two: Conceptual Framework. He spent five Karma points to have the Ledger perform a deep vibrational analysis of the two conflicting notes 'Sword's Clarity' and 'Shield's Lament.' The data returned wasn't musical notation, it was a map of spiritual stress vectors and conceptual intent. The Sword note was all forward thrust, penetration, singularity. The Shield note was encompassing resilience, circularity, plurality. To harmonize them, he needed to find a conceptual bridge. The Ledger suggested one: 'Unbreakable Blade.' A concept where resilience and sharpness were not opposites, but the same thing a sword that could not be shattered because it had absorbed the principle of the shield into its own being.
Layer Three: Spiritual Execution. He had no power to enchant. He couldn't carve formation arrays. But Master Mu's scrap yard had materials that held residual memory of such things. He found slivers of Shattered Formation Crystals, their internal patterns broken but still holding ghostly impressions of intent. He wouldn't power them; he would use them as templates, pressing them into the soft sandstone as he carved, hoping to imprint a faint directional bias onto the channels.
He worked through the night in the small, stone alcove Master Mu permitted him. His fingers grew raw from shaping metal and stone with crude tools. The mercury was the worst, requiring agonizing care to contain within the thin clay mold he'd created to form its cavity. One spill would poison the soil and likely him.
By dawn, he had a rough, ugly, two-layered vessel. It looked like a child's failed pottery project. But when he gently tapped the white iron inner layer, it rang with a clear, pure tone. The sandstone hummed in response. The mercury, sealed within, was a silent, deadly promise.
He brought it to the Singing Steelbloom as the first light touched the Quiet Peak. Master Mu was already there, sipping a cup of steaming liquid that smelled of burnt herbs and ozone. She watched, saying nothing, as he carefully excavated the soil around the bloom's roots, placed the chamber into the hole, and nestled the plant's root ball within the iron cradle. He filled the gaps with a mixture of powdered sandstone and iron filings a conductive medium. The bloom, now housed in its strange new pot, continued its discordant shudder.
"An external scaffold," Mu Qing finally said, her voice dry. "You seek to manipulate its environment to force a change in its self-perception."
"Not force, Master. Persuade," Lin Feng corrected, wiping sweat from his brow. "The chamber provides a new set of acoustic boundaries. It will reflect the 'Shield's Lament' back at itself in a modified way, and filter the 'Sword's Clarity.' The mercury introduces controlled chaos randomness that may break the deadlock of their conflict, allowing a new pattern to emerge."
"Or it may shatter the bloom entirely."
"That is a risk."
She nodded, neither approving nor disapproving. "Proceed."
Now came the most delicate part: the initiating resonance. The chamber needed to be "awakened" to the bloom's conflict, to begin its work. He couldn't infuse it with energy. But he could use a sympathetic vibrator.
From his pocket, he drew two items he'd prepared earlier: a thin, flexible shard of white iron, and a small, polished disc of sandstone. He held the iron shard against the bloom's stem, feeling the violent shudder of the Sword's Clarity. He let the vibration travel up his arm, a sharp, painful buzz. Then, he struck the sandstone disc sharply with the iron shard.
TING.
A clear, single note, devoid of conflict, rang out. It was the fundamental resonant frequency of the materials themselves, a blank slate.
He held the ringing disc against the outer sandstone layer of the chamber.
The chamber sang. A deep, complex hum resonated through the stone and metal, interacting with the chaotic mercury layer inside. The discordant grinding of the bloom seemed to hiccup. For a second, the two warring notes blurred, overlapping with the chamber's neutral hum.
Then the bloom's dissonance reasserted itself, slightly muffled by the chamber's walls, but now interacting with the chamber's own resonance. The sound in the air changed. It was no longer just a grinding conflict. It was a grinding conflict happening inside a bell. The chamber was coloring the disagreement, giving it a container, a shape.
It was not harmony. It was context.
"Interesting," Mu Qing murmured, her head tilted. "You have not cured the disease. You have given it a room with better acoustics. The patient is still ill, but perhaps now it can hear itself think."
That was exactly it. Lin Feng watched, his heart hammering. The bloom continued to tremble, but the fractures in its crystalline petals seemed to slow their propagation. The two notes, filtered and reflected by the chamber, began to develop faint, ghostly overtones third and fourth frequencies that were byproducts of their interaction within the new space.
He had bought time. And he had created a laboratory for the bloom's own internal conflict to potentially resolve itself.
"Monitor it," Mu Qing commanded. "Three times a day. Document every shift in frequency, every change in fracture pattern. This is no longer treatment. This is an experiment in emergent spiritual properties." She fixed him with her slate-grey eyes. "You have moved from gardener to lab assistant. Do not let the new title go to your head. It is merely a more precise form of janitor."
He bowed. "Understood, Master."
He spent the rest of the day there, seated cross-legged before the now-humming chamber, his senses stretched to their limit. He noted when the 'Shield's Lament' note gained a slight, piercing edge after bouncing off the iron. He noted when the 'Sword's Clarity' developed a faint, reverberant tail after passing through the mercury-damped sandstone. They were influencing each other. Not merging, but conversing.
It was a start.
As dusk fell, he left the herbarium, his mind buzzing with data and exhaustion. He had to shift gears. Tomorrow was his first day as a tournament scout, and more pressingly, the day after was his return to the Frozen Jade Pavilion. The Glacial Heart problem loomed, vast and cold.
He walked the now-familiar path down the mountain, the discordant memory of the bloom replaced by the imagined, deeper discord of Su Lingxi's treasure. Reconciliation of stillness and storm…
His thoughts were shattered by a voice from the shadows of a bamboo grove lining the path.
"Lin Feng."
It wasn't Yan Meixiang's honeyed poison. It was raw, grating hatred. Zhang Hai stepped onto the path, blocking his way. He looked worse than before unshaven, his eyes bloodshot, his robes disheveled. The aura of defeated bully was gone, replaced by something more feral, a cornered rat with teeth.
"Senior Brother Zhang," Lin Feng said, stopping, his spiritual dampening field snapping tight. He kept his voice neutral. "This path is narrow. Please, go ahead." He gestured for Zhang Hai to pass, offering no confrontation.
Zhang Hai didn't move. "You think you're clever. You think you've won. With your little notes and your brown-nosing in the gardens." He took a step forward. The scent of cheap liquor wafted from him. "You took everything from me. My standing. My followers. My face."
"The sect is vast, Senior Brother. There are other paths." Lin Feng kept his posture relaxed, non-threatening, his mind analyzing distances, angles, possible weapons. Zhang Hai's hands were empty, but clenched into white-knuckled fists. His spiritual energy felt unstable, jagged the sign of a cultivation on the verge of deviation from rage and drink.
"Other paths? For trash like me? You made sure of that!" Another step. They were now three paces apart. "But you know what? I have one thing left. The one thing guys like you, with your sneaky plans, never have."
"And what is that?"
"Nothing to lose."
Zhang Hai lunged. Not with a refined technique, but with a clumsy, full-bodied tackle, fueled by pure, desperate malice. It was the attack of someone who had given up on winning and only wanted to hurt.
Lin Feng didn't try to meet it. He sidestepped, using the minimal movement his Conscious Focus allowed, letting Zhang Hai's momentum carry him past. As the bully stumbled, Lin Feng's foot shot out, not to kick, but to hook Zhang Hai's ankle, adding a tiny vector to his already off-balance charge.
Zhang Hai crashed into the thick bamboo at the path's edge with a crunch of snapping stalks and a grunt of pain. He rolled, coming up with a broken, sharp-ended bamboo shaft in his hand, his face a mask of fury and splinters.
"I'LL KILL YOU!" he roared, charging again, the bamboo spear aimed at Lin Feng's throat.
This was no longer a bullying. This was attempted murder. And they were alone.
Lin Feng's options vanished. He couldn't outrun him in a straight line. He couldn't overpower him. His mind, cold and clear, presented the only solution, use the environment, and use Zhang Hai's own instability against him.
He didn't retreat. He stepped into the charge, inside the arc of the clumsy thrust. He caught Zhang Hai's wrist with both hands, not with strength, but with precise leverage, redirecting the force of the lunge. He pivoted, using Zhang Hai's own momentum to spin him around.
Then, Lin Feng did the one thing his five-year plan had taught him to do with conflicting energies: he introduced a chaotic buffer.
He released Zhang Hai's wrist and shoved him, not away, but sideways, toward the steep, rocky slope that fell away from the other side of the path. At the same moment, he reached for his own chaotic spiritual energy not to project it, but to let a wisp of its discordant, conflicting nature leak out, aimed not as an attack, but as a spiritual flashbang directly into Zhang Hai's face.
For a cultivator already on the edge of Qi deviation, whose spiritual sense was ragged with hate and alcohol, the sudden burst of pure, conflicting spiritual noise was devastating.
Zhang Hai screamed, clutching his head, his charge dissolving into a stagger. His foot came down on loose scree at the path's edge. He slipped. The bamboo spear fell from his hand as he windmilled his arms, his eyes wide with sudden, sobering terror.
He went over the edge.
Lin Feng stood frozen, listening to the sounds of tumbling rock and a single, short cry that was cut off by a heavy, wet thud. Then silence.
He walked slowly to the edge and looked down. Zhang Hai lay fifteen feet below on a jagged outcrop, his body bent at an unnatural angle, motionless. A dark pool began to spread beneath his head.
Lin Feng felt nothing. No triumph. No guilt. Only a cold, analytical assessment. Threat neutralized. Permanently.
He scanned the area. No witnesses. The dusk was deep. He listened for a full minute. Only the wind in the bamboo.
Carefully, he climbed down to the outcrop. He checked for a pulse. None. The fall had broken his neck. He searched the body quickly, finding a small pouch with a few low-grade spirit stones and a token for the ore-smelting hall. He took the stones and token. He then rearranged the rocks around the body, making it look more like a slip and fall from higher up the slope. He tossed the bamboo spear into the ravine below.
He climbed back to the path, brushed the dirt from his robes, and continued walking, his pace steady. His heart rate never elevated. The Conscious Focus held everything the memory, the image, the act in a bubble of pure observation, detached from emotion.
It wasn't until he was halfway back to the dormitory that the Ledger's message appeared, stark and simple.
Karmic Event Logged: Elimination of Persistent Low-Level Antagonist via Environmental Manipulation & Exploitation of Spiritual Instability.
Trope Subversion: 'Bully's Final Reckoning' resolved not by heroic combat, but by tragic, self-inflicted accident.
Karma Points Gained: +6.
Current Karma Balance: 24.
He had spent five, earned six. A net gain of one point for a man's life.
He stopped walking, looking at his hands in the twilight. They were clean. He had not struck the killing blow. He had merely guided. Created the conditions. The cliff and Zhang Hai's own rage had done the rest.
It was the most profound perversion of all. He had turned a life-or-death confrontation into a clinical exercise in resource management, with the resource being a man's destructive momentum. He hadn't won a fight. He had optimized an outcome.
He entered the dormitory courtyard. The buzz of evening chatter washed over him. Someone was complaining about the lantern-cleaning duty. Another was excited about the tournament. Life, mundane and petty, went on.
He went to his pallet, lay down, and stared at the ceiling. The first chord of the Singing Steelbloom hummed in his memory, a fragile promise of harmony born from conflict.
The echo of Zhang Hai's final cry was a dissonant counterpoint, a reminder of the true, brutal nature of the world he was trying to master. He had survived another day. He had advanced his goals. But the cost of entry into the real game was being paid in a currency far more real than Karma points. He had just paid his first installment.
He closed his eyes. Tomorrow, he would be a scout. The day after, a therapist for a glacial heart. The work continued. The ledger remained open. And the quiet spot in the center of the storm grew quieter, and colder, with every entry.