Solitude does not inherently beg for sympathy, and here, amidst the flat, hard-packed earth of the clearing, none of the examinees dared—or even truly wished—to offer any. What right had the vanquished to speak of courage?
The fading light of the late afternoon bled across the sky, casting long, distorted shadows from the gathered crowds. The air still thrummed with the residual energy of desperate spells and the metallic scent of blood, now mingling with the cleaner, astringent odor of healing tonics and antiseptics. On the worn stone steps of the outer wall, a single figure sat apart, a silhouette against the vast, empty plain. Yao. In her hands, a wedge of crimson watermelon glistened, its sweet, summery fragrance a stark, almost absurd contrast to the grim aftermath surrounding her. She spooned a bite slowly, the juice cool on her tongue, her gaze distant and unreadable. The victory was absolute, yet it settled around her shoulders like a heavy, lonely cloak.
Then, a presence approached, not with stealth, but with a deliberate, casual stride. The stones grated softly under his boots. It was Que Baimo. He sat beside her without invitation, the space between them charged with unspoken calculations. A faint, perpetual smile played on his lips, not quite reaching his eyes, which held the sharp, assessing gleam of a player who had lost a major hand but hadn't yet left the table.
"My question remains," he began, his voice conversational, as if discussing the weather over a garden wall. "How did you see through me?"
Around them, the hum of conversations dipped. Ears, both human and enhanced, subtly tuned in their direction. Yao didn't seem to care. She took her time swallowing, the sound of the spoon scraping the rind oddly loud in the lull. Finally, she turned her head just enough to look at him, her own eyes like chips of polished obsidian, reflecting nothing.
"To alter the foundational arrays across seven floors in that window of time," she said, her words measured and soft, "required either long-range manipulation—like my tendrils or solidified light—or required physically being everywhere at once. The former implies a mastery so profound that needing Wei Ran as a middleman would be pointless. Such a person could harvest points directly."
She took another deliberate bite, the crunch satisfyingly crisp. "So, it was the latter. A runner. But not a prominent runner. The Li Cangs and Xie Yiyuans of the world move with purpose, with entourages, holding positions or leading assaults. Their patterns are… predictable. Not this scattered, solitary scurrying."
Que Baimo's smile didn't flicker. "A reasonable deduction. Yet, that narrows it to hundreds."
"Your partner needed to be someone unafraid of Xie Yiyuan's potential betrayal, and more importantly, unafraid of sitting across from a creature like Wei Ran." Yao's voice dropped, becoming almost intimate. "That requires a certain… unassailable background. Or the illusion of one. Yet, this person also needed to appear weak, insignificant. Xie Yiyuan is cautious. He doesn't make leap-of-faith alliances in the middle of an exam. He works with known quantities. You've known each other a long time."
For the first time, a faint tension touched the corners of Que Baimo's eyes. "Even granting that, and assuming this person is from one of the four great clans, why me?"
Yao finally looked away, back to her melon. "Xie Yiyuan had a map. He would share that advantage only with someone within his sphere of control, or someone whose leash he held. A high-born legitimate heir? He can't control them. A hidden, talented illegitimate son? Now that's a tool. Useful, but disposable. If you turned, he could always expose you to your family's main branch and ally with them instead. A tidy bit of leverage."
She spoke as if commenting on the melon's sweetness. "But that was just theory. The points ledger confirmed it."
"Points?" Que Baimo's laugh was light, genuine. "I controlled my point gains meticulously. A few here, a few there, fighting alongside others. To have none would be as suspicious as your own… spectacular finale."
"During the second-floor chaos," Yao continued, ignoring him, "you, Xie Yiyuan, and I were all present. I had already pinpointed him. By tracking the rhythm of his kills, the ebb and flow of his points, I could infer the pattern of his secret partner's gains. You can mask your own score, but you can't mask the shared heartbeat of a coordinated team. The rhythm matched yours." She finally turned fully to him, her expression bland. "A single slipped rhythm."
Que Baimo's affable mask solidified into something colder. He opened his mouth to retort, but Yao wasn't done.
"Also, the meditation figurine I gave Hong Yan to plant. It had a secondary function—a resonance scanner. When the prisoners stampeded, it mapped the energy signatures of everyone in the panic. Every survivor's signature was in that data… except for one. Yours." She shrugged a slender shoulder. "Because you weren't running. You were with Wei Ran, calmly setting your arrays. No panic, no signature."
The silence that followed was profound. Que Baimo stared at her, the last vestiges of his smile melting away, leaving behind a stark, calculating blankness. From the crowd, a muffled curse—probably Hong Yan's—was heard. The sheer, layered depth of her forethought was chilling.
Finally, Que Baimo let out a soft, breathy laugh, devoid of humor. "Alright. I concede the round. How about we be friends? I have a fondness for clever people."
Yao's tongue pressed thoughtfully against the inside of her cheek. "You mean, allies in shared adversity."
He met her gaze, his own sharpening. "Our situations are both… precarious. An alliance is practical."
"I have an aunt," Yao said, her tone turning deceptively light, almost glib. "If the sky falls, she'll hold it up for me."
The sheer, audacious cheek of it—this nobody from a backwater planet, claiming the patronage of the most mercurial, dangerous woman in the province—struck Que Baimo as so absurd he almost laughed again. Zhou Miao, a shield? She was a scalpel, and everyone knew it. He simply shook his head, a real smile returning, this one tinged with pity. "Is that so? I'll watch with interest, then. Hope you survive until the term begins. In the meantime…"
As his voice trailed off, a subtle shift occurred in the clearing. Representatives from the major families—the Lis, the Ques, even the lesser Lian and Chen clans—began to drift with deliberate casualness towards the steps. Their auras, carefully restrained, nevertheless thickened the air with unspoken pressure. They formed a loose, inexorable semicircle around the solitary figure on the steps. Notably, the Xie family contingent remained still, a pillar of silent neutrality that screamed louder than any threat.
The undisputed champion, still clutching her half-eaten watermelon, was being cordoned by wolves in silk robes.
Within the makeshift medical tents, the weary and wounded took notice. Yu Qin, wincing as her mother Shen Yunyou applied a glowing salve to a deep gash on her arm, went rigid. Her head snapped up, her eyes, usually so guarded, flashing with protective fury. She looked past the healers, past the crowds, to where a tall, handsome man with an air of perpetual anxiety lingered several paces away, fumbling with a case of high-grade elixirs.
"Father," she said, the word cold and formal. "Call your people off. That is my captain."
Li Jie—for it was he—startled, his expression a comical mix of guilt and alarm. "Xiao Xi, I just—"
"Now."
He moved. One moment he was there, the next a blur of motion. Across the clearing, Li Cang, his noble face bruised and bandaged, was attempting to intercept his own family's elders when an inexplicable, gentle yet irresistible force shoved him squarely in the chest.
THWUMP!
He flew backwards as if launched from a catapult, crashing into a stone buttress with a sickening crunch. Blood, bright and sudden, streamed from his freshly re-broken nose.
Before the stunned Li family could react, Li Jie plowed through them, a force of paternal chaos. He reached Yao, ignoring everyone else, and seized her free hand in both of his, his grip fervent.
"Young master Xie! A talent beyond compare! Wit as sharp as a dragon's tooth, a heart of purest gold! I feel a profound, instant kinship! Let us swear brotherhood this very evening! Share wine and vows!"
The Li family elders stared, aghast. Li Cang, slumped against the wall, could only watch through a haze of pain and utter bewilderment.
Yao, for her part, was momentarily frozen, spoon suspended in mid-air. Then, understanding dawned, swift and crystal clear. Ah. Yu Qin's father. He's not trying to befriend me. He's trying to make me her 'uncle.'The sheer, ridiculous brilliance of it almost made her smile.
Shen Yunyou and Yu Qin, witnessing this spectacle from a distance, shared a look of profound, synchronized exasperation.
Yao gently but firmly tried to extricate her hand. "That's… most generous. But I'm rather young for such solemn oaths. And I don't make a habit of swearing brotherhood with… established family men."
Established. Family men.Li Jie's enthusiastic grin stiffened. Who is he calling 'established'?
Before the awkward scene could devolve further, the pressure from the other families solidified. A Que elder, his face like weathered granite, stepped forward. His voice was the sound of stone grinding on stone. "Oaks. A… remarkable performance. One wonders which master will be fortunate enough to take you as a disciple."
His eyes, however, said something else entirely: We will ensure no one does.
From the sidelines, the Yun family members exchanged glances, ready to step in. A elder from Dongguan Academy shimmered into existence nearby. The other academies hesitated.
Then, the world changed.
The air grew heavy, pregnant with heat. A scent of ozone and brimstone washed over the clearing, overpowering the smells of medicine and blood. Space itself shuddered, then tore open with a sound like ripping silk two meters from where Yao sat.
From the wound in reality emerged a head. A dragon's head. Its scales were the crimson of frozen blood-jade, shot through with veins of luminous magma that pulsed with a slow, terrible heart. Each scale was a masterpiece of lethal beauty. Its eyes were massive pools of molten gold, holding the patience of volcanoes. The heat that rolled off it in visible waves was a physical force, searing lungs and baking the stone steps dry.
Perched between its great horns sat a woman.
She wore simple black combat trousers tucked into heavy boots, spattered with dark, still-glistening blood that sizzled and vaporized into coppery mist where it dripped onto the dragon's scales. The blood wasn't just gore; it hummedwith captive power, warping the light around it. A black tank top, a military jacket tossed casually behind her as a cushion. She was curled comfortably, one knee drawn up, a coiled whip resting on it, the other hand holding a bottle of cola. She took a slow sip, the picture of weary nonchalance amidst the apocalyptic display.
Her hair, a waterfall of night, was loosely tied back with a crimson jade clasp, a few strands escaping to dance in the superheated air. Her skin was pale, not with sickness, but with a deep, inherent coolness that clashed violently with the inferno she commanded. She lifted her gaze.
The clearing fell into a silence so complete it felt deafening. The oppressive auras of the great families shrank back, insignificant before this primordial presence.
Zhou Miao.
Yao's fingers tightened minutely around her spoon. Her heart, which had been a steady, cold drum, gave a single, hard thumpagainst her ribs. This was not in the plan. Zhou Linlang's list of potential mentors, her carefully plotted path to incremental safety—it was all rendered moot by this arrival.
The woman's eyes swept past Yao, landing on Li Jie. The Xie family members, including Xie Yiyuan, dropped into deep, synchronized bows. Bloodline granted opportunity, but in the Xie hierarchy, power carved its own throne, and Zhou Miao sat on one of the highest.
Li Jie released Yao's hand, his expression unreadable. "Si Yi. You're back. I heard you tackled the Abyssal Trench. Which floor did you conquer?"
The Abyssal Trench. The name alone was a whisper of nightmares, an Orange-Grade dungeon that had broken fleets and swallowed legends, lurking in the deep waters beyond Beiluk.
Zhou Miao took another sip of cola, the fizz absurdly loud. "I thought you'd lead with thanks. For keeping your wife and daughter alive all these years."
Li Jie's jaw worked. "I am grateful. Every day. I wasn't there, but you—"
"Fortunately, you weren't," she interrupted, her voice a lazy drawl that cut like a wire. "I needed to be useful. If you'd been worthless, well… I might have advised a different outcome to the pregnancy altogether."
A collective, stifled gasp slithered through the crowd. The sheer, transactional ice of the statement was breathtaking. Li Jie looked as if he'd been slapped. Shen Yunyou merely watched, her face a mask of weary acceptance.
"Seems my investment may underperform," Zhou Miao mused, as if reviewing a ledger. "You lack ambition. With your daughter's Spirit Attunement, she'll likely marry into some Violet-Blood line. I'll be out a red envelope. A net loss."
Having delivered this casual evisceration, she finally turned her head. Her eyes, the color of a winter sky at twilight, settled on Yao.
"Finished with your melon?"
The phrase hung in the air, layered with meaning. Yao carefully set the rind down. She wiped her hands on her pants, the mundane gesture feeling surreal, and stood. She bowed, the picture of respectful deference. "Aunt. Congratulations on your return. Your prowess—"
The Inferno Dragon moved. Not with violence, but with a sudden, disconcerting familiarity. Its massive, forked tongue, glowing with inner heat, licked a broad, wet stripe from the crown of Yao's head to her boots.
Yao stood frozen, dripping hot dragon saliva. Her watermelon and spoon were gone, presumably swallowed.
Zhou Miao observed this, a faint, almost imperceptible frown on her lips. "It appears fond of you."
Yao fought the hysterical urge to correct her. It's fond of the watermelon!
"Up." The command was flat, leaving no room for the myriad excuses forming in Yao's mind.
"Aunt, the exams just ended, enrollment procedures—"
"Procedures to find a teacher." Zhou Miao finished the thought for her, her gaze flicking to the Dongguan elder. "Dongguan?"
Trapped, Yao could only nod slightly.
The Dongguan elder stepped forward, bowing again. "Lady Zhou, an honor. If the young master—"
Zhou Miao's whip snapped out, a blur of darkness. It coiled not with cruelty, but with unyielding finality around Yao's waist. A tug, and Yao was airborne, landing with a soft whumpon the broad, scorching-hot scales between the dragon's shoulders.
"She reports in three days."
Without another word, without acknowledging the stunned Xie family now rushing forward, the Inferno Dragon withdrew into the撕裂 in space, which sealed behind it, leaving behind only a wave of lingering heat and a gaping silence.
On the steps, a single wedge of watermelon rind lay abandoned, already beginning to wilt in the residual warmth.
High above the clouds, the world a blur of speed and roaring wind, Yao clung to the dragon's scales. The woman in front of her was an enigma wrapped in violence and casual power. Her plans were ash. Her autonomy, gone.
"Aunt," she ventured, the word ripped away by the gale. "What do you require of me?"
Zhou Miao didn't turn. "Dongguan Academy has twelve Special-Grade Instructors."
"Yes…" Yao's throat was dry.
"Now it has thirteen."
The meaning slammed into Yao with the force of a physical blow. She wasn't just intercepting my choice. She was becoming the choice.A teacher. A cage disguised as a privilege. To refuse a woman who had just single-handedly cleared the Abyssal Trench, who held a hundred voting rights in the Xie Elder Council, was suicide.
Yao closed her eyes for a second, the wind tearing at her hair. When she opened them, all resistance had been smoothed away, replaced by a carefully crafted veneer of grateful acceptance. She dipped her head, the motion visible even with Zhou Miao's back turned. "This student greets her teacher."
Zhou Miao finally glanced over her shoulder, one eyebrow arched. " 'Teacher-Aunt' will suffice. You didn't call me 'Shrimp-Aunt.' I'll take it."
The casual acceptance of the absurd title was its own kind of threat. Yao managed a weak smile. "By any title, you are my most respected mentor."
"Then mentor suggests a detour," Yao pressed, seizing a thread of agency. "The Arcane Palace. My dungeon rewards. I'll collect them and return immediately. I swear on the eternal torment of my father and brothers."
A beat of silence, then a soft, almost inaudible sound that might have been a scoff. The dragon banked, its flight path altering towards the distant, crystalline spires of the Arcane Palace that gleamed on the horizon.
Later, with a bag of arcane materials now heavier on her soul than in her hand, and after a failed attempt to message Zhou Linlang that left a cold knot of worry in her stomach, Yao found herself once more on the dragon, hurtling through a secondary spatial tunnel. The passage was violent, a tempest of distorted gravity and shrieking void-winds. Yao, her level insufficient to anchor herself, was flung forward. Her hands shot out, bracing against Zhou Miao's shoulders to avoid a catastrophic collision.
She felt the firm muscle under the thin tank top, the absolute stillness of the woman despite the chaos. As soon as stability returned, Yao jerked her hands back as if burned.
They emerged over a churning, grey ocean. The dragon leveled out. Yao, off-balance from the sudden calm, stumbled backwards. Her finger caught on a thin, black strap.
Snap.
The strap of Zhou Miao's tank top slipped down over one shoulder.
Time froze. Yao's blood turned to ice. I'm dead.
A hand, cold as a glacier's heart, closed around her wrist. The cold exploded upwards, a rapid crystallizationthat encased her in a block of perfectly clear ice. She stood there, a startled statue, unable to even shiver.
Zhou Miao, with infuriating calm, reached up and hooked the strap back into place. Then, she leaned over, chipped a small, clean piece of ice from Yao's frozen shoulder, and dropped it into her cola. She took a long, satisfied drink, the ice clinking gently, as the dragon flew on.
An hour later, the ice melted as suddenly as it had formed. Yao collapsed, soaked and shuddering, a garish floral-patterned quilt someone had packed—why did she even have this?—wrapped around her. She accepted a steaming cup of coffee from a small, hovering conjured elemental, her teeth chattering.
"So, Teacher-Aunt," she managed between sneezes that felt like they'd shake her bones loose. "Our destination?"
"The Xie Ancestral Temple."
The words landed like stones. The temple, where the clan's oldest secrets and strongest guardians resided. Where her borrowed identity, her fabricated bloodline, would be under the most intense scrutiny imaginable.
"She's not just claiming me," Yao realized with dawning horror. "She's presenting me. To the family. On her terms." The game had just escalated to a tier she wasn't prepared for.
She looked at the woman's profile, sharp against the sea-spray. "The temple guardians… are they as strong as you?"
Zhou Miao took a slow sip of her now-iced cola. "If I am with you, no. If I am not, yes."
The implication was a blade wrapped in silk. She had come back, not for Li Jie, not for drama, but to be her shield during this mandatory presentation. To prevent others from getting to her first, from probing too deep without her supervision.
"Why?" The question escaped before Yao could stop it, laced with a vulnerability she immediately cursed. "Why go to this trouble? For a… middle school exam champion?"
"Not a champion," Zhou Miao corrected, her gaze on the horizon where a dark island was beginning to form. "The scorer of seven hundred thousand points. The one who left the second place far in the dust. That is family honor. The elders appreciate a good show."
Of course. It was about face. About the Xie clan's prestige. And about getting a close, personal look at the anomaly that was 'Oaks.' Zhou Miao's presence guaranteed that look would be filtered through her, and her alone.
The island was a monolith of gloom, ancient and silent. The dragon landed on a wind-lashed cliff. The Ancestral Temple was a stark, pagoda-like structure of dark wood and older stone, rising from the mist-shrouded forest like a bone protruding from flesh.
At the entrance, two figures exited. A man of severe, regal bearing, and a young man who took Yao's breath away. Not with beauty, though he was stunning, but with the aura he exuded—a cold, transcendent sharpness. A dark green jade crystal was embedded in his forehead. The top scorer of the university entrance exams. Xie Yuli.
The two parties passed each other without a word, without a glance. The absolute, contemptuous silence was more loaded than any greeting. As they passed, Xie Yuli's eyes—wintry, profound, hauntingly familiar—met Yao's for a fraction of a second. She saw nothing in them. No curiosity, no malice. Just an abyss.
Then they were gone, on another dragon. Yao followed Zhou Miao up the steps, the massive doors groaning shut behind them, plunging them into a darkness that smelled of old incense and dormant power.
"Light the lamp. With your blood. Follow it."
The flame, born of her blood, was a feeble, pulsing heart in the overwhelming black. It led her away from Zhou Miao, down silent, endless corridors. The temple felt less like a building and more like a sleeping beast, its stone ribs enclosing her.
The lamp finally stopped before a door of seamless jade. It opened.
The chamber was octagonal, each wall a masterwork of inscribed arcane principles that glowed with a soft, internal light. In the center lay a hexagonal pool, its liquid a perfect, mirror-like quicksilver, so still it seemed solid.
Yao approached, her reflection warping on the metallic surface. This was it. The Silver Gene Pool. Her chance, and her greatest peril.
With methodical precision, she laid out her tools: the precious, ruinously expensive materials for the Intermediate Devouring Scroll; the pulsating, dangerous Gravity-Space Principle Stone; the Gene-Triangle Equation prism. Then, the heavy, soul-nullifying chains of Forbid-Ore and the smelter. The plan was audacious, a gamble that balanced on the edge of self-annihilation. To use the pool's transformative surge, the scroll's duality, the equation's restructuring, and Xiao Huang's new, volatile powers to try and graft the property of arcane nullification onto her very genes. To aim for an Ocular Nullification talent.
It was insane. It was the only move that made sense.
She started the smelter, the low hum and ghostly chill of the flames the only sound. Twelve hours. She had fifteen.
Stripping off her clothes, she stepped into the pool.
The sensation was not of liquid, but of a million silver needles phasing through her skin, seeking her core. A full-body convulsion seized her. Her legs buckled, and she sank into the shimmering, painless agony.
Time lost meaning. She felt her flesh reforging, her genetic tapestry being pulled apart and rewoven with threads of silvery light. Hours passed. Her eyes began to burn, a deep, cellular ache as the Xie bloodline, the Demon Orchid heritage, was violently stimulated.
A chime in her mind. Xiao Huang. The metamorphosis was complete. She accessed its status, and a fierce, proud joy cut through the pain. It had done it. The Heaven-Magnet Blood Locust Boss was now a powerhouse, its abilities perfectly aligned with her desperate needs.
Now.
The smelter finished. A small bowl of liquid void, cold enough to hurt the air around it, sat ready.
Yao activated the Devouring Scroll. For a terrifying, sublime moment, she was both 'Yao' and 'Oaks,' two genetic melodies playing in dissonant unison. She shattered the Gene-Triangle Equation. A constellation of prismatic shards dissolved into her being, a catalyst of chaotic potential.
Then, she willed her shadowy tendrils to drink the bowl of nullification.
Agony, pure and world-ending, exploded from her core. It felt like her skeleton was being dissolved in acid and recast in ice. She heard, as if from a great distance, the sound of her own bones creaking, protesting. The silvery liquid of the pool began to churn, then to clear, its essence draining into her writhing form.
She lost herself in the storm of re-creation.
Outside, in the timeless dark of the corridor, Zhou Miao finished her own business in a separate chamber. Her skin gleamed, pristine, all traces of the silver pool absorbed. A miniature, affectionate Inferno Dragon the size of a cat nudged her discarded robe towards her with its nose.
She dressed slowly, tying her hair back with a thought. "The little friend isn't finished yet?"
The dragon-ling cocked its head. "The elders gave fifteen hours. Xie Yuli barely drained his pool. This one's foundation was gutter-scrapings. Her blood is thin."
"Blood can be thickened," Zhou Miao said, her voice soft. "Strength mutated. A soul with nothing, that claws its way to the top against the sky itself… that soul burns brightest of all."
She walked back to the jade door, her lamp in hand. The time allocated was nearly spent. No sound came from within.
With a touch, she overrode the seal and pushed the door open.
The pool was calm, crystalline clear. Yao's clothes were folded with meticulous neatness by the edge. No ripple, no sign.
Just as Zhou Miao's brow began to furrow, a soft gurgle came from the carved dragon's mouth above the pool. A stream of pure, azure liquid, shimmering with dense life-force, began to pour into the cleansed water.
The little dragon, curious, fluttered to the edge and dabbed a claw in.
The ripple it created met the falling stream, creating an interference pattern of perfect, intersecting circles.
And in the center of that pattern, a figure rose.
Back turned, skin glowing with an internal, moonlit silver that fought with the pulsating azure energy now flooding into her. Water lapped at the delicate indents of her lower back. She braced one hand against the wall, her head bowed, shoulders trembling with the effort of drawing breath. The azure cascade soaked her dark hair, plastering it to her skull, her neck, streaming down the elegant line of her spine.
For a suspended moment, she was a vision of violent, beautiful transformation—a spirit being hammered into a new shape in the forge of ancient power.
Gradually, the tremors subsided. The frantic rise and fall of her shoulders stilled. One hand came up, pressing against her eyes, as if shielding them from a terrible light.
Then, she sensed she was not alone. Every line of her body went perfectly, utterly still.
From her chair by the door, where she had been waiting and working for hours, Zhou Miao finally spoke. Her voice was a low murmur, laced with something that might have been amusement, or something far more complex.
"I thought you might beg me to keep your secrets, little one."
A pause, as the azure light played over the figure in the water.
"My clever, pretty little friend."