The voice from the room was crisp, carried to Gen's ear by a thread of Shidow he'd woven through the crack under the door.
"...still don't understand." It was a younger voice, trembling but trying for strength. "To cultivate? Mastering the Wheels takes years, but it's not impossible to learn them fully."
A chuckle answered him, smug and familiar. It was the short leader from the plaza. "You're new. That's why you still think that way."
Gen didn't move in the corridor's gloom. The little boy beside him held his breath.
"Listen," the leader's voice went on, dropping to a conspiratorial tone. "Our art is called **Generous Mortality**. It uses the Qi and understanding of *others* to pave your path. Think of it as… connecting a shortcut directly to your core. In a year, maybe less, you can learn all five Wheels. Without the decades of struggle."
A sharp intake of breath from the captive. "All five? In a year?"
"All five. Their breakthroughs become your insights. Their lifetimes of effort become your stepping stones." There was a slick, persuasive pride in the man's voice.
Gen's jaw tightened. *A shortcut.* The very opposite of his father's teachings. Not finding your own difficult path, but stealing someone else's.
"My family… the ones who cast us out…" the younger voice whispered, the fear now mixed with something else—a raw, greedy hope. "Just wait until I'm strong enough…"
"Don't even bother thinking of them," the leader soothed. "They'll be screaming when they see you. But first, we need more people. What we have here is a good haul, but the lords keep saying the **Crowned Shadow** is not satisfied."
*Crowned Shadow.*
The name sat in Gen's mind, cold and heavy. He'd heard it before. In Ting's grim speculations in the Jade palace. In the grim set of Varja's mouth before the fight in the salvaged peaks.
There was a shuffle of feet, closer to the door. Another voice, younger, belonging to one of the black-robed guards. "Sir. Who… who exactly *is* the Crowned Shadow? They say he oversees all the Bliss Palace and more. Is he… powerful?"
The sound of the slap was sharp, a wet *crack* that made the little boy in the corridor flinch.
"Get to work, you idiot!" the leader snarled, his pleasant mask gone. "Is he powerful? You stupid bastard, if he wanted us dead, we'd be ash right now!"
There was a moment of heavy silence, then the leader muttered, low and resentful, to himself. He hated admitting it, but it was true. He'd met that figure once. It was no exaggeration to say it felt like standing before another Jiang.
Gen let the thread of Shidow dissolve. The voices cut off. In the darkness, the little boy looked up, his eyes wide and questioning in the faint light.
"As expected," Gen whispered, his voice flat. "It's not simple."
"Who is the Crowned Shadow?" the boy mouthed silently.
Gen didn't answer. He turned the name over in his head. Crowned Shadow. The one who spoke with the Kirin's voice? He couldn't be sure. But he felt a cold certainty that their paths would cross. And when they did, it would be settled.
They moved on, two shadows in the labyrinth. Gen noted guard posts, the heavy bar on the prisoner hold, the strange, sickly hum in the air that wasn't just malice—it was the thrum of a live formation, woven into the very stones of the building.
Soon, they stood on the roof of a far-off warehouse, looking back at the Bliss Palace stronghold. The winter night was clear and biting.
"Good we didn't rush in," Gen said, his breath a pale cloud. "The place is sealed. A formation. It attacks anyone trying to leave the town *or* this compound."
The boy's face fell. "So… we can come in, but we can't get out?"
"We can't get *them* out," Gen corrected. "Not until it's broken. I'll need time to see how. We act tomorrow morning."
The boy's hope flickered back. "I'm counting on you, sir. You can do it."
Gen looked down at the sleeping, captive town. He needed to be quick. Clear this and find the Lost Triangle. Time was a thin thread, fraying.
***
Back in their room, the boy collapsed into sleep the moment he hit the bedroll. Gen sat on the floor, a single Milky Stone casting a pale pool of light. He moved his hands slowly through the air, feeling the flows. The solid certainty of **Jingdao** in his bones. The pliant readiness of **Shidow** in the air around his fingers. The generative pulse of **Zhidow** in his core. And now, a new sensation—a sharp, clean, dividing clarity humming from a point at the crown of his head. **Fendow**. Separation. It felt like a scalpel held in the dark, waiting to cut.
The moonlight by the window thickened, coalesced. Shelai stood there, woven from memory and faint light. She smiled. "How does it feel?"
Gen stretched his shoulders. A joint popped. "Should be straightforward."
Shelai nodded. "You are growing confident. That is necessary. Without conviction, the path ends."
Gen bailed a fist, a gesture of respect. Over this past winter month, she had been a quiet guide. A pointer here, a silent observation there. Never training him, just… steering. Most of the time she was gone, walking the broken world as she pleased. Even now, her presence was fleeting. But Gen knew her journey was nearing its end. Buqu's promise was a clock ticking in the background. The Divine General had waited eight months for a rematch with a power that could rival Gen's father. Could Shelai, an Old Milky beast who had left her domain, still muster that? Having settled her core in Gen, she was no longer an apex beast in her territory. She was something else.
Yet the smile never left her face. The end waiting in the tunnel didn't seem to scare her. Only the having of freedom, and then the letting go of it, seemed to matter.
Gen gave her a slight nod as her form began to soften back into the moonlight. As a human, he'd probably never understand it. If she'd stayed in the Sky Ocean, in her domain, she'd have been nearly untouchable. She'd chosen this instead.
With the thought sitting heavy in his chest, Gen let his breath slow, his mind still. He drifted into the familiar trance, the cycle of his Qi a steady wheel, until grey dawn lightened the window. He was spending more and more time inside his own head these days. Thinking. Weighing. It was a new kind of weight.
***
The next morning, Gen and the boy stood in the crowded plaza. No one spoke. They all knew the routine. The short, two-eyed leader of the Bliss Palace cultivators licked his lips as his men pushed the latest group of captives—young, terrified faces—into the open. Among them, doing a convincing job of looking small and broken, was the little boy. He'd gotten himself caught just before dawn.
"Hu has been most generous," the leader announced, his voice slick and carrying. "Today, we offer our thanks and take our leave. Remember, following us is a choice. A willful step onto a brighter path."
As he spoke, faint lines painted in something dark and flaky on the cobblestones at the plaza's edge glowed with a sickly light. A collective flinch went through the crowd, but no one moved. They'd seen what happened to those who tried. The formation was the Bliss Palace's insurance. It had made Hu a perfect trap—things could come in, but they couldn't get out. No one strong enough to break it cared about a town this small, not with Damocles swords hanging over the world.
Gen cared.
He waited, a hooded statue in the crowd, his plan already in motion. In the dead hours of night, he hadn't only meditated.
The Bliss Palace cultivators began to herd their captives, including the boy, toward the north avenue. The leader turned to follow.
*Now.*
A building on the northern edge of town erupted. Not with fire, but with a concussive **WHUMP** of shredded air and splintered wood. The roof blew skyward. Before the echo faded, a second blast tore through the south side.
The leader froze, then spun. "Something's wrong!" he barked, his composure cracking.
It was too late. The formation, a delicate web of controlled energy, shuddered as its peripheral anchors were violently torn out. The glowing lines flickered and danced wildly.
The hooded figure in the crowd moved.
He didn't blur. The space where he'd been standing was simply empty. A streak of resolved sunlight appeared ten meters above the plaza. Gen held out his hand, and a hundred needles of pure white light—**Zhidow** given lethal form.
*Puff. Puff. Puff.*
Soft, precise sounds. Bliss Palace cultivators dropping where they stood, a neat hole in each forehead or chest. Some raised **Jingdao**-hardened arms; the needles slid through, finding the separation between skin and bone, tendon and air.
The short man shrieked. He didn't dodge; he jerked sideways, the air around him buckling unnaturally as he forced it to obey—a brutal, ugly use of stolen power. A mass of seething dark matter vomited from around him, forming a giant, wolf-like creature of swirling shadows and nullifying hunger. It wrapped around him, swallowing the deadly rain of light.
"WHO DARES?!" he roared, his voice gargling through the construct. "DO YOU KNOW WHAT YOU'VE DONE?!"
Gen's answer was to fall.
He dropped from the sky like a meteor, his body sheathed not in flaring light, but in concentrated density, all his **Jingdao** pulled inward. He was a fist aimed at the heart of the shadow-wolf.
The formation was half-broken. To shatter it completely, the domino ripple needed to take out a central pillar. The short man was that pillar.
"NOW!" screamed the little boy, breaking free and hurling a rock at a stunned guard. "DRIVE THEM OUT OF HU!"
But the crowd didn't rally. They broke. A surge of bodies scrambled not toward the fight, but toward the town's edge, where the barrier still crackled weakly. They clawed at the air, desperate to flee. Fighting the Bliss Palace was a death sentence. Everyone knew it. Better to run and live a little longer.
Above them, Gen plunged into the shadow-wolf's maw.
It opened, a vortex of dissolving darkness meant to consume his light and his life. Gen pulled his right fist back. For a heartbeat, all light died around it, sucked into a point of impossible density at his knuckles.
**The End of the World Finger**, but not as a beam. As a punch. Guided by **Fendow**'s separating truth, driven by **Jingdao** reinforcement.
He punched into the heart of the nullifying void.
There was no clash. No explosion.
The dark matter… *unmade*.
It didn't shatter. It separated. The forced cohesion of stolen Qi, the dominant will binding it into a wolf-shape—Gen's fist, imbued with the principle of division, found the seams and pulled. The construct came apart into meaningless, grey smoke that dissipated on the winter wind.
The short man stumbled back in the air, his protection gone, his eyes wide with pure shock. The beam of sunlight that was Gen didn't stop. It closed the last few feet, and a hand sheathed in silent, deadly radiance shot toward the man's throat.