Li Yuan stepped out of his house wearing a smile he couldn't be bothered to hide.

  The morning air felt lighter than usual. Even the sect mountain looked different today—less oppressive, less like the cage he once thought it was, and more like a ladder waiting to be climbed.

  A month.

  It had only been a month since the halo had appeared above his head.

  And in that single month, he had broken through again, reaching the fifth stage of Qi Condensation.

  The thought still felt faintly unreal.

  Normally, a talented cultivator needed half a year, sometimes more, to break through a single minor realm at the Qi Condensation stage. That had been the standard even for a genius like him back in his clan.

  For greater geniuses, the kind that were destined for a direct entry to the Inner Sect, that time could be shortened to four months. Three, if they were truly exceptional.

  One month was absurd.

  One month was the kind of progress that drew all kinds of attention, which was why he considered it a blessing that so few people noticed or cared about him within the sect.

  Li Yuan kept his expression relaxed as he walked through the sect, quietly examining his own body.

  His qi was dense and stable. There were no signs of forced breakthroughs. No impurities. No hidden flaws that might trouble him later.

  Even when he had taken no pills for his breakthrough and only used pure spirit herbs to aid in his cultivation, his breakthrough should've still led to some turbulence and instability in his cultivation. But there was no such thing to be found.

  Either he was a once-in-a-generation talent—even by the sect's standards—or…

  He was simply very fortunate.

  Heh.

  Spirit stones had played a part in his breakthrough, of course. Having plenty of them was essential for rapid growth. But if stones alone were enough for rapid breakthroughs, then powerful families would be full of teenage Golden Core cultivators.

  But as everyone knew, such wasn't the case.

  Most of his progress had come from the spirit herbs he had gathered and consumed over the past month.

  And some of those herbs had done more than simply raise his cultivation.

  One of the spirit herbs he had consumed in this time period was a mid-grade spirit herb called Flowersteel Grass. Consuming its flower widened, toughened, and stabilised one's meridians, making future cultivation faster and safer.

  Another was a Blood-Tempering Bead he had found hidden beneath a mirror bought from an antique shop. It strengthened his physique and enriched his blood essence, subtly improving his natural talent for cultivation.

  And then there were the cultivation artefacts…

  His lips twitched at the thought.

  The mat came to mind first.

  It was an old and dilapidated thing, that he'd found rolled up in the corner of an abandoned house on the city's outskirts, discarded like trash. Any ordinary cultivator would have glanced at it once and moved on.

  But thanks to his power, he knew its true worth.

  The mat was an ancient artefact. And even in its near-ruined state, with a half-broken Qi Gathering array, it boosted cultivation efficiency by nearly fifty percent.

  The Stillmind Pendant was even more absurd.

  He had found it in a mortal jewelry shop, wedged between glass beads and copper bangles, indistinguishable from any other trinket.

  Its effects wouldn't have been discovered until weeks later, when a male cultivator gifted it to his crush in hopes of winning her favour. The result would be the opposite of what he intended. The woman's cultivation speed would skyrocket after wearing the pendant, and she would soon enter the Inner Sect—never even sparing a single look for the simp who had given her that pendant.

  The Stillmind Pendant, when worn, sharpened focus to a razor's edge. But that wasn't all. It granted far greater control over qi, improving circulation and absorption to an extreme degree—almost doubling one's cultivation speed.

  Neither artifact had cost him much. Yet their contribution to his growth was beyond words.

  Surprisingly, none of those things could be considered his greatest improvement.

  The greatest improvement can be attributed to his halo.

  Yes, the halo was still there above him—still white—but now it glowed with a far brighter intensity, reflecting his improved fortune.

  Its effects were far subtler than cultivation artefacts or spirit herbs, but they were no less real.

  Fortune came to him more easily and in greater numbers now. And any misfortune he encountered was either resolved by itself or quietly diverted away.

  Once, after he attended an auction, a rogue cultivator took an interest in him and planned an ambush halfway up the sect mountain. That same rogue later ran into a pair of outer disciples patrolling the sect's borders. He was captured and dragged away for interrogation—and torture—for attempting to infiltrate the sect.

  Another time, three outer disciples spotted him using a spatial ring and followed him to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, intending to rob him. Instead, they were ambushed by a pair of Three-Eyed Lightning Foxes. Two died. The third escaped, but was crippled for life.

  Of course, that good fortune didn't come for free. He had noticed that each time his fortune protected him, the glow of his halo dimmed. But restoring it only required stealing the fortune of a few others, so it wasn't a bit deal altogether.

  Having such a powerful, life-protecting ability gave him great confidence in himself. It eased much of the pressure he felt in the sect and made his days far more comfortable.

  The training field came into view as Li Yuan followed the worn stone path down the slope.

  It was already crowded.

  Hundreds of outer disciples filled the wide expanse—some sparring in pairs, others practicing techniques alone, qi flaring in uneven bursts with each swing of their blade. Shouts and the clash of steel echoed through the air, mixed with the dull thud of bodies hitting the ground.

  This was one of the few places in the sect where conflict was not only permitted, but encouraged—as long as it didn't cross certain invisible lines.

  It was also one of his best hunting grounds.

  This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

  Li Yuan slowed his steps and let his gaze drift casually across the field. White halos floated everywhere, overlapping one another. A few coloured ones stood out here and there, mostly faint yellow, with the occasional green.

  If he was lucky—really lucky—he might even spot a purple. Otherwise, it was the usual.

  Still… as he glanced at the disciples training about, a part of him hesitated.

  For the first time since gaining his power, he wondered if he should stop observing the other disciples and join in on the training as well.

  Cultivation increased his strength, resources accelerated his growth, and his fortune helped him survive. But none of that would matter if he couldn't even defeat other cultivators in a fight.

  Of course, it wasn't as if he was helpless. He knew how to fight.

  Or at least, he knew how to swing a sword.

  Li Yuan had begun sword training at six, long before his meridians awakened. From then, he endured six years of gruelling practice before finally awakening his meridians at the age twelve and stepping onto the path of cultivation.

  By mortal standards, he could already be called a sword master.

  But by cultivator standards, he was barely adequate.

  And cultivator battles weren't just sword duels. They involved far more—something his fight with those five bastards had proven all too clearly.

  You could be the greatest swordsman in the world, and it wouldn't matter if you got yourself trapped in a formation and got poisoned to death.

  Of course, this was a Xianxia world, so that sword saint would probably simply cut through the formation, or perhaps even cut through the lethality of the poison in his body. Or some such bullshit. But that was besides the point.

  The point he was making was simple. If he kept advancing in cultivation without gaining enough battle experience, then one day, he would eventually become someone else's stepping stone.

  That was why he needed to learn how to fight like a true cultivator.

  So, he scanned the field, weighing potential sparring partners. Someone who was slightly stronger than him, but not overly aggressive. The last thing he wanted was to end up bedridden after a spar. He also didn't want to offend someone with backing in case he accidentally injured that guy during the spar and 'courted death'.

  Then the noise shifted, and something caught his attention.

  A ripple spread through the field as voices rose in excitement, bodies drifting toward one corner of the training field. A loose circle formed there, growing larger by the second as more disciples gathered to watch.

  Li Yuan frowned and followed the movement with his eyes.

  He couldn't see who stood at the centre of the circle from this distance—but that didn't matter.

  He saw the halos hovering above the crowd.

  And two halos hovered at the center of that crowd.

  One was white. Completely ordinary.

  But the other—

  Li Yuan stopped mid-step, eyes widening as he stared at the colour for the first time in his life.

  A golden halo.

  Not bright yellow. He wouldn't make a mistake like that. This was true gold—deep, and radiant. Its light eclipsed every other halo nearby, dominating the field by sheer existence alone.

  Li Yuan had never seen a golden halo before. He hadn't even known such halos existed.

  His heartbeat quickened at the thought of what stealing a fortune like that could do for him. Yet beneath the surge of greed, caution stirred.

  Would he even be able to steal fortune from something this strong?

  Slowly and carefully, he moved closer to the gathering crowd, his eyes never leaving that golden glow.

  Whatever was happening at the centre of the training field wasn't something he could afford to ignore. So, he reached the crowd and pushed forward to see it for himself.

  "Beat his ass!"

  "Show him his place, Senior Brother Chen Zhen!"

  "Don't go easy on that trash!"

  The shouts overlapped, voices thick with excitement and cruelty. Elbows dug into Li Yuan's ribs as he forced his way through the crowd. Murmurs and laughter brushed past him until he reached the front of the circle and stopped.

  The contrast struck him at once.

  Two disciples stood facing each other in the packed dirt at the center of the field—and they couldn't have been more different if it had been staged.

  One wore robes that caught the light even beneath the open sky. Deep blue fabric threaded with gold, with formations etched so subtly they only revealed themselves when qi stirred.

  Clothes like that demanded immense wealth to own—and powerful backing to wear, lest someone snatch them from you. A month ago, Li Yuan wouldn't have dared imagine touching a robe like that.

  Chen Zhen.

  An inner court disciple whose name even he knew. The personal disciple of a Peak Elder. An up-and-coming prodigy.

  Chen Zhen stood tall, shoulders relaxed, his sword resting casually at his side. His posture radiated effortless confidence. And qi rolled off him in dense controlled waves.

  Late-stage Qi Condensation. Possibly peak. Maybe even Foundation Establishment. He couldn't tell.

  Opposite him stood… the other one.

  Li Yuan's brow furrowed as he studied the other boy.

  The boy looked like he'd been dragged out of a gutter. His outer disciple robes were old and faded, patched in half a dozen places with mismatched cloth. His frame was thin, almost frail, ribs faintly visible beneath the fabric. His hair hung in greasy, unbound clumps, as if he'd stopped caring long ago.

  He looked exhausted, like he hadn't slept properly in weeks.

  Li Yuan's senses brushed against him, and the truth struck at once.

  First stage of Qi Condensation.

  Possibly the weakest disciple Li Yuan had ever seen in the sect.

  Worse, the boy looked sixteen or older. That meant four years—or more—on the path of cultivation, and this was all he had achieved.

  Li Yuan blinked in surprise.

  'How did someone like that even get into this sect?' Li Yuan wondered. The Nine Peak Sect didn't accept cultivators without at least some potential. Even outer disciples had standards.

  Standards he himself had nearly failed to meet, despite reaching the third stage of Qi Condensation at fourteen.

  The boy's sword didn't help his case.

  It was old and rusted. He wasn't sure if it was even a proper artifact. The edge was nicked, the hilt wrapped in fraying cloth—a weapon you'd expect from a bandit, not a cultivator.

  And yet—

  The boy stood straight, meeting his opponent with a defiant gaze. He faced a cultivator who could kill him with a single strike—and didn't even flinch. His eyes were sharp, burning with pure stubbornness. There was no fear or hesitation in those eyes. Only a quiet, grinding refusal to yield.

  A prickle crept up Li Yuan's spine at the sight.

  Anyone with eyes could see how this was supposed to end.

  One of them was a rising star.

  The other was a nameless nobody.

  That was what everyone else saw.

  Li Yuan would have thought the same—if not for his ability to see halos.

  Above Chen Zhen's head floated a clean, ordinary white halo. Stable, unremarkable, exactly what one would expect from someone moving comfortably along a predictable path.

  Above the haggard boy—

  Gold.

  A radiant, oppressive gold that shone with enough brightness that Li Yuan had to narrow his eyes just to look at it.

  'Oi oi oi. The fuck is this shit. Am I looking at an actual protagonist here.' He wondered in amazement, feeling like he was watching some sort of canon event. The scene of the birth of a protagonist. Or, as these people would call him. A son of heaven.

  "Who's that?" Li Yuan asked quietly.

  The man beside him—a broad-shouldered outer disciple with a scar along his jaw—followed his gaze and snorted.

  "Xu Chen."

  He said the name like it should mean something.

  Li Yuan waited a moment. When nothing else followed, he glanced back. "And who's Xu Chen?"

  The man looked him up and down, then huffed. "Hah. You're new, aren't you?"

  "Relatively."

  "Thought so." He folded his arms, eyes still fixed on the circle. "Alright. Listen."

  Li Yuan tilted his head slightly, feigning casual interest while keeping Xu Chen in the corner of his vision.

  "A few years ago," the man began, "that guy joined during the sect's entry ceremony and made a name for himself across the entire sect because of his talent."

  Li Yuan raised an eyebrow. "That good?"

  "Better," the man said. "He was called a once-in-a-millennium talent. And I'm not exaggerating. He finished Body Tempering in weeks and reached the peak of Qi Condensation within a year, stepping into Foundation Establishment at the age of thirteen. The elders were tripping over themselves to take him as a personal disciple."

  "And… who took him in at the end?" He asked curiously.

  "Nascent Soul Elder Wu Yuechan," the man said, his voice dropping. "After a battle with the sect leader himself, she won and took Xu Chen as a personal disciple. Some people even said that he was being groomed to become the next sect leader."

  Li Yuan's gaze flicked back to Xu Chen's thin frame. "Hard to imagine now."

  "That's the tragedy of it." The man clicked his tongue. "For a while, his rise was absurd. Inner Sect? He skipped it entirely. Became a core disciple and then the personal disciple of a Nascent Soul elder within a year. Resources were poured into him like water. Whatever he wanted, he got." He paused, then added, "He was even betrothed to the sect leader's daughter."

  Li Yuan raised an eyebrow. He hadn't even known the sect leader had a daughter. The story was starting to sound uncomfortably familiar.

  'Xiao Yan. Is that you?' He mused in his mind.

  "Seriously?" he asked, if only to keep the man talking. To get to the juicy bits of the story faster.

  "Dead serious. Formal announcement and everything. Some people were already calling him the future sect leader." The man exhaled. "Then one day… it stopped."

  "What stopped?"

  "His cultivation," the man said. "No one knows what happened. It just stopped growing. Then it started falling. At first, people thought it was a temporary deviation—that things would even out eventually." He snorted. "Pills were fed to him like candy. Doctors were called. Healers crossed half the nation to come and examine his meridians personally."

  "And?" Li Yuan asked.

  "And nothing," the man said flatly. "No one could find the cause. Let alone a cure."

  Li Yuan watched Xu Chen tighten his grip on the rusted sword, knuckles turning white.

  "And he's an outer sect disciple now?" he asked.

  "Yeah." The man grimaced. "First, he lost Elder Wu Yuechen as his master. Then he fell from core disciple to inner disciple position. Then from inner to outer. Each demotion quieter than the last."

  "That must've sucked," Li Yuan said.

  "I bet. But that's how it is. No one cares about a broken genius. The only time anyone pays attention to him now is to mock him and feel better about themselves." The man scoffed.

  Li Yuan didn't miss the edge of satisfaction in Chen Zhen's confident smile as he pointed at Xu Chen and tossed out a few meaningless insults.

  "And recently," the man continued, lowering his voice, "there've been more rumors about him."

  "What kind of rumors?" Li Yuan asked.

  "About his engagement." The man nodded. "They say the sect leader's daughter broke it off herself a few days ago. Right in the middle of the Merit Hall. Insulted him in front of everyone, tossed him a bag of spirit stones as compensation, and walked away."

  Xiao Yan. Hello?

  "Did they sign a three year agreement?" He asked.

  "A three year what?" The disciple asked, giving him a confused look.

  "No. Forget about it." He said. "It's pretty cold though. What she did."

  "Maybe. But that's how the world works," the man said with a casual shrug.

  "Well… you're not wrong," Li Yuan admitted. It might sound hypocritical, but he wouldn't want his own sister or daughter marrying a cripple either. Still, he also wouldn't humiliate the man in public. That was just rubbing salt in the wound. Simple cruelty for the sake of it. "So what led to this?"

  "Who knows?" The man shrugged. "One's a rising genius, the other a fallen one. A hundred things could've caused it. Honestly, I'm surprised he's still here. I thought he'd leave the sect after the broken engagement. Though I doubt it'll be long before he drops back to Body Tempering. At that point…"

  "…Expulsion," Li Yuan finished, being familiar enough with the sect's rules that only ever apply when you're the one getting fucked.

  "Exactly."

  Silence stretched between them.

  Li Yuan looked at Xu Chen again—the tattered robes, the hollow cheeks, the defiant eyes that refused to lower, no matter how many insults the crowd hurled at him.

  'He's resilient, if nothing else.' He thought, feeling that he himself would've given up on life a long time ago if he suffered the same fate.

  But then again. If you're gonna pose as Protagonist Stereotype #3 then you need to have this level of resilience at least.

  As if to prove him right, the golden halo above Xu Chen's head continued to burn steadily. Unmoved by the ridicule or the tough circumstances Xu Chen was going through.

  'A Son of Heaven wouldn't fall that easily,' he thought as the fight finally began.

  Chen Zhen tossed out one last insult, something-something about his ex-fiancee, and Xu Chen finally snapped, lunging forward with his sword raised high.

  Li Yuan expected… something. A sudden eruption of power. A miracle. Xu Chen overwhelming Chen Zhen despite the gap, silencing everyone who had mocked him.

  But it seemed like they were still too early for this particular plot. Because the fight unfolded exactly as one would expect between a first-stage and a tenth-stage Qi Condensation cultivator. Or whatever realm Chen Zhen was at.

  Chen Zhen sidestepped the clumsy strike and knocked Xu Chen out with a single punch.

  He didn't even use his sword to end the fight.

  That, more than anything else, felt like the final insult.

  The crowd quickly lost interest after the disappointing fight and dispersed. But Li Yuan didn't move. His gaze stayed fixed on Xu Chen's unconscious body, the golden halo above his head still burning brightly.

  Then he focused on the halo.

  And a vision unfolded in front of his eyes.