The fields lay quiet behind him.

  Rows of tilled earth stretched neatly under the morning sun, damp soil dark and rich, carrying the familiar scent of growth. A breeze passed through the crops, rustling leaves softly, indifferent to the weight in Mingzhi’s chest.

  Nothing here had changed.

  That, more than anything, unsettled him.

  He stepped past the boundary of the fields and into the forest.

  The air shifted immediately. Light dimmed beneath the canopy, branches interlocking overhead like fingers closing into a fist. The ground grew uneven, roots rising from the soil in twisted patterns. The forest welcomed no one—it merely tolerated passage.

  Mingzhi moved with practiced care.

  Unlike before, his steps were calm. Measured. Each footfall placed with intention, Earth energy faintly pulsing through his soles as he tested the ground ahead. No haste. No panic.

  Many days ago, he had fled this place injured, bleeding, and barely alive.

  Today, he returned prepared.

  The trees thinned.

  The clearing emerged.

  It looked exactly the same.

  A circle of rocky ground, scattered weeds, silent pines standing like sentinels around the perimeter. No broken branches. No scorch marks. No sign that a Cloud Gathering Level 4 beast had died here, its massive body erased into storage as if it had never existed.

  If not for memory, this place would have seemed ordinary.

  Mingzhi stopped at the edge.

  “So,” he said quietly, eyes sweeping the clearing. “Spirit. Are we ready to break it?”

  “No.”

  The answer came instantly.

  Mingzhi blinked. “What?”

  “You’ve forgotten already?” the Spirit replied flatly. “You only cracked this array in simulation. Then you stopped.”

  Mingzhi grimaced.

  “…Right.”

  He exhaled slowly, rubbing his temple. The rush of recent events—his grandfather, Death Qi, recovery—had pushed the details aside.

  “We still need the array flags,” the Spirit continued. “Without them, all you can do is provoke another rejection pulse. And you know how that ends.”

  Mingzhi nodded.

  The Five-Phases Rebirth Array.

  A self-repairing, cycling formation driven by the endless generation and suppression of the five elements. As long as the cycle flowed uninterrupted, the array could not be dismantled safely.

  To crack it, you didn’t break it.

  You paused it.

  And to pause it, you needed flags that could temporarily replace the array’s elemental anchors—just long enough to sever the loop.

  Mingzhi reached into his storage.

  One by one, the materials appeared in his hands.

  Star Silver Sand — fine, luminous grains that shimmered faintly even in shadow, capable of stabilizing high-purity Qi flows.

  Spirit Mercury — sealed carefully, its surface rippling unnaturally despite complete stillness, responsive to elemental transitions.

  Cloud-Silk Blank Flags — five pale banners, soft and light as mist, yet threaded with conductive fibers designed to accept inscriptions.

  “These are all we have,” Mingzhi said.

  “They’re enough,” the Spirit replied. “Barely. Which is why failure is not an option.”

  Mingzhi looked around the clearing again.

  “That Tier 1 beast died here before,” he said. “No strong presence since. The array itself should mask most fluctuations.”

  “I agree,” the Spirit said. “I don’t sense any immediate threats. You’re safe to begin.”

  A pause.

  “I’ll keep watch,” it added. “And I will guide you. But the execution is yours.”

  Mingzhi nodded once.

  He stepped forward.

  The moment he reached the invisible boundary, the air shimmered.

  Not violently—just enough to remind him it was there.

  He did not touch it.

  Instead, he knelt.

  The first step was preparation.

  He laid the five Cloud-Silk flags on the ground in a shallow arc, spacing them evenly. Then, carefully, he sprinkled Star Silver Sand along their edges, reinforcing their structure so they wouldn’t collapse when exposed to elemental cycling.

  Next came the Spirit Mercury.

  Using a thin thread of Qi, Mingzhi divided it into five equal droplets, guiding one onto each flag’s center. The mercury spread slowly, sinking into the fabric, forming faint, shifting patterns like veins.

  “Steady,” the Spirit cautioned. “Your control needs to be exact. Too shallow and the flag won’t anchor. Too deep and it’ll resonate with the core directly.”

  Mingzhi adjusted immediately.

  This wasn’t guesswork.

  He had failed this step dozens of times in the Eye’s simulation—flags tearing themselves apart, mercury boiling away, Qi feedback shredding his meridians.

  Here, in reality, his movements were slower.

  Cleaner.

  One by one, the flags stabilized.

  A faint hum arose—not from the array, but from the flags themselves, responding to the surrounding elemental flow.

  “Good,” the Spirit said. “Now listen carefully.”

  Mingzhi straightened slightly, attention sharpening.

  “The Five-Phases Rebirth Array cycles in this order,” the Spirit explained. “Wood generates Fire. Fire generates Earth. Earth generates Metal. Metal generates Water. Water generates Wood.”

  Mingzhi nodded.

  “To pause it,” the Spirit continued, “you don’t interrupt generation. You interrupt transition.”

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  Mingzhi’s eyes narrowed.

  “So instead of blocking Fire or Water—”

  “You insert a false node at the moment one element hands off to the next,” the Spirit finished. “The cycle hesitates. The array loses momentum. That hesitation is your window.”

  “How long?”

  “Three breaths. Four, if you’re lucky.”

  Mingzhi exhaled slowly.

  “Understood.”

  He picked up the first flag.

  Wood.

  He walked to the left side of the clearing, stopping just short of the shimmer. Carefully, he raised the flag and planted it into the ground.

  The instant it touched soil—

  The air trembled.

  The shimmer rippled violently, reacting to the intrusion. Pressure surged outward, testing the flag’s integrity.

  The Star Silver Sand glowed faintly.

  The flag held.

  Mingzhi didn’t pause.

  Second flag.

  Fire.

  Placed.

  The shimmer intensified, light bending sharply around the insertion point. Heat bled into the air, subtle but unmistakable.

  Third.

  Earth.

  Fourth.

  Metal.

  By the time he reached the fifth flag—Water—sweat had begun to bead along his spine.

  His heart hammered, but his hands remained steady.

  “This is the point of no return,” the Spirit warned. “Once the fifth flag goes in, the array will recognize an internal inconsistency.”

  Mingzhi didn’t hesitate.

  He planted it.

  The clearing shuddered.

  The Five-Phases Rebirth Array flared to life, its full structure briefly revealed—interlocking lines of elemental Qi cycling at terrifying speed, ancient and precise.

  Then—

  It stuttered.

  Just for an instant.

  The cycle hesitated.

  The hum deepened, turning uneven, like a machine missing a gear.

  “Now,” the Spirit said sharply. “Decipher the flow. Find the pause.”

  Mingzhi closed his eyes.

  He didn’t look at the array.

  He felt it.

  The flow of Wood slowing before Fire. Fire failing to hand off cleanly to Earth. The entire structure struggling to reconcile the false anchors.

  There.

  The gap.

  Mingzhi stepped forward and pressed his palm against the shimmer.

  Instead of rejection—

  Resistance softened.

  The array didn’t explode.

  It didn’t repel him.

  It stalled.

  Cracks spread through the illusion masking the cave entrance, light fracturing like broken glass.

  Stone emerged where illusion had been.

  A dark opening yawned behind it.

  The Five-Phases Rebirth Array was not destroyed.

  But it was no longer whole.

  Mingzhi staggered back, breathing hard.

  “…We did it,” he said quietly.

  “Yes,” the Spirit replied, voice low with something unreadable. “You paused it.”

  The clearing fell silent.

  For the first time since its creation—

  The array waited.

  The air changed the moment the array ceased.

  Not with a flash. Not with a roar.

  It simply… stopped pretending.

  The clearing shuddered faintly, like a held breath finally released. The distorted light dissolved, illusions peeling away layer by layer until the land revealed its true form.

  Mingzhi stood still, taking it in.

  The ground was no longer ordinary rock and weeds. Etched into the earth was an enormous array formation, its lines worn and cracked with age, yet still bearing traces of terrifying precision. Five elemental nodes marked its perimeter, each once blazing with power—now dim, hollow, exhausted.

  At the center of the clearing, partially concealed by collapsed stone and roots, yawned a dark cave entrance.

  “So this is it,” Mingzhi murmured.

  “Yes,” the Spirit replied quietly. “This is where the secret lies.”

  Mingzhi’s gaze shifted to the array nodes.

  Five beast cores lay embedded in the formation.

  They were large—larger than the cores Mingzhi had ever seen. Even drained, their presence pressed down on his senses like mountains reduced to pebbles. The surfaces of the cores were cracked and dull, their once-perfect elemental radiance reduced to faint embers.

  “Five,” Mingzhi said slowly. “All 100% purity.”

  “And all extremely high level,” the Spirit confirmed. “Far beyond this realm.”

  Mingzhi crouched, examining one closely. The core felt… empty. Not broken, but consumed.

  “There’s almost nothing left,” he said.

  The Spirit’s tone darkened. “If we had come even a little later, they would have been completely emptied.”

  Mingzhi straightened, a chill creeping up his spine.

  “So we barely made it in time.”

  “Yes.”

  They turned toward the cave.

  The moment Mingzhi took his first step inside, he felt it.

  That same sensation.

  Cold.

  Silent.

  Heavy.

  His expression hardened. “This is where it came from.”

  “Yes,” the Spirit replied. “The source of what afflicted your grandfather was here.”

  The cave descended gently, not deep, but wide. The stone walls were scorched in places, melted in others, as if exposed to incompatible forces over long periods of time. The air was stale—not rotten, but… drained.

  Then Mingzhi saw it.

  A skeleton.

  It sat upright against the cave wall, legs crossed in meditation, spine straight even in death. The bones were pale, unnaturally intact, as if preserved by will alone.

  Beside it lay a small pile of ash.

  Mingzhi stopped.

  The Spirit froze.

  For a long moment, it said nothing.

  Then—

  “…Master.”

  The word trembled.

  Mingzhi remained silent, letting the Spirit speak.

  “That’s him,” the Spirit said, voice unsteady. “And… that’s the book. Or what remains of it.”

  Mingzhi followed its gaze.

  The ash wasn’t random.

  It formed the vague outline of pages burned deliberately, carefully—nothing left but residue.

  The Spirit’s voice grew clearer, memories unlocking.

  “I remember now,” it said slowly. “He had reached a bottleneck. One that couldn’t be crossed by conventional means. No ascension… no path forward.”

  Mingzhi listened.

  “So he stole knowledge to find a way,” the Spirit continued. “Everywhere. Ancient techniques. Forbidden theories. Fragmented truths. He gathered them all and refined them into one place.”

  “…Into you,” Mingzhi said quietly.

  “Yes,” the Spirit replied. “Into the book that became me.”

  Mingzhi’s gaze returned to the skeleton.

  “That’s why they hunted him, anger and greed,” the Spirit went on. “Too much knowledge. Too many secrets. They set a trap—using these beast cores to set up a killing array. A kill-zone.”

  Mingzhi clenched his fists.

  “He barely escaped,” the Spirit said. “Took the cores with him and fled to this lower realm, where no one would look.”

  The Spirit’s tone softened.

  “He put me into an inconspicuous necklace. Burned the book. Hid me beneath the rock in your family’s field—so no one would ever think to search there.”

  Mingzhi exhaled slowly.

  “And the array?” he asked.

  “He built it to hide and recuperate,” the Spirit replied. “But he was already too badly wounded.”

  Silence fell.

  “He must have died here,” Mingzhi said.

  “Yes.”

  They stood there for a moment longer, surrounded by the quiet remains of a battle that had spanned realms.

  Then the Spirit spoke sharply.

  “There’s a storage ring.”

  Mingzhi looked again. A faint metallic glint clung to one of the skeleton’s finger bones.

  “It’s barely holding together,” the Spirit warned. “It could collapse at any time. We need to act quickly.”

  Mingzhi stepped forward and carefully probed it with his Divine Sense.

  The interior was chaotic. Space folding in on itself. Items dissolving into fragments of information.

  “I don’t recognize most of this,” Mingzhi said.

  The ring trembled violently.

  “It’s collapsing,” Mingzhi said immediately.

  “Then hurry,” the Spirit urged. “Take something.”

  Mingzhi scanned frantically.

  Then he saw it.

  A single herb, preserved by layers of seals, floating at the core of the space.

  Without hesitation, Mingzhi grabbed it and pulled it out.

  The storage ring shattered into dust.

  Mingzhi stared at the herb in his hand.

  Petals like pale crystal. A faint, steady resonance that tugged at his perception.

  “Is this useful?” he asked.

  The Spirit’s voice sharpened instantly.

  “Yes,” it said. “Very.”

  “What is it?”

  “A Mind-Refining Orchid.”

  Mingzhi’s brows lifted. “Good.”

  “I remember you mention it,” he continued. “It grows in the upper realms. Used to temper Divine Sense—its range, clarity, and stability.”

  The Spirit confirmed. “Exactly.”

  As he turned back toward the skeleton, he noticed something else.

  A stone.

  It lay where the storage ring had been, untouched by the collapse. Smooth. Dark. Heavy in a way that had nothing to do with weight.

  Mingzhi reached for it instinctively.

  “Spirit,” he asked, “what’s this?”

  “I… don’t know,” the Spirit replied.

  Mingzhi touched it.

  The world vanished.

  No falling.

  No light.

  Just—

  Darkness.

  Absolute.

  Vast.

  Mingzhi felt small.

  Not metaphorically.

  Existentially.

  As if his existence had been reduced to a speck drifting in something immeasurable.

  Then something noticed him.

  Not eyes.

  Awareness.

  A presence so enormous that the concept of size lost meaning.

  A voice echoed—not through sound, but through being.

  “Hmm.”

  Mingzhi couldn’t move.

  “There’s something here.”

  The pressure increased.

  “This one is thin.”

  A pause.

  “I’ll eat it later.”

  Mingzhi’s thoughts screamed, but no sound came.

  “Grow.”

  “Ripen.”

  “Do not rot.”

  Another pause—longer.

  “I will remember this flavor.”

  Darkness swallowed him.

  —

  “Mingzhi!”

  He gasped, lungs burning, head splitting.

  The cave rushed back into existence.

  He lay on the stone floor, heart hammering.

  “Mingzhi!” the Spirit called again. “Are you alright?!”

  Mingzhi groaned. “My head… hurts.”

  “What happened?” he asked hoarsely.

  “As soon as you touched the stone,” the Spirit said, “I lost connection to you. Completely. Then you collapsed.”

  Mingzhi tried to remember.

  Darkness.

  A voice.

  “…Eating,” he muttered.

  The Spirit paused. “Eating? Are you hungry?”

  “…No.”

  Silence stretched.

  Then the Spirit spoke softly.

  “The body… don’t let it rot here. Please.”

  Mingzhi pushed himself up. “We’ll store it for now.”

  As his hand touched the skeleton, a voice echoed directly into his soul.

  “You are not… it.”

  Mingzhi froze.

  “I feel… Spirit?” he whispered.

  “…Master?” the Spirit said, stunned.

  “Spirit… so it really is you.”

  The presence was weak. Fragmented.

  “I see. Is this your new master?”

  The Spirit hesitated. “Yes—no—I mean…”

  Mingzhi spoke calmly. “We are partners.”

  A faint, broken laugh echoed.

  “Partners… haha. Good.”

  The presence wavered.

  “No time,” the voice urged. “My body is gone. It’s consuming the rest—slowly. Soul. Spirit. Mind.”

  Mingzhi’s expression hardened. “It?”

  “No time,” the master repeated. “Spirit. Teach him the Devouring Secret Technique. Now.”

  The Spirit recoiled. “Master—!”

  “Do it,” the voice insisted. “Use it on me. Devour as much as you can. He’ll have a better chance later.”

  Silence.

  Then—

  “…Alright,” the Spirit said quietly.

  “Good,” the master replied. “I’ll slow it as much as I can. Don’t let it succeed!”

  The presence faded.

  “Only disturb me… if it’s important.”

  The cave fell silent once more.

  But the darkness beyond it had already noticed Mingzhi.

  And it was patient.