The attack came with the dawn.
Xu Tianlong was jolted awake by the clash of steel and the screams of dying men. He was on his feet before his eyes fully opened, the Iron Bone Fist technique surging through his meridians on instinct. The oil lamp had burned out. Gray light bled through the paper windows, carrying with it the acrid smell of smoke.
’They didn’t wait. Of course they didn’t wait.’
He burst through his door into chaos.
The Xu compound was burning. Not entirely, the flames were concentrated near the main gate, where black smoke curled into the pale morning sky. But the damage was already done. Guards lay scattered across the courtyard. Some were moving. Most weren’t. The Feng clan’s crimson-and-black armor was everywhere, ten, no, fifteen soldiers, plus reinforcements. They’d brought twice the force they’d shown yesterday.
And at the center of the carnage stood Feng Liang.
The scarred enforcer’s sword was already drawn, its blade wet with blood. He was directing his men with sharp gestures, sending them deeper into the compound. His voice carried over the din.
"Find the young master! Leave the servants, I want Xu Tianlong!"
’Looking for me. Good.’
Xu Tianlong didn’t announce himself. Didn’t give a war cry. He simply moved.
The first Feng soldier never saw him coming. Xu’s fist, hardened by Iron Bone Fist, amplified by a body that had climbed three layers in a single day, slammed into the man’s temple. The soldier dropped without a sound. His armor didn’t save him. Nothing could save a man who’d been hit by something that felt less like a punch and more like a blacksmith’s hammer.
The second soldier turned. Raised his sword. Xu caught the blade between his palms and twisted. The metal screamed. The soldier’s wrists snapped. Xu’s knee found his stomach, and the man crumpled.
The third soldier ran.
’Three down. A dozen more to go.’
But the Feng clan hadn’t just brought soldiers. They’d brought a cultivator.
The man emerged from the smoke like a wraith, tall, gaunt, his robes marked with the insignia of a Qi Condensation expert. His eyes were cold. His hands crackled with visible energy, the air around him distorting with heat.
"Xu Tianlong," he said. "The young master who wouldn’t die. I’ve been ordered to correct that mistake."
Xu didn’t waste breath on a response. He dropped into a fighting stance, fists raised. The Iron Bone Fist was a Body Tempering technique. It was designed to fight other Body Tempering cultivators. Against a Qi Condensation expert, someone who’d broken through the first major bottleneck, it was like bringing a wooden stick to a sword fight.
’Doesn’t matter. I don’t need to win. I just need to survive long enough to—’
The expert moved.
Fast. Too fast. Xu barely tracked the blur of motion before a palm strike caught him in the chest. The impact sent him skidding backward across the stone, his heels gouging tracks in the dirt. Pain exploded through his ribs. Something cracked, not bone, not yet, but close.
’He’s faster than me. Stronger than me. But he’s not invincible.’
Xu pushed himself up. Blood trickled from the corner of his mouth. The expert was already closing the distance, energy gathering in his palm for another strike.
Then Xu remembered the poison.
Not the poison that had been cleansed from his system, the residue. The traces that the System’s amplification had left behind, dormant in his meridians, too small to harm him but too concentrated to simply vanish. He’d felt them earlier, in the hidden chamber. A faint, toxic hum beneath his skin.
’Use it.’
He didn’t know how. The System had never explained poison manipulation. But the instinct was there, some combination of the body’s memory and the System’s silent guidance. He reached inward, found the residual venom coiled in his channels, and pushed.
[Ding!]
[Residual Poison Detected]
[Amplification x2 Applied]
[Paralytic Mist Created]
A cloud of dark vapor erupted from his palms. It spread through the courtyard in seconds, invisible in the smoke but unmistakable in its effect. The expert staggered, his gathered energy dissipating. Two nearby soldiers collapsed, their limbs seizing. A third stumbled into a burning pillar and didn’t get up.
The Qi Condensation expert coughed, his eyes watering. "What...what is this—"
Xu didn’t let him finish. He lunged forward, Iron Bone Fist at full power, and drove his knuckles into the man’s throat.
The expert went down.
Xu stood over him, breathing hard. His vision was blurring. The mist had taken something out of him, qi, stamina, he wasn’t sure. But it didn’t matter. The courtyard was clearing. The remaining Feng soldiers were retreating, dragging their wounded behind them. Feng Liang’s voice echoed from somewhere beyond the gate, shouting orders to fall back.
’We won. We actually—’
A scream cut through his thoughts.
He turned.
Lin Yueyao was in the courtyard.
She must have come running when the attack started, foolish, reckless, exactly the opposite of the cold, calculating woman he’d faced last night. Her white robe was torn at the sleeve. Her hair had come loose from its jade clip. And she was facing down a Feng soldier, not a foot soldier, but a lieutenant, a man with a blade already swinging toward her throat.
She was fast. Her cultivation was higher than Xu’s, Qi Condensation Layer 2, the body’s memory supplied, but she’d been caught off guard. The soldier’s sword was already in motion. She wouldn’t dodge in time.
Xu moved.
He crossed the distance in three strides, not thinking, not calculating, just moving. His body interposed itself between Lin and the blade. The sword bit into his shoulder. Deep. He felt the steel scrape bone. Felt the hot rush of blood down his chest. Felt his knees buckle.
But he didn’t fall. Not yet.
His fist came up, Iron Bone Fist, the last of his strength, and connected with the soldier’s jaw. The man’s head snapped back. He hit the ground and didn’t move.
Silence.
The courtyard was empty now. The Feng clan had fled. The fires were dying. The only sound was Xu Tianlong’s ragged breathing and the distant wail of a servant calling for a physician.
He fell.
Lin caught him.
Her arms wrapped around his chest, lowering him to the ground with more gentleness than he’d ever felt from her. Her face, that cold, perfect face, was cracked open. Her eyes were wide. Wet. Terrified.
"You idiot," she said. Her voice broke. "You absolute idiot. You’re supposed to be trash. You’re supposed to be weak. You’re not supposed to—" She choked. "You’re not supposed to save me."
Blood was pooling beneath him. The sword wound in his shoulder was deep. The cracked ribs from the expert’s palm strike were worse than he’d thought. His vision was going dark at the edges.
’This is it. This is how I—’
[Ding!]
[Combat Amplification Detected]
[Body Tempering Layer 6 Achieved]
The breakthrough hit him like a wave of fire. Qi surged through his meridians, knitting flesh, slowing the blood loss, pulling him back from the edge. Not enough to heal him completely, the wound was too deep for that, but enough. Enough to keep his heart beating. Enough to keep his eyes open.
He looked up at Lin Yueyao. Her tears were falling on his face. Hot. Real. The ice beauty was crying. For him.
"Don’t die," she said. Her voice was raw. Desperate. "Don’t you dare die, you...you piece of trash. You worthless—" She couldn’t finish. Her hands were pressing against his wound, trying to stop the bleeding. Her fingers were slick with his blood.
’Interesting. She still calls me trash. But she’s crying while she does it.’
He tried to speak. Managed a single word.
"Yueyao..."
Then the darkness swallowed him.
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