Ji’an, possessing the hyper-attuned, razor-sharp sensory awareness of a Head Chef who could tell when a pan was burning from three rooms away, immediately stopped writing.
She didn’t look up. She kept her eyes locked on her parchment. But her spiritual senses expanded, sweeping the immediate vicinity.
The air had changed.
The faint, omnipresent scent of sulfur and toxic miasma that permeated the Azure Dragon Sect had vanished. It was entirely overwritten by a new, rich, incredibly distinct aroma.
It smelled like those dark, heavily roasted, imported southern-leaf tobacco.
It smelled like dark, heavily roasted, imported southern-leaf tobacco, mixed with the faint, metallic tang of an ozone strike, and the deep, earthy scent of ancient, smoldering charcoal.
’Who is smoking a pipe in the VIP lounge?’ Ji’an wondered, her brow furrowing slightly.
She slowly, casually lifted her gaze, sweeping the open-air pagoda.
Elder Viper was still playing chess. The local stewards were still standing silently at the edges of the room.
Nothing seemed out of place.
And then, her eyes tracked to the far right corner of the pavilion, near the arched balcony overlooking the hot springs.
Sitting in a plush, high-backed velvet armchair that definitely hadn’t been occupied five minutes ago, was a man.
There is no way he was a disciple.
He was not wearing the pale green and black scales of the Azure Dragon Sect, but he was not wearing the pristine white of the Celestial Sword Sect either.
He was draped in a heavy, incredibly expensive robes of deep, midnight-purple silk. The robes were not worn with the strict, rigid, immaculate precision of orthodox royalty.
They were worn carelessly, haphazardly, draped over his broad shoulders as if he had simply thrown them on after waking up from a three-decade nap.
His dark hair was tied back in a messy, loose knot, secured by a single, jagged pin made of black iron.
His face was sharp, aristocratic, and devastatingly handsome, but it bore the cynical lines of a man who had lived for centuries and found ninety-nine percent of existence entirely boring.
A long, slender, beautifully carved smoking pipe rested lazily between his lips. A thin, curling ribbon of silver smoke drifted upward, catching the afternoon light.
Ji’an stared at him.
The man did not look back at her. He was casually gazing out over the balcony, watching the waterfalls, his posture the absolute, undisputed picture of relaxed, unbothered apathy.
But as Ji’an’s high-tier, Harmonious Five-Grain Qi brushed against the man’s position... her internal supercomputer catastrophically blue-screened.
’Error. Target not found.’
Ji’an blinked.
She intensified her focus, actively probing the man’s spiritual signature.
Nothing.
There was absolutely nothing there.
When Ji’an looked at Gu Zhiwei, she felt a blazing sun of holy light. When she looked at Xie Wangchen, she felt the terrifying, crushing weight of an advancing glacier.
Even when she looked at Shen Zechuan’s abyssal void, she could feel the absence of light, a gravity well that warped the air around him.
But this man?
He emitted zero spiritual pressure.
He didn’t have an aura. He didn’t have a signature.
To her magical senses, the velvet armchair was empty. The space he occupied was a perfect, flawless, absolute blank.
A cold, creeping sensation of existential terror slowly slid down Ji’an’s spine.
In the cultivation world, there were only two reasons a person possessed zero spiritual pressure.
Reason One: They were a completely mundane, powerless mortal who had never cultivated a single day in their life.
Reason Two: They were a being of such unfathomable, deity-level power that their control over their own existence was flawless. They had ascended so far past the metric of the mortal realm that they had seamlessly integrated into the natural laws of the universe. They didn’t project an aura because they were the environment itself .
Looking at the man’s effortless posture, the insanely expensive silk, and the fact that he was currently sitting completely undetected in the most heavily warded, restricted VIP pavilion of a hostile sect... Ji’an confidently ruled out the possibility of him being a "mundane mortal."
’He is like a god, no, maybe, a demi-god level character?’ Ji’an’s survival instincts shrieked, slamming the emergency panic button in her brain. ’That is like an endgame NPC or some hidden boss. That is a character in a game whose stat block is entirely composed of question marks.’
Ji’an’s breath caught in her throat.
’Why is he here? Why is he in the Azure Dragon Sect? He wasn’t at the welcoming banquet. The elders aren’t acknowledging him. Do they even know he’s sitting there?!’
She glanced at Elder Viper. The poison master was completely engrossed in his chess game, oblivious to the midnight-purple deity lounging twenty feet away.
’They don’t see him, or doesn’t care about him being here,’ Ji’an realized, a cold sweat breaking out across her collarbones. ’Or... Did he cloak his presence from everyone in the room. Except... except me?’
The man took a slow, languid drag from his pipe. He exhaled a perfect, shimmering silver smoke ring.
And then, without moving his head, without shifting his posture, the man’s sharp, dark, incredibly intelligent eyes slid sideways.
He locked eyes directly with Lin Ji’an.
The man didn’t glare. He didn’t project any killing intent.
He simply smiled.
It was a slow, wicked, incredibly amused, deeply knowing smile that curved the corners of his lips around the stem of his pipe. It was the smile of a predator who had just found an incredibly entertaining, highly unique toy in a room full of boring, predictable rocks.
Ji’an’s heart almost stopped.
’Do not engage,’ Ji’an’s transmigrator paranoia roared at maximum volume. ’I am a background character. I am a chef. I am currently experiencing visual hallucinations due to miasma exposure. I do not see the mysterious, overpowered pipe-smoking deity. I am an ostrich. I am burying my head in the sand. I am a potato.’
With absolute, heroic, desperate willpower, Ji’an forcefully tore her gaze away from the man.
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