Three months had passed since Lin Yuan returned to the Broken Sky Sect.
To most, he was already a forgettable figure—a quiet, solitary disciple with no particular presence. But this forgetfulness was no accident. Lin Yuan had shaped it carefully, like a craftsman polishing a mask.
He wore plain robes and kept to the shadows. When required to demonstrate techniques, he made subtle mistakes. He never won spars, but never failed embarrassingly either. The result: no attention, no questions. Just how he wanted it.
What no one knew was that, behind the curtain of mediocrity, Lin Yuan had already reached the peak of Body tempering in the stage of Viscera refining—his spiritual body honed like tempered steel. His muscles hummed with vitality, his meridians flowed like clear rivers. He was ready for the next realm.
But he would wait.
Today, he wandered the bustling outer sect market, blending into the crowd. Disciples traded pills, spirit beast eggs, talismans, and soul artifacts. Lin Yuan's gaze moved past the glittering goods until it landed on a small, crooked stall tucked away in shadow.
The vendor was an old man with a crooked back, cloudy eyes, and a sly grin. His table held strange things—bone dice, tarnished rings, ancient coins, and shards of unknown material. Among them sat a black metal fragment, no larger than a thumb, pulsing faintly as if it breathed.
As Lin Yuan approached, a violent tremor ran through his core.
The Orb in his dantian stirred with such force that he nearly stumbled. He hadn't felt it react this powerfully before—not even when absorbing the Origin of rare herbs or beast cores.
The elder tilted his head. "You can feel it, can't you?"
"What is it?" Lin Yuan asked, steadying his voice.
"Found it clutched in a corpse's fist at the bottom of a collapsed mine," the vendor said. "Or maybe it found me."
Lin Yuan handed over a few spirit stones. The old man didn't count them. As Lin Yuan touched the fragment—
—everything changed.
He stood in a void where skies bled fire and mountains screamed as they split. Celestial beasts warred against beings clad in radiant armor. Rivers ran red. Amid the destruction floated the Orb—his Orb—radiating power beyond comprehension.
Words echoed in a dead tongue, heavy with sorrow.
"It must not awaken again… The cycle must not repeat…"
Then blackness swallowed all.
He gasped, eyes snapping open. The market noise returned. The old man still sat, watching quietly.
"You saw," he murmured.
Lin Yuan nodded, shaken. "A war. The end of a world."
The old man smiled sadly. "Some truths are buried because they are too heavy to bear."
Lin Yuan slipped the shard into his sleeve and walked away in silence.
Let them keep forgetting me, he thought. Let them never notice.
As he returned to his quarters, a silent shift occurred within. The Orb absorbed the fragment's lingering energy, and like water filling a vessel, it poured into Lin Yuan's meridians—refining his body one last time.
His core shuddered. His bones gleamed faintly under the skin. His breath deepened.
He had reached the peak of Body Tempering.
A single step remained before he would begin Qi Condensation.
Yet no one saw it. No one sensed it. Just as he intended.
He sat in stillness, eyes closed, heartbeat steady. Outside, the sect moved on, unaware.
But inside him, something ancient had stirred—and it was watching.