"Don't talk unless I tell you to. Don't make eye contact. And for the love of Core, if they scan your chip too hard, act like you're too dumb to care."
Li Nian'er was all business now—hair tied back, body wrapped in a generic recruit's jumpsuit. She shoved a black disk into Fang Yuan's palm.
"Fake identity. Name's 'Fang Min' now. Background says you're from the Shadow Sector of Dome Eight—no family, no school history, just enough Core energy to be considered barely useful."
Fang Yuan examined the holo-projection from the disk. A bland face, forgettable. A digital bio floated beneath.
"Level 9… Core Consumer," he muttered.
"Low enough not to get noticed. High enough not to get laughed off the platform."
They stood in a wide plaza outside the south gate of Tian Luo Neo-Cultivation Academy. Above them, glowing kanji scrolled across the sky like advertisements.
> ENTRANCE TRIAL — PHASE ONE: CUT FROM FLESH
PASS RATE: 10%
ONLY THE DESERVING ASCEND
The line stretched on endlessly—hundreds of applicants in color-coded jumpsuits. Some chatted nervously. Others stared ahead, blank-eyed. Every one of them wore a Core regulator on their wrist, pulsing with real power.
A sharp electronic tone cut through the plaza.
SCAN IN PROGRESS. REMAIN STILL.
Drone after drone passed overhead, beams of light scanning faces and implants.
"Any fake IDs get flagged, they fry your chip on the spot," Nian'er muttered. "Sometimes they fry your brain too. Makes examples."
Fang Yuan watched as one boy three rows ahead twitched.
Alarms blared.
Guards in sleek white armor appeared instantly. They didn't speak. They didn't hesitate.
They shot him in the head.
A clean, quiet crack. Blood hit the tiles.
The line barely reacted.
Nian'er didn't even blink. "He flinched during the ping. Amateur."
A figure in black armor stepped in front of them—tall, visor-faced, holding a scanner that hummed as it passed over Fang Yuan.
"Name," the figure said.
"Fang Min," he replied smoothly.
The visor flickered. "Shadow Sector. Level 9. Clean imprint. Admitted."
He stepped aside.
Fang Yuan walked forward. Nian'er followed behind.
They passed beneath the gates.
It felt like entering a mausoleum.
Inside, the walls were polished metal, the floor a grid of cold blue light. No windows. No nature. Just steel and silence.
Fang Yuan exhaled.
And felt nothing.
No pulse of heaven. No rhythm of Qi.
Only sterile, stagnant energy.
They were led to a giant hall where screens hovered above them, showing Core performance metrics and arena kill counts.
At the far end, a platform rose. Standing atop it:
A man in silver robes, hands behind his back.
Tall. Clean-cut. Eyes sharp with warmth that felt practiced.
"Welcome," he said, his voice echoing from unseen speakers. "I am Xu Ran. You stand now at the border of greatness."
His smile widened.
"We will not judge you by your dreams. Nor your birth. Nor your excuses."
His eyes gleamed.
"Only by your ability… to take."
They walked in silence through a corridor of mirrored glass and humming lights. Drones passed overhead, projecting data into their retinas. Fang Yuan ignored it.
Nian'er didn't.
She stole a glance at him as they passed under a scanner arch.
"You're too calm," she muttered.
"You're too nervous," he replied.
"Because I'm smart enough to be," she hissed. "This place isn't like the outer zones. You don't improvise here. You follow protocol or they put your Core on a shelf."
He glanced sideways. "So why are we here?"
She hesitated.
Then: "There's a central archive in this academy. Buried in the restricted research wing. It holds source protocols from the first-generation Neo-Cultivation projects. The stuff that's not public. The stuff they use on real people."
Fang Yuan raised an eyebrow. "You want their secrets?"
"I want to know how they built this system. The truth." Her voice dipped. "And maybe… a way out of it."
"And you couldn't just hack it?"
"They keep the data behind a living-access wall. Only students in the Elite Stream get clearance."
She looked at him.
"I need to climb the ranks. Fast."
Fang Yuan nodded once, thoughtful.
"And you?"
She smirked. "What are you doing in a place like this, Grand Patriarch?"
He didn't answer right away.
Then: "This world has forgotten the Dao. I want to know what replaced it."
They stepped into the atrium of the Core Education Wing.
And stopped.
The ceiling stretched a hundred meters overhead—covered in inverted gravity fields. Students floated midair, suspended by Core resonance exercises. Some trembled. Others screamed. One figure suddenly convulsed and plummeted to the ground with a wet crack.
No one reacted.
Fang Yuan stepped forward and touched the edge of a transparent wall. Beyond it: rows of students hooked to Core-feedback simulators, eyes rolled back, bodies twitching as their minds were subjected to spiritual combat.
He turned to Nian'er. "They don't teach here."
"They condition," she replied.
A voice echoed from above.
"Welcome to the Core Cage."
Xu Ran descended from a hovering platform, hands folded behind his back, face warm as ever.
"These are your peers. You'll train with them. Bleed with them. And if you're worthy... feed on them."
He smiled wider.
"After all, nothing strengthens the spirit more… than the taste of another's Core."
Fang Yuan said nothing.
But inside his chest, that faint ember of golden Qi shivered.
In anger.
"Three Cores," Xu Ran said, his voice smooth as silk, projected across the simulation dome. "That's all it takes to become one of us."
The room dimmed.
And then—reality broke apart.
Fang Yuan blinked as the floor beneath him dissolved into glowing fragments, the walls evaporated, and the candidates were dropped into a new world.
A simulation field—seamlessly real.
They now stood in the middle of a rusted city-ruin, the air thick with static, streets lined with collapsed towers and molten steel veins. The sky above was black and humming with artificial pressure.
> INITIATION TRIAL – BEGIN
OBJECTIVE: OBTAIN THREE CORES FROM OTHER PARTICIPANTS.
TIME LIMIT: 15 MINUTES.
Fang Yuan felt the whisper of the rules settle into his bones.
Qi suppression engaged. No external weapons. No summoning. Raw technique only.
Perfect.
The other candidates were already moving—some stalking through alleys, others activating their Core regulators, flooding their limbs with volatile strength.
A boy behind him screamed—his Core ripped out by a girl with glowing blade-arms.
Another fought back, slamming his opponent's head into the pavement before seizing his Core and absorbing it mid-breath.
Fang Yuan walked calmly into the chaos.
No panic. No rush.
He didn't want to kill.
He wanted to see.
A figure leapt at him from the left—a lean, fast striker with a crescent blade formed from condensed Core force.
"You're mine, level-nine trash!"
Fang Yuan turned, eyes steady.
He raised one hand.
A simple motion.
Not Neo-Core. Not programmed.
A spiral of golden arcs formed in the air—lightning-shaped threads of Qi that bent into a flower.
"Eternal Bloom: First Form – Soft Bloom Deflection."
The strike never landed.
The attacker's blade shattered the moment it touched the formation. The boy's body flung backward, convulsing as his own Qi imploded in his chest.
Not dead. But close.
Fang Yuan walked forward and touched the floating Core with two fingers.
He didn't absorb it.
He pocketed it.
One.
From above, another candidate dove toward him—this one surrounded by a pulse barrier, screaming, "DIE WITH ME!"
Fang Yuan didn't stop walking.
He snapped two fingers.
"Second Form – Lotus Pulse Reversal."
The man froze midair—then was thrown backward by a silent explosion from within his own Core.
He crashed into a wall and didn't rise.
Two.
He took the Core gently, as if lifting an offering.
And then he stopped. In the center of the simulation.
Let the hunters come to him.
He would not chase.
He would endure.
He would remember.
From outside the sim-dome, Xu Ran stood watching the feed.
He leaned closer to the data.
"No absorption," he whispered. "Three Cores untouched. Techniques unregistered. Combat style... obsolete. But effective."
He smiled faintly.
"This one's... interesting."
The simulation ended in silence.
No celebration. No applause. Just cold lights returning overhead as each candidate stood exactly where they'd "died" or survived.
Only fifty-nine remained.
The rest had been removed by the system.
Fang Yuan stood still in the center of the chamber, his hands folded behind his back. His three Cores hovered beside him in a containment ring—untouched, unsullied, hovering in soft stasis light.
A low beep sounded.
His wristband blinked blue.
> Candidate #0931 – Special Review Assigned
Report to Annex Sector IV – Evaluation Hall
Nian'er passed him on the way out, bruised but smiling. She raised a brow. "Review already? Either you impressed someone… or scared them."
Fang Yuan didn't answer.
---
The review hall was empty.
Sleek. Windowless. The kind of room designed to make even confident men doubt themselves.
Xu Ran arrived ten minutes late.
He didn't rush. Didn't smile.
He simply walked in, sat across from Fang Yuan at the steel table, and opened a slim black datapad.
"I reviewed your simulation footage five times," he said, not looking up.
"You never used a Core technique."
Fang Yuan met his eyes. "No."
"You defeated four enemies. Took three Cores. Didn't absorb any of them."
"I didn't need to."
Now Xu Ran looked up.
His face was still. Too still.
"Where did you learn that formation work? I've seen fragments of it in very old footage. But what you used—was whole."
Fang Yuan didn't blink. "Private training. Off-grid."
Xu Ran nodded once, then closed the datapad.
There was a pause. Not awkward. Measured.
"I'm responsible for selecting candidates for the elite development stream," Xu Ran said. "Those students receive accelerated resources, unrestricted access, and… custom instruction."
"Based on merit," Fang Yuan said.
"Not always."
There was a long silence between them.
Then Xu Ran leaned back, fingers steepled, voice calm.
"You are either an echo of something long dead… or the beginning of something inconvenient."
Fang Yuan gave a polite smile.
"Then I hope I'm useful enough to keep alive."
Xu Ran's expression didn't change.
"But not so dangerous that someone decides you're worth dissecting."
Another pause.
Then he stood.
"There's a training wing beneath Sector Nine," he said. "Private. Only accessible by personal invitation."
He tapped his datapad.
A new alert flashed on Fang Yuan's wristband.
> Access Granted: Sublevel Nine – Personal Stream Entry
Fang Yuan stood slowly.
"I'm not here to be anyone's project."
Xu Ran turned back at the doorway.
"Neither am I."
And then he was gone.
The door sealed shut behind him.
Fang Yuan stared at the access symbol on his wristband.
He hadn't fooled Xu Ran.
But that wasn't the goal.
He only needed to stay inside the system long enough… to break it.
Sublevel Nine didn't feel like the rest of the Academy.
Gone were the white lights and sterilized walls. The ceilings here were lower. The floors hummed with residual Qi from too many experiments, too much repetition. The air carried the scent of rusted circuitry—and beneath that, ash.
Fang Yuan moved silently through the corridors. His new access badge allowed him through every sealed gate. The guards didn't stop him. The cameras didn't track him for long.
They already assumed he belonged here.
He passed a training chamber where three students floated in anti-gravity harnesses, bombarded by shifting pressure fields. Another room filled with rows of neural-link meditation pods, each one leaking Core mist through its seams.
And then—he heard it.
Faint.
Subtle.
Breath.
Not the breath of lungs.
The breath of the world.
He stopped at the edge of a dark side hall. No indicator. No label. But something stirred there—something old. He stepped through the threshold.
A girl sat alone in the center of a broken chamber. Cracked tiles. Faded diagrams of ancient meridian paths on the walls, long overwritten with digital clutter. Her eyes were closed. Hands placed gently on her knees.
She wasn't cultivating like the others.
She was… listening.
Her breathing followed a rhythm he hadn't heard in centuries. Crude. Incomplete. But real.
Fang Yuan didn't speak. He just watched.
After several minutes, the girl opened her eyes—and froze when she saw him.
"Are you faculty?" she asked, voice defensive.
"No."
"Then you're not supposed to be here."
Fang Yuan stepped forward. "Neither are you."
She stood, warily. "This room's off-grid. They don't monitor it."
"You were meditating."
She frowned. "Not the way they want us to. I don't use Core-loop systems. They mess with your instincts."
Fang Yuan studied her a moment.
Then said, softly, "What do you call what you were doing?"
She hesitated. "…I don't know. I just do it. My grandmother taught me."
"Did she give it a name?"
Another pause.
Then: "She called it Listening to the River."
Fang Yuan looked around at the cracked walls. The silence.
"Hold on to that," he said.
Before she could respond, he turned and left.
Back into the noise.
Back into the machine.
But now, he knew:
Not everyone was lost.
And the Dao?
Still breathed beneath the steel.