Across the upper nine strata, where nebulae swirled like discarded silk and stars pulsed with ancient light, an unseen mechanism shuddered to life. A faint, dissonant hum resonated through the ether, like a million bronze gears grinding into motion.
Within the Nimbus Jade Academy, the shift was immediate and unsettling. The midday sun, usually a comforting gold, bled into a sickly ochre. The air, typically thick with the scent of blooming Jadesilk and simmering elixirs, now carried a faint, metallic tang. A low rumble began, deep beneath the earth, shaking the very foundations of the lecture halls and forging chambers. Disciples paused, their parchment scrolls and circulation diagrams forgotten in mid-stroke.
“What in the blazes is that?” Lei Ban bellowed, dropping a practice blade with a clatter. He had been attempting to mimic Zhuo Qianfeng’s minimalist dodging patterns, sweating profusely in the secluded training yard. The ground beneath him bucked, nearly throwing him off balance. “Is this some new torture devised by Elder Ruan?”
Before anyone could answer, the earth ruptured. Not with the clean crack of a fissure, but with a sickening, gurgling tear. From the freshly opened chasms, figures began to emerge. They were crude, cobbled together from dark, unglazed clay, their forms vaguely humanoid, their faces blank and featureless. Scores of kiln-baked effigies poured forth from the ditch. Their joints ground like dry pebbles before settling into a synchronized rhythm, blank visors tracking the panicked youths.
Panic, indeed, was the fuel. As the first shriek ripped through the courtyard, the baked figurines hardened, faint crimson veins tracing intricate paths across their chests. These lines glowed, pulsing with the fear and confusion radiating from the scrambling masses. Their power was not inherent; it was parasitic, feeding on the very anxiety they inspired.
Instructors rushing from their pavilions found their mountain-cleaving palm strikes barely scratched the kiln crust, each fracture sealing as fresh cries broke out. The flagstones became a pen of panicked youths hemmed in by silent, relentless automatons.
Lin Suyin raised an emerald ward to shelter her hall apprentices, but the pressing mass battered her barrier thin. A heavy effigy, its shoulders crusted with dry loam, lunged with an earthen club. Her ward split with a sound like snapping glass.
Just as the first crack widened, a figure moved. Zhuo Qianfeng, who had been observing the burgeoning chaos from the safety of a nearby archway, stepped into the fray. He walked with the same unhurried pace he used to select obscure herbs, his expression as placid as a deep mountain lake. He ignored the frantic cries, the clatter of steel, the booming strikes of cultivators. He stepped straight past the clay ranks, which ignored his unhurried stride in favor of larger sources of panic.
One construct swung a baked cleaver toward his shoulder. Zhuo Qianfeng shifted half an inch sideways, letting the edge part empty air, and tapped two fingers against the effigy's nape. There, almost invisible beneath a faint layer of grime, was a minuscule, eight-pointed star rune. He tapped it. The crimson lines across the soldier's body flickered, then dimmed. Its movements seized, its form crumbling into an inert pile of dust, the ambient Qi that had animated it flowing directly into Zhuo Qianfeng, who absorbed it without so much as a sigh.
He continued, a phantom amidst the pandemonium. A second construct, then a third, slumped into gray heaps. His taps fell rhythmically, turning each shambling figure into inert grit while fighting instructors remained too preoccupied to track the growing mounds.
Lei Ban, however, saw. He had been hacking furiously with a nicked training saber, but watching Zhuo Qianfeng disassemble the figures with two fingers froze him mid-swing. “What… how are you doing that?” he yelled, momentarily forgetting his own peril.
Zhuo Qianfeng continued along the terrace, his taps quietly siphoning the corrupted Qi from each husk directly into his meridians. By the time the final husk crumbled into ash across the courtyard, he had neatly pocketed the vitality of several hundred fear-fed constructs.
He turned, his gaze falling upon Lei Ban, who stood panting, his face streaked with dirt and blood from a minor scratch. “Lei Ban,” Zhuo Qianfeng said, his voice flat. “You are inefficient.”
Lei Ban’s chest puffed out in indignation. “I just fought off twenty of those things! What do you mean inefficient?”
Zhuo Qianfeng raised his open palm. The stolen spiritual current pooled above his skin in a dense, swirling pearl. It swirled, a maelstrom of raw, concentrated power, then began to compress, to solidify. Gleaming strands braided together, folding like beaten silver. The light intensified, forcing everyone to shield their eyes, until it suddenly collapsed inward with a soft, resonant hum.
When the light faded, a sword floated in the air before Zhuo Qianfeng. Its edge gleamed with cold astral silver, ancient script etched into the fuller like braided frost. It floated upright, quiet and unadorned.
“Take it,” Zhuo Qianfeng commanded, pushing the weapon towards Lei Ban. “Stop being useless and guard the entrance.”
Lei Ban stared at the sword, then at Zhuo Qianfeng, then back at the sword. His mouth worked silently. An apex treasure, shaped from ambient vapor and handed over like a brass coin. He grabbed the hilt, knuckles white as its silver luster hummed through his forearm. "Y-yes, Sovereign! That is—Zhuo Qianfeng! Nobody passes this arch!" he barked, puffing his chest as he pivoted toward the gate.
Zhuo Qianfeng watched him go, a faint, almost imperceptible tilt to his lips. Zhuo Qianfeng turned toward the courtyard. "The first boundary seal is stripped," he said, his clear tone carrying over the silent courtyard. "Eight remain. Shore up your defenses. This was an introductory drill." He glanced toward the upper vault of Jiutian, reading the faint tremor of the approaching second cycle.