The bronze resonance mirror shimmered under the pavilion lanterns, its rim carved with interlocking furnace runes that parsed raw bloodlines. Ruohan’s vision narrowed to its polished surface, where his sweat-drenched disguise twisted against the glare. His throat felt like ash. He watched as the first few initiates, fresh-faced and eager, stepped up, their honest lineages confirmed by a soft, harmonious hum from the mirror. They bowed, then moved aside, relief blooming on their faces. Ruohan’s turn was rapidly approaching. Sweat beaded on his temples, stinging where artificial skin-wax met his hairline. “Next!” a proctor barked, his voice sharp. Ruohan’s feet moved before his mind caught up, a desperate gamble against fate. He would take one step, then another, hoping for… what? A miracle? A distraction? He wasn’t sure, but standing still was death. He felt the ground tremble slightly as he shuffled forward, his gaze fixed on the array of shimmering crystal formations marking the boundary circle. Suddenly, a high-pitched squeak pierced the tense silence. A blur of grey fur, surprisingly swift for its bulk, shot from behind Fan Bo’s trembling legs. Pudge, Fan Bo's overfed armored beast, scuttled toward an iridescent beetle crawling along the flagstones. The scaled burrower, habitually dormant, lunged across the flagstones in an uncharacteristic lurch of grease and claw, its round belly scraping granite like a dislodged boulder. Fixated on the insect, the beast failed to register the crimson-veined pillars anchoring the verification array. Its front claw caught a seam in the pavers. A loud crack echoed across the paving as three hundred pounds of scaly fat collided with the eastern focal spire. Carved quartz fractured into smoking grit, spraying powdered mineral across the flagstones. The humming mirror went dead, replaced by the whine of severed runic conduits. “PUDGE! You clumsy lump!” Fan Bo wailed, his face a mask of horror. “My apologies, sirs, noble sirs! He… he saw a particularly juicy beetle!” Chaos erupted. Proctors shouted, disciples gasped, and Meng Tianxiao’s stern face flickered with a brief, unreadable expression. The array was shattered, its conduits discharging raw heat into the open air. Ruohan did not pause. The pill's medicinal fire was already tearing through his fake pathways, so he seized the surge with Old Master Gu's brute-force methods. He drove the ignition outward into his palms instead of his core. His left skin flared copper-orange; his right turned frost-pale. Blistering heat tore his left cuticle while the right went numb under frostbite, bleeding off the gut pressure before the artificial meridians gave way. His gaze swept to Song Yueli, standing rigid and pale by the shattered array, her hand instinctively on the hilt of her sword. The purplish rot across its steel core pulsed like an open vein. He raised his hands, the conflicting energies swirling and twisting. The orange heat intensified, then the blue cold surged to meet it. He slammed his palms together, not in a clap, but in a carefully controlled, violent conjunction. A blinding flash erupted, a deafening crackle of power that momentarily silenced the gathered disciples. Then, a needle-sharp white plume, neither scorching nor freezing, took shape between his thumbs. “The Spirit-Cleansing Conflux!” Old Master Gu’s mental scream tore through Ruohan’s mind, a mix of shock and maniacal glee. “You mad boy! You actually did it! You’ll detonate, you fool, but you’ll do it in style!” Ruohan ignored the old lunatic's cackling in his head. He thrust the white plume straight at Yueli's weapon. Her brow twitched, but she held the scabbard flat without flinching. He clamped both palms against the fuller. The black corrosion hissed, curling back like scorched hide as the neutral flame chewed through necrotic residue. Flakes of blackened iron dropped onto the pavers, leaving pristine folded steel gleaming beneath. Silence locked the pavilion tiers. Patriarch Meng’s fingers tightened on his jade thumb-ring, his thin lips flattening. A supposed crippled servant had dissolved third-grade rust using nothing but a barehanded thermal inversion. The moment the last speck of rust burned away, Ruohan's patched pathways collapsed under the recoil. The white fire went out. His knees dropped toward the granite. Before he hit the hard earth, a strong, steady hand caught his arm. Song Yueli caught his collar, hooking his shoulder against her breastplate before he struck stone. Her polished blade remained locked in her left hand, its reflection bright against the hem of her robes as she braced him upright. “He’s exhausted!” she declared, her voice ringing out, cutting through the stunned silence. “This disciple requests medical transport for an initiate who neutralized weapon rot during an array breach!” The declaration, coming from the highly respected Sword Warden, galvanized the proctors. Whispers erupted, not of suspicion, but of awe. “A seeded spot in the Grand Crucible!” one elder exclaimed. “Such talent, wasted in the servant ranks!” Nearby, Fan Bo pawed through the debris to inspect his pet. When his fingers skimmed the creature's back plates, the horn felt dense, almost leaden, tinted copper from inhaled mineral vapor. Fan Bo stuffed a smoking sliver of quartz into his pouch, eyeing his dazed familiar with sudden, frantic calculations. Stretcher-bearers lifted Ruohan onto a canvas cot while disciples backed away to clear the lane. The broken array smoldered behind them, its test aborted without a single drop of his blood drawn. He drifted through dark corridors of sleep until the smell of bitter moxibustion woke him. A latch clicked into brass fittings across the chamber. When he cracked his eyelids, a broad shadow blocked the lamp stand. Meng Tianxiao stood three paces from the mattress, arms folded behind his brocade belt, staring straight through the false skin on Ruohan's brow. “You have his eyes, boy.”

Detonation and Purification