The early morning mist on Solitude Spire smelled faintly of sweet clover and dry pine.
Lyra Ashford had been awake since five o’clock.
She wore her practical gray training tunic. Her silver hair was pulled back into a braid.
She gripped a twig broom. With meticulous, rhythmic sweeps, she cleared the cedar porch of stray needles, dried leaves, and morning cobwebs.
She had spent three days on the Seventh Spire.
She had watched merchant princes grovel in the mud for vegetable peels. She had seen an ancient dragon frozen solid to chill lemonade.
Every hour spent in Felix Vance’s presence felt like walking along the edge of a divine precipice.
Lyra paused her sweeping, resting her palms on the broom handle, and looked inward at her dantian.
A faint sigh escaped her lips.
Deep inside her lower abdomen, her mana pearl floated in a pool of liquid spiritual mist. It was about the size of a pigeon’s egg, swirling with pale blue light.
Three jagged dark lines scarred its surface. They were marks left by poisoned daggers from the assassins who hunted her she was an Adept Tier 4, standing at the absolute peak of the mortal bottleneck.
For ordinary cultivators, breaking through from Adept to Astral Knight was an ordeal of fire and blood. In her clan, elites trained five years in dark caves. They endured agony as meridians were shattered and reforged under pressure.
More than half failed, their cultivation ruined forever.
With my damaged meridians, Lyra thought bitterly, I may never touch the Astral Realm. I will remain a broken Adept, unworthy of even sweeping the porch of a Sovereign.
The cottage door creaked open.* **
Felix Vance shuffled out onto the porch.
He wore his faded hemp tunic. It looked like oversized pajamas that had survived dozens of wash cycles.
His brown hair stood up in messy tufts. He squinted against the bright morning sunlight like a startled mole.
In his left hand, he held his chipped earthenware mug filled with hot jasmine tea.
Under his right arm, tucked securely into his waistband, was the obsidian slate of the AetherDeck.
Before stepping outside, Felix had checked his morning status notification:
[AETHERDECK OS: MORNING STATUS REPORT]
Core Status: PLANETARY ROCKY CORE (EARTH-MASS TIER 1)
Internal Fusion Core Temp: 15,000,000 Kelvin
Internal Core Pressure: 250 Billion Atmospheres
Overnight Solar Heat Accumulation: 99.4% [CAPACITY FULL]
Warning: Thermal dampers saturated. Excess heat auto-vent
recommended to prevent core throttle lag.
Morning Quest: Perform 1x Physical Stretch (Reward: 5 Gold)
Felix took a cautious sip of hot tea, then looked out over the edge of the floating island.
The sky was clear. The wind was calm. Down in the valley, the other six spires of the academy were tiny white specks surrounded by drifting clouds.
"Man," Felix muttered, rolling his stiff shoulders. "Sleeping on that straw mattress is murder on my lower lumbar. If this game has an ergonomic mattress in the high-tier gacha banners, I’m dumping all my savings into it."
He stepped toward the edge of the cedar porch steps, right into the warm bath of natural sunlight.
He glanced at his daily quest: [Perform 1x Physical Stretch].
"Five free gold coins just to stretch my arms?" Felix muttered.
"The developers are really handing out welfare rewards today. Might as well clear the daily."
He set his tea mug down on the wooden railing.
Felix planted his feet shoulder-width apart. He locked his fingers with palms up and reached toward the sky. Then, he arched his spine backward, leaning his torso into a deep, lazy, full-body morning stretch.
CRACK-POP-CRACK.
You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.
Three loud, resonant pops echoed along his spine.
Inside his chest, however, something entirely different occurred.
* * *
Felix arched his back. The one-Earth-mass gravitational field of his rocky core shifted along its rotational axis.
The magnetic containment dampers, already sitting at 99.4% saturation from a full night of offline hydrogen fusion, automatically tripped their pressure relief valves.
Click.
A microscopic fraction of excess thermal energy—roughly 0.000001% of the star’s coronal output—vented outward through Felix’s skin.
This was neither flame nor simple fire.
A silent shockwave of grounding planetary mana rolled across the porch. The warm golden ripple carried immense gravitational weight.
To Felix, it felt like the satisfying relief of popping a stiff vertebra.
"Ahhhh," Felix groaned happily, exhaling a long breath. "That’s the stuff. Zero stiffness."
To Lyra, standing five paces away with a broom, the air hummed with boundless power.
* * *
The golden ripple hit Lyra before she could even blink.
The moment the invisible wave of solar radiation touched her skin, her eyes snapped wide.
WUUUUUUUUUUUUUUM.
It did not burn. It felt like being submerged in a warm, fragrant river of liquid amber.
The planetary energy penetrated her flesh deeply. It passed through skin and bone until it flooded her dantian.
The three dark, poisoned scars on her mana pearl vanished instantly, incinerated like dry grass under a magnifying glass.
Then, the true terror began.
Lyra’s mana channels burst open under the deluge of pure grounding mana. Decades of meditation were completed in seconds.
The liquid mana in her dantian did not boil; it underwent rapid, violent spiritual fusion!
Thump! Thump! THUMP!
Her heart beat with the force of a war drum.
Her pigeon-egg-sized mana pearl contracted, collapsing inward into a pinpoint of blinding diamond density. Then, with the chime of a celestial bell, it reignited!
DING!
A brilliant, swirling aura of astral silver and solar gold exploded outward from Lyra’s body.
Her long silver hair whipped into the air, floating as if submerged in deep water. Ancient starlight runes crystallized along her arms and collarbone. They glowed brightly through her tunic.
The twig broom in her hands began to hum with terrifying spiritual frequency.
Around her feet, pine needles and cedar dust floated into the air. A localized gravity swirl held them suspended. The debris began to slowly, gracefully orbit her boots in a perfect planetary ring.
Adept Tier 4 Peak... broken!
Astral Knight Tier 1... surpassed!
Astral Knight Tier 3... obliterated!
In minutes, the spiritual torrent settled in her dantian. It condensed into an eight-faceted crystal radiating celestial grace.
She was an Astral Knight Tier 5.
A realm that had taken the Grand Chancellor sixty years of bitter seclusion to attain. A realm that her clan elders claimed was an unreachable dream for a disgraced runaway.
She had achieved it in ten minutes.
While holding a broom.
* * *
Lyra stood frozen, her hands trembling violently around the wooden handle.
The runes on her skin slowly faded beneath her collar. But the boundless power coursing through her veins was real.
She could hear the heartbeat of the mountain. She could feel the subtle gravitational pull of the clouds drifting three miles below the spire.
Tears sprang to her eyes, spilling over her lashes and trailing down her cheeks.
Her gaze shifted to Felix Vance.
He had finished his stretch. His hands rested on his hips. He tilted his head back, looking up at the sky with sleepy contentment.
Lyra’s mind shattered into ten thousand glittering fragments.
The Sacred Mudra of the Primordial Dawn, she thought, her soul weeping in ecstatic terror.
He raised his arms to the heavens! He interlaced his fingers in the Nine-Star Solar Bind! He arched his celestial spine to align the thirty-six heavenly pillars of the universe!
He saw my broken meridians. He saw my secret despair. He knew that I was trapped in the mortal quagmire of Adept Tier 4!
He did not lecture me. He did not hand me a pill. He simply performed a single divine movement of the True Sun Scripture, pulling down the river of celestial dawn to cleanse my mortal vessel!
And he did it all while pretending to complain about a stiff back... so that my fragile pride would not be wounded!
Lyra could bear it no longer.
The broom clattered to the cedar planks.
She dropped to her knees, throwing herself forward until her forehead pressed hard against the weathered wood at Felix’s feet. Her entire body shook with uncontrollable sobs of profound, life-altering devotion.
"Senior Brother!" Lyra cried, her voice choked with tears.
"Your servant... your servant has no words! You have granted me the rebirth of the heavens! You have bestowed upon this unworthy girl the glory of the Astral Realm!"
Felix looked down at the floor.
He blinked once. Then he blinked again.
Lyra was weeping hysterically, prostrated before his straw slippers.
Around her boots, dry leaves spun in a tiny dust devil. Several strands of her silver hair stood straight up.
Felix scratched the back of his neck, completely bewildered.
A black tooltip blinked into view above her head:
【Target: Lyra Ashford】 【Cultivation: Astral Knight Tier 5 (Stellar-Infused)】 【Status: Severe Spiritual Euphoria / Complete Mental Breakdown】 【Inspector Note: Has somehow absorbed stray solar radiation while sweeping your porch. Cultivation has skyrocketed. Is now thoroughly convinced you performed an ancient Daoist ritual to save her soul. If you offer her a potato, she will probably build a temple around it.】
Felix stared at the text box, then stared at the leaves spinning around his slippers.
"Lyra," Felix said, his tone flat and deadpan. "Are you getting static electricity from the carpet inside?"
Lyra’s breath hitched against the wood.
Static electricity! she thought frantically. He speaks of the primal lightning of the Void! He warns me not to let my newfound astral power disrupt the delicate balance of the mortal realm!
"I hear and obey, Senior Brother!" Lyra choked out, pressing her forehead even harder into the planks.
"I shall suppress the divine lightning! I shall conceal the heavenly radiance!"
Felix let out a tired, heavy sigh.
He picked up his chipped tea mug from the railing, blew away a wisp of steam, and took a sip.
"Right," Felix muttered. "Whatever you say."
Just... could you sweep those leaves into the dirt instead of spinning them around?
"You're kicking dust into my jasmine tea."
"Instantly, Senior Brother!" Lyra gasped, scrambling to grab her broom with trembling, reverent hands.
Felix shook his head, pulled out his AetherDeck, and checked his daily quest screen.
[QUEST COMPLETED: PERFORM 1x PHYSICAL STRETCH]
Reward: 5 Idle Gold Coins
Daily Streak: 14 Days [BONUS CRATE UNLOCKED]
[CLAIM DAILY CRATE]
Felix tapped the button, grumbling under his breath.
"Five gold coins," Felix muttered. "And the game lagged for three minutes before registering the clear. Absolutely atrocious network latency. If the devs don't patch the server ticks soon, I’m leaving a one-star review."
Behind him, Lyra swept the porch with happy tears. She treated every stroke like a sacred ceremony.