The moon above the Azure Cloud Sect was a jagged crescent, silver and sharp against a sky stained with lingering violet mist.
Ren slipped through the shadows of the lower peaks, his steps light and silent. Using his new control over his local body mass, he reduced his physical weight to a fraction of a feather, leaping thirty feet at a time across the ruined chasms of the Western Ridge without causing a single pebble to skid down the cliff.
He stopped at the edge of the Whispering Precipice—a desolate training ledge hanging over the endless Void. Here, the atmospheric pressure was three times heavier than in the lower yards, whipped by wild, unrefined wind currents that tore at solid stone.
Ren sat down in the center of the ledge, crossing his legs.
If I want to survive the Outer Tournament without Elder Lu exposing me, I can't just absorb blows, Ren thought, gazing down into his palm. I need to turn this density into speed, precision, and absolute control.
He closed his eyes and sank his mind into his dantean.
The microscopic singularity spun steadily, pulling in the crushing air pressure of the precipice. Instead of letting the force settle passively, Ren forced the dark energy out through his nine ignited spirit pathways, wrapping it tight around his skin, bones, and muscle fibers like a second, invisible skeleton.
He willed himself to become light.
His body lifted an inch off the stone floor. He flicked a wrist, launching himself across the ledge at a speed that left a blurry trail of displacement in the air.
He willed himself to become heavy.
Ren dropped instantly mid-leap, his feet striking the granite ledge with the impact of a falling iron anchor. The rock groaned, a sharp spiderweb crack expanding six feet in every direction around his boots.
"The Dense Realm Art," Ren murmured, opening his eyes, which flickered with faint violet light. "It isn't just brute force. It's shifting mass at the instant of contact."
For six hours, under the harsh silver light of the moon, Ren pushed his body past its absolute limits. He let the wild, turbulent winds of the precipice batter his frame, drinking in the kinetic force, grinding it down in his core, and using it to compress his bone density until his frame rang like forged steel when struck.
By the fourth hour, he discovered he could project a localized sphere of heavy gravity three feet around himself. Anything entering the field—a falling leaf, a flying stone, an incoming blade—would instantly lose its momentum and drop like lead.
A sudden sound echoed from the mountain path behind him.
Ren’s eyes snapped open. He instantly pulled his gravity field back into his core, letting his weight return to normal as he dissolved into the deep shadows beneath an overhang of dark rock.
A figure emerged from the fog, moving with fluid, effortless grace.
It was a young woman clad in the pale blue robes of an Inner Sect core disciple. A thin, crystal-clear sword hung at her waist, humming with a icy, razor-sharp Qi that cut through the mountain fog.
It was Lin Xiu—the famed "Ice Lotus" of the Azure Cloud Sect, a genius who had opened twenty-four spirit veins at age fifteen and was said to be on the verge of the Core Assembly Stage.
She stopped at the edge of the ledge, her cold, luminous eyes scanning the cracked floor where Ren had been training moments before. She knelt, pressing two slender fingers against the deeply fractured granite.
"No residual element Qi," Lin Xiu whispered to herself, her brow furrowing slightly. "Pure... physical pressure? No, the stone was compressed, not shattered by a strike."
She stood up, her gaze drifting toward the dark shadows where Ren held his breath. Ren suppressed his heartbeat, using his Null Root to drag every trace of his body heat and presence into the microscopic singularity.
For three long, agonizing seconds, the Ice Lotus stared directly into the darkness where Ren was crouching.
Finally, she exhaled a faint cloud of frost, turning away toward the upper peaks. "An anomaly... or the lingering aura of the falling shard. I must report this to the Patriarch."
She stepped off the cliff edge, her body floating effortlessly on a gust of icy wind as she glided away into the night.
Ren stepped out from the shadow, sweat cold on his forehead.
He looked down at his hands, feeling the terrifyingly dense power humming beneath his skin. The tournament was tomorrow. The outer sect elders, Song Chen, and the prying eyes of core geniuses like Lin Xiu were all gathering.
"Let them watch," Ren said softly, turning his face toward the dawn breaking over the floating mountains.