Rain turned the roof tiles into soap.
He Long lay flat on his stomach atop a building beside the warehouse, soaked to the bone.
He wedged his right elbow between two weathered stones to keep his body from sliding down the slope of the roof.
For three nights in a row, he had watched the same wooden door below.
He counted the lanterns and waited for the same person.
The lantern never appeared before the second bell.
The man always entered alone, running his fingers over the grain sacks as though inspecting rare cloth, then left through the back door without ever looking behind him.
A mysterious organizer of intermediaries in the outer district.
That was what the rumors called him.
Someone who knew how to collect taxes from an entire district without spilling a single drop of blood, yet never left a name behind.
Perhaps a neglected talent.
Or an outcast abandoned by one of the great families who had come to weave his own web in the mud.
But He Long was not losing sleep in search of geniuses.
He was looking for a reason.
“Second son.”
Two words that summarized nineteen years of his life.
The elder brother would inherit the branch.
The elder brother sat at the elders’ right hand.
The elder brother received applause in the training hall even when he made a mistake in his sword path.
As for He Long, he had reached the peak of the beginner stage and stepped into the threshold of Soul Core before turning twenty.
The elders had nodded and said, “Good.”
Then they had turned their attention back to his brother.
That was why he had come out into the rain tonight without telling anyone.
The branch elder had sent him on a trivial reconnaissance mission, one whose report was destined to pass through his brother’s hands as usual.
What the elder had never considered was that the second son might decide to find something that would make the report carry his name alone.
His train of thought broke suddenly.
The lantern moved below.
But it was early.
The second bell had not rung yet.
And the footsteps were different.
Quick.
Slightly heavy.
The steps of a man who had just come out of an encounter rather than someone following a quiet routine.
He Long’s brown eyes narrowed, the warmth disappearing from them.
Yuan knew someone was watching him from the roof before he turned into the final alley.
It was not the presence of a cultivator’s energy.
His body had no pathways.
But as he approached the warehouse, he felt the dead chill of silence beneath the sound of rain.
No rats scurried through the drainage channels.
No autumn insects chirped between the cracks.
Even the stray cats that usually slept near the ventilation openings had disappeared completely.
It was the kind of heavy silence created by the presence of a predator.
Yuan stopped.
His left hand remained hanging beside his waist, his eyes fixed on the mud ahead.
He did not turn around.
The calculations in his mind spun with cold speed.
“Who are you, and why are you visiting this warehouse at this particular hour?”
The voice came calmly from the darkness above.
Then a slender figure descended through the air.
It was not a leap that ended in a heavy landing, but a soft descent, as though the wind had carried his feet down and placed them on the wet gravel without a sound.
A young man in simple gray robes without any insignia.
But the transparent aura of energy resting around his shoulders revealed everything.
This was not Gao Qi.
Nor was he some alley thug.
This was a true cultivator, steady on his feet and at the early stage of Soul Core.
Soul Core, the Merchant whispered from the depths of Yuan’s consciousness, his voice trembling with restrained unease.
Boy… even at the first stage, a single energy-infused punch from him could break your ribs like dry branches.
“I’m only an inspector checking the spoiled grain,” Yuan said calmly, his voice perfectly even.
He was not trying to convince him.
He was buying a few seconds.
He Long gave him a half smile that knew a lie when it heard one.
“No one inspects grain like this.
Not with this kind of caution.
You’re hiding something bigger than wheat.
Tell me the truth, and I’ll spare you a few broken bones.”
He took a step forward.
A faint pressure spread from his aura.
It was not a direct attack, but a probing movement cultivators often used to determine an opponent’s level, like a doctor pressing his thumb against an exposed nerve.
The air in the passage suddenly grew heavy.
Falling raindrops bent into crooked paths, while fine spray scattered from the edges of He Long’s clothes in precise circles.
Normally, any cultivator standing beneath such pressure would feel their internal pathways tremble against their will, like the strings of an instrument, revealing their true level and rank.
But Yuan’s body gave no response.
No pathways trembled.
No energy flowed through him to collide with the external pressure.
The pressure of a Soul Core cultivator passed through him like wind through a window without glass, leaving only his wet clothes clinging to his skin.
He Long froze.
His eyebrows slowly rose, and genuine astonishment flashed in his eyes before he could conceal it.
“Impossible… No pathways?
How are you standing there without your knees trembling?”
At that exact moment, Yuan understood the real danger.
This was not an ordinary guard who could be controlled with silver like the Ming men.
Nor was he a calculating woman like Lin Shui who could be persuaded with numbers.
He was the heir of a cultivator family who had just witnessed an anomaly unlike anything he had ever seen.
If curiosity alone drove him far enough, He Long might take Yuan alive and present him to his family as a rare specimen.
Or he might end his life with a single strike out of caution toward the unknown.
The inner door had to be opened.
But opening it was not instantaneous.
It required a full second to loosen the will holding the lock without allowing the spirits to burst out all at once.
One second against a Soul Core fighter was the difference between life and a cold corpse on the gravel.
Soldier.
Yuan called to him internally without a trace of hesitation.
The lock slid open.
An icy shudder ran through his veins as though his blood had suddenly frozen.
His arms grew heavy.
The muscles in his legs tightened with immense force.
The world around him broke into slow, precise details.
A drop of water sliding from He Long’s eyebrow.
The slight movement of his right fingers as they began to close around Yuan’s throat.
The angle of his shoulder.
He Long’s hand shot toward his shoulder at incredible speed.
Yuan bent three centimeters to the left in the dead moment before the fingers closed.
He Long’s hand passed through the damp air.
At the same instant, Yuan’s hand moved.
It was not a full-fisted punch that would raise suspicion.
Instead, his index finger and middle knuckle struck together beneath He Long’s wrist.
A tiny nerve junction no larger than a grain of rice.
The movement ended in the blink of an eye.
He Long took a full step backward.
His right hand trembled with sudden muscular looseness, and his eyes widened in disbelief.
A Soul Core cultivator had been stopped at the wrist by a boy without a single energy pathway.
“Who…?”
He Long muttered, then suddenly lowered his voice until it became hoarse.
“Who the hell are you?”
Yuan slammed the inner lock shut, choking off the Soldier’s hungry cry for more.
He clenched his teeth as the muscles in his forearm complained beneath the sudden weight, but his face remained a dry wooden board without expression.
He calmly wiped the rain from his jaw.
“Someone not worth wasting your time on tonight.
And someone who, if you’re concerned about your own interests, you’ll realize is best described in the report you submit to your family before dawn as nothing more than ordinary goods and an alert guard.”
He Long stared at him for a long time.
Yuan could see the calculations turning coldly behind the young man’s eyes.
If He Long reported a pathwayless boy capable of reading his movements and disabling his nerves, the elders would come and take complete control of the secret.
The second son would receive nothing more than a faint word of praise, soon buried beneath compliments directed at his elder brother.
But if he kept the secret to himself…
He would possess something no one else in the He Family knew.
“I’ll give you some time,” He Long said quietly, steadying his numb wrist with his other hand.
“I won’t speak tonight.
But I’ll be back soon.
And when I return… I’ll have clear answers.
No more evasions.”
His body rose into the air.
Then he disappeared over the dark rooftops as though he had never been there.
Several minutes later, three alleys away, He Long sat beneath a slanted roof tile that offered some protection from the heavy rain.
He raised his right wrist toward the distant light of a lantern.
There was no fracture.
No blue swelling.
Only a tiny red point, as though the tip of a needle had been driven precisely into the root of the nerve.
He knew this point well.
He had studied it in old books on combat anatomy during his first year of training.
It was a strike that could only be performed by someone who had spent decades studying the body’s joints, or by a battle-hardened fighter who had survived hundreds of deadly encounters.
How could a boy this young, without a single energy pathway, possess it?
He Long looked toward the darkness and rubbed the tiny red mark with his fingers.
The elder was waiting.
His brother was waiting in the warm hall to sign the report in his place.
He Long smiled coldly in the darkness.
He decided to remain silent.
Only now did he possess a secret his brother did not share.