The silence inside the outer treasury stretched so thin it felt as though it might snap.
Lin Hao’s hand remained frozen on the hilt of his sword, his eyes wide with a mixture of naked terror and desperate hope.
“How… how do you know about the midnight pains?” Lin Hao whispered, his voice trembling as he lowered his blade by an inch.
“No one else knows. Not even the clan elders.”
Ye Chen took another step forward, his posture radiating the effortless authority of an emperor.
“I know because your Raging Wave Art is a degraded copy of an ancient spirit-rank technique. It forces Qi through your secondary meridians without clearing the primary channels first. It is like forcing a raging river through a narrow straw. You think you are growing stronger, but you are merely tearing your own walls down from the inside.”
Lin Hao swallowed hard.
Every single word Ye Chen spoke matched his symptoms perfectly.
For the past three months, his cultivation had felt stuck, and the burning pain in his abdomen had grown more intense with each passing night.
“Can… can it truly be fixed?” Lin Hao asked, his pride entirely forgotten in the face of his ambition.
“It can,” Ye Chen said smoothly, extending his left hand toward the velvet desk.
“The solution is simple: a minor alteration to the chant that redirects the Qi flow into the Celestial Convergence point before it reaches your lower dantian. I will write the corrected method for you right now. In exchange, the Spirit-Cleansing Herb leaves with me.”
Lin Hao looked at the pale green herb in the jade box, then back at Ye Chen.
The herb was valuable, yes, but it was meant to be given to his younger brother next week.
His own cultivation path was infinitely more important.
“Fine!” Lin Hao barked, pushing the jade box across the table.
“Take it. But if your corrected chant causes my core to rupture, I will personally hunt you down and flay you alive.”
“If you follow my instructions, you will break through to the Fourth Layer of Qi Condensation within three days,” Ye Chen replied calmly.
He picked up a spare piece of parchment and a charcoal stylus from the desk, rapidly writing down a brief, three-line spiritual chant.
He tossed the paper onto the desk and swept the jade box into his wide sleeve.
“A pleasure doing business with you, Cousin.”
Without waiting for Lin Hao’s response, Ye Chen turned on his heel and walked out of the treasury.
The two guards outside didn’t look twice at him as he descended the stone steps and disappeared into the labyrinth of the outer estate.
He didn’t return to his courtyard.
Lin Bao and his guards would eventually recover, and Lin Hao would soon realize the sheer value of the chant he had just received.
Ye Chen needed a quiet, isolated place to consume the herb immediately.
He walked deep into the bamboo grove at the western edge of the Lin Clan’s territory—a desolate place where the spiritual energy was sparse, meaning no high-ranking cultivators would bother coming here to practice.
Finding a flat boulder hidden behind a thick wall of green stalks, Ye Chen sat cross-legged.
He pulled the jade box from his sleeve and opened the latch.
The sweet, medicinal fragrance of the Spirit-Cleansing Herb instantly filled the small clearing.
“A mortal weed,” Ye Chen murmured, a nostalgic smile touching his lips.
“But enough to patch a broken foundation.”
He placed the leaf into his mouth and chewed.
The herb was bitter, tasting of crushed earth and raw copper, but within seconds, a soothing, ice-cold liquid slid down his throat.
Suddenly, a violent jolt shook his entire frame.
The cold liquid turned into a thousand tiny, frozen needles that tore directly into his lower abdomen, rushing toward his fractured spirit roots.
The pain was immediate and suffocating, making his vision blur with tears.
A normal teenager would have screamed and collapsed from the shock, causing the medicine to scatter and destroy their meridians permanently.
But Ye Chen’s mind was made of forged iron.
He clamped his jaw shut, refusing to let even a single groan escape his lips.
Circulate!
his mind roared.
Using his immense soul awareness, he didn’t follow the basic techniques of the Lin Clan.
Instead, he forced his fractured thread of Qi to adopt the rhythm of the Nine Heavens Monarch Scripture—the supreme cultivation art he had mastered in his previous life.
It was a technique designed to command the stars, and even a tiny shred of it was enough to dominate the wild energy of the herb.
Under the absolute control of his mind, the ice-cold needles stopped tearing his flesh.
Instead, they began to weave together, wrapping around the jagged cracks of his broken spirit roots like silver threads repairing a shattered porcelain vase.
The dirt and impurities trapped within his dry channels were forcefully expelled through his pores, forming a layer of foul-smelling, dark grime on his skin.
One hour passed.
Then two.
As the sun reached its zenith, a crisp, metallic ping echoed inside Ye Chen’s mind.
He opened his eyes, a brilliant beam of absolute light flashing across his dark pupils.
He took a deep breath, and for the first time in sixteen years, the natural Qi of the universe rushed into his body without escaping through the cracks.
The cracks were gone.
His spirit roots were perfectly sealed, radiating a faint, silver glow beneath his flesh.
Not only were they repaired, but under the influence of the Nine Heavens Monarch Scripture, his foundation was now three times wider and tougher than that of a normal cultivator at his level.
He had officially stepped into the First Layer of the Qi Condensation realm.
He was no longer a mortal; he was a cultivator once more.
Ye Chen stood up, shaking the dried black grime off his arms.
A cold, ruthless smile formed on his young face as he looked toward the center of the Lin Clan estate.
“The foundation is set,” Ye Chen whispered to the wind.
“Now, it’s time to take back everything this clan stole from my father.”