Morning sunlight poured through the towering arched windows of the Vael estate, casting long, golden rectangles across the polished marble floor.
Ming Xuan Ji stood perfectly still beside the massive four-poster bed, her dark eyes fixed on the pale, sleeping face of her disciple. Evanthe’s breathing was slow and even, but the air immediately surrounding the girl was unnaturally cold. Beneath the thick silk sheets, right over the center of Evanthe’s chest, a faint, crystalline layer of spiritual frost pulsed with a steady, rhythmic glow.
The Yin-Qi seal was holding.
Xuan Ji reached out, hovering her palm an inch above Evanthe’s sternum. She closed her eyes, extending her spiritual awareness into the girl’s body. She could feel the violent, chaotic crimson ocean of the Heavenly Killing Star constitution raging against the icy dam she had constructed. The Yang fire was aggressive, relentlessly trying to melt the absolute-zero frost that kept Evanthe’s fractured mortal meridians from shattering completely.
*A month perhaps,* Xuan Ji thought, withdrawing her hand.
Thirty days until the Yin seal fully sublimated. Thirty days before the unrefined, boiling energy melted through the spiritual ice, cascaded through the micro-fissures in Evanthe’s pathways, and burned the fourteen-year-old girl from the inside out.
Thirty days was a suffocating noose tightening around her neck.
She knew the basic theory of what she needed. To cure the physical decay of the meridians and balance the Heavenly Killing Star, she required a catalyst of extreme, absolute Yin energy. But she wasn't a native doctor. Spiritual physiology in this reality was complex, fragile, and entirely unforgiving. She needed an expert, native healer to diagnose exactly what material could safely repair the girl’s pathways.
But there was a glaring, fatal flaw in her immediate plan. If she left the Vael estate to hunt for a healer, or worse, if she had to dive into a dungeon to procure the cure, she would be leaving Evanthe behind.
The Blood God cult had already proven they had the ability and the competency to destroy a city; having a tracking method or countless eyes across the kingdom is not beyond them. They knew Evanthe was the vessel, and they would not stop hunting her.
Leaving the incapacitated girl alone in the Vael estate with standard, low-level noble guards was practically a death sentence. The Marquess’s men might look impressive in their polished armor, but against blood-magic zealots, they were fodder.
Xuan Ji needed a fortress. She needed an absolute, impenetrable vanguard to guard this room while she focused on the cure.
Turning away from the bed, Xuan Ji walked over to the gilded mirror resting against the far wall. She adjusted the collar of her black-and-crimson hanfu, her fingers tracing the intricate, indestructible weave of the *[Heavenly Demon Raiment]*.
She had arrived in this world with nothing but the clothes on her back, her void ring, and her martial knowledge. She didn't have an inventory full of magical game potions to rely on; she only had her power and the resources she had butchered her way into acquiring since arriving. That is to say, she has to search for the cure herself.
When she looked at her reflection, she didn't see the thrill-seeking gamer who had treated this world like a sandbox. The amused spark in her dark eyes was gone, replaced by a cold, calculating void. She was no longer playing a game.
Without making a sound, Xuan Ji slipped out of the bedroom, sealing the heavy oak door behind her.
She navigated the quiet morning corridors of the Vael estate and stepped out through the main gates. As she walked through the sprawling, vibrant streets of the Royal Capital, she accessed the geographical data she had gleaned from the Marquess’s library the night before.
Outside of the King’s royal army, the capital possessed three distinct pillars of independent martial strength. There was the Mage Tower, an insular, bureaucratic spire dedicated strictly to scholars who wielded raw mana. There was the Adventurer Guild, a massive, chaotic organization built for scavengers, mercenaries, and anyone desperate enough to explore the lower-tier dungeons.
But Xuan Ji didn't want scholars, and she certainly didn't want scavengers.
She set her sights on the third pillar: The Warrior Guild.
Unlike the Adventurer Guild, which took anyone who could hold a rusted spear, the Warrior Guild was an elite, specialized group. It was dedicated exclusively to those who practiced the way of the weapon and the internal cultivation of Qi. It was a place for swordmasters, heavy-shield bearers, and true martial artists. If she was going to buy a Vanguard, it had to be from there.
Using a subtle, highly advanced application of *[Qinggong]*, her footwork was so flawless and silent that she seemed to glide over the cobblestones. The dense crowds of citizens subconsciously parted before her, their primal survival instincts urging them to clear a path.
She soon stood before the colossal, fortress-like structure of the Warrior Guild Headquarters. Built from reinforced dwarven steel and dark granite, massive banners bearing crossed swords hung from the battlements, snapping sharply in the wind.
Xuan Ji walked up the wide, sweeping stone steps and pushed open the massive double doors.
Vice Guild Master Durgan took a long, heavy pull from his massive iron flagon, the dark dwarven stout doing little to dull the headache blooming behind his eyes.
He sat at his usual heavy oak table on the VIP balcony, looking down over the sprawling, cavernous main hall of the Warrior Guild. Durgan was a terrifying figure to behold. He was a half-orc, standing well over seven feet tall, possessing a frame built from slabs of dense, scarred muscle. Unlike the green-skinned monsters of the deep wilderness, his skin was a deep, rich human brown, but the jutting line of his jaw and the sheer, unnatural width of his shoulders proudly displayed his formidable orcish heritage.
It was barely mid-morning, and the guild was already a deafening madhouse. Hundreds of heavily armed men and women were shouting over bounty boards, aggressively haggling over contracts, and clashing wooden training weapons in the side rings.
It was a chaotic symphony of martial pride, and as the Vice Guild Master, it was Durgan’s job to keep the rabble from killing each other before they even reached the dungeons.
"You're brooding again, old man," a smooth, melodic voice noted.
Durgan shot a glare across the table. Sitting opposite him was Axel. To the untrained eye, Axel looked like a lean, handsome young man barely out of his twenties. But the ash-grey skin, the elegantly pointed ears, and the predatory sharpness in his eyes marked him as a dark elf.
Despite his youthful appearance, Axel had been shedding blood in the Grand Abyss for decades. He was roughly the same age as Durgan, and his wind-aligned Qi was so terrifyingly sharp that he was already being scouted by the King's Royal Guard.
"I'm not brooding, elf," Durgan grunted, setting his flagon down with a heavy thud. "I'm calculating how much of the guild's repair budget is going to be eaten up when those two idiot halberdiers by the east wall inevitably start a brawl."
Axel chuckled, resting his boots on the edge of the oak table. "Five silver says the one with the scar throws the first punch."
Durgan opened his mouth to reply, but the words died in his throat.
*Thrum.*
It wasn't a sound. It was a physical, atmospheric shockwave.
Durgan’s battle-honed instincts, the very instincts that had kept him alive through fifteen floors of the Grand Abyss, violently kicked in. His heavy, Earth-aligned mana core forcefully flared to life inside his massive chest, an involuntary, desperate defensive reaction to a sudden, overwhelming threat.
The ambient Qi in the cavernous guild hall instantly stagnated. The temperature in the room plummeted ten degrees in a single second. It felt as though an invisible, suffocating ocean of deep, dark water had suddenly flooded the room, pressing down on Durgan's broad, half-orc shoulders with the crushing weight of a mountain.
The deafening roar of the guild hall died. Instantly.
Durgan gripped the edge of the oak table, his thick fingers denting the wood. He looked down at the main floor.
The scarred halberdiers had frozen mid-argument. A group of seasoned veterans had instinctively reached for their weapons, their faces pale, their bodies trembling as they refused to draw the blades. The entire hall of elite warriors had been paralyzed by a singular, suffocating pressure that smelled faintly of iron and blood.
Standing just inside the massive double doors was a woman.
She was small, delicate-looking, and possessed a flawless, porcelain beauty. She was dressed in an intricate, dark black-and-crimson silk hanfu that looked entirely out of place among the steel and leather of the guild.
But as Durgan stared at her, his combat instincts screamed in absolute terror. He wasn't looking at a noblewoman. He was looking at an apex predator. A walking, breathing natural disaster contained within a human shell.
The woman didn't spare a single glance for the terrified receptionist cowering behind the marble front desk. She walked forward, her soft footsteps echoing like war drums in the dead-silent hall. *Clack. Clack. Clack.*
She stopped in the absolute center of the room.
Suddenly, she closed her eyes. When she opened them a fraction of a second later, Durgan physically flinched.
Her irises were glowing with a piercing, brilliant, blinding golden light.
Durgan felt entirely exposed. As her golden gaze swept over the frozen crowd of warriors, he felt as though she wasn't just looking at their armor or their weapons; she was looking straight through their flesh, dissecting their spiritual cores, weighing their souls, and finding them entirely, laughably inadequate.
Her expression beneath the golden light was one of absolute, unadulterated disdain.
Then, her gaze tilted upward. She looked past the lower floor, past the silver-ranked balconies, and locked her glowing eyes directly onto the VIP balcony. Directly onto Durgan and Axel.
The golden light faded from her eyes, leaving them bottomless and dark once more. Without a word, the mysterious woman turned and began walking toward the wooden staircase that led up to their table.
As she moved, the frozen crowd of warriors scrambled backward, practically climbing over each other to clear a massive path for her.
Axel’s boots dropped from the table. The dark elf’s arrogant smirk had completely vanished. His ash-grey skin was paler than usual, his breathing shallow, and his hand had instinctively drifted toward the hilt of his rapier. His lean muscles were coiled with immense tension, like a trapped animal.
"Durgan..." Axel whispered, his voice incredibly tight. "What the hell is that?"
"Don't draw your weapon," Durgan commanded in a harsh, low gravel, never taking his eyes off the stairs. "Don't even tense your Qi. If you provoke her, we are both dead before your blade clears the scabbard."
The soft footsteps reached the top of the stairs.
The woman approached their reinforced oak table. She didn't ask for permission. She didn't offer a polite traveler's greeting. She moved with the cold, absolute authority of a sovereign.
She reached her hand out, her slender fingers brushing the space in front of her. Durgan watched in awe as a spatial tear opened seamlessly from the intricate ring on her finger, a casual display of profound magical mastery.
With a flick of her wrist, she withdrew a heavy, dark-leather pouch and tossed it onto the center of their table.
The pouch hit the thick oak with a dull, heavy thud. The drawstrings loosened, spilling the contents directly under the lantern light.
Axel’s breath hitched. Durgan actually leaned forward, his hard eyes widening in genuine, unmasked shock.
Spilling out of the pouch were not gold coins, but a dozen perfectly spherical, violently glowing monster cores. They were A-rank cores, freshly harvested from the apex predators of the Zel'Mora forest. The ambient mana radiating from the pile alone was enough to buy a minor noble house outright. It was a king’s ransom, casually tossed onto a pub table by a woman who felt like death incarnate.
The mysterious woman placed both of her hands flat on the edge of their table, leaning in slightly. Her dark eyes locked onto Durgan’s, the invisible weight of her aura pressing heavily against his own.
"I am looking for a vanguard," the woman stated, her voice as cold and absolute as a winter storm. "And I am willing to buy your lives for the next thirty days."