CHAPTER 17

  When Yang Feng awoke that morning, he did not immediately examine the spiritual power in his dantian, nor did he reach for the wounds that had already closed across his body. What drew his attention first was something subtler, a sensation faint yet unmistakable.

  His body felt slightly heavier. Not from fatigue, but as though a new layer of endurance had formed within it, something that had never existed there before.

  The low-grade Spirit Ox beast blood he had used the previous night had not brought the usual surge of medicinal force. It did not churn through his meridians, did not agitate his spiritual power, did not shake his dantian.

  Instead, it settled quietly, like water sinking into long-parched earth, slowly reinforcing muscle and bone. The change was neither dramatic nor showy, yet it was real.

  He raised the arm that had cracked under strain in yesterday’s clash. The muscle responded slowly but steadily. The hollow sensation that once accompanied the bearing of force was gone.

  The dry rasp within the joints had faded. The movement still carried a trace of heaviness, but it was not the heaviness of weakness. It was the weight of something newly reinforced.

  The change was not great, yet it was enough for him to recognize what he had avoided confronting for an entire year. His body had never been prepared to carry what he had forced it to endure.

  He had relied on spiritual power to compensate for the lack in his muscles, had used cultivation to conceal deficiencies in bone, and had assumed that once his dantian was full, the rest would naturally follow. He had advanced quickly, but the ground beneath him had never been compacted.

  When he rose to his feet, Su Xueni’s words from the day before returned to him.

  He stood before the door for a moment, then pushed it open and stepped outside.

  Morning had already settled over the Healing Hall.

  The scent of decocted herbs lingered in the air, heavy and grounded, as though the place had never truly rested. A few lightly injured disciples sat along the corridor, one with bandages wrapped around his wrist, another holding an arm that had not yet fully recovered. From the front desk came the steady scratch of brush against bamboo paper, dry and measured.

  Yang Feng stepped toward the registration table.

  The overseeing elder looked up. His gaze lingered a fraction longer than usual, not in surprise, but in assessment.

  “You are out of bed already?”

  “Yes.”

  “Walking without difficulty?”

  “There is no obstruction.”

  The elder studied him for another moment, his eyes passing over shoulder and arm, the same ones that had fractured under recoil, before giving a small nod.

  “Your rate of recovery does not resemble that of someone who suffered severe backlash.”

  There was no accusation in his tone, nor praise. It was simply an observation.

  Yang Feng did not respond.

  The elder opened the ledger, his finger pausing at a marked entry from the previous night. He then slid a slip of expense across the table.

  Eight hundred and fifty contribution points.

  The number lay on the paper, clear and unadorned.

  Yang Feng looked at it briefly before speaking in a quieter voice.

  “Elder, is there an error in this amount?”

  A faint curve touched the elder’s lips.

  “You used one Guardian Bone Restoration Pill, one vial of low-grade Ox Spirit Blood, medicinal herbs to stabilize your meridians. I also guided your qi personally for one full watch.”

  He closed the ledger.

  “This has already been calculated according to outer disciple rates.”

  No further explanation was needed.

  Yang Feng understood that none of those materials were inexpensive.

  He also knew that a senior elder personally guiding spiritual force was not something offered lightly.

  The problem was not the cost, but what he possessed.

  He withdrew his disciple token from his storage pouch, lowering his voice.

  “This disciple has only four hundred and twenty points.”

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  He paused.

  “May I record a debt?”

  The elder regarded him without change in expression.

  “Half of your contribution from each mission will be deducted directly to the Healing Hall.”

  “Until the amount is settled.”

  There were no additional terms and no room for negotiation. It was a simple and clear arrangement.

  Yang Feng nodded and handed over his token. The process was completed swiftly.

  When it was returned to him, a thin slip acknowledging the debt had been placed inside his sleeve.

  “Keep it safe,” the elder said.

  Yang Feng bowed in thanks and turned to leave, but the elder’s voice followed him.

  “Your body is not bad.”

  He stopped.

  “If you had relied on spiritual power alone, you would still be lying here.”

  There was a brief silence.

  “Understand it. Temper it.”

  The elder paused before adding in the same even tone,

  “If you injure yourself like this again and come here, the price will double.”

  There was no threat in the words. Only reminder.

  Yang Feng cupped his hands in acknowledgment and stepped out of the Healing Hall.

  The slip of debt inside his sleeve felt weightless.

  Yet he knew it carried weight, not merely in contribution points, but in the cost of moving faster than his own foundation could bear.

  Without lingering, he turned toward the path that led to One-Sword Peak.

  Leaving the Healing Hall grounds, Yang Feng neither slowed his pace nor forced himself to walk faster.

  The path leading toward One-Sword Peak stretched between sparse rows of trees, morning light filtering through the leaves and scattering patches of brightness and shadow across the earth. There was no noise here from the outer court plaza, no voices calling out to practice sword forms.

  Only the wind and the steady rhythm of his own footsteps.

  One-Sword Peak lay beyond the four inner peaks, separated by a stretch of natural woodland and a gently rising slope.

  There were no brilliant defensive formations, no shimmering spiritual radiance like that of other places within the sect.

  The entrance was nothing more than a simple stone arch. Above it hung an old wooden plaque, the black ink of its inscription still clear despite the years.

  The three characters, One-Sword Peak, were written without ornament and without display. Yet the longer one looked at them, the more a quiet steadiness seemed to gather beneath the strokes.

  Yang Feng stepped through the arch.

  The first stone step met his foot with a faint and unusual sensation, so subtle that it was difficult to tell whether it was merely the lingering effect of yesterday’s injuries, or whether the path itself carried a distinct pressure.

  He did not pause to consider it. He continued upward.

  The first flights of stone steps were unremarkable, nothing but rock and rising slope.

  Yet after passing more than a hundred steps, his breathing grew just perceptibly heavier. Not the heaviness of clear exhaustion, but as though each inhalation required a fraction more strength than befo re.

  By the time he reached roughly three hundred steps, his shoulders began to sink gradually, as if his outer robe had absorbed an invisible layer of water, slowing each movement by half a beat.

  He did not immediately sense anything amiss. In his mind, this could easily be attributed to a body that had only just recovered.

  Though nourished, it had not yet returned to perfect condition.

  He continued climbing, allowing the growing weight to merge with the rhythm of his steps.

  When he reached four hundred steps, each footfall demanded more force than before, as though the distance between the steps had subtly lengthened.

  The muscles of his thighs and back began to warm.

  Not from pain, but from sustained load.

  What he did not realize was that from the moment he passed beneath the stone arch, he had entered a gravity formation quietly laid along this path.

  The pressure did not descend abruptly, nor was it fierce enough to provoke immediate alarm.

  It increased slowly and steadily, like an unseen hand adding weight to him little by little, allowing him to grow accustomed to the change without ever noticing where it had begun.

  By the time he reached the four hundred and ninety-ninth step, the gravity along the path had increased to four times its natural weight.

  What had once been no more than his own body weight now pressed upon him as though the pull of the world had quietly deepened.

  Each step required effort drawn from deep within muscle and bone.

  The air felt thicker, the stone beneath his feet less forgiving.

  Yet the spiritual power within him still circulated in steady silence, absorbing most of the strain. Because of that, he did not collapse. He did not panic.

  His movements merely grew denser and slower, as though he were walking through a weight that had always been there, only now made visible.

  He believed he had adapted.

  The five hundredth step opened into a wide stone courtyard.

  There were no decorations, no visible talismanic markings. Only wind passing along the cliffside, and a single figure in pale blue standing at its center.

  Su Xueni had been waiting there.

  She watched him approach, her gaze calm as still water.

  “I said that if you could rise from your bed, you could come here.”

  Her voice was neither raised nor cold.

  Her eyes passed over his body and paused briefly at the arm that had once fractured.

  “I did not expect you to recover this quickly.”

  There was no praise in the words, and no clear suspicion. Only acknowledgment.

  She bent down, picked up a wooden sword resting beside her, and with a measured motion tossed it toward him.

  The sword rolled across the stone, scraping softly before coming to rest a few steps away.

  “Pick it up.”

  Yang Feng took another step forward and placed his foot fully within the courtyard.

  In the instant his foot crossed that boundary, another layer of formation activated in silence.

  There was no flash of light, no great sound, no obvious fluctuation of spiritual power.

  The spiritual force within his dantian, which had been circulating steadily to share the burden until now, was suddenly sealed completely, like water locked behind an iron gate, unable to flow through his meridians.

  The loss brought no pain, yet it was absolute. The pressure already present upon his body did not lessen.

  Only its support vanished. All the weight that spiritual power had been quietly dispersing now fell fully upon his spine, his knees, the muscles that had only just been reinforced.

  For a brief instant, his body attempted to maintain balance out of habit. Then his knee lowered slowly and struck the cold stone.

  It was not because he was weak.

  It was because for the first time since stepping onto this path, he was forced to bear the full weight with nothing but his mortal body.

  Su Xueni watched as he struggled beneath the immense pressure. She did not step forward to help him. Nor did she show impatience. Her gaze remained composed, as though the scene before her had long been anticipated.

  After a silence long enough for his breathing to grow heavier, she finally spoke. Her voice was neither loud nor soft. It carried no reprimand and no threat.

  “You said you cultivated quickly because you wished to enter the inner sect sooner.”

  She glanced briefly up the path above them, where the stone steps continued to climb.

  “This is only one third of the way to the summit of a single inner peak.”

  Her gaze returned to him. It was neither sharp nor softened.

  “Do you understand the weight of the words Inner Sect now?”

  Wind swept across the stone courtyard, carrying the scent of resin and the chill that lingered from the night before.

  Above them, the stairway continued upward in silence.

  There was no spiritual glow, no passing figures, only stone and elevation.

  Beneath the thin clouds drifting slowly across the summit, the path remained as it was, unmoved by the sight of one man kneeling upon it.