Morning bells rang like distant thunder.
Huolian sat cross-legged inside the training hall, surrounded by more than thirty other disciples. Each wore the violet robes of the sect's inner circle, marked with the insignia of their respective masters.
She stood out only in one way, her silence.
Everyone else whispered.
"She's Shenxiu's personal disciple? The fourth elder took another student!"
"Peak Wu Realm already?"
"Was she from a hidden family?"
They all glanced her way when they thought she wasn't looking.
Huolian ignored them.
Her gaze scanned the group, and what she saw shook her more than expected.
These were not children.
Each of these disciples had cultivated to the Wu Realm. Some had been here for years. Their movements were precise. Their auras steady. Their eyes calm. These weren't naïve novices.
They were lik tempered blades.
But even so… she was the only one at the peak of the Wu Realm.
And yet...
'Why do I feel so… average?'
Their first instructor arrived just before sunrise.
Elder Ruan. Wrinkled but sharp-eyed. His movements held no wasted breath, and his qi pressed against the skin like cold iron. He carried no weapon.
He didn't need one.
"Your cultivation is unstable," he said without preamble. "Not in power. In foundation."
No one dared refute it.
He waved his sleeve. A scroll floated into the air, unfolding mid-air to display a diagram of a meridian system gone awry. With twisted veins, shattered qi nodes, and blackened spiritual roots.
"This," he said, "is what happens when arrogance guides your training."
"Qi deviation."
The word sent a ripple through the room.
"From today onward," Elder Ruan continued, "you will learn how to rebuild your spiritual foundation, stabilize your qi pool, and purge lingering chaos. Those who fail will regress. Those who survive… may ascend."
The lesson began.
Qi deviation training wasn't mystical.
It was brutal.
Each disciple was ordered to cycle their qi while Elder Ruan personally scanned their meridian flow. If the flow faltered, he lashed out with a brush of spiritual force, searing the deviation from their bodies.
Painfully.
Huolian began her first cycle with confidence.
Her qi flowed like fire in her veins, roaring through her meridians in the patterns Boluo had refined through a hundred blood battles. Each path honed through slaughter, shaped by necromantic runes and blood sacrifice.
But…
When she tried to conform her flow to the sect's technique, her channels resisted.
Her body had been trained for killing, not balance.
It felt like trying to pour molten lava into a glass mold.
Her qi flared. Wavered. Cracked.
Snap!
Elder Ruan's force struck her side. Not hard, but precise.
She coughed. Her breath scattered.
She tried again.
And again.
And again.
By the end of the session, her robes were soaked in sweat.
She wasn't alone.
Dozens of other disciples panted in pain. A few groaned openly.
But what shook her wasn't the pain.
It was the realization.
She was average.
No one else had been struck more than her.
After the session, a few disciples lingered around her.
One, a lean youth with white hair tied in a warrior's knot, extended a hand.
"Wen Shan. Sword path cultivator. You're the peak Wu Realm girl, right?"
Huolian nodded curtly. "Huolian."
Another girl, slightly older with a blue pearl in her forehead, joined them. "Zhao Fei. Water-essence body. I've been here two years. You?"
"Two days," Huolian replied.
Wen Shan blinked. "Shenxiu took you in after just two days?"
Zhao Fei raised a brow. "Your foundation's rough. I thought maybe you were a rogue cultivator."
Huolian smiled faintly.
"Something like that."
The trio walked together toward the outer meditation courts, where a small pond shimmered with reflective qi.
Disciples gathered in clusters, meditating or conversing. Some sparred. Some scribbled talisman scripts in the grass with their fingers.
Everyone was working.
No one wasted time here.
Huolian watched in silence.
She had never felt this before.
In her past life, Boluo stood above everyone. He was the terror in the night. The one whose name silenced rooms. The only company he kept were corpses and the echoes of screams.
But here?
She was nothing.
'If I don't do something… I'll be forgotten. Buried beneath them all.'
And yet… she couldn't use her full power.
Her core powers were inhumane. Forbidden. They involved necromancy
If she summoned the spirits she'd enslaved in her past life, she'd be expelled or executed.
'Then I'll need to build another name.'
'One even stronger.'
That night, Huolian returned to her quarters and didn't sleep.
She sat by the spirit-gathering array, absorbing the thin ambient qi, and began her own secret training. Not the sect's method. Not the necromancer's madness.
A blend.
A fusion.
She tried to temper her old ways with the stability Elder Ruan demanded. Rewiring her meridian patterns stroke by stroke.
Every cycle burned.
Every shift rebelled.
But slowly… the lava began to take shape.
The killing intent in her dantian softened. The bloodlust folded inward.
'I can't use the old Boluo.'
'But maybe… I can forge something new from his ashes.'
The next morning, she returned to the hall.
This time, when the qi cycling began, her energy moved smoother. Not perfectly—but enough that Elder Ruan did not strike her.
Not once.
Zhao Fei gave her a sideways look. Wen Shan grinned.
The whispers returned.
But this time, they were tinged with respect.
"She improved already?"
"Wasn't she struggling yesterday?"
"Shenxiu really doesn't pick wrong."
Huolian didn't smile.
She wasn't satisfied.
'I didn't come here to be average. I came to win.'