The two months that followed were a masterclass in controlled duality. Li Yao became a ghost in the machine of the Soaring Cloud Sect—present, compliant, and utterly unremarkable on the surface. He attended every drill, every lecture, his performance in the sect's techniques a model of orthodox adequacy that drew neither praise nor criticism. He was the perfect, grey cog.
But beneath the surface, a tempest was brewing.
In the alchemical dead of night, his courtyard became a crucible of innovation. The System, now armed with the complete flawed database of the sect's alchemy, generated recipes that were works of art. He wasn't just purifying pills; he was re-engineering them.
He created the "[Convergence Qi-Pill]," a version of the Qi-Gathering Pill that utilized a triple-spiral infusion pattern, increasing efficacy by 40% and reducing impurities to near-zero. He synthesized "[Soul-Tempering Solution]," a liquid designed to gently vibrate the soul in resonance with his core, a preparatory step for the Soul Tempering Realm that lay beyond Core Formation. Each concoction was consumed immediately, leaving no evidence, their pure energy seamlessly absorbed by his Stellar Core.
His cultivation advanced at a pace that would have terrified the sect elders had they known. He solidified the Early Stage of Core Formation, then began the slow, deliberate process of filling his core to its limits, preparing for the transition to the Mid Stage, where his energy would stabilize and his body would begin its independent regeneration.
He was a dam, quietly holding back a flood of progress.
His interactions with Wang Jin were brief and transactional. He would deliver a modified elixir or a piece of cryptic advice, always framed as a necessary step for the Stellar Core Method. Wang Jin, now wholly consumed by the agonizing process, took them without complaint, his hatred a dull ember compared to the roaring forge of his own cultivation. The Young Master's aura was changing, becoming heavier, sharper, with a strange, dissonant hum—the mark of the spatial instability Li Yao had engineered.
The forest was calling. The Void-Whispering Orchid was the key to leaping ahead, to touching the fringes of the Law Path long before any of his peers. But the deepest parts of the Whispering Fang were a deathtrap. He needed more than just power; he needed a key, a path, and most importantly, a distraction.
The key came from an unexpected source: Mei.
He found her one evening practicing her dagger forms by a isolated pond. Her movements were a blur, silent and lethal. She had reached the Perfection of Essence Gathering, her aura a tightly coiled spring. She stopped as he approached, her hunter's eyes assessing him.
"You move differently," she said, her voice flat. "Like the air parts for you without you asking."
Li Yao didn't deny it. "The forest has its own paths for those who listen."
Her gaze sharpened. She knew he wasn't talking about the outer trails. "The deep woods are not for listening. They are for surviving."
"I need to go deep," Li Yao said, deciding on a calculated honesty. "There's something I need. A flower that blooms near spatial rifts."
Mei's expression didn't change, but a flicker of understanding passed through her eyes. "The Hundred-Year Pulse. The beasts go mad near it. The terrain shifts. Men get lost and are never found." She paused. "My grandfather's map. He was a trapper. He marked a safe route, a hunter's path, to the edge of the anomaly. He never went further. Said the air tasted of broken mirrors."
This was more than he had hoped for. A map. A legacy of survival knowledge.
"What do you want for it?" Li Yao asked.
"Not money," she said immediately. "I break through to Core Formation soon. The sect's method is... blunt. I need an edge. Not power. Precision."
She was asking for his heresy. She had seen his control, sensed the depth beneath his orthodox facade. She was a hunter; she knew a predator in camouflage when she saw one.
Li Yao considered. Mei was not an enemy. She was a potential asset, one with skills he lacked. He took a small, self-made notebook from his spatial ring—a recent purchase with his sect points. In it, he had written down a heavily sanitized, but still profoundly effective, version of a body-tempering technique the System had generated. It focused on enhancing sensory perception, flexibility, and reaction speed—a perfect complement to her assassin-like style.
He handed it to her. "This is for the map. Study it. Don't practice it where you can be seen."
She took the notebook, her fingers brushing his. She didn't open it, simply nodded, a pact sealed in silence. She slipped a worn, leather scroll case from her belt and handed it to him. "The map. The path is red. Don't stray from it."
He had his key.
The distraction arrived with the force of a breaking storm.
It happened during a senior disciple lecture on array breaking. Wang Jin, pushed to his absolute limit by the Stellar Core Method and the Rift-Shard catalyst, finally reached his breaking point.
He had been attempting the final convergence, the fusion of the earthly foundation and the stellar ignition into a single, stable core. The air around him had grown heavy, charged with ozone and the groan of stressed space.
Li Yao, sitting several rows away, felt it the moment it went wrong. The carefully engineered instability he had introduced tipped over the edge into outright rebellion.
There was no sound at first. Just a sudden, violent warping of the light around Wang Jin. Then, space itself seemed to tear. A jagged, silvery rift, the size of a man's arm, ripped open in the air beside him, screaming with the sound of a thousand shattering windows.
Gravitational force gone wild slammed disciples against the walls. Scrolls and instruments were sucked into the miniature vortex and shredded. Wang Jin screamed, not in pain, but in triumph and terror, as the chaotic spatial energy flooded into him, violently jump-starting the final fusion process.
His core stabilized. Forced into existence by a spatial tantrum.
He collapsed, unconscious, his body radiating the powerful, but unmistakably chaotic, aura of the Early Core Formation Realm. He had succeeded. But his core was a mess, a stellar furnace with a crack in its foundation that bled raw spatial energy.
The lecture hall was in chaos. The senior disciple was shouting, activating emergency wards. All attention was on Wang Jin, the prodigy who had formed his Core in such a spectacular, destructive fashion.
In the ensuing pandemonium, no one noticed Li Yao slip away.
He went straight to his courtyard. He had his key. He had his distraction. The sect would be focused on Wang Jin for days, maybe weeks—analyzing his strange core, celebrating his power, managing the fallout.
It was time.
He packed his spatial ring with the remaining High-Grade Spirit Stones, the alchemical tools he would need to preserve the orchid, and the map. He left a note on his door: "In closed-door cultivation for the Inner Sect exam. Do not disturb."
As night fell, he activated the basic privacy wards of his courtyard. Then, using the [Shadow-Water Tread] at a level he had never dared show publicly, he became a wisp of darkness, flowing over the sect's outer wall and into the embrace of the Whispering Fang Forest.
The hunt for the Void-Whispering Orchid had begun. The slow, meticulous burn was over. For the next month, he would be a ghost in the deep woods, racing against time and the beasts that called the spatial anomaly home. His goal was not just to pass an exam, but to steal a fragment of cosmic law from under the nose of heaven itself.