Cade’s mind avatar floated above the crimson fog in his realm of consciousness, carefully inscribing a complex technique diagram. It’d been two weeks since he’d entered seclusion, and so far he’d made tremendous progress thanks to the potent and expensive Rank 3 blood.

  Not only had he fully recovered, but his skin was greatly reinforced after being fully stripped and rebuilt from nothing. Its resistance to blood qi ignition was already high before, but now he felt its tolerance to mist ignition was markedly improved as well. The rest of his body had likewise become slightly tougher, though this time the effect was minor, likely because the internal damage he suffered during the Darkheart encounter was no greater than when Castien’s master had struck him. Still, it served to show the notable strengthening of his body after the battle with the half-dead wasn't a fluke, but rather a natural response to a devastating injury.

  He was now also more than a third of the way to the peak of the early stage of Flesh Fortification. If things continued at this pace, he’d break through within the next four weeks, two weeks earlier than predicted.

  In the outside world, not much had changed during that time.

  Legion was cultivating, slowly nourishing himself on Cade’s soul emanations. The Asura could tell the spirit wasn’t pleased with him—he didn’t get to gorge on any souls during the last confrontation. Cade promised to make it up to him once he advanced into the middle stage of Flesh Fortification.

  Jade was still unconscious—there were no new developments on this front. He linked his comms token with the female healer who had admitted the princess into the infirmary. Her name was Elisa, and she promised to let him know when Jade woke up.

  When Reeve and King found out about the opening of the Divine Realm—and what could be found inside—their excitement soared, especially King’s. Their determination to get into the inner court was already high, but now it had reached an entirely new level. Both men were busy preparing for their upcoming fights in the Low Ladder, which were only a few weeks away. If they won, they’d be able to take part in exploring the Life and Death Divine Realm.

  When Cade asked Reeve if he was interested in learning the Elemental Weaving Art, the latter thanked him but chose to stick with the Hak Fu doctrines for now. Switching one's primary cultivation method as a body refiner was no small matter, often demanding a complete overhaul of their fighting style. It wasn’t something that could be done on short notice. King, on the other hand, was ecstatic to look through Darkheart’s qi cultivation manuals, and Cade passed him those through Lucy.

  When it came to his young servant, she was doing amazingly well. She had already entered the seventh stage of Qi Saturation and was making solid progress towards the eighth, all thanks to Master Lao Ren’s miraculous spiritual tea. After her work was done—which, admittedly, was very minimal with Cade not requiring her services—she’d study her new cultivation art and train with other servants. He originally planned to send her to one of the scribes to copy the Elemental Weaving Art, but since Brickwall wasn’t interested, that was no longer necessary. Because he told her to inform him of her progress, nearly every day he’d get an excited message describing what new things she had learned. These updates gave him a really good, wholesome feeling. He was beginning to understand why experienced cultivators took on disciples.

  Aien had nearly finished translating Cade’s scribblings. The Asura was deeply curious about the Death Dao arts and even more intrigued by what they might become when their diagrams were reversed.

  During those two weeks, other than marinating in Rank 3 blood essence, Cade was busy with several other goals he wanted to accomplish before reaching the middle stage. With the automation technique he had learned in Blood Transformation, a small part of his mind ran Flesh Fortification cultivation diagrams while he could focus on other things, like examining his abilities and possibly improving them.

  His first target was the mist. He wanted to be in charge of the terror effect. It was a result of the prismatic dust taking on the horrifying property of the spherules. Whenever someone set their gaze on the mist for the first time, it had a shocking effect as if they were looking directly into one of the spherules, and Cade remembered all too well how that felt.

  The mist and disabling pulse were both abilities triggered through his voracious heart, and anything the heart did could be represented as a technique diagram—this part was clearly explained in the Book of Life. His heart and the spherules were so tightly linked, it wasn’t incorrect to say the spherules were effectively an extension of his voracious heart. He was dead set on learning how to use the heart to control the spherules, even if only in its most basic capacity.

  It was only today that he stumbled upon his first breakthrough, after spending more than two hundred hours inside his realm of consciousness, either rewatching Yin Tian’s memory or inscribing diagrams that did absolutely nothing.

  Today he had finally inscribed a new kind of diagram for releasing his red mist—one that was both simple and complex. Or rather, the road leading to its discovery was complicated, but once he had discovered how to do what he wanted, the matter turned out to be mostly straightforward. The diagram had only one role: to prompt the spherules to release the dust without passing on their terror effect.

  And that was exactly what it did. From there, it was a simple job to create another diagram which triggered the terror effect on its own.

  Cade couldn’t describe in words how he felt right now. For most of his brief cultivation journey, he was a passenger, a passive participant observing what his body was doing and how it was developing. Now, he was beginning to take control.

  This new discovery had one very important ramification: he could start working on his second project, which was to turn the disabling pulse into an aura.

  He had originally believed the pulse was an aura—a static field—but this was wrong. Instead, it was a single spike with a very strong effect if his target was close, which greatly weakened with distance. Cade wanted to recreate the pulse as an aura diagram. The ability was incredibly undemanding, requiring almost no blood qi, which made it perfect for this purpose.

  He was willing to sacrifice its debilitating properties—something it achieved through disturbing the enemy’s blood qi—and turn it into a weaker, but sustainable version that would be more effective over longer distances. Cade theorized this should allow him to avoid the biggest downside of the pulse: just like the mist’s terror, the moment it ended caused an adaptation, rendering the next pulse mostly ineffective.

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  Naturally, during a fight he would be faced with a decision whether to use the aura or the pulse, as triggering one would make the other useless for a time. The aura’s goal was different: it was to oppress the enemy, to slow them down, to grind on them, to mess with their concentration, and force them to expend more effort to perform every single action. It traded a momentary stun for a long-lasting, if fairly mild, impairment. While the aura would make the disabling pulse ineffective, he could still use the mist’s terror in a crucial moment, so this wasn’t a huge concern.

  On the other hand, a sustainable field—even if much weaker than the original ability—could continue working for quite some time. According to his current understanding, the complete adaptation should only happen after the aura was removed.

  This whole concept occurred to him after examining the pulse’s action and its effects on the two chickens—his avian testing subjects back in Tower Oasis. Even though it was a brief spike, its effect lingered for much longer than the mist’s terror. The disabling pulse mostly affected the body, whereas the mist’s terror influenced the mind. Cade had no idea how to even begin turning the terror effect into an aura, mostly because he didn’t understand how it worked. But the pulse? He was convinced it should be possible.

  As he began working on the aura diagram, he sensed a message arriving on his comms token. Sighing, he stopped inscribing and sent a trickle of blood qi into the crystal.

  It was Elisa.

  “Jade woke up. Physically she’s fine. Please come see me first before you go into her chamber. And bring the bloodstone.”

  Excited and a little alarmed, Cade rushed out of the coffin to wash away the blood.

  After entering the infirmary, he headed directly for the shift leader’s office but found it empty. In the small crowd of disciples, there were a few healers attending their duties, and after asking around, he eventually managed to track down Elisa. She looked almost exactly the same as the last time he saw her, wearing a dark green robe—shift leader colors—with her long brown hair pinned up top.

  He waited patiently, resting his back against the stone wall, observing as emerald qi flowed out of her outstretched fingers, penetrating the arm of a badly burnt disciple.

  “Greetings, Sister,” Cade said once he saw she was done. Elisa turned around sharply before releasing a weary sigh.

  “Do you want to give me a heart attack?” she grumbled lightheartedly. She sounded tired. “Walk with me; I’ll explain the situation.”

  Cade followed obediently, not even attempting to memorize the path they took. The infirmary was huge. Many cultivators walked or even ran past them, most of whom were disciples in need of healing, with only the occasional white-coated silhouette flickering in the distance. Pretty much all the healers he saw wore tired expressions. Patients were shouting over each other, some demanding to be served first, others crying from pain. A strong medicinal smell permeated the air.

  “What’s the deal with those decorated pine trees?” he asked after passing the second one, with several colorful boxes stacked underneath.

  “It’s an ancient tradition where I’m from. If you’ve been good all year, you’ll find a present under the tree. If you weren’t, you get a kick in the arse from a corpulent bearded fellow in a red outfit.”

  “Nice.” Cade nodded with appreciation. "The world is truly vast."

  Elisa swiftly navigated the corridors, leading him to a small room, its only furniture an empty bed with an adjacent nightstand. She then locked the door behind them, cutting off the cacophony of sounds, and threw herself on the bed with a relieved sigh.

  “Sister… Any other day I’d be honored, but I’m not here for pleasure,” Cade quipped, glancing meaningfully at the bed. He wished she would just tell him upfront what was going on.

  “What…? Oh,” Elisa laughed softly, sitting on the edge of the bed. “It’s good you have a sense of humor. Let’s hope I don’t spoil your mood too much. I brought you here because people keep pestering me in the office; I can’t even get five minutes of peace there.”

  “Right, of course,” Cade put on a serious expression.

  “This job pays very well, and I greatly enjoy helping our disciples, but we don’t get paid for nothing. It’s taxing both physically and mentally. I’m nearly always low on spiritual qi. Such prolonged depletion is exhausting. Anytime I get a moment for myself, I try to relax and recover a little. Sit, I won’t bite,” she said, patting the space on the bed next to her as she produced and swallowed a spiritual qi pill.

  “Sure,” Cade sat down, turning towards her.

  “First, tell me how long have you known Jade?” she asked. It didn’t seem like this was a question driven by curiosity.

  Cade wasn’t sure himself and considered the question for a moment.

  “You could say we’ve known of each other for less than four months. Why?”

  “Alright, here’s the situation—and it’s both good and bad. First, her memory loss overall is not too severe. Considering what she’s gone through, it could’ve been much worse,” she said, and seeing the surprise in his gaze, Elisa quickly clarified, “Saint Erendriel informed me what kind of attack was used on her. I don’t know much about mind-controlling arts, but overall I think she got off easy. The last thing she remembers vividly is an argument she had in an auction house a few months back with, quote: ‘some thieving bastard’,” she added with a chuckle, not failing to notice Cade’s wry grimace. “She has several faint memories from the following few days, single scenes mostly, and that appears to be it. The bad news, well, now I’m sure you can understand yourself.”

  From the very moment Cade heard that Jade would lose some memories, he was preparing himself for such news. His luck was too predictable. He was still happy that she was fine otherwise, and he was sure she'd quickly recover all the progress she had made in the monastery. As for their friendship, the prospects weren’t great.

  “So… she won’t remember anything that happened in the last few months? Not even a scene, an image, a single conversation?”

  “I’ve questioned her as much as I thought was warranted medically. Her brain is still recovering from the attack, so she might regain some memories with time… with a big accent on might. Right now, she doesn’t remember anything from that period,” Elisa shook her head.

  Cade exhaled deeply, handing Elisa the bloodstones he took from Castien, six gems in total.

  “I’ve checked them all; they all contain pure, refined blood qi. You’ll probably find some use for them. I took the bloodstones from the fellow who did this to her.”

  “Thank you. Yes, these will be very helpful, not just to Jade,” Elisa offered him a grateful smile. “Do you want to talk to her? Meeting you might trigger a partial memory release, though I don’t want you to have too much hope. It’s very unlikely, considering the type of damage she had suffered.” The healer’s voice didn’t inspire confidence.

  “I’ll go see her, but after what you’ve told me, I think I’ll probably just get yelled at,” Cade winced, imagining Jade’s outburst.

  “It’s that bad?”

  “Yes, well. I might have been that thieving bastard she was so vocal about.”

  “Oh, I see your point,” Elisa barely stifled a chuckle. “Well, it's up to you then.”

  “Let’s go. I might as well get this over with,” he sighed wearily.

  Elisa swiftly guided him to Jade’s chamber, which wasn’t far from the main transportation formation.

  “Good luck,” the healer said, giving him a sympathetic pat on the arm before departing to her duties.

  Cade knocked on the door, taking a slow, deep breath.

  “Come in,” he heard Jade’s muffled voice. She sounded like her usual self.

  Maybe it won’t be too bad.

  Exhaling, he walked in, closing the door behind him. Taking a quick glance, he saw Amelia—Jade’s equally short and voluptuous cousin—sitting next to her bed and holding the princess's hand.

  “Hey, Cade,” Amelia smiled at him, her expression a little stiff. He noticed dark circles under her eyes. This wasn’t surprising. With Arthur and Roland missing, and Jade suffering a serious attack, she and Renata must have been terrified. From their perspective, someone was obviously targeting the Brighthearts. He returned Amelia’s smile, right before Jade’s face tensed, a shadow of a brewing storm passing through her eyes.

  The moment she registered Cade’s presence, her pupils narrowed before rapidly widening. Veins popped on her forehead, and her whole body began shaking with fury.

  “You!” she spat, pointing her finger at him. “You’re that bastard who snatched my drop of blood!”