The walk from the training grounds to the Elder's garden was a journey through a sea of whispers. Ren's display had torn a hole in the fabric of what the students understood about cultivation. He was no longer just a freak or a puzzle; he was a walking paradox, a silent enigma who could shatter targets with his apparent non-action. The stares that followed him were no longer just scornful; they were laced with a new and potent ingredient: fear.
Ren paid them no mind. His focus was entirely on the impending meeting. He replayed the event in his head, analyzing it with the cold detachment he had learned from his years in the wild. He had followed the Elder's command to the letter—he had not circulated his Spirit Soul's Aether. He had used the Aether absorbed into his flesh. But had he obeyed the spirit of the command? The Elder prized subtlety, and while the method had been invisible, the result—a target with a gaping hole blasted through it—had been anything but. He had solved one problem only to create another.
He found Elder Tian seated on the same stone bench, meticulously pruning a miniature, crystalline tree that grew in a shallow dish on the table beside him. The tree pulsed with a faint, internal light, its branches humming with a refined Aether. The Elder snipped a single, glowing leaf with a pair of silver shears, his movements precise and economical. He did not look up as Ren approached.
"You have a talent for turning obedience into spectacle," the Elder said, his voice as sharp as the shears in his hand. He placed the tool down and finally raised his eyes, his gaze pinning Ren in place. "The objective of the exercise was to demonstrate precision and control. You demonstrated overwhelming, inexplicable force. You drew every eye. You invited a thousand new questions. You have made yourself a target."
"My intention was only to complete the task as instructed," Ren replied, his voice even.
"Your intention is irrelevant. The result is all that matters," the Elder countered coldly. "Your method was ingenious. You manipulated the external world without projecting your own internal energy. You used the Aether Weave itself as your weapon. It is a principle that even most Aether Masters fail to grasp. But your application was crude. It was the equivalent of using a siege engine to crack a nut. It was loud, inefficient, and ostentatious."
He gestured to the crystalline tree. "A true master does not shatter the stone he wishes to carve. He understands its nature, its grain, its flaws. He applies the precise amount of force needed—no more, no less—to achieve the desired shape. Your power is the stone. Your will is the chisel. At present, you are wielding it like a sledgehammer."
The reprimand was sharp, but Ren felt no sting. It was a diagnosis, not an insult. It was a lesson.
"Your control is incomplete," the Elder continued. "You can open a gate and allow the Aether to flood in. You created a dam and then simply let it burst. A true master would have opened the gate just enough, allowing a gentle, controlled stream to flow, creating a subtle pressure that would have nudged the sphere with perfect accuracy, leaving the target intact."
He let the lesson sink in before his tone shifted. "However. Your progress is undeniable. You have unlocked a gate that has been sealed for millennia. We will now learn how to sculpt with the torrent that passes through it."
The Elder stood and walked towards the center of the garden. He pointed to the ground. "The next phase of your training will not involve targets or opponents. It will involve this." He indicated the simple, unadorned earth. "Your task is to refine your control over the kinetic force you can generate. You will start with a single grain of sand."
He crouched down, his ancient finger hovering over the dirt. "You will use your method to lift one grain of sand one inch into the air and hold it there for one hour. You will not disturb the grains around it. You will not cause a whisper of wind. The force you apply must be so perfectly controlled, so exquisitely balanced against the weight of that single grain, that its movement is imperceptible to the naked eye."
It was an impossible task. It was an exercise in a degree of precision that bordered on the divine. To generate a force so minute, so perfectly calibrated, was infinitely more difficult than the crude blast of pressure he had used on the training grounds.
"When you can do that," the Elder said, rising to his feet, "you will move on to two grains of sand. Then a pebble. Then a leaf. You will learn the exact weight of the world, and you will learn to apply the exact force needed to defy it. This is the foundation of true mastery. Subtlety. Efficiency. Absolute control."
A new fire lit within Ren. This was not a punishment. This was a path. A clear, impossibly difficult path forward.
"And while you are doing this," the Elder added, his voice dropping slightly, "you will begin your true education. Your afternoons will no longer be spent in the academy's general classes, which are beneath you. You will be granted access to the GAMA's private archives, housed here in the Elder's Pavilion. You will read. You will study the histories of the Rift Wars, the nature of Aetheric Anomalies, the banned texts on Soul-Forging and Primordial bloodlines. You are an anomaly, boy. It is time you understood what that means."
The Elder turned his back, returning to his crystalline tree. The audience was over.
Ren stood alone in the garden, his gaze fixed on the patch of dirt at his feet. He had been given two monumental tasks: to master the physical world with a god-like precision, and to unlock the secrets of his own unnatural existence. The scorn of his peers, the rivalries, the petty politics of the academy—it all felt small, insignificant. His journey was no longer about surviving in their world. It was about creating his own.