The morning bells rang low over the east ridge.
Rayen didn't rise immediately.
He lay on the straw mat in his hut, eyes closed, breath slow, Spiral looping just beneath the surface. Thread Three remained intact—stable, if strained. He hadn't slept so much as recalibrated.
[ SPIRAL BREATH v0.31 – BACKGROUND MODE STABLE ]
▓ Threads: 3 / 9
▓ Spiral Drift: 3.2% (within tolerance)
▓ Anchor Node Efficiency: 86%
▓ Simulated Qi Signature: Earth Root – Masked
▓ Outward Emission Risk: 2.9%
Q.E.D. maintained the loop while his body recovered. But Rayen knew something else was coming. That watcher in the forest hadn't attacked—but it hadn't vanished either.
It was a message.
Not everything that saw him was blind.
He sat up, rolled his shoulders, and pulled on the cleaned outer sect robe Lin Xue had left outside his door sometime before dawn. The sleeves still smelled faintly of rain.
Rayen stepped into the compound with quiet steps.
The other disciples trained in loose formations across the field. Most ignored him. A few watched. Whispers followed in his wake:
"Wasn't he the one who collapsed during the mirror test?"
"I heard he survived it this time."
"No root. He's just putting on a show."
"Then why hasn't he bled out yet?"
Rayen walked past them all and found a quiet corner beneath the Engraving Stone. He sat cross-legged, back to the slate, and exhaled through his nose.
Time to play the part.
He raised a hand and began to cycle a basic Metal-style intake technique—the same one used by low-tier root cultivators.
He didn't actually channel it.
He simulated its visual output with Q.E.D.
A gentle silver sheen flickered around his fingers, weak but steady. Just enough to mimic someone early in their root alignment phase.
[ EMULATION ACTIVE – METAL STYLE SHEEN LEVEL: 17%
Visual Consistency: 94.2%
Qi Efficiency: 0%
Spiral Loop: Hidden – No signature conflict ]
To any watching instructor, he was meditating. Practicing. Maybe even improving slowly.
In truth?
He was reviewing Spiral Core v1.4.
The Codex fragment from the ruin had implanted a recursive overlay. A mathematical structure with fractal extensions he couldn't yet process in full. But its feel was clear:
A technique designed to evolve dynamically.
"Build Spiral Threads not as layers," he muttered under his breath, "but as functions of loop feedback. Recursive compression. Adaptive pulse modeling."
[ NOTE – Heavenless Codex Architecture Supports:
– Loop Reversal
– Energy Displacement Anchors
– Spiral Cloaking: In Progress ]
He filed it away. He couldn't use that here.
Not yet.
A shout from across the field snapped him back.
Two outer sect disciples clashed near the weapon stands, one of them clearly overreaching in a sparring match.
Qi flared. A bamboo practice sword snapped.
Rayen didn't look directly.
But he noticed the internal sect instructor watching them from the balcony above the east pavilion.
Eyes sharp.
Too sharp.
Probably still watching him too.
He needed something more convincing than a light show.
"Q.E.D.," he said quietly. "Simulate one low-tier sect technique. Preferably a real one—something stored in host memory."
[ Searching... One technique found. Name: Iron Pulse Flow ]
[ Rank: Sect-basic body refinement form
Style: Linear compression + joint targeting
Known usage count: 11
Result: 3 minor injuries, 8 failed attempts
Risk: Low
Visual Overlap with Spiral Breath: 71.8% ]
Close enough.
He ran the simulation through posture memory.
The motion came slow at first—a palm twist, elbow lock, rotation of the shoulder with a downward breath. The form emphasized stability through leverage and single-point pressure.
Rayen stood and practiced it once, slow and deliberate.
To any outsider, it was standard sect drill.
But internally, he modified the breath timing and mapped it to a Spiral compression burst.
[ HYBRID SIMULATION ONLINE – IRON FLOW (SHELL) + SPIRAL BREATH (CORE)
Qi Output: 0.009%
Spiral Retention Gain: +0.3%
Visual Deviation: None (masked) ]
The result?
A real movement.
A fake technique.
And a quiet spiral growing beneath it.
He sat again, hands folded in his lap.
Q.E.D. whispered updates beneath his awareness. No warnings yet.
But then—
A line of speech drifted from the inner courtyard behind the stone wall.
Rayen didn't move, but his breath slowed.
The voice belonged to a teaching disciple—a woman, instructing three younger ones.
"...The Heavenless Path," she said, "is a heresy. A cursed attempt to cultivate without the Heavens' favor. Such techniques rely on deception, recursion, and denial of Dao law."
A younger voice: "But Elder—why does the sect bother hiding it? If it's useless, shouldn't we just ignore it?"
The woman's reply was colder now.
"Because it works—for a time. Until the cultivator collapses. Or worse—until Heaven notices."
That line stopped Rayen's breath.
He kept his face blank.
But something inside him locked tight.
[ Q.E.D. NOTE – Corroboration Detected: Heavenless Path Confirmed as Prohibited Doctrine. Unknown detection threshold. Risk of exposure increasing. ]
So they knew about recursion cultivation.
They had a name for it.
And they hunted it.
He adjusted his posture and resumed emulation.
If they were listening, all they'd hear was perfect sect technique.
If they were watching, all they'd see was a disciple with a slow root awakening.
Nothing more.
Let them think that.
He'd build the Spiral in silence.
And one day, they'd see the truth spiral up from their graves.
The challenge came just after midday, and it arrived not from an elder—but from a whisper.
A whisper among the outer disciples.
"He's faking the root."
"He failed the Mirror."
"Maybe his threads are fake too."
Rayen didn't turn his head when he heard it.
He didn't need to.
He had been around enough labs and backstabbing researchers to know what came next: the whisper turns into a challenge, the challenge into a test.
The test into an accusation.
Lin Xue stood under the Spirit Engraving Stone, arms crossed as usual, face unreadable.
"You should accept the next sparring rotation," she said.
Rayen didn't look at her. "Why?"
"You've drawn attention."
He simulated the next Iron Flow motion—deliberate, simple, clean. A downward sweep paired with spiral-thread compression deep inside the anchor node.
"I thought hiding was the plan."
"It still is," she replied. "But hiding doesn't mean acting weak. It means acting predictable."
Rayen considered that.
Then stood up.
The sparring circle behind the weapons pavilion was a simple thing—etched stone and containment wards, built more to prevent accidents than to test real combat ability. But in the outer sect, it meant everything.
It was the place reputations lived and died.
The current rotation was already in motion when Rayen stepped up. Several junior instructors glanced over, one of them frowning slightly as he reviewed the manifest scroll.
"You're not scheduled," the instructor said.
"I volunteered."
The instructor narrowed his eyes. "Fine. Let's see what you've got, Wu."
Rayen stepped into the arena as murmurs rolled across the field.
"Didn't he choke out at the Mirror test?"
"No root. What's he doing in the circle?"
"I heard he grew a thread. Just one. Probably fake."
His opponent entered from the other side—Wen Tao.
Tall, sharp-cheeked, the kind of outer disciple who already had the look of an inner sect candidate. His hair was tied back in a flame-colored band, and he cracked his knuckles as he stepped forward.
Wen tilted his head. "Really? You?"
Rayen stood calm. "Why not me?"
"You're a ghost, Wu. You should've stayed dead."
The instructor didn't even raise a brow. "Begin when ready. Light contact only. No permanent damage. First to surrender or drop loses."
Wen didn't wait.
He charged immediately, palm extended, flame Qi curling from his fingertips. A basic Fire Spiral technique—blunt and aggressive, but fast.
Rayen ducked low, twisting his body sideways.
[ SPIRAL BREATH v0.31 – ACTIVE (OBFUSCATED MODE) ]
▓ Threads: 3 / 9
▓ Pulse Simulation: Ready
▓ Technique Shell: Iron Pulse Flow (masked)
He shifted his back foot, rotated his hip, and released a reverse-palm motion—but not to strike.
The spiral within compressed into a short kinetic burst, coiling pressure not into his palm, but into the space just beyond it.
[ Q.E.D. NOTICE – Spiral Pulse Delay Set: 0.42 seconds ]
Rayen's hand swept past Wen's side harmlessly.
Wen smirked—until the air behind him detonated.
A compressed burst of spiral-modeled pressure exploded against Wen's back.
He stumbled forward, tripped, rolled across the ring, and skidded to a stop.
Gasps rang out.
Rayen didn't follow.
He stepped back into a stable stance, arms lowered.
Wen scrambled to his feet, eyes wide. "What the hell was that?"
"A basic form," Rayen replied, dryly. "You overextended."
Wen growled and came again—this time slower, cautious.
Rayen let him.
They traded three more clashes, but Rayen never overcommitted. Every move was emulated—appearing as sect technique, but built on Spiral math.
No real Qi, just simulated force output.
[ HYBRID MODE: IRON FLOW + SPIRAL PULSE
Signature Leakage: 1.3% (within visual bounds)
Spiral Gain: +0.7% loop retention
Anchor Node Load: Minimal
Detection Risk: Negligible ]
Wen finally backed off, panting.
The instructor raised his hand. "Sufficient. Combat complete."
Rayen stepped out of the ring.
No cheers. No jeers.
Just silence.
Which was worse.
Because now he wasn't being laughed at.
Now… he was being watched.
He returned to his hut near dusk. The sky had turned blood-orange behind the ridge, and most of the compound was preparing for the twilight cultivation cycle.
Rayen didn't light a lamp. He sat in the shadows, cross-legged on the floor, hands folded.
Spiral Breath ran in background mode. His core spun with methodical rhythm, three threads reinforcing each other like an artificial heartbeat.
He had survived the Mirror.
He had simulated a sect technique.
He had knocked down a fire-root cultivator using nothing but compressed breath math.
And no one had caught him.
Yet.
He reached into the hollow beneath his sleeping mat and drew out a rough sketch slate—a piece of charcoal and half a broken tile. He began scrawling the recursive formation he had extracted from the Heavenless fragment: Spiral Core v1.4.
A trident-shaped loop with layered feedback triggers.
Rotational margin: ±17%
Compression yield: scalable
Trigger delay: self-learning
He stared at it for a while.
Then added a fourth loop beside it.
He didn't know what it did yet.
But he would.
He was still sketching when it hit.
Not a knock.
Not a sound.
A pulse.
Weak. Ragged. Unstable.
But unmistakable.
[ Q.E.D. ALERT – SIMULATION SIGNAL DETECTED ]
Rayen's breath caught.
[ Source: 0.7 kilometers southwest
Pattern: Spiral-type recursion
Emission Class: Weak (early-stage mimicry)
Technique Class: Unclassified
Status: ACTIVE – Unshielded
Signal Profile: Not Host-Originated ]
He stood so fast the mat nearly flipped.
Someone was simulating Spiral Breath.
Not him.
Not the ruin.
Someone new.
"Direction?"
[ Estimating... Confirmed sector: Disused outer meditation terrace. Occupied by three registered outer disciples. Specific match: Pending visual confirmation. ]
He reached for his robe and belt silently, strapping on his satchel and tightening the waist cord.
The sun dipped behind the treeline.
Wind rolled through the cracks in the bamboo wall.
A simulation signal from another disciple meant one of two things:
Either someone else was trying Spiral Breath from scratch—
—or someone had seen him.
And started copying.
Rayen didn't know which was worse.
But he was going to find out.
He stepped out of his hut.
And vanished into the dark.