Two chapters to celebrate the weekend , Enjoy ! 😋😋😋
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The sect slept.
Lanterns along the inner courtyard walls guttered low, their flames dim against the night's stillness. Disciples had long since retreated to their quarters; only the occasional watchman passed, steps muffled by the thick carpets of pine needles and fallen leaves.
Kaelen lingered in the silence, his back pressed against the cool stone wall of the library annex. He waited until the last watchman's shadow faded around the corner. Then he moved.
The valley stream was no longer enough. The flows he observed there had limits—gentle currents of Qi in plants and stones, too weak to push him further. If he wanted to test the edge of his Spectral Meridian Insight, he needed a harsher current, a stronger resonance.
That was why his steps took him toward the back of the mountain, where few disciples wandered: the cavern mouths that fed into the sect's defensive formation lines.
The elders forbade lingering here. Even standing too close to the array nodes without authorization was a punishable offense. The Qi flowed violently, raw and unstable, drawn in from the heavens and bent into a shield that wrapped the mountain in protection.
But to Kaelen, the danger was a lure.
He reached the cavern mouth just before midnight. Cold air poured from it, humming faintly with a rhythm that shook his bones. He could feel the meridians of the world itself pulsing here, threads of power converging and splitting like a thousand rivers braided together.
He sat at the threshold, careful not to cross into the center where the flows raged strongest.
The serpent at his back manifested faintly, its dull silver form swaying in rhythm with the cavern's breath.
"Let's see if you can survive this," Kaelen murmured under his breath.
He closed his eyes, and the Insight unfurled.
The cavern exploded into rivers of light. Thousands of streams raced and tangled, each one vibrating at a different pitch. He saw where they crossed, where one flow fed another, where they knotted so tightly a careless step would shred a mortal's meridians to pieces.
Kaelen did not step. He studied.
And then, he tested.
He recalled Joren's serpent strike—the brutal thrust that coiled, compressed, and then lashed outward like a spear. It was efficient, but rigid.
He paired it with another technique he had observed from a lesser disciple: a flowing palm meant to redirect force like water swirling around a stone.
Alone, each was powerful but flawed. Joren's lacked subtlety; the palm lacked bite. Together? Perhaps something new.
Kaelen breathed, guiding Qi through his meridians with painstaking precision. He tried to weave them, aligning his energy to mimic both flows.
The first attempt tore at his veins. His chest spasmed, and blood filled his mouth. He caught himself against the stone, biting down hard until the dizziness passed.
The serpent behind him hissed, faint silver scales flaring in agitation.
"Again," Kaelen whispered.
He tried a second time. This time he slowed, allowing the Qi to follow Joren's coiled thrust—but softened the end, letting it spill like water into the redirecting palm's pathway.
It sputtered, half-formed, the energy breaking apart before it could release.
The cavern's resonance shook through him, mocking.
Kaelen drew deeper on the surrounding flow, threading the unstable Qi into his meridians. His body screamed with the strain, but he endured.
"Again."
The third time, something clicked.
The coiling thrust built, compressed tight within his core. As it reached the point of bursting outward, Kaelen softened the flow, bending it along the palm's path instead of letting it rupture.
The strike lashed forward like a serpent's fangs, but instead of breaking, the energy curved. It slashed through the air in a spiral, a strike both piercing and fluid.
The cavern air howled as the energy slammed into the stone wall. Dust and shards burst outward, leaving a spiral-shaped gouge scorched into the rock.
Kaelen staggered back, chest heaving. His veins burned, his arms shook—but the technique had held.
Behind him, the serpent flared brighter.
In the Soul Palace, it coiled around itself and shed another strip of dull skin. Silver gleamed beneath, sharper now, scales catching faint light like the edge of a blade. Its eyes glimmered with awareness, as if it too understood what had been achieved.
Kaelen fell to one knee, coughing blood into the dirt. But when he raised his head, his eyes were steady.
"That's one," he murmured, voice ragged. "One of many."
He lingered at the cavern's edge until dawn streaked the horizon, testing the new flow again and again until his body screamed with exhaustion. Each attempt refined it further—the spiral strike grew smoother, the balance between thrust and redirect more natural.
When he finally rose, his robe was damp with sweat, his knuckles scraped raw. But his serpent gleamed brighter in its faint form, the tarnished silver shedding the last hints of grey.
Kaelen concealed it at once, dimming the glow until it appeared the same dull shadow as always.
He could not afford questions.
As he walked back through the sect's silent corridors, the first disciples were just rising, chatter drifting as they spoke of Joren's latest training feat.
Kaelen passed unnoticed among them, a shadow swallowed by the morning light.
Only within his chest did the hidden current hum, quiet but steady—a new rhythm no one else could hear.