The transition from the Qi-rich, misty peaks of the Soaring Cloud Sect to the Silent Expanse was a physical and spiritual shock. The air grew thin and dry, the vibrant colors of life fading to a monochrome palette of bleached rock and dusty earth. The hum of spiritual energy, a constant backdrop to Li Yao's life for over a year, faded into a deafening silence. It was a void, a spiritual vacuum.
Wang Jin coughed, his face pale. "It's… dead."
"Quiet," Li Yao corrected, his enhanced senses straining. "Not dead. Different."
He could feel it. The absence of dense Qi was itself a presence. The laws here were bare, exposed, without the cushion of abundant energy to soften their edges. The wind scouring the mesas obeyed a purer, harsher version of the Law of Motion. The relentless sun beat down with an unadulterated Law of Thermal Transfer. It was a harsh classroom, but a pristine one.
Their "mission" was a fiction. The survey maps they were supposed to update were centuries out of date, the landmarks eroded to dust. Their true purpose was to exist here, out of sight and out of mind.
They found a cave system in the lee of a massive sandstone cliff, a shelter from the searing days and freezing nights. It was here that Li Yao established his new base of operations.
The first order of business was survival. The Qi was too thin to sustain their cultivation through absorption alone. Li Yao used the last of his contribution points to purchase a massive supply of Spirit-Stones and nutrient pills before they left. It was a finite resource. They were on a clock.
He assigned Wang Jin the task of setting up basic living quarters and a perimeter of alarm talismans. The Young Master, stripped of his status and comforts, performed the manual labor with a sullen, but efficient, silence. The leash held.
With the camp established, Li Yao began his work. The Ephemeral Lotus Pond's clarity had given him a blueprint.
His first project was his spatial arm. In the sect, he had been limited to minor refinements, hiding its progress. Here, there was no one to watch. He spent days in deep meditation, focusing on the [Law of Spatial Anchoring]. He didn't just maintain the limb; he reforged it. Thread by painstaking thread, he increased its density, its stability, its integration with his own meridian system.
"[Law of Spatial Anchoring] Understanding: 3.8%. Proto-Limb structural integrity significantly enhanced. Can now channel Mid Core Formation-level Qi. Capable of limited spatial manipulation within a one-meter radius (e.g., minor telekinesis, creating small spatial folds for storage)."
He could now, with effort, lift a heavy rock with his mind or create a pocket of compressed space inside his gauntlet to store a few key items—a profound upgrade in utility. The arm was no longer a prosthesis; it was an integrated artifact.
His second focus was Soul Tempering. Without the Soul-Root Ginseng, he had to find another way. The System proposed a brutal, but effective, method: [Resonance Scourging].
The Silent Expanse, for all its Qi-barrenness, was not spiritually empty. It was filled with the faint, lingering echoes of ancient lives—the desperate thirst of long-dead animals, the patient endurance of primordial rock, the vast, indifferent weight of the sky itself.
Li Yao would sit on a high plateau at noon, the sun at its zenith, and open his soul. He would not project a wisp this time; he would let the entire, harsh spiritual landscape of the Expanse resonate against his own soul.
It was agony. The alien echoes scraped against his consciousness, the sheer age and emptiness threatening to overwhelm his sense of self. He felt his identity fraying at the edges, his memories becoming distant and unreal. He was a tiny, temporary candle flame in a wind-tunnel of eternity.
But he held on. His will, tempered by a hundred life-and-death struggles, was his anchor. He let the echoes wash over him, scouring away spiritual impurities, strengthening the core of his selfhood through sheer resistance.
"Soul Tempering Progress: 12%. Soul cohesion significantly increased. Resistance to psychic and environmental spiritual pressure enhanced. Ability: [Soul Echo] unlocked. Can now leave a faint, temporary spiritual imprint on an object or location."
Weeks turned into months. The harsh routine was relentless. Cultivate the arm. Temper the soul. Conserve resources. Monitor Wang Jin.
The Young Master was changing. The sullen resentment was slowly being worn down by the grinding monotony and the stark reality of their situation. He practiced the stability exercises Li Yao gave him without complaint, his own progress slow but measurable. The desperate, calculating look in his eyes was being replaced by a weary patience. The Expanse was tempering him, too, in its own way.
One evening, as a blood-red sun dipped below the horizon, Wang Jin broke the silence they usually maintained.
"Why are you doing this?" he asked, his voice rough from disuse. "You could have left me in the sect. You have the power to break the leash now, don't you? This arm of yours… it's more than just a tool now. I can feel it."
Li Yao looked at him, the cold, clear air of the Expanse making everything feel sharp and honest. "The leash was never just about control," he said. "It was about observation. You are the first and only long-term subject of the Stellar Core Method. Your progress, your stability, even your regression… it's all data. Invaluable data."
Wang Jin absorbed this, a bitter smile touching his lips. "So I'm an experiment. A log in your furnace."
"Yes," Li Yao said, without malice. "And so am I. We are both climbing a mountain no one has mapped. Your path is just… more heavily documented."
It was the most honest conversation they had ever had. There was no pretense of master and servant, no illusion of camaraderie. Just two climbers on a sheer cliff, one holding the rope for the other, for his own reasons.
As the sixth month in the Expanse began, their supply of Spirit-Stones was half-depleted. The clock was ticking louder. Li Yao knew he needed to make a significant leap soon, or the Expanse would become not a crucible, but a tomb.
He decided to risk the System's most ambitious proposal yet. A fusion of his advancements.
[Spatial-Soul Weaving].
The theory was to use his tempered soul not just to perceive laws, but to actively weave them, using his spatial arm as the loom and the needle. He would attempt to draw the bare, harsh laws of the Expanse directly into his soul, using them to embroider a permanent, passive enhancement onto his spiritual matrix.
It was a step beyond comprehension. It was integration.
He prepared for a week, meditating, storing his energy. Then, he went to the highest point he could find, a spire of rock that speared the empty sky.
He sat, and he began.
He reached out with his soul, not to resist the echoes, but to capture them. He focused on the Law of Persistence in the stone, the Law of Scouring in the wind. He let these concepts, raw and unforgiving, flow into his spatial arm.
The pain was beyond anything he had ever experienced. It was not physical or mental, but ontological. He felt his very definition of "self" being rewritten, his soul stretched and sewn with threads of absolute, impersonal law.
His spatial arm glowed, not with light, but with a profound darkness, a concentration of structured nothingness. He was using it to hold the pattern, to force the laws into a stable form that could be integrated.
For three days and nights, he sat on the spire, a statue undergoing a silent, cosmic surgery. Wang Jin watched from below, his face a mixture of fear and something akin to awe.
On the fourth dawn, Li Yao opened his eyes.
The world was the same, yet he was fundamentally altered. He felt… anchored. The harshness of the Expanse no longer felt like an assault; it felt like a part of him. The wind could scour, but it could not erode him. The silence could press, but it could not crush him.
"Breakthrough Successful. [Spatial-Soul Weaving] achieved. Soul Matrix has been permanently enhanced with foundational laws of Persistence and Scouring. Passive resistance to environmental spiritual damage increased by 300%. [Law of Spatial Anchoring] Understanding: 5.1%. Soul Tempering Progress: 25%."
He had not advanced a sub-realm, but he had fortified his foundation in a way that was arguably more valuable. He had taken the first, conscious step in weaving his own soul into the fabric of the universe.
He looked down at his camp, at the small figure of Wang Jin staring up at him. He had come to the Silent Expanse to hide and to survive. He was leaving it, in spirit if not in body, fundamentally remade. The wasteland had given him not just clarity, but a new kind of strength—one born not from accumulating power, but from integrating with the immutable laws that governed it. The path of Eternal Ascension had just deepened from a climb to a fusion.