Ling Feng landed lightly in the square.
The aftertaste of Mei Suyao's Dao sermon still hung in the air—faint lotus fragrance, wisps of immortal light fading from the sky, the murmurs of cultivators who had just glimpsed a higher realm and were still trying to convince themselves they understood it.
Li Shuangyan and the others drifted to his side as naturally as breathing, as if the space next to him was where they'd always belonged.
Chi Xiaodao took an involuntary step forward, excitement written all over his face—then flinched when his sister's hand closed around his arm in a silent warning.
He ignored it anyway.
"Brother Ling…" he started, eyes shining like a kid who'd just been told the world really did have heroes.
Ling Feng reached out and flicked his forehead with two fingers.
"Ow—!"
"Don't get too high," Ling Feng said, smiling. "You touched the sky once. Good. Now learn to stand steady on the ground with that new height."
Chi Xiaodao clutched his head, but the grin didn't leave his face. If anything, it got brighter.
Chi Xiaodie watched them, lips pressed together.
Her mind was still full of chains breaking, of that palace hall of Lion's Roar where she had stood alone while a godking's statue watched in silence, of a voice that told her: you are allowed to want something for yourself.
She drew a slow breath and smoothed her expression. The princess came back to the surface.
"Fellow Daoist Ling," she said, stepping forward and cupping her fists with proper etiquette. "Today, this Chi has been greatly enlightened. As the princess of Lion's Roar, I… must thank you."
Her voice was clear and restrained, carrying the natural dignity of someone raised to carry a country on her back.
Ling Feng's gaze slid to her.
Up close, Chi Xiaodie's beauty was not the dazzling, city-toppling kind of certain sect fairies. It was the quiet, tempered beauty of a blade wrapped in velvet—refined, firm, and unwilling to bend for the wrong person.
He smiled, eyes softening.
"Then remember it well," he said gently. "Don't let anyone wrap you up in those chains again, Princess."
Inside her sleeve, her fingers curled into her palm.
"…I will keep it in my heart," she replied, bowing slightly.
He nodded once.
"Good." He clapped his hands lightly, the sound crisp in the cooling evening air. "Then—lesson's over. Field trip time."
Before anyone could ask what he meant, space twisted.
The world around them wavered like a curtain caught in an invisible wind. The square, the palace walls, the last glimpse of Mei Suyao's jade dais and her serene figure—all of it stretched, smeared, and folded.
Mountains flickered in and out of existence. Rivers blurred into streaks of light. For one heartbeat, the capital of Lion's Roar became a painting someone crumpled in their fist.
In the next, the painting smoothed out.
They were standing beneath an old stone archway again, in front of the overgrown stones and moss-covered hall of the Chi Clan's Ancestral Temple. The dark pond lay quiet among the reeds, deep beneath it the golden turtle earth vein pulsing like a slow, ancient heartbeat.
Chi Xiaodao swayed, clutching his chest.
"Every time you do that…" he muttered. "Feels like my guts stayed behind for half a second and are sprinting to catch up."
Ling Feng snorted.
"You'll get used to it," he said. "Or vomit. Either way, your body will remember."
Chen Baojiao laughed and clapped Xiaodao's shoulder hard enough to make him stagger.
"Little Chi, you should feel honored," she teased. "Most people don't even have the qualifications to puke from this kind of travel."
Xu Pei covered her mouth, shoulders shaking with suppressed laughter.
Li Shuangyan shook her head helplessly, but warmth softened the cool clarity of her eyes.
Bai Jianzhen didn't say anything. She merely stepped through the distorted air, treating such warping of space like a breeze on a mountain peak—noticed, assessed, discarded.
...
Inside the half-ruined temple, the air was heavy with dust and old incense.
Ling Feng raised a hand.
The dust of decades lifted in a slow, rippling wave, rising from pillars and floorboards, from the dim corners where spiders had claimed their territories. Under his control, it twisted into a small gray sphere in his palm, condensed until it looked like a marble of forgotten time.
He flicked it aside.
The air in the hall turned clean and cool, carrying only the faint scent of old stone and distant turtle qi from the pond outside.
"Sit," he said.
Chi Xiaodao and Chi Xiaodie instinctively sat down in the center of the hall, facing him. His women spread out around them, forming a loose circle without needing instructions—leaning against pillars, sitting cross-legged, or simply standing with weapons by their sides.
They didn't form a formation in the formal sense. But as their auras settled, the entire temple shifted. The tattered ancestral hall of the Chi Clan suddenly felt like a makeshift Dao platform, the center of a world.
Ling Feng reached into his sleeve and drew out two jade scrolls.
They were unadorned—one a deep, steady green, the other a paler, calmer shade—but the moment they appeared, the golden turtle earth vein beneath the pond gave a faint, muffled thrum, as if turning over in its sleep.
Chi Xiaodao's eyes widened.
"These are…?"
"A little something I threw together for you two on the way back," Ling Feng said, tone casual, as if he were talking about buying snacks, not rewriting someone's cultivation future. "A modified cultivation law. Keeps the Heavenly Stone Golden Turtle's stubborn temper, but makes it less likely you'll tear your foundation apart trying to open new Fate Palaces."
He tossed the deeper green scroll toward Chi Xiaodao, and the paler one toward Chi Xiaodie.
"The turtle likes you two anyway," he added, jerking his chin toward the pond. "Might as well make the most of it."
Chi Xiaodao caught his scroll with both hands, nearly dropping it in his haste. Chi Xiaodie's fingers closed around hers more steadily—but the moment her spiritual sense swept over the jade, her pupils shrank.
Layered patterns unfurled inside the scroll.
At first, it was like looking at the shell of the golden turtle—each line carved by some patient, ancient hand, dense with earth principles, stubborn and enduring.
Then, between those lines, another current appeared.
Colorless. Soundless.
Chaos.
It threaded the turtle shell patterns together, filling the gaps, loosening the places where earth had become too rigid, like water soaking into old leather so it wouldn't crack.
"This law…" she breathed.
"It works with your current Fate Palaces," Ling Feng said, voice light. "Instead of forcing your True Fate to drag your physique along like a stubborn ox, it lets the turtle do the heavy lifting. Every time you open a new palace, the turtle sheds a ring of its shell and grows a new one further up."
He smiled faintly.
"Once you get used to that feeling—climb, shed, grow again—your later palaces will be much easier. As long as your Dao heart doesn't shatter, I don't see why you can't reach at least five Fate Palaces before Enlightened Being."
Chi Xiaodao's jaw dropped.
"Five…" he croaked. "Before Enlightened Being…"
In the Chi Clan, that number wasn't just a dream; it was a threshold spoken of in quiet tones, the mark of someone who might, at minimum, step into the outer ring of Heaven's Will contenders during a grand era. Most would be satisfied with three or four Fate Palaces before taking that step. Five was something textbooks pointed at and said: this is what monsters look like.
Chi Xiaodie's expression tightened, then shifted.
She had grown up with those numbers carved into her bones—not as distant stars to wish upon, but as cold ledger entries: at least four palaces, or the country will have no spine; more, if you can, because the world has no mercy. Five Fate Palaces before Enlightened Being was something she had never dared to say aloud.
"And this is… 'thrown together'?" she asked dryly.
Ling Feng shrugged.
"Time was short," he said. "If you want something truly perfect, I'll sit down and draw you one properly later."
For a long moment, Chi Xiaodie seriously wondered if she should be offended on behalf of every sect and kingdom that would wage war for a law like this.
"…Then, please instruct us," she said finally, bowing from her seated position, sincerity anchoring each word.
"Yeah!" Chi Xiaodao blurted, nearly smacking his forehead into the floor. "Brother Ling, please teach us!"
Ling Feng rolled his shoulders as if warming up.
"Alright," he said. "First, calm down. I'm not running away."
He lifted his hand.
Chaos energy flowed out—not the overwhelming, world-strangling storm he had unleashed in the square, but a thin, clear stream. It spilled over the siblings, sinking into their meridians, mapping their pathways, gently nudging them into alignment with the patterns carved into the jade scrolls.
At the same time, he glanced lazily at his women.
"You four," he said. "Close your eyes. That Chaos fragrance you tasted earlier? Don't let it just fade into a nice memory. Grab it. Grind it. Turn it into progress."
Li Shuangyan nodded without a word.
As she sank into meditation, her Pure Jade Physique shone with faint crystal light. Inside her sea of consciousness, Fate Palaces stood like jade towers—perfect, flawless, cold.
Earlier, under his Dao preaching, she had seen the danger in that perfection: the brittleness of glass masquerading as diamond. Now, she lifted her sword and stepped forward. In her mind, the blade gently tapped the wall of one jade tower.
A hairline crack appeared.
Tiny. Almost invisible. But through that crack, warmth seeped in—life, emotion, the messy, human things she had always held at arm's length.
Chen Baojiao snorted and folded her arms.
"I don't need you to tell me that," she muttered, but obediently let her eyes fall shut.
In her dantian, Immortal Springs roared, water slamming against her meridians like armies charging a fortress wall. Before, the force had always been a little too wild, a little too eager to spill over into waste.
Now, the faint echo of Chaos fragrance twined through the springs.
The water didn't just crash; it spiraled. It compressed, then burst out in controlled waves—no longer a chaotic flood, but a barrage of cannon blasts. In the battlefield of her expectations, some old flags—I must win this way, I must stand alone, I must crush everyone in one strike—tore themselves free of their poles and fell.
Xu Pei's storm qi gathered again, clouds circling.
In her inner world, thunderheads once always threatened to swallow everything—her hopes, her fears, her self-control. Every time she'd pushed for advancement, she had feared her own power as much as her enemies.
Now, whenever that old fear rose, it ran into the memory of a still presence seated in the center of her storm: Ling Feng, leaning back lazily as lightning crawled over his skin like harmless sparks, telling her, You're not a bomb. You're artillery. Aim.
The eye of the storm quieted. Lightning no longer lashed at random; it curled around her like a cloak, waiting for her gesture.
Bai Jianzhen sat cross-legged, sword resting quietly across her lap.
Her Sword Dao was still straight and sharp enough to slice a mountain in half. But now, for the first time, faint threads of Chaos coiled around the blade—not to stain it, but to keep it from rusting in solitude, to remind it that the world had more colors than black and white.
Ling Feng waited until their auras settled, until the hall's atmosphere turned thick with quiet enlightenment, then focused fully on the Chi siblings.
"Follow my voice," he said softly.
His tone was nothing like the formal, rhythmic cadence of orthodox Dao chants. His words flowed like ordinary conversation, slipping into modern expressions here and there, light and easy. But behind every casual syllable, the essence of a supreme grand Dao pulsed—simple on the surface, unfathomable beneath.
He started with Chi Xiaodao.
"Take a breath," Ling Feng said. "Not the shallow kind. The kind that starts in your soles and ends between your eyebrows. Good. Now, feel the turtle."
Within Xiaodao's body, the Heavenly Stone Golden Turtle stirred.
It had always been there—a heavy, stubborn presence in his Fate Palace. A blessing and a shackle. Turtle Fate, Lion Physique: two paths biting each other's tails, locking him in place.
"This thing's been dragging you," Ling Feng continued lazily. "You've been trying to pull it uphill with your True Fate tied to its shell. No wonder you're exhausted."
His Chaos energy slipped into the turtle's outline, tracing the old, rigid trajectory carved by the Chi Clan's original law… then gently twisting it.
"Stop pulling," Ling Feng murmured. "Let it carry you instead. You sit on the shell, yeah? The turtle climbs the wall. You just don't jump off."
In Xiaodao's inner world, the turtle that had always felt like a stubborn rock suddenly moved.
Slowly at first.
Then, with a grinding roar, it began to climb.
The third ring on its shell glowed, then cracked. Under Ling Feng's guidance, Chaos seeped through the cracks, softening them enough that they didn't shatter the turtle, only loosened its old layer.
"Now," Ling Feng snapped his fingers, the sound echoing in Xiaodao's consciousness. "Shed."
The old ring peeled away.
A new one grew beneath it, thicker, denser, glowing with faint golden light.
High above the shell, a dim Fate Palace that had always hovered just out of reach shook, then slammed fully into existence, pillars rooting themselves into the fabric of his True Fate.
In the ancestral hall, Chi Xiaodao gasped, sweat drenching his back. The aura around him swelled violently, then stabilized.
He opened his mouth on pure instinct—
Ling Feng flicked his forehead again.
"Don't shout," Ling Feng said. "Breathe. You shout now, your Dao heart floats away with your voice."
Chi Xiaodao's teeth clicked together with an audible clack. He shut his mouth obediently and focused on his breathing, eyes wide, chest heaving.
Then it was Chi Xiaodie's turn.
Her foundation was cleaner than her brother's, her meridians more orderly, her Dao heart tempered by years of being the person everyone relied on. The princess didn't have the luxury of carelessness.
But that same meticulousness had tightened her path to the point of strangulation.
Inside her inner world, everything had its place: palaces aligned with military precision, meridian rivers flowing in orderly routes, thoughts arranged like files in a bureaucrat's cabinet.
No room left. No margin. No empty corner where the unexpected could grow.
Ling Feng's Chaos slipped into those tight spaces like warm water into clenched fingers.
"Let go a little," he said quietly. "You're not an account book. You're a person."
In the depths of her consciousness, she stood again in that palace hall full of chains—chains tying her wrists to thrones, her ankles to throne rooms, her throat to the Lion's Roar crest. She had broken them once under his guidance; the memory was still raw and bright.
This time, when she looked down, she saw something new.
Beyond the shattered chains, a road.
A simple stone road, stretching out of the palace and down the mountain, vanishing into a horizon she had never dared to look at before.
"Walk," Ling Feng's voice said, not commanding, just… inviting.
Chi Xiaodie lifted her foot.
The moment her sole touched that road, something behind her roared.
A new Fate Palace rose, bright and fierce, its foundations rooted not only in duty but in desire—her desire to protect, to grow stronger, to live as more than a tool of state.
The palace's light poured through her bones, filling them with a new kind of gravity.
In the hall, her eyelashes trembled. Her fingers, resting on her knees, flexed slightly.
Night slowly fell outside the temple.
By the time the last light faded from the Lion's Roar sky and the first stars pricked through the dark, the ancestral hall glowed with the combined radiance of two newly opened Fate Palaces and four women whose realms had been pushed to the absolute edge of their current stages.
Li Shuangyan's jade-like aura flowed more naturally, no longer glassy and brittle.
Chen Baojiao's internal springs surged with controlled ferocity, ready to turn incoming force into fuel.
Xu Pei's storm hummed steadily, its lightning obedient at the center instead of rampaging at the edges.
Bai Jianzhen's Sword Dao ran straighter and deeper, a solitary path that now had a thin strand of Chaos woven through it—a promise that her blade would not be trapped in the same old patterns forever.
Outside, stars burned cold above Lion's Roar. The mountain winds carried the faint scent of earth, turtle qi, and the distant city below—a country resting uneasy, as if it, too, felt the shift in its destiny.
Inside the temple, Chi Xiaodao sat dazed on the floor.
"I…" he said slowly. "I opened… another Fate Palace."
His voice sounded like it belonged to someone else.
He had imagined this moment a thousand times in half-angry, half-desperate daydreams—elders praising him, the clan's expectations finally matching his reality, Bao Yun's eyes shining with pride.
Nothing in those dreams had felt like this—like his chest had been cracked open and filled with sky.
Chi Xiaodie flexed her fingers, feeling the weight of the new palace settling into her bones. Her excitement was contained, as always, but her eyes were unmistakably bright.
So much, in one day.
From Mei Suyao's Dao preaching in the imperial capital, to the shattering of her inner chains, to this alien yet perfectly fitting merit law and another Fate Palace opening under another person's guidance…
"This…" she murmured, almost to herself. "This is not something that happens in the stories."
Stories were neat. Stories had proper pacing and structured struggle. Stories didn't hand you three turning points in a single day and expect you to keep walking.
Ling Feng leaned against a temple pillar, arms folded, watching the siblings with a faint smile.
"Stories are written after the fact," he said. "Real life's messier. And honestly? More fun."
Chi Xiaodie turned her head to look at him.
The flickering lantern light painted his features in warm gold and shadow. The lazy humor in his eyes had retreated slightly, revealing a depth that wasn't always visible. The cold ruthlessness he'd shown earlier in the square—when he'd crushed expectations with a few sentences—hadn't vanished, but it sat further back now, letting a quieter warmth take the front.
"Why?" she asked.
The word slipped out before she could put all the layers around it. She firmed her voice, forcing it to carry the weight of her station.
"Fellow Daoist Ling… why do all this for us? For Lion's Roar? You helped my brother with his bottleneck, overshadowed Goddess Mei in public, gave us such a profound law… all in one day. Our Chi Clan cannot offer something equal in return."
Chi Xiaodao tensed instantly.
"Jiejie—"
Ling Feng lifted a hand, stopping him without looking.
"Why?" he repeated, eyes on Chi Xiaodie.
He pushed away from the pillar and walked closer, his steps unhurried.
Up close, she could see the details more clearly: the faint laugh lines at the corners of his eyes that spoke of someone who smiled more often than he frowned, the way his posture was relaxed without ever looking careless, like someone who was used to carrying weight but refused to stiffen under it.
"Because I want to," he said simply.
Chi Xiaodie blinked.
He smiled.
"You and your brother have your heads screwed on straight," he continued. "You care about your people. You hate the idea of your fates being bought and sold like spirit stones at an auction. That's enough for me."
His gaze slid deliberately from Chi Xiaodao's earnest, still slightly stunned face to Chi Xiaodie's composed one.
"And," he added, tone turning teasing, "I also couldn't just watch a beautiful princess walk around with a storm cloud glued to her face. Helping you smile instead of frowning like you're carrying the whole world? That's a good day's work in my book."
Chi Xiaodie's ears flushed a faint shade of red.
"You—" she started, caught between indignation, embarrassment, and an unexpected urge to laugh. "Your words are too frivolous."
On the side, Chen Baojiao pounced on the opening like a predator scenting blood.
"Oh?" she drawled, tilting her head, eyes gleaming. "So our Young Noble Ling still has spare energy to flirt with princesses now, does he?"
Li Shuangyan's lips curved by the slightest fraction, the tiniest visible smile.
Xu Pei's eyes sparkled with mischief.
Bai Jianzhen snorted softly and looked away, as if she couldn't be bothered with such nonsense—but the way her fingers tightened briefly on her sword hilt betrayed the fact that she was listening.
Ling Feng laughed.
"Relax," he said. "I flirt with all of you. Equal treatment."
Xu Pei choked, her face flushing crimson.
Chen Baojiao burst into outright laughter.
Li Shuangyan shook her head in helpless exasperation, but the look she gave him was all layered warmth, affection, and a faint, knowing resignation: this is just how he is.
Chi Xiaodao, meanwhile, had turned stiff as a board.
His gaze jumped from his sister, to Ling Feng, back to his sister—thoughts racing in insane circles.
Princess… Brother Ling… Bao Yun… Somewhere in that mess, the image of Bao Yun catching him being "too close" to another woman made him go even redder.
Before his imagination could spiral any further, Ling Feng reached into his sleeve again.
He pulled out two simple jade talismans. Circular, without ornaments, each was inscribed with a tiny, twisting pattern that made the eye ache if one stared for too long—like trying to follow a knot tied in four dimensions.
"Here," he said, flipping one to each sibling.
Chi Xiaodao fumbled his catch, barely keeping hold of it. Chi Xiaodie plucked hers out of the air with smooth, steady fingers.
"Soul-linked communication talismans," Ling Feng explained. "Crush them and think of me if something big happens."
"Something big…" Chi Xiaodao echoed blankly, looking at the talisman as if it weighed ten thousand jin.
"Bao Yun," Ling Feng said bluntly.
Chi Xiaodao's face went from dazed to scarlet in an instant.
Ling Feng grinned, eyes full of unrepentant amusement.
"If you want help with Little Yun," he continued, tone turning sly, "or if some idiots from Furious Immortal Saint Country decide to throw their weight around at you again—use it. I'll flick them away."
The way he said "flick them away" was light, as if he were talking about tapping dust off his sleeve. But Chi Xiaodie remembered the sensation of her chains burning to ash, the way her new Fate Palace had risen under his guidance, the ease with which he had stepped out of Mei Suyao's shadow without caring about the watching crowd.
She believed him.
"…Fellow Daoist Ling," she said slowly, bowing deeper this time, sincerity pouring from every word, "if you say so, then our Chi Clan will… trouble you in the future."
Ling Feng waved a hand.
"Friends trouble each other," he said. "That's how you know you're actually friends, not just smiling acquaintances."
He stretched both arms over his head, joints cracking softly, the tension bleeding out of his frame.
"Alright," he said. "That's enough enlightenment for one day. You two should digest what you got. Don't even think about forcing another breakthrough tomorrow, or I'll really come back just to smack you."
Chi Xiaodao and Chi Xiaodie both nodded vigorously, like children swearing they'd never sneak snacks before dinner again.
Ling Feng glanced around at his women.
Their auras had calmed. Their eyes were clearer. Their foundations had quietly climbed half-steps toward realms most people needed decades to approach.
He smiled.
"Let's go," he said. "We've earned some down time."
Li Shuangyan rose first, straightening her robes, Frost-like aura settling into a smooth, confident flow.
Chen Baojiao stretched like a predator cat, joints popping, a ferocious grin tugging at her lips.
Xu Pei carefully gathered the scattered scrolls and jade slips they'd used earlier, hands steady now.
Bai Jianzhen stood last, sliding her sword into place at her waist. The way her gaze lingered on Ling Feng's back—just for a breath—carried quiet acknowledgement: his Dao was something her sword wanted to see again.
As they stepped out of the Chi Clan Ancestral Temple, the old stone archway framed their figures against the starlit sky—one modern anomaly wrapped in Chaos, four peerless women, and two siblings whose fates had just been violently, irrevocably shifted.