Lin Xuan stood frozen in the corner of the dining room, his hands gripping the edge of the teak table that felt strong beneath his fingers. He watched Lin Haifeng, who was now pressing a cell phone to his ear. The room suddenly felt devoid of air. Lin Xuan could hear the ticking of the wall clock, which seemed to thump in rhythm with the pulse in his neck.
"Hello, Mr. Zhang? Yes, it's me, Haifeng. My apologies, it seems the meeting at the Ping'an project this morning must be postponed. My body suddenly feels very unwell... Yes, perhaps due to exhaustion lately."
Lin Xuan sharpened his senses. In normal circumstances, the human ear would only hear muffled murmurs from a phone speaker. However, for Lin Xuan, whose soul had been tempered by future suffering, he could feel more than just audio. He felt the Vibration.
From a distance, through that signal wave, he caught a dissonant frequency. Zhang Wei's voice on the other end sounded very friendly, full of manufactured concern, but behind it, there was a sharp distortion—an energy of anxiety radiating when a big plan suddenly missed its target.
"Lies have a dissonant tone," Lin Xuan thought. "If you are calm enough, you can hear the heartbeat of fear behind sweet words. Zhang Wei, you are not just disappointed, you are panicking."
After the call ended, Lin Haifeng let out a long sigh and leaned his back against the chair. "I've done it, Xuan. Mr. Zhang sounded very worried. He even offered to visit me with his private doctor. I feel a bit guilty lying to an old friend."
Lin Xuan approached, placing his hand on his father's shoulder. His palm radiated a calming warmth, an effort to realign his father's frequency which had momentarily wavered due to guilt. "Father, do not feel guilty toward a wolf in sheep's clothing. Your guilt is the entry point for them to control you. Stay here, do not leave the house today, for any reason."
Lin Haifeng looked at Lin Xuan with a furrowed brow. There was something very foreign about his son. "You talk as if this world is a battlefield, Xuan."
"Because that is the reality, Father. It's just that most people don't realize the main weapon isn't bullets, but what we allow to enter our minds."
One hour later, Lin Xuan decided to leave the house. He needed to map the flow of energy in this city. In the Law of Attraction principles he believed in, the environment is an extension of the mind. If he wanted to master his destiny in Jianghai City, he had to recognize the currents flowing within it.
He walked along the sidewalk toward the city center park, adjacent to the Blue Moon Art Gallery. The morning air was fresh, yet to Lin Xuan's inner eye, the Jianghai sky looked slightly murky—a sign that this city was being dominated by the invisible ambitions and greed of conglomerates.
As he passed the gallery gates, a luxury silver car stopped right in front of him. The door opened, and a woman stepped out.
Time seemed to slow down. The light drizzle that had briefly stopped now began to fall again one by one, caught by the sunlight piercing through the clouds. The woman wore a simple white dress with a long cream coat. Her black hair fell loose over her shoulders, and her face—was something Lin Xuan could never forget in his entire life.
Han Seo-Ah.
In his previous life, Seo-Ah was the daughter of the Han Group, the biggest rival and the party that would later devour the remains of the Lin family's destruction. However, there was one memory buried deep—at Lin Haifeng's funeral back then, Seo-Ah was the only person from the upper class who came and laid a single white flower without saying a word. Her eyes at that time seemed to hold sincere sadness, as if she knew that Lin Xuan was being trapped by the world.
Their footsteps crossed in front of the gallery stairs. A gust of wind carried the soft scent of lilies from Seo-Ah's body. Lin Xuan stopped abruptly, forcing Seo-Ah to also stop to avoid a collision.
Their eyes met.
Lin Xuan was stunned. The vibration emanating from Seo-Ah was so pure and clear, like mountain water untouched by pollution. This was a rare type of energy in an intrigue-filled city like Jianghai. However, behind that purity, Lin Xuan saw a black thread winding around Seo-Ah's wrist metaphysically—a curse or a soul contract binding her to her family's dark destiny.
Seo-Ah stared at Lin Xuan with a faint frown. She did not know this young man, yet she felt a strange vibration crawling up her spine. The youth in front of her had a very contradictory aura; his body looked like an ordinary student, yet his gaze had an ancient depth, like someone who had died many times and carried secrets from beyond the grave.
"Excuse me," Seo-Ah's voice flowed like black velvet. It sounded calm and deep, carrying a firmness behind every syllable. "Have we met before? You look at me as if I am a ghost from your past."
Lin Xuan smiled bitterly. "Perhaps not from the past, Miss Han. Perhaps from a future I do not want to let happen."
Seo-Ah fell silent for a moment, her eyes searching for honesty in Lin Xuan's face. "You speak in riddles. And how do you know my name?"
"This world is smaller than you imagine if you know how to see it," Lin Xuan answered. He leaned in slightly, whispering in a tone only Seo-Ah could hear. "My advice, do not sign anything in this gallery today. What looks like a work of art is sometimes just a snare to bind your soul."
Seo-Ah froze. Those words hit directly into the doubts she had been harboring about her father's secret business meeting inside the gallery. Before she could ask further, Lin Xuan had already walked away, disappearing behind the crowd of people carrying umbrellas.
Seo-Ah touched her chest, feeling her heart beating fast. "Who is he? Why does the frequency of his voice make me feel... safe yet afraid?"
Lin Xuan continued his journey toward a quieter suburban area. However, as he passed a narrow alley that served as a shortcut to the terminal, his steps stopped.
Three men in black leather jackets with scarred faces were already standing there. From the way they stood, Lin Xuan knew they were no ordinary thugs. They had a coarse but trained circulation of energy—low-level henchmen from an underground cultivation organization that usually worked for people like Zhang Wei.
"Young master Lin, Mr. Zhang feels very disappointed today," one of the men, the largest one, stepped forward, flipping a folding knife in his fingers. "He said, if your father cannot come, then his son must come with us to explain the reason."
Lin Xuan did not back down a single step. He sighed, looking at the three men with a pitiless gaze. In his past life, he might have trembled, knelt, or tried to run away crying. But now, he saw them not as a threat, but as dust disturbing his inner resonance.
"Attention flows where energy goes," Lin Xuan murmured to himself. "If I focus on fear, I give them power. If I focus on their non-existence, they will never touch me."
"You were sent as bait," Lin Xuan said coldly. "But unfortunately, you bit the wrong hook."
"Too much talk!" The large man lunged forward, swinging a hard punch toward Lin Xuan's face.
In the world of modern Xianxia, this was a basic-level fight. But for Lin Xuan, this was a pure application of the LOA. He did not counter that punch with another harder punch. He only made one small movement, a very precise shift in position as if he already knew where that fist would land even before his enemy thought of punching.
The man's punch missed widely, hitting the concrete wall with great force.
Lin Xuan spun his body, his hand touching the back of his enemy's hand softly, yet full of internal energy drive. He did not fight the man's strength, he merely borrowed his momentum and directed it to the ground.
Thud!
The large man fell face-first onto the asphalt. His two companions were stunned, then attacked simultaneously.
Lin Xuan remained calm. In his eyes, their movements were as slow as snails. This happened because his mind was already at the point of the End Result—a condition where he had visualized these three people sprawled on the ground. Physical reality was merely following instructions from his mental blueprint.
With two elegant movements resembling a dance, Lin Xuan avoided the knife attacks and applied pressure to the nerve points on the necks of the two men. In less than ten seconds, the three men were already groaning in pain on the asphalt.
Lin Xuan stood in their midst, his breath remaining steady, his clothes not even wrinkled. He leaned down, picked up one of the fallen thugs' phones, and searched for Zhang Wei's number in the recent calls list.
He pressed the call button.
"Hello? Well? Have you brought the boy?" Zhang Wei's voice sounded impatient and full of anger on the other end.
Lin Xuan smiled, a smile that radiated absolute coldness. "Mr. Zhang, your bait is too cheap. Next time, send something more challenging for my mind."
Silence immediately fell on the other end of the phone. Zhang Wei seemed to have lost his words.
"And one more thing," Lin Xuan continued, his voice now dropping to a terrifying whisper. "I know what you planted beneath the foundation of the Ping'an project. If you try to touch my family again, I will make sure the whole world knows that your wealth was built upon the sacrifice of human lives. I will not only destroy your business, I will erase your existence from the frequency of this world."
Lin Xuan cut the connection before Zhang Wei could answer. He threw the phone into a puddle, letting it die along with the owner's panic on the other side.
He walked away, leaving the dark alley. The Jianghai sky now looked a little brighter in his eyes. He realized that the conflict he faced was much larger than just business revenge. There were dark forces, ancient conspiracies, and a rotten system that he had to tear down.
However, Lin Xuan did not feel burdened. On the contrary, his shoulders felt lighter. Because to him, in this world, obstacles are not walls that block the path, but steps created to test how great the belief in oneself is.
Life never gives a problem larger than one's mental capacity. If you feel you are facing a giant storm, it is because the universe knows, you have the power to stop the wind just with your stillness.