Rank Twenty arrived with rain.
Not the dramatic kind—no thunder tearing the sky open, no lightning answering the sect's name. Just a steady, soaking downpour that turned stone dark and slick and pressed the mountain into a quiet mood.
Xiaogang reached it during morning meditation.
He felt the shift the way he felt everything now: not as a surge, but as a settling. Soul power slid into place, compact and obedient, like a door clicking shut.
He opened his eyes and waited.
Nothing followed.
No warmth in his limbs. No increase in presence. No sense of being more than he had been yesterday.
Only the weight in his chest deepened slightly.
He let out a slow breath.
"So that's twenty," he murmured.
Luo San Pao lifted its head, blinked, and went back to sleep.
The difference became visible within days.
Children who had once trained alongside him now moved ahead—literally. Their strikes cracked training posts. Their movements carried momentum that pulled the eye.
Xiaogang moved the same as always.
Clean. Controlled.
Unimpressive.
Instructor Qiao stopped correcting him.
That, more than anything, confirmed Xiaogang's fears.
When an instructor stopped correcting you, it meant you were no longer expected to improve.
During a paired drill, a boy two years older than him overcommitted on a strike. Xiaogang stepped inside the arc, redirected the arm, and sent the boy stumbling.
The yard went quiet.
"That shouldn't work," someone whispered.
Instructor Qiao cleared his throat. "Again."
The boy tried harder the second time. More power. Less control.
Xiaogang lost.
Cleanly.
He picked himself up without complaint, brushed dust from his sleeve, and bowed.
The lesson was obvious.
Skill can bridge gaps. It cannot erase them.
That afternoon, Elder Mo requested a private demonstration.
Not a test. Not an evaluation.
A demonstration.
Xiaogang stood alone in a smaller courtyard, rain pattering softly against the stones. Elder Mo watched from beneath a covered walkway, hands folded in his sleeves.
"Show me your circulation," the elder said.
Xiaogang closed his eyes and did so.
Mo's gaze sharpened.
"Again."
Xiaogang repeated it, slower this time.
The elder raised a hand. "Enough."
Mo stepped closer, studying him with an intensity that made Xiaogang's skin prickle.
"You compress your soul power," Mo said.
"Yes."
"That is not standard practice at your stage."
"No."
Mo nodded. "And yet you do it instinctively."
Xiaogang hesitated. "It feels… safer."
Mo considered that.
"Manifest your martial soul."
"Luo San Pao."
The pig appeared, shook itself, and sat.
Mo circled it slowly. "No visible strain. No rejection. And yet…"
"And yet it doesn't grow," Xiaogang finished quietly.
Mo stopped in front of him. "You believe the ceiling lies at twenty-nine."
"Yes."
"Why not thirty?"
Xiaogang thought for a moment. "Because thirty requires transformation. A qualitative change. I don't think Luo San Pao can transform."
Mo's eyes narrowed. "You speak as if you've already seen it."
"I haven't," Xiaogang said. "But the pattern points there."
Mo straightened. "Reach twenty-five."
Xiaogang blinked. "Elder?"
"Do not rush," Mo said. "Do not force. Reach twenty-five naturally. Then we will speak again."
Xiaogang bowed. "Yes, Elder."
As Mo turned to leave, he paused. "If you are right," he said without looking back, "you will have answered a question the sect has avoided for centuries."
Xiaogang watched him go, rain soaking into his sleeves.
Or they'll bury it, he thought.
Rank Twenty-Five took longer.
Not because cultivation resisted him—if anything, it remained smooth—but because Xiaogang slowed himself deliberately. He refined breathing. Refined posture. Let soul power settle fully before advancing.
He began to feel… different.
Not stronger.
Denser.
Like his body was learning to bear weight it did not yet show.
Sometimes, while meditating, he felt the faintest echo beneath the pressure in his chest—vast, distant, unmoving.
"You are approaching the limit of the vessel," Great Red murmured once, unprompted.
Xiaogang's jaw tightened. Of the pig?
"Of the interface," came the reply.
Xiaogang didn't know what that meant.
He didn't ask.
The rumors changed tone.
At first, they'd been dismissive.
Poor young master.
What a shame.
Now they were uncertain.
"He's strange."
"He doesn't struggle."
"But he doesn't grow."
"He watches everything."
Elder councils did not meet about him.
Which meant they discussed him anyway.
Rank Twenty-Nine arrived on a clear morning.
Xiaogang felt it the instant he woke.
The pressure in his chest had stopped deepening.
Not eased.
Stopped.
He sat on the edge of his bed, Luo San Pao warm against his ankle, and stared at the floor.
This is it.
He went to the training yard before dawn, when no one was there.
He manifested Luo San Pao.
The pig looked the same.
No glow. No change. No sign of readiness for the next step.
Xiaogang gathered soul power and pushed—carefully, precisely, with every technique he knew.
The power reached the familiar edge—
And went no further.
No pain this time.
No backlash.
Just… refusal.
Like a door that would not open no matter how gently you knocked.
Xiaogang let the power withdraw.
He sat there for a long time.
When the sun rose, he stood and dismissed the spirit.
He did not feel despair.
He felt certainty.
Yu Yuanzhen summoned him that evening.
The sect master listened in silence as Xiaogang spoke—briefly, clinically.
"I have reached twenty-nine," Xiaogang said. "I cannot advance further through Luo San Pao."
Yu Yuanzhen's eyes did not leave his son's face. "You are sure."
"Yes."
"How did you test it?"
"Every safe method available to me."
Yu Yuanzhen nodded once. "And unsafe methods?"
Xiaogang hesitated. "I did not use them."
A flicker of approval crossed his father's face.
Yu Yuanzhen rose and walked to the window. "Then we speak plainly."
Xiaogang straightened.
"You will not advance here," Yu Yuanzhen said. "The sect has no method to evolve a mutated beast spirit of that class."
Xiaogang nodded. "I expected that."
"And yet you do not look defeated."
"I'm not."
Yu Yuanzhen turned. "Why?"
"Because the limit belongs to the system," Xiaogang said quietly. "Not to me."
Silence stretched.
Yu Yuanzhen studied his son as if weighing a dangerous tool.
"What do you want?" the sect master asked.
Xiaogang answered without hesitation.
"I want access to knowledge beyond this mountain."
Yu Yuanzhen exhaled slowly.
"You want to leave."
"Yes."
The word hung heavy.
Yu Yuanzhen did not react immediately. "You understand what leaving means."
"Yes."
"No protection of the sect."
"Yes."
"No inheritance."
"Yes."
Yu Yuanzhen looked at him sharply. "Then why should I allow it?"
Xiaogang met his father's gaze, steady.
"Because if I stay," he said, "I will become a reminder of failure. If I leave, I might become something else."
Yu Yuanzhen was quiet for a long time.
Finally, he said, "Spirit City."
Xiaogang's breath caught.
"The Spirit Hall archives are vast," Yu Yuanzhen continued. "Their scholars are ruthless. Their doctrine is… flexible when it suits them."
Xiaogang nodded. "I know."
Yu Yuanzhen's voice lowered. "You will go as my son. You will have resources. You will have guards until the city gates."
Xiaogang bowed deeply. "Thank you, father."
Yu Yuanzhen's expression softened—just slightly. "Do not thank me yet."
That night, Xiaogang packed slowly.
Not because he had much.
Because leaving felt heavier than arriving ever had.
Luo San Pao followed him from corner to corner, confused.
"We're going," Xiaogang told it softly. "Somewhere with better books."
The pig snorted, unconcerned.
As Xiaogang lay down for the last time in his room, he stared at the ceiling and listened to the mountain breathe.
This is where Yu Xiaogang was born, he thought.
But it doesn't have to be where he stops.
Deep inside, the scarlet presence stirred—not approving, not warning.
Waiting.
And somewhere beyond the mountain, a city built on belief and ambition prepared to receive a boy who had just proven something far more dangerous than talent:
He had found the edge.
And chosen to step past it.