Time marched on, and an entire week vanished in the blink of an eye.
The digital news cycles on the global net were notoriously fickle. The apocalyptic buzz surrounding the mysterious Grandmaster who "Severed the Peak" flared incredibly hot, but burned out just as quickly.
Citizens were far too consumed by the crushing pressure of corporate quotas, rent, and daily survival to obsess over distant demigods. The incident was soon pushed off the front pages, relegated to conspiracy forums.
After all, a clash involving Ascendant-level power was fundamentally incomprehensible to the working class. It was a myth to be discussed over beers, but never something that would impact their daily commute.
For the average citizen, putting food on the table was the only true religion.
It's a huge relief the media has ADHD. That whole situation was spiraling way out of control.
Lounging behind his desk as the final hour of his shift approached, Kaelen masterfully slacked off, scrolling through the trending feeds on his datapad.
He let out a long, highly satisfied sigh when he confirmed the mountain-cleaving incident had completely dropped out of the top fifty search results.
Looking back on his dramatic midnight test-fire, Kaelen couldn't help but cringe slightly at his own arrogance.
How was I supposed to know condensing thirty perfect sword arts would yield a tactical nuke?
I just went outside for a light swing... and accidentally restructured the local geography!
You honestly can't blame me for that. The structural integrity of that mountain was clearly subpar!
If I had known the Heavens-Severing Zenith Blade was going to be that catastrophic, I probably would have aimed at a small, uninhabited asteroid instead.
I wonder how much its destructive yield has increased now that I've refined the Aether pathways...
Kaelen powered down his datapad, casually picked up two basic sword manuals he had already memorized, and lazily slotted them back onto the steel shelf.
Boring.
Over the past week, he had aggressively systematically devoured every single martial arts text available on the entire ground floor.
The first floor of the Astral Library was massive, divided into eight distinct sectors.
And during this period, Kaelen hadn't been idle for a second. He continually made highly convincing excuses to "volunteer" for extra shelving duties, granting him unrestricted access to wander through every aisle of every sector.
Even the notoriously strict Floor Supervisor couldn't help but wipe a tear of admiration from his eye seeing Kaelen's relentless 'work ethic.'
Finding a young corporate drone as deeply motivated as Kaelen was a one-in-a-million miracle! So, the Supervisor simply bypassed protocol, gave Kaelen master keys to the ground floor, and let him "organize" to his heart's content.
Taking full, predatory advantage of his newfound freedom...
Kaelen speed-read and uploaded every available combat manual in the facility.
By his final count, he had downloaded and analyzed at least twenty-five distinct, foundational sword arts into his Mindscape!
However...
To his immense professional disgust, Kaelen realized that the martial arts publishing industry was a complete scam.
Most of these so-called 'ancient' basic sword manuals were aggressively repetitive.
Some of the historical authors were completely shameless. It was one thing for the fundamental stances to be similar, but some masters had literally copy-pasted entire chapters of Aetheric theory from rival manuals, slapped a new edgy title on it, and published it as their own "secret" family technique.
For a few hours in the Mindscape, the data was so muddy that even Kaelen's quantum-brain couldn't verify who the original copyright holder was.
This entire cultivation world is just a den of plagiarists. Who is stealing from who?!
Kaelen was utterly speechless at the academic dishonesty.
But, thankfully...
Despite the rampant intellectual property theft, these slightly varied styles still possessed unique, microscopic merits.
Separate the wheat from the plagiarized chaff.
With the absolute analytical power of the Aetheric Mindscape, it was a trivial matter to surgically extract the useful data points and discard the garbage.
Having now fully integrated and optimized the essence of twenty-five distinct sword styles, Kaelen's fundamental comprehension of the Sword Dao had evolved from 'Master' to 'God-like'.
The theoretical destructive output of his Heavens-Severing Zenith Blade had multiplied exponentially.
I really, really wonder just how much stronger it is now...
At this intrusive thought, Kaelen's hands actually twitched with the overwhelming urge to test-fire his weapon again.
But the media panic over his last stunt had only just died down.
And if I swing the sword now, the output would be magnitudes more terrifying than the last time.
If I actually unleashed a full-power strike tonight, wouldn't I just accidentally erase the entire mountain range from the map?
Obliterating local geography was out of the question, and so was aiming vertically at the sky.
He had named it the Heavens-Severing Zenith Blade for a reason.
What if I swing my sword straight up... and accidentally slice the atmosphere in half, tearing a permanent hole in the ozone layer?!
That wouldn't just be a PR disaster; that would be an extinction-level event!
"Sigh... suffering from success is a very real, very heavy burden," Kaelen lamented softly, pulling out his phone to check the time.
Quitting time. Finally.
He reached over, killed the overhead lights for Sector 1, and briskly walked away from his desk.
Not long after he exited the library's grand glass doors and stepped into the neon-lit street, he nearly collided with a heavily armed tactical squad.
A dozen Enforcers, clad in matte-black composite armor and carrying heavy Aether-rifles, brushed aggressively past him, establishing a rapid perimeter around the library steps.
The atmosphere they brought with them was suffocatingly tense and violently grim.
They're all veterans at the Late Stage of the Mortal Tier.
Kaelen casually swept his Aetheric Perception over them, instantly verifying their combat levels. He remembered an internal memo stating these were the elite private contractors Chief Director Silas had hired to bolster library security.
Although the global uproar over his mountain-cleaving had subsided, the localized terror regarding the Sanguine Fiend was reaching a boiling point, leaving the citizens of Neo-Veridia in a state of hyper-paranoia.
This Sanguine Fiend was a complete phantom, moving flawlessly through the city's underbelly and executing a string of horrific, ritualistic murders.
Every single victim was found as a desiccated husk, completely drained of blood.
Wild, gruesome rumors dominated the dark web, stirring up massive civil unrest and protests against the Enforcer Bureau's incompetence.
This reality is just too damn volatile.
Walking down the damp, neon-lit pavement, Kaelen looked up at the swirling violet rifts in the night sky, his internal threat-assessment alarms ringing loudly.
Being able to level a mountain with one swing still isn't enough security. Not even close.
I still need more firepower to guarantee my peaceful retirement.
Just as Kaelen was lost in his paranoid planning...
RING! RING! RING!
A frantic, obnoxious ringtone suddenly blared from his pocket.
Kaelen frowned deeply at the interruption and fished his phone out.
Who is calling me this late? Don't tell me the Floor Supervisor is actually trying to call me back for mandatory overtime?! I'll quit!
However, when he checked the caller ID, it was an encrypted, unknown local number.
Highly suspicious, Kaelen tapped the answer icon and held it to his ear.
Immediately...
Xander's loud, violently sobbing voice exploded from the speaker:
"KAELEN! BRO! SAVE ME!"
"???"
What the hell is happening?
Kaelen froze in his tracks, his heart skipping a dangerous beat as his mind instantly jumped to the worst-case scenario: the Sanguine Fiend.
It can't be that much of a coincidence, can it?
Did I literally just jinx him by thinking about the blood cultist?!
"Where are you?! Give me your exact coordinates!" Kaelen barked, his voice dropping an octave, dead calm.
The vast, terrifying ocean of Astral Flux within his core began to boil, ready to be unleashed. His muscles tensed, fully prepared to activate the Seven-Star Void Step and break the sound barrier.
Xander was the only person in this dimension he actually considered a friend; he absolutely wasn't going to let some edgy vampire drain him dry.
However, the next moment...
"The... the Honglang Hotel! Room 404! Kaelen, please, you have to get here right now!" Xander bawled, his voice cracking hysterically.
"Huh? The Honglang Hotel? What the hell are you doing there?" Kaelen was completely derailed.
"I am the unluckiest man alive! That beautiful girl... she was a corporate spy! She set me up in a honey trap!"
Xander wailed, breaking down into ugly, loud sobbing. "They ambushed me and stole everything! They took my wallet, my datapad, my watch... they even took my clothes, Kaelen! I'm completely naked!"
"Hurry up and bring me a pair of sweatpants! If word of this leaks to the press and my dad finds out, he won't just use the belt, he'll actually disown me!"
Xander sniffled loudly. "I'm literally calling you from a sympathetic bellboy's personal phone right now. Thank the stars the bellboy is a guy, or I'd have to jump out the window from the shame."
Kaelen: "..."
Hearing this utterly pathetic confession, Kaelen stood frozen on the sidewalk, genuinely not knowing whether to laugh until he cried, or teleport over there just to punch Xander himself.
So it was just a classic, mundane robbery.
Looks like the collective city-wide panic has made me a little too tense, jumping at shadows.
"Hello?! Are you still there?! Kaelen!"
When he didn't get an immediate response, Xander grew frantically anxious on the other end of the line.
"Please come save me! Kaelen... no! Father Kaelen! Lord Kaelen! Please save your worthless son's life!"
"I'm coming, I'm coming. Lock the door and stay away from the windows. I'm on my way."
Kaelen pinched the bridge of his nose, exhaling a long, deeply exasperated sigh.
His figure flickered, folding into the shadows, and he vanished from the street, heading in the direction of the hotel.
...
[The next morning.]
Last night, Kaelen had successfully extracted a heavily bruised, deeply traumatized Xander—who had been stripped to his absolute birthday suit and was a mess of snot and tears—and covertly smuggled him back to the Vance estate.
After a surprisingly restful night's sleep, Kaelen arrived at the Astral Library for his shift, coffee in hand, completely undisturbed.
However, not ten minutes after Kaelen sat down at his desk...
He saw Xander limping down the aisle toward him.
Xander's face was incredibly haggard, sporting massive dark bags under his eyes from a sleepless night of terror, and he was aggressively scratching at his messy bedhead.
"Try to exercise a single ounce of self-control from now on. Don't let your lower half make tactical decisions for you," Kaelen teased mercilessly as Xander slumped into the adjacent chair. "If I'm busy meditating next time, you're going to be walking home in a newspaper."
"Hmph. I was just tactically outmaneuvered for a brief moment," Xander grumbled defensively, trying to salvage his shattered dignity.
He pulled out his new, backup datapad to check his messages, but suddenly let out a loud, shocked gasp.
"Holy shit, Kaelen! Look at this! The Sanguine Fiend was actually captured by the Enforcers last night!"