The basement storage room of the West District Library was damp, cramped, and filled with the overwhelming scent of decaying cedar wood and dry ink. For most teenagers in the Sanctuary City, it would have felt like a dungeon. To Shen Jin, it was a fortress.
Midnight arrived without a sound. The only indication of the shifting hours was the distant, muffled tolling of the Sanctuary Spire’s bronze bell, vibrating faintly through the city's basalt foundation blocks.
Shen Jin sat cross-legged on his rough canvas cot, his breath completely soundless.
System,
he thought, letting his eyelids fall shut.
Initialize Flawless Simulation.
[PING.]
[Flawless Simulation: Initialized.]
[Transporting Host Consciousness to Subspace...]
The heavy, ink-laden air of the basement vanished. Shen Jin stood once more upon the familiar, infinite expanse of reflective black glass beneath a starless violet sky.
In this space, his translucent spiritual body glowed with a sharper intensity than before. Wrapped around his lower abdomen, the remaining eight ethereal chains of the
Nine Seals of Qi
thrummed with a heavy, oppressive resonance. But beneath those chains, his first opened seal—his dantian—was a spinning vortex of pristine, condensed twilight-blue energy.
[System Notice: Vanguard Meridian Scripture — Volume 2 successfully integrated into the simulation matrix.]
[Host has unlocked the pathway to break the Second and Third Seals of Qi.]
[New Active Skill Available for Practice: [Vanguard Pulse].]
"Volume two," Shen Jin murmured.
Unlike standard cultivation mantras that instructed a practitioner to project their Qi outward into external elemental constructs like fireballs or frost auror blurs, the
Vanguard Meridian Scripture
focused entirely on structural mastery. Volume Two introduced the concept of
Kinetic Layering
. It taught the cultivator how to compress their internal Qi into dense, overlapping defensive rings directly beneath the skin, turning the human body into a physical sponge for external force.
Following the memory matrices downloaded into his soul, Shen Jin dropped into a low, relaxed martial stance. He raised his hands, palms open, tracing a slow, geometric arc through the empty violet air.
Inhale through the marrow, exhale through the core.
Slowly, a thin ripple of transparent, colorless energy expanded from his center, traveling down his arms and pooling at his fingertips. It looked like a heat distortion warping the air, completely devoid of light or sound. This was the foundation of the active skill,
[Vanguard Pulse]
.
When he pushed his palm forward, the distortion didn't shoot out like a projectile. Instead, it stayed anchored to his hand, vibrating at a frequency so high it would liquefy the internal iron structure of a weapon upon impact, while leaving the outside looking completely untouched.
"Perfect," Shen Jin whispered, a cold, satisfied light in his eyes.
For the next twenty hours inside the timeless safety of the simulation, he repeated the movement ten thousand times. He didn't tire. He didn't lose focus. He watched his internal pathways adjust to the new flow, the mid-grade energy paths widening, hardening, and adapting to hold higher volumes of compressed Qi. By the twenty-third hour, he directed a precise, pressurized stream of this new twilight energy toward his lower abdomen, targeting the second ethereal chain.
Hummmmm.
The second chain vibrated, turned a blinding shade of white-hot violet, and then, with a silent, crystalline snap, it unraveled into glittering dust, raining down into his expanded core.
[PING.]
[Breakthrough Achieved!]
[Current Cultivation Realm: Second Seal of Qi — Qi Gathering (Middle Stage).]
Active Skill Mastered:
[Vanguard Pulse - Rank 1].
Movement Technique Mastered:
[Glinting Shadow Steps - Rank 1].
System Notice:
Due to [Absolute Obscurity], your expanded spiritual volume has been completely compressed. Your external presentation remains that of an ordinary mortal.
The violet void fractured, and the reflective black glass dissolved.
Shen Jin’s eyes snapped open in the physical world. The dim gray light of dawn was just beginning to seep through the tiny, street-level iron grate of his basement room.
He didn't waste a single moment reveling in his sudden spike in power. He quickly stood up, grabbed his stiff hemp broom and a wooden dustpan, and hurried up the creaking wooden stairs to begin his daily routine before Old Meng could wake up. He had a role to play.
For the next week, Shen Jin became the perfect ghost of the West District Library.
Every morning, he swept the golden ginkgo leaves from the cobblestone entrance. Every afternoon, he climbed the tall wooden ladders on the second floor, meticulously wiping down the leather spines of historical ledgers and ancient geography scrolls. He moved with a slight, awkward limp—a minor "mishap" he fabricated by pretending to trip over a loose floorboard on his third day, ensuring Old Meng shook his head and grunted about his lack of natural coordination.
But while his hands held a duster, his mind was monitoring the entire district.
Using his expanded Qi senses and the
[Danger Sense Radar]
, Shen Jin mapped the subtle power structures of the West District. He discovered that the peace of these quiet, willow-lined streets was an illusion. The area was currently being systematically squeezed by a localized underworld syndicate known as the
Black Bamboo Triad
—a group of low-tier rogue cultivators who ran protection rackets on the independent scholars, paper merchants, and small clinics in the Outer Ring.
On a rainy Tuesday afternoon, the quiet rhythm of the library was violently shattered.
The heavy oak doors of the archives were kicked open with a loud, splintering
BANG
. Three men stepped into the dim interior, tracking thick, black street mud across the pristine wooden floorboards that Shen Jin had spent three hours scrubbing.
The leader was a scarred, heavy-set man wearing a sleeveless vest of dyed green leather, a thick iron ring piercing his left nostril. His breath smelled heavily of cheap wine, and a crude, low-grade iron saber hung loosely from his brass-buckled belt. Behind him stood two enforcers carrying heavy wooden bludgeons.
"Old Meng!" the leader roared, slamming a heavy, dirt-encrusted palm onto the mahogany reception counter. "The month has turned! The Black Bamboo Triad doesn't keep accounts on credit! Where is our share of the library's registry tax?"
Old Meng didn't lift his head from the massive ledger he was currently cataloging. He lazily turned a page, his single clear eye focused entirely on the ancient script.
"The library is a municipal sanctuary under the city charter, Master Iron-Tooth," Meng said, his voice flat, dry, and entirely devoid of fear. "We generate no spiritual revenue, and we pay no underworld taxes. If your boys want to read history, the entry fee is two copper pieces. Otherwise, take your mud outside."
The leader, Iron-Tooth, let out a dark, vicious sneer. He reached down, grabbing the edge of the heavy mahogany desk, his low-grade first-stage Qi gathering in his forearms as he prepared to flip the entire structure over to humiliate the old archivist.
Shen Jin, who was currently standing on a high wooden ladder on the second floor directly above the counter, looked down through the balustrade. His eyes narrowed into cold slits.
[🚨 DANGER SENSE ACTIVATED!]
Hostile Action Initiated: Intended destruction of property and physical assault on Ally (Old Meng).
Optimal Low-Key Counter-Path: Utilize a minor structural mishap from above to disrupt the leader's momentum without revealing presence.
I have 5 Vanguard Points left,
Shen Jin thought.
I don't even need to use the shop for this.
With a subtle, weightless movement of his foot, Shen Jin intentionally shifted his center of gravity while leaning over the ladder's top shelf. He let his elbow "clumsily" brush against a massive, twenty-pound historical ledger bound in solid oak plates—
The Chronicles of the Great Flood
.
"Oh no! Watch out below!" Shen Jin shrieked in a panicked, cracking voice.
The massive oak-bound book slipped from the shelf, hurtling straight down through the open air of the atrium.
Iron-Tooth, in the middle of channeling his Qi to lift the heavy counter, heard the sudden, pathetic scream from above. Out of pure reflex, he jerked his head upward to look at the source of the noise.
CRACK!
The twenty-pound oak ledger didn't hit his head. Instead, it struck the protruding handle of the iron crowbar tucked into his own enforcer's belt right behind him. The sudden, heavy impact caused the iron tool to lever upward violently, striking Iron-Tooth dead-center in the back of his knee.
"Aaargh!" Iron-Tooth bellowed.
His knee buckled instantly. The sudden, excruciating spike of pain completely broke his focus, and the rudimentary Qi flowing through his arms shattered. Instead of flipping the counter, his upper body collapsed forward, his chin smashing brutally against the hard, solid mahogany edge of Old Meng’s desk.
SNAP.
The sound of teeth fracturing echoed clearly in the quiet room. Iron-Tooth flew backward onto the muddy floor, clutching his bleeding mouth, rolling in absolute agony as three of his front teeth scattered across the wood.
The two enforcers froze, staring down at their screaming leader in utter horror. Then, they looked up at the second floor, where Shen Jin was currently hanging onto the top of the wooden ladder by his fingertips, his legs flailing wildly in the air, looking like a terrifyingly clumsy child who was about to fall himself.
"I'm sorry! The book was so slippery!" Shen Jin wailed, his face pale with a perfectly fabricated layer of absolute dread. "Master Meng, help me! The ladder is shaking!"
Old Meng slowly raised his head from his ledger, looking at the bleeding, groaning Triad leader on the floor, then up at the flailing stable boy dangling from the rafters. The old archivist's single clear eye flickered with a profound, unreadable expression.
"Get out," Meng whispered to the two enforcers, his voice completely calm. "And take your trash with you before the boy drops the rest of the library on your heads."