The rain returned to Jiangnan by 3:00 AM, a cold, driving downpour that washed away the tire tracks and footprints left outside the northern logistics hub. In the safety of an abandoned, half-demolished concrete residential building on the city's outskirts, Lin Feng sat cross-legged on a piece of dry cardboard.
He unzipped his heavy backpack, letting its contents spill onto the floor.
The three uncut white jades from Mount Tai sat silently in the dim beam of his phone’s flashlight. Even under the dull casing, the ethereal sapphire luminescence trapped within the minerals pulsated in a slow, hypnotic rhythm. The ambient air in the ruined room grew crisp, the condensation from Lin Feng’s breath turning into frosty white plumes.
A passive mass-variance sensor,
Lin Feng recalled, a small shake of his head accompanying a dry smile.
I had forgotten how reliant these corporate syndicates were on mundane weight calibrations before the rifts truly shattered their understandings of physics. If I had brought a two-kilogram block of common scrap iron to swap out for the jade, the alarms wouldn't have sounded until their morning inventory check.
He dismissed the thought. In the grand scheme of things, the alarm was an insignificant variable. The corporate higher-ups at the Zhao Group would be looking for a highly coordinated, heavily armed extraction team backed by a rival conglomerate like the Bai family. A clean, silent bypass of their digital firewalls coupled with the absolute physical destruction of their surveillance drones screamed industrial sabotage.
Lin Feng extended his right hand, his bare fingers brushing against the rough, calcified surface of the first spiritual stone.
The moment his skin touched the mineral matrix, the
Nine Heaven Circulation Scroll
within his lower abdomen flared to life without his conscious command. The core of pure Qi he had established using the Spiritual Seed spun like a miniature turbine, creating a powerful, localized magnetic vacuum within his meridians.
“The spirit hides in the stone, the stone dissolves in the breath, the breath returns to the primordial void.”
A sharp, audible
crack
echoed through the abandoned room as a web of hairline fractures split across the first white jade stone. A dense, concentrated stream of liquid sapphire light leaked through the fissures, defying gravity as it coiled around Lin Feng’s right arm like a small, luminous serpent before sinking into the pores of his palm.
An overwhelming, searing wave of pressure slammed into his primary spiritual pathways.
Unlike the premature seed from the construction site, which had been diluted by groundwater and silt, the energy locked inside this Mount Tai stone was incredibly pure, dense, and ancient. It felt as if a stream of molten lead was being poured directly into his delicate, unawakened energy channels. His veins swelled beneath his skin, turning a deep, vivid violet as the immense volume of Qi forced its way through his primary conduits.
Ordinary human channels would have ruptured instantly under this level of stress, leading to permanent internal bleeding or total paralysis.
But Lin Feng’s baseline was entirely unique. His meridians had been perfectly scoured of calcified mortal impurities during his hard labor at the excavation pit. They were flexible, clean, and completely unmarred by the chaotic, low-tier awakening methods used by independent cultivators in his past life.
He clenched his teeth, his breathing remaining rigid, slow, and perfectly synchronized with the manual's ancient cadence. He guided the raging torrent of sapphire energy down from his arms, across his chest, and straight into his lower abdomen, using the pressure to forge a second, more powerful layer of spiritual reserves.
Mortal Flesh Refinement—Stage 4!
Stage 5!
The expansion didn't stop. The kinetic feedback from his bone marrow sounded like a dull, distant drumbeat inside his ears as his skeletal framework absorbed the excess energy. His bone density multiplied, the connective tissues in his joints tightening and reinforcing until they possessed the tensile resilience of specialized carbon-fiber cables.
By 5:00 AM, the first stone had completely collapsed into a small pile of fine, gray dust, its entire spiritual essence thoroughly drained and anchored within Lin Feng’s soul.
He didn't immediately move to the second stone. He knew the limits of the mortal frame; trying to consume all three high-grade stones back-to-back without letting his physical body adapt to the sudden shift in mass and pressure would result in a structural bottleneck. He needed to test his new baseline under real-world conditions.
He stood up from the cardboard, his movements completely devoid of the natural weight and friction common to mortals. He felt incredibly light, as if a simple flex of his calves could launch him straight through the concrete ceiling.
He picked up his phone, opening the encrypted
Brocade Carp Network
browser. The interface lit up, showing a massive wall of urgent alerts and high-tier red notifications inside the localized Jiangnan forum board.
The digital space was in an absolute frenzy.
Thread: [EMERGENCY NOTICE] Zhao Group Logistics Hub Hit in Midnight Raid! Full Sector Lockdown Implemented!
Thread: Is there an ongoing corporate war between Zhao and Bai? Rumors of localized military-grade electronic warfare deployed in the northern district!
Thread: Anonymous source confirms three high-end corporate drones were completely obliterated inside the inner vault. No gunpowder residue found. The security enforcers are silent.
Lin Feng scrolled through the panicked posts with a cold, analytical eye. Among the sea of public speculation, a single private message sat in his inbox, sent from the highly encrypted corporate handle of
The Jade Pavilion
.
The Jade Pavilion (Bai Qingxi): "The northern hub of the Zhao Group went into an automated high-value lockdown exactly three hours after our meeting on Phoenix Street. The technical cloner model we provided you was logged as the primary digital signature used to bypass the exterior perimeter firewalls."
The message screen updated in real-time, showing a second text being typed out from the other end of the encrypted connection.
The Jade Pavilion: "You didn't just use our equipment to gather intel, Xuanwu. You used us as a digital shield to orchestrate a high-profile corporate heist. The Zhao Group’s internal security director, a man named Zhao Kun, has officially arrived in Jiangnan with a full tactical detachment. They are sweeping every black-market tech broker in the province to find the cloner's serial code. You've brought an execution squad to our doorstep."
Lin Feng rested his back against the damp concrete wall, his thumb moving smoothly across the glass keyboard as he formulated his response.
Xuanwu: "Zhao Kun's arrival is within my expectations. If he is sweeping the tech brokers, it means his attention is locked entirely onto the digital trail. He is looking for a hacker, a code-breaker, or an internal mole."
He paused, a dark, dangerous glint reflecting in his pupils as he thought about the name
Zhao Kun
. In his past life, Zhao Kun was a legendary, iron-fisted commander who excelled in counter-insurgency and asset recovery. He was a ruthless pragmatist who didn't look for evidence; he simply eliminated every individual within a five-mile radius of a leak until the variance stopped.
Xuanwu: "The second baseline geological reading for the West District pit will be finalized by noon today. If you want the coordinates to the secondary fault line—the one that sits directly beneath the Zhao family's private ancestral estate in the southern hills—make sure your tracking teams are stationed at the Jiangnan High-Speed Rail Station at 2:00 PM. Zhao Kun's tactical detachment will be passing through the main security gate there. Give them an anonymous tip that the cloner is inside a specific locker in the terminal."
There was a long, suffocating silence on the other end of the chat. The digital indicator flickered erratically for nearly two full minutes before Bai Qingxi’s reply finally broke through the encryption.
The Jade Pavilion: "You want us to frame the tactical detachment at a public transportation hub? That’s not a data leak, Xuanwu. That’s an international incident. If Zhao Kun realizes he's being played, the entire Jiangnan province will become a warzone before the week ends."
Lin Feng smiled faintly, his fingers tapping out the final message before deleting the account data from his device.
Xuanwu: "The warzone was already scheduled, Director. I'm just changing the venue. Be there at 2:00 PM, or watch the Zhao family secure the southern hills by midnight."