Chapter 21: The Ticket to the Capital

The high-speed passenger train cutting through the northern borders of Jiangnan Province was a sleek white needle separating the rolling green hills from the heavy gray storm clouds above.

Lin Feng sat in a window seat in the standard economy car, his chin resting lightly on his palm. He had deactivated his visible energy signature entirely, forcing his

Dantian

to run on a tight, low-frequency internal circuit. To the corporate commuters, families, and students filling the carriage, he was completely invisible—just another young man returning to his classes before the end of the summer recess.

The layout in Jiangnan is settled,

Lin Feng calculated calmly, watching the concrete electricity pylons whip past the glass.

Zhao Kun is permanently paralyzed from the neural shockwave, the Central Bureau has cordoned off the ancestral manor as a high-security state reserve, and the Bai family is contentedly occupying the vacant industrial nodes I left them. The provincial board has been scrubbed clean. But the true fault lines—the ones that will split the core of Huaxia into five warring sanctuaries—are anchored beneath the Capital.

To plant his feet firmly inside the Capital before the grand rupture, he needed a flawless, ironclad social status. In his previous life, unbacked independent cultivators were treated as frontline labor fodder or labeled as rogue insurgents. To avoid that restriction entirely, he was heading toward the most elite institutional network in the country:

The Imperial Cultivation Academy.

Right now, it was publicly disguised as an experimental advanced institute for athletic kinesiology and macro-geological research. Only the highest echelons of the state syndicates knew that the academy was a highly classified filtering engine designed to train the next generation of strategic vanguards before the rest of the world awakened.

Lin Feng tapped the screen of his phone. The network signal was bouncing through three anonymous nodes he had established via the data drive he passed to the Central Bureau.

Notification: Enrollment verification finalized for Candidate Lin Feng. Special Allocation: Jiangnan Provincial Merit Representative. Reporting Status: Pending physical review at Capital Grid Sector 01.

"Tickets, please. Electronic or print verification."

The polite, automated voice of the train conductor cut through the low, mechanical drone of the rails.

Lin Feng reached into his utility jacket to pull up his digital pass, but before his fingers could touch the glass screen, a sharp, sudden disruption in the carriage's ambient air pressure caused his

Qi Circulation Channeling—Stage 1

senses to narrow.

The temperature inside the car plummeted three degrees in a fraction of a millisecond.

Walking down the center aisle from the first-class cabins was a tall, elegant youth appearing to be no older than twenty-two. He wore a crisp, immaculate white linen button-down shirt that bore a subtle, silver-threaded insignia on the left collar node: a soaring crane dividing a mountain peak. His hair was meticulously styled, his posture carried an unshakeable, aristocratic grace, and his eyes—cool, sharp, and detached—swept across the economy passengers with a faint, structural indifference.

This was Zhao Ming, the youngest prodigy of the Capital’s primary branch of the Zhao Clan, and the direct cousin of the broken Jiangnan director, Zhao Kun.

Behind him walked a broad-shouldered old man in a traditional dark blue tunic. The old man’s hands were tucked neatly inside his wide sleeves, but his ears were remarkably thick, and his steady, rhythmic breathing pattern indicated he had been refining his pulmonary containment channels for nearly half a century.

A Stage 7 Flesh Refinement protector,

Lin Feng’s internal radar noted instantly, his face remaining a mask of absolute, youthful simplicity.

And the kid... he’s already using the Capital branch’s compressed breathing script to manually dilate his primary meridians. He’s running on an artificial Stage 6 baseline.

"Young Master," the old protector murmured softly, his voice structured so that the soundwave traveled purely into Zhao Ming’s ear canal. "The regional tracking array we deployed at the last station indicated that the trace of raw Mount Tai Qi disappeared right inside this carriage block. The individual who handled the white jades must be seated within these ten rows."

Zhao Ming stopped dead in the middle of the aisle, right next to Lin Feng’s row. He pulled a small, silver pocket watch from his vest. The face of the watch didn't contain gears or hands; it was a polished plate of dark obsidian that began to vibrate faintly, its surface sweating tiny beads of sapphire moisture as it drew close to Lin Feng's silhouette.

"The resonance is active," Zhao Ming whispered, his cool eyes locking onto the obsidian plate before slowly shifting upward to scan the passengers sitting nearby. He stopped his gaze on a middle-aged merchant carrying a heavy leather briefcase two seats ahead of Lin Feng. "Old Tang, check the briefcase. If he is carrying a secondary cloner or an unshielded fragment of the mineral, liquidate his assets at the next transit grid."

Lin Feng didn't look up from his phone screen, but a cold, undefeated smile played at the edge of his consciousness.

A minor variable,

he calculated, his liquid Qi circulating smoothly through his

Ren Channel

to completely swallow the residual resonance of the stones.

The Capital branch doesn't know that Zhao Kun was broken by an independent cultivator; they think the Gilded Fang intercepted the shipment and sold the core pieces to a black-market smuggler. They are hunting a merchant.

The old protector, Old Tang, stepped forward, his hand dropping out of his wide sleeve to press his iron-hard fingers against the merchant’s leather briefcase.

"Hey! What do you think you're doing with my property?!" the merchant cried out, his face turning pale with sudden outrage as the old man ruthlessly tore the brass lock from the leather seam with a casual flick of his thumb.

"Corporate inspection under the Emergency Commerce Act," Old Tang replied indifferently, dumping the contents of the briefcase onto the aisle floorboards. Documents, clothing, and sample electronics spilled across the linoleum, but there was no jade, no silver cloner, and no sapphire energy. The obsidian plate in Zhao Ming’s hand instantly went completely dark.

"Nothing, Young Master," Old Tang muttered, his brow furrowing in confusion as he scanned the surrounding rows. His gaze swept right past Lin Feng, failing to log the youth as anything more than a broke student reading an online article.

"The signal was here," Zhao Ming growled, his aristocratic composure cracking with a sudden, icy frustration as he snapped the pocket watch shut. "The thief must have used a dynamic frequency grounder to mask the matrix. Disconnect the regional carriage routers at the next checkpoint. If we can't find the physical stone, we will starve the data line until the mole breaks cover."

He turned on his heel, stepping over the merchant's ruined paperwork as he marched back toward the VIP cabins, Old Tang trailing silently in his wake.

Lin Feng watched their retreating figures through the reflection in the dark window glass. He calmly closed his phone, his vacant, bottomless eyes mirroring the infinite expanse of the passing countryside.

The mishap of the Capital branch’s regional tracking net had been flawlessly deflected. They were hunting a shadow, completely blind to the fact that the true apex cultivator of New Huaxia was sitting inches away from their lineage seals, holding a ticket to their own backyard.

The high-speed train let out a long, metallic whistle as it crossed the provincial boundary line, plunging straight into the heart of the Capital.