The afternoon sun cast long, amber shadows across the cedar planks of Solitude Spire.
Up in the sky, Felix Vance’s laundry was already bone-dry, snapping crisply in the high crosswinds between the three stationary dreadnoughts.
Down on the porch, Felix sat in his wooden recliner, staring intently at the low cedar table.
His face was grim.
His brow was furrowed in mild, concentrated irritation.
Under the front left leg of the table, Grandmaster Vivienne's purple Sovereign Heart Seal held the heavy furniture as immovable as a mountain.
Beside his elbow, the glowing Soul-Pearl paperweight securely pinned down a stack of unread academy invoices.
Yet none of these legendary relics could solve the glaring catastrophe before him.
Right in the center of the polished wood sat a faint, circular moisture stain.
A tea ring.
Felix reached out with the sleeve of his yellow dragon-scale poncho and scrubbed at the damp circle.
The mark faded slightly, but the faint ring remained etched into the cedar grain.
"Unbelievable," Felix muttered, leaning back with a quiet scowl. "A legendary porch table, and it has zero built-in coaster protection. This is an egregious oversight by the developers."
On his brass perch, Barnaby the clockwork owl remained safely silenced.
The black rubber stopper sealed the bird’s beak shut, holding the polished copper tip in an unyielding grip.
Barnaby’s amber crystal lenses clicked softly, his internal gears purring in a steady, hypnotic rhythm:
*Tick... tick... tock.*
"At least you don't leave water rings, Barnaby," Felix said, pointing a finger at the automaton. "You just collect dust."
Felix brought the white porcelain Infinite Cozy Teacup to his lips and took a sip.
*Slurp.*
The roasted barley tea was soothing, rich, and maintained at exactly 68.5°C.
He set the cup back down, carefully aligning the base with the existing water mark so as not to create a second ring.
"I need coasters," Felix decided. "Or saucers. Real ones. Not paper napkins."
He pulled the brass-cased AetherDeck from his poncho pocket.
He opened *Pocket Garden: Cozy Harvest* and swiped past the cabbage patches to the artisan crafting workshop.
A newly unlocked feature glowed softly on the screen:
Felix tapped `[YES]` without a second thought.
"Ten seconds versus eight hours?" Felix scoffed. "Who on earth waits eight hours for basic pottery? Fast-forward buttons exist for a reason."
He stood up, walked down the porch steps to the edge of the garden path, and scooped up a lump of damp gray clay from beneath a fern.
He tossed the clump into his wooden washbasin, added half a dipper of well water, and roughly shaped the clay into twenty small, flat circular discs.
They were slightly uneven, with crude rolled rims, looking very much like beginner pottery made by an exhausted middle schooler.
Felix held the AetherDeck over the washbasin and clicked `[Bake]`.
Deep within his lower abdomen, the tiny, dense white dwarf companion orbiting his central stellar core hummed.
A microscopic beam of degenerate thermal-gravitational force projected from the AetherDeck’s lower bronze sensor.
For a fraction of a second, the space above the wooden washbasin bent into an optical prism.
The air smelled intensely of scorched lightning and compressed starlight.
The molecules of ordinary river clay were violently crushed, their atomic lattices collapsing into an ultra-dense, degenerate crystalline matrix.
*Ping.*
The progress bar filled instantly.
The blinding flash vanished as quickly as it had appeared, leaving the washbasin completely intact.
Sitting inside the wooden tub were twenty pale-green celadon saucers.
They possessed a soft, milky glaze that seemed to absorb ambient daylight rather than reflect it.
Felix reached in and picked one up.
It was surprisingly light in his hand, perfectly balanced, and cool to the touch despite having just survived the heart of a dead star.
His passive Inspector HUD popped up with an evaluation:
【Item: White Dwarf Celadon Saucer (Set of 20)】 【Grade: Sovereign-Tier Spatial Wardplate (Disguised as Tableware)】 【Durability: Indestructible / Infinite】 【Thermal Absorption: 100% (Absolute Zero Heat Bleed)】 【Inspector Note: Forged under degenerate stellar pressure. Completely prevents condensation rings on wooden furniture. Its crystalline lattice can withstand a direct kinetic strike from a falling meteor without sustaining a hairline fracture. Sells for 3 copper coins at the junk vendor.】
"Zero heat bleed," Felix said, thoroughly pleased. "No more tea rings. Finally, some decent home decor."
He stacked the twenty saucers into a neat pile and carried them back up the porch steps.
***
A moment later, the screen door clicked open.
Lyra Ashford stepped out onto the porch, carrying a dark lacquered tray with a steaming pot of fresh roasted barley tea.
She wore her crisp Ashford Clan tunic, her silver rapier belted securely at her hip.
"Senior Brother," Lyra said with a respectful bow. "I brought fresh barley from the lower pantry."
"Good timing," Felix said, gesturing toward the stack of pale-green plates on the table. "Use these from now on. Put one under every cup. If I see another water ring on this cedar, I’m locking the pantry."
Lyra paused, her gaze dropping to the stack of saucers.
At first glance, they appeared to be simple, unpretentious tea saucers with a modest celadon glaze.
However, as Lyra’s refined noble senses touched the porcelain, her breath hitched violently in her throat.
Her heart began to pound against her ribs.
*What... what is this material?!* Lyra screamed internally, her eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated terror.
To the naked eye, it was ceramic.
Yet to her spiritual perception, each saucer radiated an aura of terrifying, suffocating density.
The space directly above the stack was visibly warping, bending the light of the afternoon sun into tiny gravitational rings.
*This is not clay!* Lyra realized, her fingers trembling beneath the tea tray. *This is degenerate cosmic matter! It carries the crushing weight of a collapsed world, yet Senior Brother has bound its gravitational field so masterfully that it rests upon an ordinary wooden table without breaking the planks!*
*Twenty plates! Twenty Sovereign-Class warding barriers, forged in secret to prepare for the coming conflict with the Western Empire!*
"Senior Brother..." Lyra whispered, her voice quivering with devotion. "You... you forged twenty Divine Aegis Plates just for tea service?"
"They're saucers, Lyra," Felix corrected dryly, adjusting his yellow poncho. "They keep the moisture off the wood. Don't make it sound complicated."
Lyra swallowed hard, carefully lifting one of the celadon saucers with both hands.
It felt completely weightless, yet her instincts screamed that she was holding the unyielding core of an ancient celestial shield.
*He speaks of furniture protection,* Lyra thought, her mind racing with profound reverence. *He disguises the supreme defenses of the cosmos as household utensils so the Western spies will never suspect their true nature!*
Before she could place the saucer beneath Felix's teacup, a sudden chill cut through the warm valley breeze.
***
From the jagged shadows beneath the eastern porch eaves, a sliver of darkness detached itself from the timber posts.
This was no mere shadow.
It was an elite assassin from the Western Skies Black Dagger Corps: Shadow Master Kaelen.
Kaelen had spent twelve hours scaling the sheer granite cliffs of Solitude Spire, completely cloaked in seventh-tier Void-Veil talismans.
His mission, issued directly by the high admirals aboard the dreadnoughts, was simple: eliminate the recluse who had tethered their fleet before the morning flags could be raised.
Kaelen hovered silently behind the wooden recliner, entirely unseen and unheard.
In his right gauntlet, he gripped the pride of his order: the *Soul-Piercing Stiletto*.
Forged from abyssal void-steel and quenched in the venom of a nine-headed hydra, the dagger was designed to bypass physical armor entirely, striking directly at an astral cultivator's nascent soul.
*Die, arrogant hermit!* Kaelen thought, his eyes flashing with lethal malice.
With the blinding speed of a striking viper, Kaelen lunged forward, thrusting the blackened blade directly at the back of Felix's exposed neck!
At that exact microsecond, Lyra stepped forward to place the celadon saucer on the table.
Her motion naturally carried the saucer directly into the trajectory of the strike.
*CLANG!*
The sound was not the dull thud of metal piercing ceramic.
It was the catastrophic, bell-like chime of an immovable celestial object meeting an utterly insignificant insect.
A shockwave of pure, compressed kinetic energy blasted outward from the impact point, instantly tearing Kaelen's Void-Veil talisman into tattered ribbons.
The legendary *Soul-Piercing Stiletto* did not scratch the saucer.
It did not even chip the pale-green glaze.
Instead, the moment the abyssal void-steel struck the degenerate starlight lattice, the entire nine-inch blade shattered into thousands of harmless, glittering metallic flakes!
*Crack-snap!*
The violent kinetic recoil traveled instantly up the assassin’s arm.
Kaelen’s wrist shattered.
His elbow dislocated with a sickening pop, and the shockwave threw his entire body backward across the porch, slamming him hard against the cedar floorboards.
*Thump!*
Kaelen lay flat on his back, gasping for breath through a mouthful of blood, his right arm twisted into an unnatural zigzag.
He stared in absolute, uncomprehending horror at the pale-green saucer in Lyra's hands.
The saucer was entirely unblemished.
A single droplet of water from the teacup's base sat quietly in its center, not even rippling from the impact.
"Impossible..." Kaelen wheezed, his voice choked with terror. "My dagger... a Seventh-Tier Sovereign Relic... shattered against a tea plate?!"
Lyra Ashford slowly lowered the saucer onto the cedar table, sliding it neatly beneath Felix's teacup.
She drew her silver rapier with a sharp, metallic ring, her gaze icy and full of contempt as she looked down at the broken assassin.
"Insolent dog," Lyra said coldly, resting the tip of her rapier against Kaelen's throat. "Did you truly believe your pathetic kitchen knife could penetrate Senior Brother's morning coasters?"
Felix, who had just taken another slow sip of roasted barley tea, glanced over the rim of his cup at the assassin groaning on the floorboards.
He looked at the glittering pile of shattered metal on the deck, then looked at the mud tracked across the clean cedar planks.
Felix let out a heavy, exhausted sigh.
"Seriously?" Felix grumbled, setting his teacup down with a soft click. "I just swept this porch two hours ago."
Kaelen trembled violently, blood dripping from his chin as he looked up into Felix's tired, dark-circled eyes.
To Kaelen, those eyes did not look sleepy.
They looked like the bottomless, uncaring void of an ancient cosmic sovereign who regarded emperors and gods as mere insects crawling across his porch.
"S-Spare me..." Kaelen gasped, his spirit meridians rupturing from the residual shock. "What... what manner of ancient Divine Aegis is that plate?!"
Felix rubbed his temples, his voice thoroughly deadpan.
"It’s a saucer. It holds tea. And right now, your cheap toy just made a mess on my floor."
Felix looked toward the garden path.
"Nether-Bane!" Felix called out. "Bring the broom and a dustpan. Someone broke a fork or something up here."
"Coming, Milord!" Nether-Bane’s hollow voice echoed from the tomato patch. "The Corsairs of the Damned stand ready to sweep!"
Felix turned back to his AetherDeck, completely ignoring the bleeding assassin.
He checked the crafting ledger on *Pocket Garden*, noting that the remaining nineteen celadon saucers were safely stored in his wooden cupboard.
"Though honestly," Felix muttered, scrolling through the texture options, "the glaze color came out way too muted. I wanted sky-blue, but the white dwarf mod defaulted to celadon gray. Typical RNG color tinting."
He picked up his teacup, feeling the cool, clean stability of the indestructible saucer beneath it.
"Whatever," Felix sighed, leaning back into his cushions. "At least the wood won't rot. Now everyone shut up. It's time for my afternoon nap."
He pulled his yellow poncho over his chest, closed his eyes, and drifted off to sleep, leaving the terrified assassin to weep in the dust.