The girl standing in the kitchen doorway looked like she had just been dragged backward through a briar patch by an angry wyvern.
Her silver-inlaid breastplate was scarred by deep, smoking gouges. Her midnight-blue cloak hung in tatters around her muddy knees. Her left arm trembled as she leaned heavily against the cedar doorframe, white knuckles clutching a slender mithril rapier that hummed with faint, dying blue sparks.
She was young—perhaps seventeen—with pale skin, sharp noble features, and high cheekbones smeared with black lamp soot and pine needles.
Her chest heaved violently as she fought for oxygen.
"Eldest... Senior Brother?" she managed to gasp out, her voice raspy from hours of frantic running.
Felix sat at his kitchen table, wooden spoon halfway to his mouth.
A fat slice of pickled radish dangled from the edge of the spoon. He chewed slowly, his expression entirely blank, looking like a man whose Saturday morning television program had been rudely interrupted by a lawnmower outside.
He tilted his chin slightly.
A semi-transparent black bracket snapped into focus over the girl’s head:
【Target: Lyra Ashford】 【True Cultivation: Adept Tier 4 (Severely Strained Meridians / Mana Exhaustion)】 【Threat Level: Harmless Companion NPC】 【Background: Third Daughter of the Imperial Ashford Spellblade Clan. Fleeing six hunting squads of family assassins after discovering an imperial treason conspiracy.】 【Inspector Note: High noble drama. Currently composing a tragic, three-act speech in her head. Give her food immediately before she faints on your clean cedar floorboards and triggers a mandatory escort quest.】
Felix let out a low, weary breath through his nose.
"Great," he muttered inaudibly. "A walking side quest with full backstory lore. Why do these games never let you skip the cutscene?"
He swallowed his radish and lowered the spoon.
"Door was unlocked," Felix said mildly, pointing with the handle of his spoon toward the coat rack in the corner. "Wipe your boots on the hemp mat. I just swept the pine needles off the rug this morning."
Lyra froze.
Her breath hitched in her throat. Her grip on the rapier slipped half an inch as her wide, panicked eyes darted around the small kitchen.
There were no glowing arcane circles on the floorboards.
There were no levitating swords pulsing with ancient sword intent.
There wasn't even a single incense burner filling the air with divine, fragrant sandalwood smoke.
There was only a tired-looking young man in a wrinkled gray hemp tunic, slouching over a cracked ceramic bowl, chewing barley porridge as if the entire outside world didn't exist.
*Is this... an illusion?* Lyra thought frantically, her mind spinning into overdrive. *I crossed the Nine Sky-Bridges. I slipped past the outer wards of the Seventh Spire, where the ancient records said Grandmaster Vivienne's terrifying direct disciple resided! The imperial archives described him as a reclusive monster who disdains all worldly affairs!*
She stared at Felix’s relaxed posture.
He didn't have a weapon drawn. He didn't even have a mana barrier raised. He sat there completely open, unprotected, radiating zero spiritual pressure.
To an untrained novice, he looked like an ordinary mortal peasant.
To Lyra, whose noble clan had trained her in the subtle art of spiritual perception since she was four years old, the realization hit her like an iron sledgehammer.
*He radiates zero spiritual pressure because his cultivation is so terrifyingly high that his soul has completely merged with the Great Void!* she realized, a cold shiver running down her spine. *He knew I was coming. He knew about the assassins. He left the door unlocked on purpose to test whether I possessed the courage to step over his threshold!*
Her knees turned to wet clay.
She dropped her rapier with a metallic clatter, fell to both knees on the rough floorboards, and pressed her forehead against the wood.
"This disciple is Lyra Ashford!" she choked out, her voice trembling with reverence. "I have escaped the claws of traitors to seek sanctuary beneath the banner of Solitude Spire! Senior Brother... please, forgive my unannounced intrusion into your sacred hermitage!"
Felix stopped chewing.
He looked down at the girl prostrating herself before his breakfast table.
"Kid," Felix said slowly. "Get off the floor. The pine resin will ruin your pants."
"I dare not rise before Senior Brother grants me permission!" Lyra declared passionately, her face pressed tight against the cedar grain. "I know this humble dwelling is merely a physical manifestation of your transcendent Dao heart! Tell me... is this ascetic meal a test of my resolve? Are you purifying your divine marrow with the bitter grains of mortal suffering?"
Felix stared at her. Then he looked down at his bowl.
It was literally rolled barley and pickled radish. He had bought the barley from an old lady at the lower sky-dock for eight copper coins a peck.
"It’s just breakfast," Felix said, picking up his wooden spoon again. "And it’s heavily nerfed."
Lyra’s ears twitched. "Heavily... nerfed?"
"The HP regen is only plus two per second," Felix explained plainly, taking another mouthful. "It doesn't stack, the duration is only ten minutes, and the flavor text says 'minor satiety.' If you don't eat something, your stamina bar is gonna zero out and you'll pass out on my floor. I don't feel like dragging an unconscious NPC to the couch."
Lyra’s breath seized in her chest.
Her aristocratic mind caught those strange, alien words and frantically spun them through three layers of ancient esoteric philosophy.
*Nerfed?* she thought, her eyes widening in mounting terror behind her bangs. *HP regen? Stamina bar?*
Her thoughts raced like frightened stallions:
*He says the nourishment has been 'nerfed'... That means the Heavenly Dao itself has laid an ancient seal upon the mortal grain of this world, suppressing its spiritual vitality so that mortals cannot ascend! Yet Senior Brother consumes it casually, letting the suppressed grain enter his divine stomach to battle the Heavens' decree!*
*And he perceives that my stamina and meridians are on the verge of total collapse without even laying a finger upon my pulse!*
*He isn't offering me food... he is offering me a supreme Daoist test! He wants to see if my mortal flesh can withstand the Heavens' suppressed grain!*
Tears of profound, overwhelming revelation pricked the corners of Lyra’s eyes.
She lifted her head, her face pale but determined, and crawled forward on her knees.
"This disciple understands!" she whispered, her voice shaking with awe. "I shall accept Senior Brother’s profound trial! I will consume the Heavens' suppressed grain and temper my soul!"
Felix blinked.
He slid the bowl of porridge across the pine tabletop with a dull scrape, stopping it in front of her.
"Just use a spoon," Felix muttered, pushing a spare wooden utensil toward her. "Don't eat with your hands. We’re not barbarians."
Lyra took the spoon with trembling fingers as if it were forged from celestial diamond.
She scooped up a bite of the warm, gray barley porridge, raised it to her lips, and swallowed.
It tasted... surprisingly good. Warm, slightly nutty, with a pleasant salty crunch from the pickled radish.
As the hot food hit her empty stomach, a gentle wave of warmth spread through her shivering chest. Her depleted mana core gave a soft, appreciative flutter, easing the agonizing cramps in her meridians.
Lyra’s eyes grew moist.
*Such profound Daoist medicine!* she cried internally, shoveling another bite into her mouth. *It feels like common porridge on the tongue, yet it instantly mends my shattered spiritual foundation! Senior Brother’s alchemy has reached the realm of returning to the natural origin!*
"Told ya," Felix remarked, watching her eat like a starving stray dog. "Plus two HP per second. Solid starter consumable."
***
While Lyra hastily scraped the bottom of the wooden bowl with religious fervor, Felix leaned his elbow against the pine table.
*Creak.*
The table tilted three inches to the left. His half-empty clay teacup slid two inches toward the edge before Felix caught it with his thumb.
Felix frowned, letting out an annoyed click of his tongue.
"I hate this table," Felix grumbled, shifting his weight. "Every time the humidity drops, the floorboards warp. The front left leg is short by half an inch. Slanted surfaces drive me crazy."
Lyra set her clean bowl down with delicate, reverent care.
"Senior Brother," she said tentatively, her posture straight and deferential. "Perhaps I could carve a small wooden wedge from the garden fence to balance the foundation?"
"Fence wood is pine," Felix replied dismissively, shaking his head. "Soft wood compresses under load. After three days of leaning on it, you're tilted again. You need something completely rigid. High density. Incompressible."
He pushed his chair back, stood up, and shuffled over to a tall, rickety wooden cupboard standing against the kitchen wall.
He yanked the lower cabinet door open.
Inside was a chaotic jumble of household junk: rusted nails, balls of hemp twine, dried chili peppers hanging from strings, an old brass shoehorn, and three chipped teacups.
Felix reached into the back of the cupboard, pushing aside a dried fish carcass.
"Where did she put that damn thing..." Felix muttered, rummaging through the dust. "Ah. Here it is."
He hauled out a heavy, square slab of translucent golden jade.
The moment the object cleared the cabinet door, the atmosphere inside the small kitchen warped violently.
*BZZZZZZZZT!*
The faint morning light shining through the windowpanes was completely swallowed by a blinding eruption of nine-colored imperial radiance.
The air grew so thick and dense that breathing felt like inhaling liquid mercury.
A suffocating, ancient aura—older than the sky-islands, heavier than mountain ranges—crashed down upon the kitchen like a collapsing celestial firmament.
The wooden floorboards beneath Felix’s straw slippers groaned under an invisible, terrifying gravitational surge.
Lyra’s breath was ripped from her lungs.
Her pupils shrank to needlepoints. Her heart slammed against her ribs with such violence that her vision flashed red.
*Thud!*
She couldn't stay seated. The overwhelming imperial pressure forced her out of the chair and drove her flat against the floorboards, her cheek pressed hard against the wood.
*The... The Sovereign Heart Seal of the Nine Heavens!* her soul screamed in pure, unadulterated terror.
She recognized the design from the secret ancestral archives of the Ashford Clan:
It was an eight-inch square of primordial divine jade, carved with ninety-nine coiled True Dragons whose golden scales crackled with violet lightning.
Upon its surface burned ancient celestial runes that held the condensed karmic authority of twelve fallen imperial dynasties.
It was a legendary Emperor-grade Divine Artifact—a treasure capable of leveling entire continental empires with a single decree, lost to the mortal realm ten thousand years ago during the First Cataclysm!
*Why... Why is it in a kitchen cupboard next to a dried fish?!* Lyra’s sanity frayed at the seams. *Is Senior Brother about to unleash the wrath of the Nine Heavens upon the traitors of my clan?!*
Felix walked back across the kitchen, holding the multi-million-year-old cosmic artifact casually in his left hand like a brick of cheap cheddar cheese.
He reached the wobbly pine table.
He bent down, lifted the short front leg with his right foot, and kicked the Sovereign Heart Seal directly beneath the table leg.
*CLACK.*
The ancient jade slab wedged cleanly between the floorboards and the short pine leg.
The table instantly leveled out.
Felix set both hands on the table and shoved downward with all his weight.
The table didn't move a millimeter. It was dead flat, perfectly balanced, and rock-solid.
"Nice," Felix said, nodding once in deep, profound satisfaction. "Master left that brick in the cupboard when she skipped out three years ago. Zero vendor sell value at the sky-dock general store, but the density is incredible. Completely uncrushable. Makes a great furniture shim."
Lyra remained pinned to the floorboards, staring at the ancient Emperor-grade relic currently supporting half an ounce of spilled barley porridge and a chipped salt shaker.
*He uses the Sovereign Authority of the Heavens... as a furniture shim,* she thought, her soul leaving her body in a silent, hysterical wail.
*He isn't an archmage.*
*He is an ancient cosmic horror.*