The iron head of the warhammer tore through the velvet curtain, spraying ripped silk across the carpets.
Lieutenant Horgan stepped into the private tea room like an enraged bull.
Soot coated his scarred cheeks, and brown earth-qi rolled off his broad shoulders in heavy waves.
Behind him, four Iron-Hound enforcers squeezed through the ruined doorway, their jagged sabres dripping with black oil.
“There he is!” Horgan roared, his yellow teeth bared in a vicious grin. “The Vance runt in the hammock!”
“Run, boy!” Barnaby yelled, his voice cracking with panic.
The old man waved his heavy wooden ladle toward the shadowed corner of the chamber.
“The rear drainage pipe is right behind the screen!” Barnaby bellowed. “It empties into the lower canal! Crawl through it now!”
Mina dropped the mint towel and grabbed Kaelen’s sleeve with both hands.
Her small fingers trembled against his coarse linen robe.
“Brother, please get up!” Mina pleaded, her eyes wide with terror. “We can’t hold a Rank 8 enforcer! He’ll crush your head with that hammer!”
At the shattered entrance, Sera braced her boots against the stone threshold.
Her palms stung from the corridor parry, and her knuckles bled where the hammer blow had jarred her grip.
“Drop that novel and get your legs moving, Vance!” Sera shouted through gritted teeth. “My arms are numb, and my spear is broken! I can’t block him twice!”
From the brass speaking tube mounted beside the hammock, a frantic, muffled shriek hissed into Kaelen’s ear.
It was Deacon Vane, shouting from behind the barred security grille of the inner auction vault.
“Drop your book and run out the back drainpipe, Young Master!” Vane screamed through the bronze pipe. “Hound-Lord Briggs brought three squads of bone-saws! If Horgan takes this room, we’re all dead!”
Kaelen did not flinch.
He lay flat on his back in the woven hemp hammock, resting his head on a rolled cotton blanket.
Inside his mind, the Fallow Slate hovered like a slab of cold river jade, its carved numerals burning with fierce light.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Stacking Time: 239h 50m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!] [Stage 1 Vessel Cap: 240h 00m]
Ten minutes remained.
Exactly six hundred seconds stood between him and the absolute ceiling of the First Stage.
A single pulse of movement would break the True Fallow State.
If he swung his legs over the side of the hammock, the golden seal would crack.
Ten days of pure, undisturbed indolence would vanish into thin air.
Do they think napping for ten straight days is easy? Kaelen thought, feeling the immense pressure throbbing behind his eyes. Every muscle in my back aches from lying down, and my tea is cold. Moving right now would waste more silver than this entire underground market is worth.
Kaelen raised a single finger into the air.
He dog-eared the corner of page forty-two in Book 3 of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride.
Then he closed the thin paper booklet with a quiet snap.
“Do you have any idea what waking me up ten minutes before my ten-day cap costs in Spirit Stones?” Kaelen said from his bamboo stretcher in a calm, flat drawl. “Hold my book, Mina.”
Mina blinked in stunned disbelief, but her hands instinctively accepted the worn romance pamphlet.
“Brother, this is no time to read about bandit weddings!” Mina cried.
“It’s a very good story,” Kaelen murmured. “The third wife is about to poison the clan elder’s wine. Now step behind the stone pillars and don’t trip over the spittoon.”
Lieutenant Horgan threw his head back and barked a harsh, booming laugh.
“A dying pup giving orders from a bed!” Horgan sneered. “Break their legs and take the girl’s marrow!”
The four Iron-Hound thugs charged forward, their boots thumping against the rugs.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 51m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Nine minutes left.
Sera did not wait for the bandits to reach the hammock.
She reached into her leather pouch, pulled out a translucent pill covered in swirling white cloud patterns, and threw it into her mouth.
It was the spare Cloud-Veined Supreme Pill Kaelen had given her before the raid.
The moment the pill touched her tongue, it dissolved into liquid warmth.
There was no bitter ash, no greasy sludge, and zero Pill-Poison to clog her meridians.
A radiant surge of pure energy exploded through her chest, flushing the bone-deep numbness from her arms in two heartbeats.
Sera exhaled a plume of white steam.
Her Mortal Pulse Rank 7 spear-aura flared around her limbs, glowing like polished silver wire.
“Nobody touches this room,” Sera said coldly.
She lunged forward, unleashing a barrage of Rank 7 spear thrusts through the smoky air.
Snap!
The jagged iron point pierced the leather shoulder guard of the first bandit.
Before the man could scream, Sera twisted the shaft, slammed the blunt butt into his chin, and swept her back leg across the stone.
The lead thug crashed backward into his companion with a dull crack of breaking teeth.
Horgan’s eyes narrowed.
“A Rank 7 girl on high-grade medicine?” Horgan grunted. “Crush her!”
He swung his two-handed spiked warhammer in a wide, sweeping arc.
The heavy iron head whistled through the air, wrapped in the crushing weight of Mortal Pulse Rank 8 earth-qi.
Sera could not meet that weight head-on.
She kicked off a fallen mahogany table, dancing sideways with rapid, nimble steps.
The hammer smashed into the stone floor where she had stood a fraction of a second before.
Boom!
Flagstones shattered into jagged shards, sending a shower of stone dust over the carpets.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 53m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Seven minutes left.
Two more bandits vaulted over the rubble, trying to circle around Sera’s flank.
They held serrated meat cleavers, their eyes fixed on Mina and the helpless young master in the hammock.
“Grab the little sister!” one shouted.
Mina took a sharp breath.
Her small jaw tightened, and her delicate hands clenched into tight fists.
The icy chill deep inside her bones surged upward.
Instead of fighting the pain, she leaned into it, letting the bitter frost flow down her arms and into the palms of her hands.
Mina dropped to her knees and slammed both hands against the smooth flagstones.
“Stay away from my brother!” Mina yelled.
A layer of brittle, pale blue frost raced outward across the floor like spiderwebs.
In an instant, three yards of polished stone transformed into a sheet of slick, mirror-bright ice.
The two charging bandits hit the frozen patch at full sprint.
Their iron-shod boots found zero purchase.
Both men let out startled yelps as their legs flew out from beneath them.
The first thug crashed violently onto his back, knocking the wind from his lungs with a wet thud.
The second bandit slid across the ice on his belly, his meat cleaver spinning uselessly into the shadows.
“Good girl!” Barnaby roared.
The old gardener stepped forward with surprising speed for a man with one arm.
He held a steaming bronze kettle in his left hand and his heavy oak ladle in his right.
He dipped the ladle into the bubbling brew and snapped his wrist with thirty years of shed-tending muscle memory.
Splash!
A wave of scalding, freshly boiled jasmine water struck the sliding bandit directly across the face.
The man shrieked in agony, dropping his hands to his blistered cheeks as steam rose from his raw skin.
Barnaby scooped another ladleful from the boiling kettle and hurled it into the eyes of the second fallen thug.
“Have some tea, you mangy dogs!” Barnaby shouted, his whiskers bristling with fury. “No sugar for thieves!”
Kaelen watched from the hammock, his chin resting against the hemp rope.
Old Barnaby has spent thirty years boiling bitter roots, but who knew his wrist flick was this lethal? Kaelen thought, feeling a faint wave of amusement cut through the pounding pressure in his skull. If he put half that much effort into brewing sweet red-bean soup, Mina would complain far less about her afternoon lessons.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 55m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Five minutes left.
The pressure inside Kaelen’s lower dantian reached a deafening roar.
The dense sphere of stored Qi felt like a miniature sun trapped behind a thin glass pane.
His veins pulsed with golden heat, and his skin tingled as if bathed in boiling oil.
Fallow Distension was testing his will.
Every instinct in a cultivator’s body screamed to circulate the Qi, to vent the pressure before the meridians burst.
Kaelen closed his eyes and breathed steadily through his nose.
He kept his limbs loose, his spine straight, and his breath rhythmic.
A true master of doing nothing did not panic when the ceiling approached.
He simply waited for the clock to strike.
***
“Out of my way, useless worms!” Horgan bellowed.
The massive lieutenant kicked the scalded bandit out of his path, sending the groaning man sliding into the wall.
Horgan stomped his heavy boots onto the ice-covered stones.
He channeled his thick earth-qi into the soles of his feet.
The frost instantly cracked into white powder under his supernatural weight.
His boots bit into the stone beneath, completely ignoring the slippery surface.
Sera blocked his path once more.
Her breath came in ragged gasps, but the Supreme Pill had stabilized her internal injuries.
She held her broken spear in a two-handed guard, the iron point aimed straight at Horgan’s throat.
“You’re tough for a caravan slave,” Horgan growled, gripping his spiked warhammer with two massive, calloused hands. “Let’s see if your little stick can hold against a mountain.”
Horgan stepped forward and swung.
He did not use a simple strike.
He unleashed the Iron-Hound Gang’s signature martial technique: Skull-Splitter Hammer.
The weapon blurred through the air, dragging a vortex of muddy brown Qi behind its spiked head.
The sheer pressure of the descending iron felt like a collapsing boulder.
Sera did not retreat.
She focused every shred of her Rank 7 aura into the tip of her weapon, executing the Mountain-Splitting Point.
Clang!
The collision sounded like a temple bell striking an anvil.
Sparks rained down over the rugs, burning tiny black holes in the velvet fabric.
The shockwave blew the surrounding tea cups off their tables, shattering porcelain against the walls.
Sera’s arms shuddered violently.
The wooden shaft of the spear bent into a deep arch, groaning under the terrifying force of a Rank 8 strike.
She deflected the spiked head toward the ground, but the back blast caught her shoulder.
Sera stumbled back three paces, her boot catching on a torn carpet.
She dropped to one knee, panting heavily as fresh blood stained her collar.
Horgan grinned, his eyes burning with savage triumph.
He did not waste time finishing her off.
He stepped right past her fallen form, his heavy boots crushing the porcelain shards beneath his heels.
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 58m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Two minutes left.
“Stop!” Barnaby screamed, rushing forward with the empty bronze kettle raised like a club.
Horgan did not even turn his head.
With a casual backhand swipe of his armored gauntlet, he struck the side of the kettle.
Bang!
The bronze pot crumpled like paper, and the impact sent Barnaby tumbling backward over a stack of dry herb crates.
The old man hit the wall with a groan, clutching his bruised shoulder.
Mina screamed, trying to summon another surge of frost from her palms.
Her small face turned pale as ash.
Her Frost-Marrow Decay flared in response to the sudden strain, sending a spasm of agonizing pain through her small frame.
She collapsed onto the floor, clutching her ribs as cold mist leaked from her lips.
“Mina!” Sera shouted, struggling to stand on trembling legs.
Horgan ignored them all.
He stood directly beside the woven hemp hammock.
He looked down at Kaelen Vance, who lay motionless with his hands folded neatly over his stomach.
“Third Son of the Vance clan,” Horgan sneered, spitting a glob of phlegm onto the floorboards. “You stayed in bed while your little sister and your servants bled for you. What a worthless coward.”
Kaelen opened one eye.
“They weren’t bleeding for me,” Kaelen said in a soft, even voice. “They were buying time. And you made a terrible mistake entering this room.”
Horgan chuckled, raising his spiked warhammer high above his head with both hands.
“I’ll cave your skull in first,” Horgan said. “Then I’ll take that book you love so much and burn it in your mouth.”
[Current Stacking Time: 239h 59m] [Active Multiplier: 240x READY!]
Sixty seconds remained.
The brown earth-qi gathered around the warhammer until the iron spikes glowed with a dull, muddy radiance.
The air in the tea room became heavy and suffocating under the weight of a Rank 8 execution strike.
Fifty seconds.
Sera clawed at the carpet, trying to drag herself forward with her broken spear.
Forty seconds.
Barnaby groaned among the shattered crates, trying to reach his wooden ladle.
Thirty seconds.
Mina reached out a trembling hand toward the hammock, tears streaking through the soot on her cheeks.
Twenty seconds.
Horgan tightened his grip, his leg muscles coiling as he prepared to drive the hammer down with all his might.
Ten seconds.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Kaelen let his eyelids drift shut and took a slow, deep breath, feeling every fiber of his being align with the cosmic rhythm of the Fallow Slate.
Six.
Five.
Four.
Three.
Two.
One.
Two hundred and forty hours, Kaelen thought, feeling the great lock inside his dantian turn with an audible click. Ten full days of magnificent, unblemished, horizontal peace. The bill has come due.
The final second expired.
With Book 3 resting safely in Mina’s hands, the cold jade tablet behind Kaelen’s brow dissolved into a sunburst of golden-white light.
Luminescent script flared across his inner vision.
[The Fallow Slate: Stage 1 Mortal Tally] [Status: True Fallow State Completed] [240 Hours Abstained (MAX VESSEL CAP) -> Multiplier: 241x READY!]