The warhammer plunged toward Kaelen’s face with the shrieking fury of a mountain avalanche.
Compressed shockwaves howled through the cramped room, vibrating so hard that the hemp tassels on the hammock snapped.
Kaelen opened his eyes.
He did not dodge, and he did not roll.
Inside his dantian, the massive reservoir of stored energy unlocked its golden floodgates.
[Cashing Out: 240 Hours Abstained] [Multiplier: 241x Engaged!] [Active Quad-Combo Burst Window: 60 Minutes] [Equivalence: 1 Burst Minute = 241 Baseline Hours]
In an instant, Kaelen’s perception of the world slowed to a crawl.
The descending weapon hung in the air like a millstone sinking through thick honey.
Kaelen looked directly at Lieutenant Horgan’s shoulders, arms, and wrists.
He saw every line of tension in the man’s sinews.
He traced how the sluggish Qi coiled along Horgan’s brachial meridian before pooling at the weapon’s striking head.
So that’s how the Iron-Hounds hammer their prey, Kaelen thought with detached amusement. Crude leverage, sloppy waist rotation, and terrible breath control. They swing like blacksmiths who never learned to read.
His five-minute martial burst packed twelve hundred and five baseline hours. Thirty seconds of observation poured one hundred and twenty and a half hours of ruthless study into his awareness.
The Fallow Slate chimed softly, its golden lines scrolling at breakneck speed.
[Comprehending Martial Art: Skull-Splitter Hammer (Tier 1)] [Entry Achieved...] [Proficient Achieved...] [Small Success Achieved...] [Great Success Achieved...] [Mastery: Transcendent Dao Intent Reached! (400% Strike Force Output)]
Kaelen understood the technique better than the man who had created it.
He knew every flaw in the weapon’s iron grain, every weak seam in its casting, and the exact harmonic frequency of its descending force.
The hammer was now three inches from his nose.
Kaelen lifted his right hand from his lap.
He did not ball his hand into a fist.
He simply raised his index and middle fingers, channeling a controlled 30x Safe Strike into his fingertips.
Tink.
Kaelen tapped the flat side of the heavy warhammer with a casual flick of his wrist.
A sharp, crystalline sound rang out across the chamber.
For a fraction of a heartbeat, the weapon froze completely in mid-air.
Then the solid cast iron shattered.
Crack!
The massive hammerhead burst into hundreds of jagged iron fragments, exploding outward like a clay pot struck by lightning.
The shockwave reversed the entire momentum of the blow, traveling up the wooden haft and into Horgan’s thick forearms.
Both of Horgan’s armored gauntlets blew apart in a cloud of bronze rivets.
His radial bones snapped with the sound of dry pine branches.
“What?” Horgan choked out, his bloodshot eyes bulging from their sockets.
Kaelen swung his legs off the woven hammock and placed his cloth shoes firmly on the rug.
He stood up without haste, smoothing the front of his coarse linen robe.
“You broke my sister’s teapot,” Kaelen said softly.
He placed an open palm against the center of Horgan’s heavy iron breastplate and pushed.
It was not a punch.
It was merely a relaxed release of compressed Rank 6 Qi, backed by the supreme leverage of the very technique Horgan had tried to use.
Boom!
The air behind Horgan’s back exploded in a visible white ring.
The three-hundred-pound enforcer was lifted entirely off his feet, flying backward across the private chamber like a stone launched from a catapult.
He crashed through the first folding silk screen, tearing through the cedar frame.
He smashed through the second wooden tea stall, obliterating a table of antique porcelain.
He blasted through the third decorative partition and slammed into the solid stone wall of the corridor, leaving a spiderweb of deep cracks in the masonry.
Horgan slid down into the rubble, his eyes rolled back into his head, completely limp.
The entire tea room fell into absolute, stunned immobility.
Mina sat on the icy floor, her mouth shaped into an open circle, the third booklet of The Bandit King’s Secret Bride clutched against her chest.
Barnaby sat among the crushed herb crates, his wooden ladle raised halfway to his shoulder, his mouth hanging open so wide his grey beard touched his tunic.
Near the doorway, Sera braced herself against her broken spear, staring at Kaelen as if he had just transformed into an ancient dragon.
“How...” Sera whispered, her knuckles trembling against the wood. “How did you do that with two fingers?”
“Proper leverage and good sleep,” Kaelen said calmly. “And a very angry spleen.”
[Martial Burst Timer: 4 Minutes 15 Seconds Remaining]
Kaelen tapped the two groaning bandits on the ice with his foot, knocking them out cold, then stepped into the smoky corridor.
Beyond the dying oil slick, the remaining twenty-six Iron-Hound thugs stood frozen.
They had seen their invincible Rank 8 lieutenant fly through three partitions like a sack of flour.
“Lieutenant?” one bandit stuttered, his broadsword trembling.
Kaelen glanced down the hallway toward the main market cavern.
Four minutes left on my footwork burst, Kaelen thought. If I let this drag on, they’ll track mud over my mats, and Barnaby will nag me for three weeks. Best to finish this before my tea cools.
Kaelen took a single step forward.
Under the two-hundred-and-forty-one times multiplier, his Ash-Wind Footwork devoured twelve hundred and five baseline hours of movement comprehension.
[Ash-Wind Footwork: Transcendent Dao Intent Achieved! (400% Evasion Output)]
He did not run.
He dissolved.
To the eyes of the twenty-six bandits, the young man in the coarse linen robe simply vanished from the doorway.
A whisper of grey wind drifted through the narrow corridor.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Three bandits in the front row collapsed simultaneously, their knees buckling as invisible finger strikes tapped their neck meridians.
Kaelen appeared behind the second row like a ghost stepping through morning mist.
Two thugs swung their heavy sabres in panic.
The steel blades sliced through empty air, cutting only the afterimage of Kaelen’s floating sleeve.
Kaelen pivoted on his heel, his slippers brushing the stone without making a sound.
With two rapid taps of his knuckles, he struck the armpits of both swordsmen.
Their weapons clattered to the stones, and both men dropped face-first onto the rugs, knocked out cold.
“Demon!” a bandit shrieked, turning to flee toward the cavern entrance.
Kaelen drifted past him like a falling leaf.
A gentle palm strike to the base of the skull silenced the man mid-stride.
He swept through the choke point with effortless grace.
He did not use weapons, and he did not spill a single drop of blood.
Every strike landed on a vital pressure point with microscopic precision, instantly cutting off the flow of Qi to the brain.
Snap. Thud. Clang.
Within two minutes, eighteen armored enforcers lay neatly arranged along the stone hallway, snoring peacefully in rows.
Kaelen glided into the main market foyer.
The remaining eight Iron-Hound crossbowmen were attempting to reload their heavy iron windlasses behind a overturned merchant cart.
Kaelen stepped into their midst with the soft rustle of autumn wind.
He reached out with both hands, plucked the crossbows from their trembling grips, and snapped the iron firing pins with his bare thumbs.
Then he delivered eight swift, painless taps to their temples.
The eight crossbowmen slumped against the cart, unconscious before their hats touched the ground.
[Burst Timer: 1 Minute 45 Seconds Remaining]
The entire thirty-man raid had been dismantled in less than three minutes.
Across the foyer, Deacon Vane pressed his face against the heavy iron bars of the auction vault, his beady eyes bulging behind his brass spectacles.
“Heavenly Ancestors...” Vane choked out, his knees shaking so violently his silk robe fluttered. “Master Ash... you... you cleared the entire Iron-Hound vanguard with your bare hands!”
Kaelen did not answer.
He walked over to the unconscious form of Lieutenant Horgan, bent down, and untied the heavy, embroidered leather pouch from the lieutenant’s belt.
He opened the drawstring and glanced inside.
Twenty-five Low-Grade Spirit Stones sparkled under the dim lantern light, alongside several promissory notes stamped with the Iron-Hound crest.
“Hazard pay,” Kaelen murmured, slipping the twenty-five stones into his own robes.
He glanced at his internal timer.
[Quad-Combo Burst Window: 45 Minutes Remaining]
“Deacon Vane,” Kaelen called out, his voice smooth and untroubled. “Open the private refining chamber behind your vault. Quickly.”
Vane scrambled to unlock the heavy iron mechanism with his brass key.
“Right away, Grandmaster!” Vane stammered, pulling the reinforced door open.
Kaelen stepped into the soundproof inner vault, leaving the stunned market behind him.
He had forty-five minutes of his sixty-minute Quad-Combo Burst Window remaining.
Inside the quiet vault, spirit-coal burned inside a bronze refining furnace beside shelves of dried auction herbs.
Kaelen sat cross-legged on the jade cushion before the fire.
Forty-five minutes of a capped window is a terrible thing to waste, Kaelen thought. If I spend it breathing soot in the hallway, I’ll regret it for a month.
He swept bundles of Frost-Cleaving grass, Sun-Root tubers, and Pulse-Opening blossoms into the bronze cauldron.
Under his two-hundred-and-forty-one times alchemy focus, he controlled the flame with effortless twitches of his fingers.
The herbs dissolved into crystalline essences without a speck of scorched ash.
Ping! Ping! Ping!
Across two rapid cauldron runs over the next thirty minutes, twenty translucent spheres rolled into the ceramic recovery tray.
Each pill bore pristine white cloud veins and zero Pill-Poison.
Twenty Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills refined in a single sitting: ten Pulse-Opening and ten Marrow-Warming, recovered into separate labeled trays.
With fifteen minutes left on his window, Kaelen pulled twenty Low-Grade Spirit Stones from his pouch and crushed them between his palms.
Crack!
The stones shattered into bright blue dust as two thousand points of pure Qi surged into his pores.
Normally, absorbing two thousand Qi took days of meditation.
Under his two-hundred-and-forty-one times cultivation burst, the Qi flooded his meridians like a river plunging into an ocean.
His lower dantian expanded smoothly, absorbing every single droplet of power without resistance.
The sixth meridian in his torso widened, glowing with clear white light.
[Cultivation Breakthrough: Mortal Pulse Rank 6 Peak Achieved!]
The golden light of the Fallow Slate dimmed.
[Burst Complete] [Stacking Reset: 0h 00m] [Active Multiplier: 1x]
Kaelen exhaled a long, warm breath, feeling his body return to its standard, relaxed state.
His cultivation was steady, clean, and completely devoid of internal toxins.
He pocketed the twenty Supreme Pills, swept the spirit stone dust off his trousers, and stepped out of the private vault.
***
In the outer foyer, the dust was just beginning to settle.
Cassian Vance stood near the shattered entrance archway, surrounded by four bruised clan guards.
Cassian held his unsheathed steel broadsword, his green wind-qi still crackling erratically around his blade.
His breath came in ragged, wheezing gasps, his face pale from the toxic backlash of the Crack-Grade pills he had consumed during the fight.
Cassian had just finished dealing with two minor scouts outside when he stepped into the foyer.
He stopped dead in his tracks.
Thirty elite Iron-Hound enforcers lay scattered across the stone floor, snoring peacefully in neat piles.
Lieutenant Horgan, the terrifying Rank 8 monster who had terrorized the southern roads for three years, was embedded half a foot deep into the back wall like an oversized portrait.
Standing casually in the center of the room was Kaelen Vance.
Kaelen was holding a lukewarm cup of jasmine tea, blowing gently across the surface.
Cassian’s jaw dropped.
His grip on his broadsword loosened, the blade trembling against his palm.
“What... what happened here?” Cassian stammered, looking from the unconscious army to his younger brother. “Who did this? Did the Black-Crow auction elders arrive?”
Kaelen took a slow sip of tea and shook his head.
“The air down here is terrible,” Kaelen remarked. “Full of soot and screaming. It gave me a headache.”
Cassian stepped forward, his eyes burning with frantic suspicion and wounded pride.
He pointed the tip of his sword at Kaelen’s chest, his voice trembling with anger.
“You were sleeping in the back while the Iron-Hounds attacked!” Cassian shouted, trying to regain his authority. “You cowardly waste! You let the clan guards bleed while you hid like a rat! Step aside! I am requisitioning this entire chamber under the authority of the First Young Master!”
Cassian moved to block the main exit corridor, puffing out his chest.
Kaelen did not move an inch.
He slowly lowered his teacup and looked Cassian directly in the eye.
A subtle, nearly imperceptible trace of Rank 6 Peak aura leaked from Kaelen’s frame.
It was quiet. It carried the chilling, immovable weight of an ancient mountain range.
Cassian’s knees buckled.
A wave of suffocating pressure slammed into his chest, forcing the air straight out of his lungs.
He took three involuntary steps backward, his boot slipping in a puddle of grease.
Kaelen reached into his sleeve, pulled out a small sheet of tea-stained parchment, and scribbled several neat characters with an ink brush.
He held the paper out toward Cassian’s trembling nose.
“You’re standing in my walkway,” Kaelen said in a pleasant, flat tone. “Blocking a convalescing third brother incurs an emergency hallway clearance fee. That’ll be ten Low-Grade Spirit Stones.”
“Are you insane?” Cassian hissed. “I’m the heir! I don’t pay you silver!”
“I didn’t ask for silver,” Kaelen replied smoothly. “I asked for Spirit Stones. If you refuse, I might ask Lieutenant Horgan over there how he ended up inside the masonry.”
Cassian glanced at the wall crater where Horgan was pinned.
Cold sweat rolled down Cassian’s temple.
His fingers shook as he pulled ten glittering Low-Grade Spirit Stones from his belt pouch and dropped them into Kaelen’s palm.
“You insolent dog,” Cassian gritted out, his teeth clicking. “Don’t think this saves you. Tomorrow morning, the Barony Tournament brackets open! Face my duel challenge on the public stage, and I’ll break every bone in your lazy body!”
Kaelen stacked the ten spirit stones into his pouch alongside the five left from Horgan’s twenty-five after his cultivation.
“Your tournament duel?” Kaelen murmured, yawning into his sleeve as he turned toward the exit. “Fine, I accept. Just make sure the arena chairs have cushions.”