The steel broadsword whistled through the dust, aimed straight for the open doorway.
Before the edge could cross the threshold, a streak of polished silver drove through the shadows.
Clang.
The point of Storm-Pike struck the flat of Derrick Vance’s blade, knocking the heavy steel aside with a ringing shower of sparks.
Sera Thorne stepped into the kitchen entryway, her boots planted firmly on the flagstones.
Her dark eyes were steady and cold, the ash-wood shaft of her spear braced against her hip.
Behind her, Old Barnaby kicked through the cellar side door, holding a six-foot ironwood poker in his single calloused fist.
“Step back, Derrick,” Barnaby rasped, blocking the narrow kitchen door alongside Sera as Kaelen’s Fallow Slate ticked to two hundred and thirty-eight hours and forty minutes. “You gave up your right to this shed long ago.”
Baron Derrick Vance lowered his broadsword, his black cloak stained with slimy moss from the drainage culvert.
Behind him, four Vance clan guards in full iron plate spread out across the cramped kitchen, their short sabres and iron hooks drawn.
The lead enforcer, a scarred veteran named Horgan, raised a hooked iron polearm toward the doorway.
“Lord Baron,” Horgan muttered, spitting gray grit from his teeth. “The passage behind us is narrow. If we do not seize the girl now, the magistrate will finish battering the front gates without us.”
Derrick did not look at his guard.
His eyes remained locked on Sera Thorne, his Mortal Pulse Rank 9 aura flaring to its absolute limit.
“Get out of my way, indentured girl,” Derrick snarled, the veins bulging on his thick neck. “The county magistrate holds an imperial warrant for the Yin-Marrow vessel. Anyone standing between me and that bed will be executed for high treason.”
“Master Kaelen ransomed and burned my indenture contract weeks ago,” Sera replied quietly. “And he does not permit trespassers during his rest.”
Derrick let out a harsh, barking laugh that shook the hanging copper pots.
“Rest?” Derrick roared, pointing his bloodied blade past her shoulder toward the cot ten feet away. “The entire manor is under siege, and that useless dog is sleeping in a hammock. Kill them both and grab the girl!”
The four clan guards lunged forward in unison, their iron boots crunching over shattered pickle jars.
Horgan thrust his hooked polearm toward Sera’s throat, intending to drag her off-balance.
Sera did not retreat an inch.
Knowing the sheer weight of a Rank 9 master backed by four armored veterans would quickly wear down her physical stamina, she reached into her leather belt pouch.
Her fingers closed around two ruby spheres Barnaby had transferred to her pouch from Kaelen’s cedar box, leaving five ruby pills in reserve beside Mina’s cure pill.
Two Cloud-Veined Supreme Marrow-Warming Pills.
Without a second thought, Sera tossed both ruby Supreme Pills into her mouth and swallowed them whole.
Instantaneous, pure medicinal heat blossomed in her chest.
Unlike standard pills that flooded the meridians with toxic residue and bitter slag, the Cloud-Veined Supreme medicine dissolved into liquid sunlight.
The pure energy surged through her eight opened pulses, washing away the fatigue of the previous hours in half a heartbeat.
Her skin flushed with healthy color, and her vision sharpened until she could track every speck of floating brick dust.
“Northern Gale Spear, Piercing Wind form,” Sera murmured softly.
Her spear moved like a striking viper.
The steel point blurred through the air, striking Horgan’s hooked polearm right at the iron socket.
Clang.
The force of the impact snapped the wooden polearm shaft cleanly in two, sending the iron hook spinning into the ceiling rafters.
Before Horgan could draw his side blade, Sera’s spear tip reversed, driving hard into the center of his heavy breastplate.
Crack.
The tempered steel plate dented inward like soft lead, throwing the two-hundred-pound soldier backward into the pantry shelves.
Derrick lunged to capitalize on the momentary opening, his broadsword slashing downward in a vicious diagonal cleave.
“Mountain-Cleaving Edge!” Derrick bellowed, his blade glowing with the dull bronze light of Vance clan sword arts.
Sera twisted her waist, bringing the center of the ash-wood spear shaft up to meet the crushing blow.
Clang.
The metal shrieked as Derrick’s full Rank 9 strength crashed against the tempered spear.
A blinding shower of yellow sparks illuminated the dark kitchen rafters.
Sera’s boots slid back two inches across the damp stone, but her wrists remained locked like iron clamps.
The Supreme Pills continued to pump spotless, uncorrupted spiritual essence through her arms, neutralizing the jarring shock before it could tear her tendons.
Beside her, Old Barnaby swung his heavy ironwood poker in a wide, whistling arc.
The blunt timber smashed across the kneecap of the second guard, sending the man crashing to the floor with a wet crunch.
“Keep your distance, puppy,” Barnaby growled, using his heavy leather boot to pin the fallen guard’s sword arm to the flagstones. “I was forging weapons before your father grew his first whisker.”
The third guard lunged at Barnaby’s blind side, his short sabre aimed for the old man’s empty sleeve.
Barnaby did not even flinch.
With his single hand, the old smith reached down and kicked over an iron cauldron of boiling elderberry wash that had been simmering on the stove corner.
Whoosh.
A torrent of scalding purple liquid splashed across the guard’s iron greaves and leather boots.
The man shrieked in agony, dropping his sword to clutch at his blistered ankles as he tumbled into the debris.
Derrick’s face darkened with savage, incredulous fury.
He was the master of the Vance clan, a peak Mortal Pulse Rank 9 cultivator who had dominated the county for three decades.
He had spent thousands of silver taels on Crack-Pills and spirit herbs to maintain his position.
Yet here in this damp, herb-scented kitchen, an indentured scout and a one-armed cripple were holding him completely at bay.
Worse, Derrick could see the unnatural vitality glowing beneath Sera’s skin.
There was no tremor in her fingers, no shortness of breath, and no dull purple discoloration in her neck veins.
She showed none of the telltale exhaustion that came from burning spiritual energy.
“Supreme Pills,” Derrick whispered, his voice trembling with sudden, horrified realization. “Cloud-Veined Supreme Pills with zero poison. You have been feeding them to servants.”
The thought hit him like an iron mallet.
For weeks, the Ghost Market had whispered tales of an anonymous master alchemist named Master Ash who supplied perfect, poison-free medicine.
The entire county had turned upside down searching for that mysterious sage.
And all the while, the source had been right here in his own backyard, brewing in this forgotten shed.
“Master Ash does not answer to deadbeats,” Sera said coldly, her spear lashing out in a rapid three-strike combo that forced Derrick to parry desperately.
Clang. Clang. Clang.
The broadsword shook in Derrick’s grasp.
“Form on me!” Derrick shouted to his remaining guards. “Pin her weapon and breach the door!”
For forty grueling minutes, steel rang against lightning-struck ironwood in the cramped kitchen doorway.
Fueled by the two zero-poison Supreme Pills, Sera deflected dozens of heavy Rank 9 broadsword cleaves without yielding an inch of the threshold. Beside her, Barnaby jabbed his ironwood poker through every gap.
When the fourth guard finally rushed forward with an iron-banded buckler, Sera released her rear grip and drove her palm into his visor with a sharp crack.
The guard stumbled back over the broken pickle jars with a bloodied nose, and Derrick seized the split-second opening with a ferocious shoulder tackle.
His heavy pauldron slammed into the wooden doorframe, splintering the oak jamb and forcing Sera back a full yard into the bedroom hallway.
Through the wider gap, Derrick’s wild, bloodshot eyes locked onto Kaelen’s motionless figure resting in the hemp hammock.
The boy had not shifted an inch.
He lay there like a wooden doll, completely undisturbed by the screaming steel, flying splinters, and smell of blood ten feet away.
A thick vein throbbed violently against Derrick’s temple.
“Kaelen!” Derrick bellowed, his voice hoarse with hatred and desperate rage. “Open your eyes, you worthless parasite! The manor is burning, your sister is dying, and you lie there pretending to sleep! Have you no shame? Have you no blood in your veins?”
Inside his quiet mind, Kaelen listened to his father’s screaming.
Behind his closed eyelids, the golden ledger of the Fallow Slate advanced with absolute precision.
[The Fallow Slate] [Current Inaction Tally: 239 Hours 20 Minutes] [Current Multiplier: 240x] [Stage 1 Vessel Limit: 240 Hours (241x)] [Condition: Fallow Distension (Peak)]
Two hundred and thirty-nine hours and twenty minutes.
Only forty minutes remained until the ten-day cycle was complete.
The accumulated power contained within his body felt like a coiled dragon pressing against the inside of his skull.
His nine diamond-hard pulse gates hummed at a pitch so high it sounded like singing crystal.
Every cell in his body tingled with the silent weight of two hundred and forty times his natural cultivation rate.
Father always preached family piety during the ancestral rites, Kaelen thought, his expression completely tranquil in the dim room. He spent three years telling the elders that discipline and filial obedience were the pillars of the Vance name. Now he crawls through a sewage ditch with four thugs to butcher his own daughter for a second-tier cultivation manual.
The sheer hypocrisy was almost amusing.
He truly believes I am pretending, Kaelen thought, feeling the immense spiritual tension vibrating in his fingertips. If I stepped out of this hammock forty minutes early, the uncontrolled release of two hundred and forty times multiplier energy would level this entire wing of the house.
Kaelen took a slow, deliberate breath through his nose.
Then, at exactly two hundred and thirty-nine hours and twenty minutes, he opened his right eye.
His dark pupil was clear, calm, and utterly undisturbed by the chaos in the doorway.
Without lifting his head or shifting his spine, Kaelen rotated his right wrist.
His fingers brushed against the small nightstand beside his pillow, touching the cold mutton-fat jade box.
Click.
A tiny brass catch popped open under his thumb.
The jade lid swung back on silent, oiled hinges.
Instantly, a soft, ethereal radiance poured into the dark bedroom.
It was not the harsh glare of torchlight, nor the cold, biting gleam of moonlight.
It was a gentle, luminous silver-blue glow that washed over the ceiling rafters like liquid starlight.
Resting on a bed of crimson silk lay a single, flawless sapphire-blue pill.
The Void-Frost Lotus Supreme Pill.
Ninety-nine delicate cloud veins swirled across its polished surface, pulsing in perfect harmony with the natural rhythm of heaven and earth.
Zero Pill-Poison.
One hundred percent medicinal purity.
The moment the box opened, the bitter stench of quicklime, burning sulfur, and stale sewer muck was completely banished from the room.
In its place arose the clean, crisp fragrance of mountain snow, winter plum blossoms, and ancient lotus nectar.
Mina turned her head weakly on the frozen pillow.
The little girl was shivering so violently that her small teeth clicked together like rolling dice.
Thick frost coated her dark eyelashes, and her lips had darkened into a deep, bruised indigo.
The freezing blue mist pouring from her chest was so dense it obscured her collarbones and turned the bedsheets into stiff boards of ice.
She was moments away from freezing from the inside out.
Yet when she saw the silver-blue glow and looked into Kaelen’s calm face, the terror in her eyes faded into pure, childlike trust.
“Brother,” she whispered, her voice barely louder than the falling snow.
Kaelen picked up the warm pill between his thumb and forefinger.
The pill felt warm, almost hot against his skin, carrying the concentrated essence of pure Yang herbals combined with the celestial Yin lotus.
Behind his brow, the Fallow Slate ticked forward to two hundred and thirty-nine hours and thirty minutes.
He reached across the narrow gap and gently placed the glowing silver-blue Void-Frost Lotus Supreme Pill into Mina’s trembling hands.
His warm fingers closed around her freezing hand, squeezing softly.
Three paces away, Derrick’s broadsword crashed against Sera’s spear shaft with a deafening screech of grinding metal.
Sparks flew into the bedroom, bouncing off the stone floor like golden fireflies.
“Give me the pill!” Derrick roared, catching a glimpse of the silver-blue light through the doorway. “That is clan property! It belongs to the heir!”
“The heir is currently crying in the main hall with cracked ribs,” Sera said coldly, her spear lashing out to drive Derrick back two steps. “And you have never given this girl a single copper bit.”
Kaelen looked directly into his sister’s wide, dark eyes.
For three years, she lived in terror of the monthly clan audits, Kaelen thought, his thumb smoothing the frost from her knuckles. She hid beneath thin blankets, praying that Madam Evelyn would forget her existence. She watched our mother’s belongings get auctioned off piece by piece, never daring to complain.
The memory stirred something cold and immovable deep within his chest.
That fear ends tonight, Kaelen decided.
He held Mina’s freezing hand tight as the sparks danced across the kitchen threshold.
“Swallow it, Mina,” Kaelen said, his voice soft, calm, and utterly unshakable. “Swallow the warm pill, and never fear this house again.”