“Looks like we’re going to need a bigger dining table,” Gu Changsheng said, setting five extra platters of sliced spirit-mutton beside the copper pot.
He meant it literally.
What began that evening with five pillars of breakthrough light rising from the study hall turned into a quiet, six-year foundation-polishing retreat across the newly warmed star field. Gu Changsheng had never believed in rushing a child’s growth with violent pills or unstable shortcuts. Just as good bone broth needed a slow, steady simmer to draw out the marrow.
Stepping from the terrestrial realms into the true Rank 8 Star Realm required years of honest study, balanced nutrition, and growing into one’s own bones.
Over the six peaceful years that followed Headmaster Hong’s expulsion, the five Gu children hadn’t merely studied their civic textbooks and helped wire the outer-system heating pipes. They had grown like well-watered bamboo after a spring thunderstorm.
Gu Nian was fourteen years old now. His shoulders had broadened, his jaw was square and honest, and he stood nearly up to his father’s chin. His black-gold Chaos eyes carried the quiet, grounded confidence of an elder brother who had spent six years walking his younger siblings to school every morning and mediating student disputes every afternoon.
