Stirrings

Si Tingyu's eyes held a look of worry. She glanced at Si Qi beside her, lips parting as if to speak — but in the end she said nothing. She understood that her strength, measured against a Battle Saint, was simply too slight.

"Heh — let's leave that aside. By the way, A-Yuan, have you given it any more thought? Either Tingyu or Tingxue — both are yours to marry."

Si Qi glanced at Si Tingyu's complicated expression, then smiled and turned his gaze to Lu Yuan.

"Perhaps I'd like to see your wedding before you all leave."

That word — *leave*. It wasn't just leaving the palace. Lu Yuan had a feeling the old man meant before they left Great Qi Star itself.

He had already made up his mind to deal with the Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast and stay put. And yet, hearing those words, he still felt the awkwardness crawling in.

*The offer is impossibly tempting. How am I supposed to refuse this?*

He wasn't the only one caught off guard. Si Tingyu beside him blinked, and the complicated expression she'd been wearing evaporated in an instant. A faint warmth crept across her normally composed, serious face. She stole a glance at Lu Yuan — then looked away, with a bashfulness that was entirely unlike her.

That glance hit him somewhere deep, and the thought surfaced before he could stop it: *why not just say yes today?*

He cleared his throat and reined himself in.

At the very least, the Aberration Feral Beast could make its move at any time. Holding a wedding in the middle of all this was completely out of the question.

And he was still a student at the Talent Camp. Still young.

Si Tingyu seemed to come to the same realization, and spoke up:

"Ancestor, please don't concern yourself with this."

Si Qi let out a soft grunt and shot her a look, then shook his head.

"Fine, fine. Off with you then."

Lu Yuan suspected that Si Qi and Elder Li Xinghai had called them over for precisely this reason.

The two nodded, said their farewells to Si Qi and Li Xinghai, and left the palace.

Talent Camp. Inside Si Tingyu's Underground Containment Room, their forms materialized.

The flush on Si Tingyu's face hadn't yet faded. When her eyes landed on Lu Yuan, there was still a thread of evasiveness in them.

Lu Yuan found it quietly amusing. He'd never imagined that his perpetually serious mentor had a side that could get flustered like this.

He turned the most innocent expression he could manage on her.

"Mentor — what's the matter? Why is your face so red?"

Si Tingyu blinked, shot him a glare, then seemed to think of something. She asked, as if in passing:

"Actually, what did Elder Li Xinghai mean earlier? What exactly happened between you and Qinghe?"

Lu Yuan cleared his throat. *She's actually curious about that?*

He gave her a sideways look, then laughed it off. "Ah — that. Why don't you go ask Qinghe yourself, Mentor?"

Si Tingyu gave the visibly squirming Lu Yuan a cool sidelong glance, crossed her arms, and gave a small nod. "I see."

Just then, the door to the cultivation room swung open, and footsteps sounded on the stairs coming down.

Lu Yuan and Si Tingyu fell quiet in perfect unison and turned toward the staircase.

Down came Si Tingxue and Rebecca. Si Tingxue carried herself with her usual cool reserve; Rebecca's face was alight with her signature energy, practically bouncing with each step.

The moment she spotted Lu Yuan, Rebecca's eyes lit up and she came jogging over with a grin.

"A-Yuan, you're here too!"

Lu Yuan smiled and ruffled her orange hair with a nod. "Mm."

Si Tingxue glanced at Lu Yuan, then looked over at Si Tingyu — and caught the faint, lingering blush still on her face. She paused, one eyebrow arching. When she looked back at Lu Yuan, her expression carried a distinct trace of suspicion.

Lu Yuan noticed. *Didn't expect the ice block to be this sharp.*

Then again — he hadn't actually done anything. What did he have to feel guilty about?

And even if he had — he still had nothing to feel guilty about. Elder Si Qi had all but given his blessing.

He straightened, chin raised, and held Si Tingxue's gaze without flinching.

At the directness of his stare, Si Tingxue found she couldn't hold it. She let out a quiet "hmph" and turned away.

Rebecca hadn't caught the silent exchange. Si Tingyu was still working through her earlier question and hadn't noticed either. A small, satisfied smile crossed Lu Yuan's face.

That evening, Lu Yuan had dinner in Si Tingyu's dormitory building before making his way back to his own under the cover of nightfall.

The common area was empty. He didn't know whether Yang Ping and Maige had returned — they were both past freshman status now, with their own affairs to keep them occupied.

Back in his room, Lu Yuan began putting his earlier plan into motion.

Spirit Power swirled around him. Shadow Clone after Shadow Clone writhed up from the shadow pooled at his feet and rose to stand before him.

Each one was composed entirely of darkness — featureless, faceless, maintaining nothing but a humanoid shape.

With a single thought, the clones stepped into space. They vanished without so much as a ripple of spatial disturbance.

Lu Yuan didn't stop. He kept burning through Spirit Power, conjuring one clone after another.

At his current strength, if he poured in everything he had, he could produce several hundred Shadow Clones — every one of them carrying half his full power.

Honestly, even he would find it dangerous if several hundred half-strength versions of himself swarmed him all at once.

And he could keep absorbing Spirit Power and producing more, right up to the ceiling of what his Mental Power could simultaneously hold.

He mapped that ceiling out quickly: six hundred Shadow Clones.

It was a number that made even Lu Yuan himself uneasy. Six hundred clones, each at half his power — if they turned on him, he was fairly confident his best move would be to run.

He dispatched them all. With seven Saint Grade Transcendent Genes amplifying his Mental Power, plus the further boost from his Saint Grade Gene Armaments, his awareness at full spread could blanket all of Great Qi Star — though at that scale, he couldn't pick out fine detail.

Even so, for a Gene Warrior who had only just entered Battle Sovereign rank, it was something that defied all reason.

When it came to directing Shadow Clones rather than spreading raw perception, his reach extended even further.

Great Qi Star alone was all he needed.

The idea had come from watching Si Qi and Li Xinghai. He planned to slip a small number of clones into the shadows of every Battle Emperor on the planet and wait.

From what he understood of the Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast, it had a strong vindictive streak — understandable, given that Aberration Feral Beasts were savage by nature. Cunning as it might be, that cruelty was still there underneath.

With clones hidden in their shadows, he could lie in wait. The moment the beast moved to ambush one of them, Lu Yuan could arrive instantly — and might even pull the target out alive.

There were only thirty-nine Battle Emperors on all of Great Qi Star. That was barely a tenth of his available clones. He placed them without effort.

As he did, he noticed that Li Xinghai and Si Qi were still together — at the rear mountain of the palace. And it wasn't just those two: all thirty-nine Battle Emperors were paired up, at least two per group.

He frowned, then understood.

The Aberration was Saint-grade, with formidable spatial ability. Against a lone Battle Emperor, a silent assassination would likely succeed before any resistance could be mounted. With two present, the target might at least have a fighting chance.

*Not a bad strategy.*

The remaining five-hundred-plus clones he spread across Great Qi Star in every direction, combing for any trace of the beast's location.

Only once everything was in place did Lu Yuan settle back into his cultivation.

Four days later. Rear mountain of the Red Maple Empire's imperial palace.

Li Xinghai and Si Qi were still together, seated cross-legged in cultivation inside their private chamber.

There was something they hadn't told Lu Yuan and Si Tingyu.

They both knew the Aberration was capable of spatial movement. Staying together was their answer to the threat of a direct spatial-blink assassination.

Both Battle Emperors had their pride, of course.

What they did not know was that the shadows at their feet were hiding Lu Yuan's clones.

Then — the space behind Li Xinghai trembled faintly. Without a sound, a sickly green, gaunt claw reached through and stretched toward his body.

The claw left no trace, raised no alarm. Not even Li Xinghai or Si Qi registered it.

Then the shadow beneath Li Xinghai bent.

In the next instant, space convulsed — and the claw was gone.

Only then did the two men feel the spatial disturbance. Their eyes snapped open. They spun toward the source.

Ice shot down Li Xinghai's spine. His gaze was wide and filled with alarm.

Si Qi's brow locked tight, his voice heavy:

"Li, old man — right behind you?! Was that the Aberration Feral Beast?!"

Li Xinghai drew a slow breath, closed his eyes for a beat, then snapped them open again.

"An abrupt spatial disturbance, and neither of us sensed it coming — it can only be that creature. What else would it be? A Saint-level warrior with a spatial gene playing a prank on me?"

Si Qi stared at the now-settled space where it had happened, frowning. "Then why did it just leave? And it made such a disturbance doing so. That isn't like it at all."

Li Xinghai fell silent, gaze fixed on that same spot.

Then both men went rigid at once. Their heads jerked skyward, as if they could see straight through the ceiling to the sky beyond.

They looked at each other. The shock on both faces was naked.

"That aura," Si Qi said, voice hushed. "It's immense."

"Two of them — there are *two*?" Li Xinghai's voice had fallen nearly to a murmur, his disbelief plain on his face. "One reeks of evil — that's definitely the Aberration. The other one... who is that? So many different essences of power, all woven into one..."

So many distinct powers, each at that magnitude, all fused into a single being. It shook something fundamental in his understanding of the world.

It simply made no sense. A typical Gene Warrior inscribed genes along a single elemental direction. Even the most powerful might branch into two, perhaps three.

This was *how many?*

The two men exchanged a glance. Something flickered in their eyes.

Si Qi drew a breath. "There's a Saint out there who found the Aberration — and they're fighting it right now. Let's go."

Li Xinghai nodded. They were through the door in an instant, vanishing a heartbeat later, blazing toward the impossibly distant source of that pressure.

They were not alone. Across every corner of Great Qi Star, powerful figures rose into the air and turned toward that same point on the horizon — Battle Emperors and the mightiest of Battle Sovereigns alike. Ordinary Battle Sovereigns and Battle Kings couldn't sense an aura from so far away.

Moments earlier.

The instant the Aberration's claw had reached for Li Xinghai, Lu Yuan — seated cross-legged in his Talent Camp dormitory room — opened his eyes. Deep darkness flowed through his gaze.

He narrowed them slightly.

*Good thing I was thorough enough to nest clones in the Battle Emperors' shadows.* He hadn't truly expected the beast to act so soon — and yet here they were.

Li Xinghai, of all people.

*Why him?*

He was genuinely puzzled, though a cold thread of unease ran beneath the curiosity. Li Xinghai had always been good to him. More than that — he was Li Qinghe's ancestor. If anything happened to him, Qinghe would be shattered.

He seized control of the clone and activated its spatial transfer — wrenching the Aberration out of the Dimensional Space it had been moving through and flinging it into the deep void far above the planet.

Had his real body been there, the transfer would have left almost no trace. But a clone operating at half strength had strained just to move the beast — and there was no hiding the turbulence that followed.

After the transfer was complete, Lu Yuan stepped forward and disappeared from his room. Across Great Qi Star, patches of shadow stirred — one by one, the hidden clones dissolved and were gone.

In the deep silence of the vacuum, Lu Yuan and the Aberration Feral Beast faced each other, each sizing the other up.

The green dog was enormous. Its shoulders stood nearly four meters high. Its body was blanketed in green Scale Armor etched with blood-red patterns of unsettling intricacy, its frame gaunt — almost starved-looking. Hideous by any measure.

But the sinister green miasma coiling around it pressed against Lu Yuan's senses like a physical weight, and he felt his brow furrow.

*Powerful. Terrifyingly so.*

This was the strongest presence he had ever encountered. He wasn't even certain the Tianming Sage could match it.

Though — to be fair — the last time he'd stood in the Tianming Sage's presence, his own strength had been far below what it was now. He hadn't had the ability then to accurately gauge just how powerful that Saint truly was.

But if this green dog could traverse space the way it did, then even if the Tianming Sage could defeat it, *killing* it would be another matter entirely.

Lu Yuan exhaled slowly. Something cold settled into his eyes.