The morning sun slanted through the balcony glass and pooled in pale rectangles across the living-room floor.

I sat cross-legged on a plastic stool, a wisp of faint blue vapour coiling around my fingertips, working through the finer points of the Flowing Wave Slash from Introduction to Water-Element Bladework. Since breaking through to the Fifth Layer of Qi Refinement, spiritual energy had been moving through my meridians more freely than ever — like a house that had finally had its pipes replaced and no longer had to worry about low water pressure.

"Ethan Lu! You hung your socks on the cactus again!" Jade Lin's voice detonated from the kitchen, accompanied by the clang of a spatula against the iron wok. "Where is River's school uniform? They're raising the flag at assembly today!"

My hand jerked. The vapour around my fingertips dissolved with a soft pfft, showering cold droplets down the back of my neck. Right. Cultivation session — interrupted again. I scrambled to my feet to retrieve the socks. The pot of cactus I'd accidentally cultivated into a spirit plant was bristling its spines at me, apparently lodging a formal complaint about my mistreatment.

"Coming, coming!" I called back, peeling the socks off the Soul-Piercing Grass one by one.

"Daddy, look at my drawing — 'Silent Ultraman vs. the Fish Monster'!" River came charging over, the silence bell around his neck swaying with each step yet making absolutely no sound. On the sheet of paper, a bell-wearing Ultraman was swinging a water blade down at a scaly fish creature, with the words Go Daddy Go scrawled crookedly beside it.

Something warm moved through my chest. I tousled his hair. "That's really something, buddy — though maybe next time don't make the fish monster handsomer than Ultraman."

Jade Lin came over carrying breakfast and shot me a sideways look. "You and your sweet-talking. Hurry up and eat, then take River to school. By the way — last night after you got back from the night market, did you go training again? I heard strange noises out in the corridor, like you were fighting someone."

The hand I was using to push noodles around my bowl went still. On the walk home from the market stall last night, I had caught the faint trace of two weak spiritual-energy signatures trailing me — but before I could react, both had abruptly vanished, as though something had frightened them off. I'd written it off as small fry from Baizhen Pavilion and thought nothing more of it. Now that Jade Lin had brought it up, it nagged at me.

"Nobody. Probably just two cats scrapping." I brushed it off vaguely, though my mind was turning the matter over. The old System geezer had been about as talkative as a rock lately — barely a peep out of him beyond issuing tasks. He was probably holed up inside the ring cracking melon seeds again.

After I dropped River at school, I didn't head straight to the market. Instead, I looped around to the old locust tree behind the residential compound, intending to test the spirit-gathering stone. The moment I closed my fingers around a dark-green stone, a torrent of exceptionally pure spiritual energy surged through my meridians and flooded into my dantian — at least three times faster than my normal training pace.

Ding. Host detected using an Intermediate Spirit-Gathering Stone. Spiritual energy absorption efficiency increased by 300%. Current proficiency in Introduction to Water-Element Bladework: 15%.

The system chime had barely faded when I sensed three cold threads of spiritual energy closing in from separate directions — two at the Fourth Layer of Qi Refinement, one at the Fifth. So Baizhen Pavilion had put a bounty on my head. These rogue cultivators had caught the scent and come running.

I let out a cold laugh, pocketed the spirit-gathering stone, and shifted the meteorite-iron chopping board behind my back. Fourth Layer of Qi Refinement? That was nothing to me now.

"Friends — skulking around like that is no fun. Why not come out and have a chat?" I deliberately raised my voice, flooding my ears with spiritual energy to pick out the faint sound of breathing coming from the shrubbery to my left.

The words had barely left my mouth when a dark figure burst out from behind the bushes. It was gripping a dagger that gleamed with cold light, aimed straight at my face. The figure was dressed head-to-toe in night-black clothes, face wrapped in a dark cloth, leaving only a pair of vicious, narrowed eyes exposed — Fourth Layer of Qi Refinement, roughly on par with the brute I'd run into at the water plant last time.

"Ethan Lu — your life is mine!" the shadow snarled, and I noticed that the dagger was laced with a faint thread of black qi. Someone had clearly been cultivating a crooked technique.

I didn't dodge. I didn't retreat. When the blade was barely half a foot from my face, I twisted sideways and swung the meteorite-iron chopping board in a single, brutal arc. A dense thud rang out. The dagger crumpled like a wrung-out towel. The figure was flung backwards, stumbling several steps, the web between thumb and forefinger split open and bleeding freely.

End of Chapter 23: Morning Ambush at the Old Locust Tree