Qingxue's consciousness drifted as she pushed her spiritual energy through Alexei's body, mapping the pathways. And then, between one breath and the next, the treehouse disappeared.
She stood in a vast, open landscape under a perfectly square sun. The ground beneath her feet was made of blocks, grass on top, dirt below, visible layers like a cross-section of the earth itself. In the distance, a rough humanoid structure rose against the horizon. Its head was a perfect cube. Its body, arms, legs, all made of different colored blocks arranged to suggest a figure.
A statue.
Near its base, a small figure moved. Brown robes, large nose, arms crossed.
Qingxue found herself drawn closer, her spiritual form gliding across the blocky terrain without conscious thought.
"Hrm," the figure said, noticing her. Its voice was nasal, oddly pitched. "Hrm hrm."
"What is this place?" she asked.
The figure gestured to the statue. "Hrm hrm hrm." It seemed to be explaining something, but the words made no sense. It was not a language barrier, the sounds themselves were just noises.
Yet somehow, she understood: it's the home of the First Builder. The one who placed the first block.
She looked up at the statue. Blocky head, featureless face except for a simple design, like dark eyes, darker hair, a beard or shadow where a mouth should be. Light blue shirt, and dark blue pants.
"Who built this statue?"
"Hrm hrm hrm."
We did. To remember.
She moved closer to the statue's base, where a sign stood with words carved into its surface. As she tried to approach and read it, her advance came to an abrupt halt.
It was like walking into an invisible wall.
Her spiritual form could go no farther. The carved text remained just out of reach, unreadable.
You don't belong here.
The brown-robed figure watched her with dark eyes. "Hrm."
Everything went white.
---
Qingxue gasped, her hand jerking back from Alexei's back.
"What?" Alexei turned. "What's wrong?"
"I..." She blinked, disoriented. "I was checking your meridians and then..."
What had just happened? She'd been mapping his spiritual channels, her hand hovering near his back, but something felt off, like she'd forgotten something important.
"Did you sense something?"
She looked at him, then at her hand, confused by the lingering sense of wrongness.
"Let me check again."
She placed her hand back on his back, and pushed her spiritual energy through...
Nothing unusual. Just normal, if oddly configured.
She frowned.
What had she been expecting to find?
"Well?" Alexei pressed.
Qingxue pulled her hand back, fox ears twitching in embarrassment.
How was she supposed to tell him that, aside from checking his bone age, she hadn't sensed anything special at all? All she'd learned was that his body carried some kind of pleasant fragrance she couldn't identify. Like fresh bread.
"Um..."
Alexei's expression shifted from hopeful to wary. "That's not a good 'um,' is it?"
She'd also tried checking his lower body, when the upper body examination proved inconclusive. But that had yielded nothing either.
His physical strength, from what her spiritual sense could detect, was completely ordinary. Weaker than average, even, for his apparent age. By all measures, he shouldn't have been able to lift forty kilos, let alone three tons.
Could it be some kind of special spiritual root? Or an innate divine ability that only activated under specific conditions?
But she'd never heard of any spiritual root or divine ability that granted selective super-strength to otherwise normal mortals.
"So?" Alexei asked again. His voice had gone flat. "How bad is it?"
Qingxue cleared her throat delicately. "Possessing a special physique does provide certain advantages in cultivation, but it's far from indispensable."
Alexei stared at her.
"Across the entire Profound Sky Continent, there are countless top-tier experts. Very few who became regional overlords actually relied solely on a special physique to get there."
Alexei continued staring.
"In fact, many of the most powerful cultivators had completely ordinary constitutions. What matters is dedication, comprehension, and—"
"I don't have a special physique," Alexei interrupted. "That's what you're saying."
"I'm saying it's not necessary to—"
"But I don't have one."
Qingxue's tail swished guiltily. "...No. I couldn't detect one."
Alexei sat there for a moment. She watched disappointment flicker across his face, quickly suppressed.
He'd been hoping, she realized. Maybe even fantasizing about what kind of heaven-defying physique he might possess.
She felt terrible.
"However," she added quickly, "the cultivation path primarily depends on spiritual roots, not physique. Detecting spiritual roots requires specialized tools, a Qi-Sensing Stone, Spirit-Measuring Stone, or Spirit-Measuring Stele. I can't check them manually."
Alexei looked up.
"When the time comes, you can return to my sect with me. I'll help you test them properly there." She tried to sound encouraging. "And honestly, based on everything I've seen, I think your talent is probably very good."
"Really?" His tone suggested he didn't quite believe her.
"The fact that you can lift three tons suggests something unusual about you. I just can't identify it through standard examination methods."
"Huh." Alexei seemed to turn this over in his mind. "Okay. I guess that makes sense."
His mood lifted slightly, which eased the guilty knot in her chest.
"Wait, though." He paused. "Return to your sect? You want me to leave the treehouse?"
Qingxue couldn't help but smile. Her hand reached out almost unconsciously to pat his head. "Of course we have to return to the sect. You can't stay alone in the Silkspore Basin forever."
He pulled away from the head pat, which she took as a bad sign.
"Though we'll need to wait until my injuries recover more. Probably another half year."
"Half year?" Alexei's expression changed. "Wait, your injuries..."
He suddenly scrambled for his inventory, pulling out that absurdly heavy iron bucket.
"Try this milk."
She reached for the bucket, careful this time to brace herself for the weight, but Alexei held it up to her mouth instead, supporting it himself. As it approached, that rich milk fragrance grew stronger. She could smell the mushroom undertones now.
Her mouth watered involuntarily. She parted her lips and took a sip from the bucket's rim.
Flavor exploded across her tongue. A hundred times more intense than the scent promised. The faint mushroom notes didn't clash with the milk at all, they complemented it, added depth and complexity she'd never experienced before.
Her eyes widened.
When she was very young, her master had searched far and wide for spirit beast milk to help regulate her half-demon constitution. But no matter how fragrant those spirit milks smelled, they always carried an unpleasant fishy aftertaste that made her gag.
But this was perfect.
The milk slid down her throat, and a gentle, cooling sensation carrying a milk-and-mushroom scent spread from her mouth through her body and into every limb.
Alexei watched her. "Is it okay? You look—"
"It's wonderful," she managed.
Then she felt her spiritual veins respond. They flowed more smoothly than they had since before the tribulation.
She blinked, then took another sip, paying more attention this time.
The milk didn't even reach her stomach. It dissolved and was absorbed before it could travel that far. As it did, she felt her damaged meridians knit together. She felt old, hidden injuries, some of them decades old, close and heal.
She stared at the bucket. "Where did you get this?"
"The milk?" Alexei looked confused. "From Bessie."
"Bessie..." Qingxue's gaze swung to the cow-like creature with mushrooms growing on its back, currently chewing cud without a care in the world.
That creature had no spiritual energy. She'd checked when she first woke up. It was completely, utterly mundane.
And it produced this?
"You want more?"
Qingxue's hands trembled slightly.
This boy was casually offering her what might be the most valuable spiritual medicine on the entire Profound Sky Continent.
And he had no idea.
She steadied herself. "If you're sure."
"I'm sure. It doesn't even take up stomach space," he said this like it was the most natural thing in the world.
She'd already noticed the milk dissolving before reaching her stomach, but hearing him confirm it...
She took the bucket from his hands and drank a proper mouthful.
Warmth spread through her meridians as damaged channels knit themselves whole. Circulation paths long sealed by old injuries loosened and opened. Her cultivation base settled, then sharpened, growing clearer and more stable.
The bucket was surprisingly deep. She drank and drank, and the level barely seemed to drop.
Alexei sat nearby, fishing rod in hand again, casting his line into the water source block and giving her space.
She kept drinking, monitoring her internal state.
Her spiritual veins were whole again, restored as if they had never been damaged. Her hidden injuries were gone. Even the ones she'd accumulated during Foundation Establishment, ones she'd thought would plague her forever.
Her physical injuries were still severe, but with her spiritual veins healed, those would mend naturally in two weeks at most. No pills required.
She felt better than she had in decades.
The last drops of milk slid down her throat. She set the bucket down and just sat there. Then she felt her Dharma Aspect.
It was curled up in her qi sea, breathing softly like it was asleep. Which was wrong. Dharma Aspects didn't sleep. They were manifestations of will and power, not living creatures.
But hers was definitely sleeping, and it felt whole. More than whole. Complete in a way it had never been before, even prior to the tribulation.
Curiosity overrode caution.
She reached for it with her consciousness, tried to summon it.
No, the room is too small...
Too late.
Her hair lifted in an unseen wind as spiritual energy spiraled around her. White light gathered behind her, forming into the outline of a fox-shaped phantom that flared toward brilliance... Thump.
Something small landed on her head.
Qingxue froze.
She reached up slowly, felt something warm and fuzzy, and pulled it into view.
A fox.
It fit neatly in her palm. Milk-white fur, a tiny pink nose, eyes closed as if it were only half awake.
It was her Dharma Aspect.
She held the tiny fox up at eye level.
Other cultivators had Dharma Aspects hundreds of meters tall, including thousand-meter giants that could shake the earth with a single step. Even the weakest among them stood at least ten meters high.
Hers was the size of her hand.
The tiny fox yawned, showing sharp teeth, then blinked sleepy eyes at her.
"Mrrp?"