Where the Icy Crown Spider had fallen, a soft, pulsating sphere of light the size of a fist hovered just above the frozen earth. It glowed with a cool, blue-white luminescence, containing the condensed essence of the beast.
Chubbs approached it cautiously, poking it with a stick. The light didn't react. "This must be it," he declared. "The key to fill the talisman. But…" He looked from Gen to Lorel. "…there's only one. Who claims it?"
Lorel glanced at Gen, her expression earnest. "Gen should have it. Without you drawing its attention, creating that opening… I would never have landed the final strike."
Gen didn't even look at the sphere. He turned and started walking toward the edge of the clearing, his back to them. His voice drifted over his shoulder, casual and dismissive. "When you're done, let's move. I still need to hunt mine."
He vanished into the silver-barked trees.
Chubbs stared after him, his mouth slightly open. Then he turned to Lorel, his expression one of pure astonishment. "Did he just…? For once, the arrogant toad showed a shred of… not decency… tactical appreciation? He left it for you."
Lorel walked to the sphere. As her fingers touched it, the light dissolved, flowing up her arm in a shimmering current before settling into the pendant at her neck. One of the five grey wedges flickered, then glowed with a steady, soft blue light. One segment filled.
The victory warmed her, but it was a distant, secondary feeling. The primary, fluttering heat in her chest was from Gen's gesture. *He left it for me.* In her mind, it wasn't a tactical decision. It was a gift. The first thing he had ever willingly given her. She was still a girl, a few months shy of seventeen, and the simple, unacknowledged kindness from the boy she was promised to made her heart feel light. A small, secret smile played on her lips as she tucked the now-partly-lit pendant inside her robe.
Gen, walking ahead through the forest, allowed his own thoughts to surface. He'd wanted the sphere. The drive to fill his own pendant, to prove his strength, was a physical hunger. But the sight of Lorel, bathed in the dawn-light of her own power, standing firm against the spider… it had struck him with a force he didn't expect. *She's strong. When did that happen?* The question brought a cold prickle of unease. His Jingdao was a locked gate. If she, with her strange mix of Creation and basic Reinforcement, could rise so high so fast… where did that leave him? Giving her the first sphere was a challenge he'd thrown at himself. *I'll take the next one. A stronger one. I have to be stronger.* And, buried beneath the pride and the strategy, was a quieter, more unfamiliar feeling: the memory of her surprised, admiring smile when he'd fought beside her. It felt… good. Pernicious, but good.
They hunted in a new formation. Gen took point, his senses stretched thin. When they encountered weaker beasts—a pack of crystalline foxes equivalent to a low First Wheel cultivator, or a lumbering Stone-Tusk Boar—Gen would simply step aside.
"You two handle it," he'd say, leaning against a tree, watching.
Chubbs huffed, taking up a clumsy guard. "Too complacent! What if a real threat comes?"
Lorel, however, understood. This was training. For her, and for Chubbs. She used these smaller fights not to win quickly, but to practice. She would summon her Supremacy Sword, holding the unstable, luminous form, trying to make it last longer, strike faster. The sword would flicker and fade, or strike with imperfect force, but each attempt honed her control.
After several hours and a few more minor scuffles, they found a rare patch of calm—a small, clear stream cutting through the forest, its banks soft with luminous moss. The pervasive sounds of distant combat had faded to an eerie quiet, as if every other cultivator in this section had also decided to catch their breath.
Gen sat cross-legged on one side of the stream, his back against a smooth, warm root. Lorel and Chubbs settled on the opposite bank. A heavy, awkward silence descended, thicker than the forest mist. The only sound was the gentle babble of water.
Gen shifted, uncomfortable. He was used to Liang's constant, nervous analysis, or to the easy, competitive banter of the training yards. This quiet, shared with a girl who kept blushing and a loyal oaf who glared at him, was a foreign country. He picked up a twig and began breaking it into smaller and smaller pieces.
Chubbs cleared his throat loudly. "Right. I'm going to… scout the perimeter. For security. Be back in a moment." He shot a significant look at Lorel that she pointedly ignored, then lumbered off into the trees, leaving them truly alone.
The silence grew deeper, more intimate, and infinitely more awkward. Gen stared at the pieces of twig in his hand. Lorel traced patterns in the moss with her finger.
Unable to bear it any longer, Gen spoke to the ground between them. "So. What have you been up to? All this time."
Lorel's head snapped up. She stared at him, her twilight eyes wide. *Is he… is he asking about me?* Hope, fragile and terrifying, fluttered in her chest. She opened her mouth, the truth poised on her tongue: *I left to find you. To fulfill a promise to your father. To be someone you might one day see.*
But the fear of his reaction—pity, dismissal, the crushing weight of being seen as a duty he couldn't shake—choked the words. "I… decided to leave my father," she said, her voice soft. "With Baili. To… to fulfill a promise." She was deliberately vague, her gaze dropping to her hands.
Gen watched her. He saw the flicker of something more in her eyes, a shadow she quickly hid. He didn't press. He simply leaned his head back against the root, looking up at the tangled, glowing canopy. "Good motivation," he said, his own voice quieter than usual. "I made a promise too. To beat the crap out of a Divine General in five years." A dry, humorless chuckle escaped him. "This year's almost gone. I'm no closer."
The raw admission of his own struggle, so unlike his usual bravado, made Lorel's heart ache. "I understand that pain," she said softly. "It's… it's part of why I came looking."
Gen's eyes flicked back to her. "Did you say something?"
She shook her head quickly, the motion making her braid sway. "No. I didn't."
He held her gaze for a moment, then looked away again, his jaw tight. The memory of that shattered peak was a ghost between them—his raw, screaming grief, her quiet, futile approach, the way the whole world had turned its back. In that sea of desertion, after Tiang Feng's cold ultimatum and Captain Wen's pragmatic betrayal, after he had driven everyone away with his own shattered pride… she had been there. She had tried. She had stepped toward the storm when even his father's disciples fled.
The words came out rough, unpolished, more feeling than thought. "Thank you," he said, the words simple and freighted with the weight of that day. "For… back then."
Lorel felt her breath catch. Back then. He remembered. He remembered her tentative step forward, her broken attempt to reach him in his tempest. He hadn't acknowledged it then—he'd been lost in a world of ash and fury. But he'd seen it. And now, in this quiet forest, he was naming it. A warm, profound feeling spread through her chest, sweet and aching. "You're… welcome," she murmured, the words encompassing everything—the failed attempt, the shared loss, this fragile moment now.
Emboldened by the fragile connection, she continued. "I've been through a lot. I got beaten. At the Stonewatch tournament. A two-against-one fight, after I'd already defeated the first."
Gen sat up straight, a scowl darkening his features. "That's dirty. You were already wounded."
Lorel shook her head, a new firmness in her expression. "In the past, I would have thought so too. But after training with General Mearl… I understand now. It wasn't unfair. I was just weak at that time." She clenched her fist, looking at her knuckles. "I paid the price. Now I'm stronger. And my chance will come."
Gen looked at her—at the resolve carved into her once-soft features, at the fire in her twilight eyes. He didn't offer pity. He didn't give a grand speech. He simply stated a fact, with the absolute, unshakeable faith he usually reserved only for himself. "Now that you've trained," he said, "you'll crush him."
The words were a bolt of pure, validating sunlight. A brilliant, beaming smile broke across Lorel's face, so bright it seemed to light up the dim bank. Her eyes shone.
Gen saw it. He saw the smile, the light in her eyes, the way her whole being seemed to soften and glow at his simple statement of belief. He felt something then—a strange, warm tightness in his chest, a pull in her direction that had nothing to do with strategy or obligation. Their gazes locked, and the silence returned, but this time it wasn't awkward. It was charged, humming with something unnameable. The sounds of the forest faded away.
Just as the space between them seemed to shrink, a loud rustle announced Chubbs's return. "All clear!" he boomed, stepping back into the clearing. He stopped, looking from Gen's unusually still form to Lorel's flushed, radiant face. His eyes narrowed. "What's going on here?"
Lorel shot to her feet, brushing invisible dirt from her robes. "Nothing! We should… we should continue onward."
"Right," Gen said, standing up as well, his voice back to its normal gruffness. "Time's wasting."
Chubbs stared at them, his expression deeply suspicious. "Uh-huh. Sure. Nothing." He was about to say more, to pry, when a new sound cut through the forest quiet.
Voices. Shouting. The crash of bodies through undergrowth.
"Over here! They went this way!"
"They think they can flee from the Li family? Arrogant worms!"
"Catch them! Kill all of them! Even that fool with the strange jar of lightning!"
Gen had been ready to ignore it, to focus on his own hunt. But the last phrase hooked into his mind and yanked.
***Strange jar of lightning.***
His blood ran cold. His world narrowed to a single, white-hot point of focus.
*Liang.*
Without a word, without a glance back at Lorel or Chubbs, Gen was a blur of motion, shooting toward the source of the voices, his bamboo rod already in hand, his earlier discomfort and unspoken moments forgotten in the face of a single, driving imperative: *Find him.*