The morning sun had barely crested the horizon of Thousand Waves City, but the Grand Hall of the Jin Clan was already suffocatingly tense.
The meeting hall was a sprawling, majestic marvel of architecture. Massive pillars of dark red spirit-wood held up a vaulted ceiling painted with ancient, soaring phoenixes. Heavy crimson tapestries lined the obsidian stone walls, and braziers of burning sandalwood filled the air with a thick, expensive haze. It was a room designed to project absolute wealth and martial authority.
At the far end of the hall, upon a raised dais, sat the high-backed, gilded throne of the Matriarch.
Meng Yan sat upon it, draped in her most imposing crimson and gold battle robes. Her emerald hair was pinned up with lethal-looking jade hairpins, and her deep blue eyes were as cold and fathomless as the northern seas.
But what had the dozen assembled Jin Clan Elders whispering furiously amongst themselves was not the Matriarch's stunning, reinvigorated appearance. It was the young man sitting casually in an ornate chair positioned directly to her right.
Shen Yu sat there lazily, wearing pristine white robes, casually sipping tea as if he owned the hall. To the elders, this was absolute madness. Everyone in the city knew Tang Wei was a useless cripple with shattered meridians.
Meng Yan raised a single, slender hand. The hall instantly fell dead silent.
"I have summoned you all to announce an immediate and irreversible shift in our clan's foundation," Meng Yan's voice echoed with undeniable authority. "Effective immediately, the Jin Clan will completely sever our auxiliary medicinal contracts with the Peng Clan. Furthermore, we are extending our exclusive, absolute protection and full financial backing to the Tang Clan."
A stunned silence stretched for three seconds before the hall erupted.
"Matriarch, this is preposterous!" Elder Zhao, a stout, calculating man who secretly lined his pockets through illicit back-channel deals with the Peng Clan, stepped forward. "The Tang Clan is on the verge of collapse! The Peng Clan has given them an ultimatum. If we interfere, we will be dragged into a war over a dying business. It makes no logical sense!"
Several other elders nodded in agreement, their faces grim.
Meng Yan's gaze snapped to Elder Zhao, her eyes narrowing into dangerous slits. "Are you questioning my logic, Zhao?"
"I am thinking of the Clan's survival!" Elder Zhao argued, emboldened by the murmurs of his peers. "Why would we risk the wrath of the Peng Clan for a crippled boy and his failing estate?"
Meng Yan didn't raise her voice. She simply smiled, a chilling, breathtakingly arrogant smile.
"Because," Meng Yan said smoothly, "the Tang Clan possesses something the Peng Clan never could. For five years, the core elders of this room have known that my cultivation was stagnating, paralyzed by a violent Yin blockage."
The older, more loyal elders flinched, exchanging nervous glances. It had been their most closely guarded secret.
"But as of last night," Meng Yan stood up, her crimson robes billowing. "That stagnation is no more."
BOOM!
A terrifying, heaven-shaking pressure erupted from Meng Yan's body. The braziers in the hall instantly extinguished as a suffocating, silver-blue aura of pure frost blanketed the room. The obsidian floorboards cracked beneath the sheer weight of her power.
The elders were violently forced to their knees, their faces pale with absolute terror as they struggled to breathe.
"E-Eighth Stage!" Elder Zhao gasped, his eyes bulging out of his skull as he stared at the majestic, terrifying phantom of a Lunar Phoenix flashing briefly behind her. "You broke through to the Eighth Stage of the Golden Core Realm!"
"The Tang Clan possesses heaven-defying medical arts that have been hidden from the world," Meng Yan declared, looking down at the kneeling elders like a god addressing mortals. "Young Master Tang personally cured my dying core, allowing me to break through four minor realms in a single night. In exchange for my life and my breakthrough, I allied our clan with his."
Before the elders could even process the shock of the Matriarch's rebirth, Shen Yu placed his teacup down with a soft clink.
He stood up from his chair. And then, he released his aura.
A dense, incredibly pure wave of Qi Condensation pressure rolled off his body. While it wasn't the apocalyptic pressure of a Golden Core, to the elders kneeling on the floor, it was like seeing a ghost.
"He has Qi!" an elder cried out in disbelief. "The cripple's meridians are intact! He is a cultivator!"
"Watch your tongue," Meng Yan snapped coldly. "To repay my debt to the Tang Clan, I gifted Young Master Tang the Astral Mending Herb. It repaired his shattered meridians and pushed him to the late stage of Qi Condensation. The Jin Clan and the Tang Clan are now bound by blood and trade. Anyone who opposes this alliance opposes my life."
Faced with an 8th Stage Golden Core Matriarch and the miraculous recovery of the Tang heir, the opposition instantly crumbled. Even Elder Zhao pressed his forehead to the freezing floor, trembling.
"We obey the Matriarch's supreme will!" the elders chanted in unison.
"Dismissed," Meng Yan commanded.
.
.
.
By the time the sun reached its zenith over Thousand Waves City, the secrets of the Jin Clan's grand assembly had spilled into the streets, striking the northern district like a geopolitical earthquake.
The news didn't merely spread; it exploded. Communication jade slips buzzed frantically in the hands of every major merchant, sect elder, and guild master in the city.
"Matriarch Meng has shattered her bottleneck! She stepped into the 8th Stage of the Golden Core!" "The Tang Clan's cripple... he has Qi! The young master's meridians are completely healed!" "The Jin Clan has officially declared a blood-alliance! They are backing the Tang Clan's businesses with their entire treasury!"
The rumors tore through the crowded tea houses, the opulent brothels, and the rowdy mercenary guilds, completely overturning the established hierarchy of the medicinal market in a matter of hours.
For the past few years, the Tang Clan had been viewed as an ambitious but stalled newcomer. They had arrived in the city recently, making a brief splash before hitting a hard ceiling in the ruthless, deeply entrenched local market. To the established powers, the Tang Clan was simply an upstart that had stagnated, a minor faction waiting to be squeezed out or swallowed whole.
Now, in the span of a single morning, this "stagnant" clan had secured the absolute, unquestioning protection of the city's wealthiest powerhouse.
Almost immediately, the market reacted. The value of Tang Clan medicinal herbs skyrocketed, while terrified third-party vendors began freezing their long-term supply contracts with the Peng Clan, desperate to avoid getting caught in the crossfire of the Jin Clan's newfound aggression.
Miles away, within the sprawling, gold-gilded halls of the Peng Estate, the news arrived like a suffocating blanket.