— ✦ —
Three weeks at Clear Sky Hall.
It was the most stable three weeks since he had arrived in this world.
Cultivation sessions in the senior hall every morning. Restricted archive reading every afternoon. Sparring with Li Qing every third day — they were even at five wins each after six sessions, and each session pushed both of them further than any previous practice.
Cai Rong had been paired with Wei Xun for sparring and training at Ma's suggestion. The two of them had developed a mutual incomprehension-to-respect trajectory that had made Cai Rong a significantly better fighter by the second week. He reached Level Three in the eighteenth day. Cai Rong said almost nothing about it. His expression said everything.
Zhou Jin had been talking to Du Fang, the quiet one, in the evenings. What they discussed Wen Dao didn't ask. Whatever it was, something in Zhou Jin's posture had resolved — a tension he had been carrying since Iron Mountain's corridor conversation had eased.
On the twenty-first day, Ma called a private meeting.
Just the two of them in her study at the top of the mountain structure, with a view of the northern peaks through the window.
"I received word this morning," she said. "Through a back channel I've maintained for contingency purposes." She looked at him carefully. "Xuan Bing has moved."
He was still.
"He has left the Hollow Spire Academy for the first time in thirty years," she continued. "He is traveling north. His stated reason is an inspection tour of northern cultivation sites."
"His actual reason."
"Unknown. But his route will bring him through the Jade Summit range in approximately thirty days."
Thirty days.
The Level Five to Six transition — at his current pace, two months of normal practice. With the hall's resources and the waypoint's benefit, potentially six weeks. Still after Xuan Bing's arrival.
He thought about the Dao Saint's stated purpose. The combination as a key to expanding his own ceiling.
At Level Five, he was not a threat to a Dao Saint. He was not close to being a threat. The gap was not just power — it was realm distance. Qi Condensation versus Dao Saint was six full realms.
Xuan Bing did not need to fight him. He only needed to acquire him. Contain him. Use him.
"What are my options?" he said.
"Leave before he arrives," Ma said. "Which means leaving in the next ten days."
"Or stay and deal with the arrival."
"I would not advise staying," she said. "I am Core Formation. My senior disciples are at most Level Seven. Xuan Bing is a Dao Saint. I cannot protect you if he makes a direct move."
He looked out the window at the northern peaks.
Leave in ten days. But north, south, east, or west?
The archive had been worth coming for. The waypoints had been worth stopping at. The sparring with Li Qing had been genuinely developmental.
But the archive had eighty tablets still unread.
He thought about River Stone. Forty years of controlled brief integration. Soul Ascension eventually. The entity answering instead of attacking.
He had four months of combination practice and a long road ahead.
"I need a direction," he said. "The waypoints Ma described were part of Broken Dawn's path. Where does it go after the Jade Summit range?"
Ma reached into her desk. A map. She unrolled it and placed it on the table.
She had marked it already. Three points north of the Jade Summit range, each annotated with what Clear Sky Hall knew about their cultivation significance.
The furthest north — four hundred miles — was marked: ANCIENT TOWER SITE. UNVERIFIED.
He pointed at it.
"Is this real?" he said.
"The archive has three separate records referencing it," Ma said carefully. "The descriptions are consistent. It is not the Shattered Heaven tower — that was destroyed when Broken Dawn was destroyed. This is described as a secondary structure. A relay point."
"On the same path," he said.
"On the same path," she confirmed.
He traced the route north with his finger.
The road continued. It had always continued.
"Ten days," he said. "I'll read what I can of the archive. Then we leave."
Ma nodded.
"Li Qing," he said. "She has the plateau stones' information."
"Yes."
"She should come."
Ma looked at him.
"That is her choice," she said.
"Of course." He paused. "But if you mention the northern tower site to her—"
"She already knows," Ma said. "She read the archive three months ago and has been looking for a reason to go north."
He almost smiled.
"Then she'll decide on her own," he said.
He stood up.
Ten days. Sixty-two tablets. Five sessions with Li Qing. Cai Rong to inform. Zhou Jin to inform.
And then north.
Always north.
Where the tower waited.
Where the path that had been laid for him three hundred years ago led.
Where the question that was larger than any question he had asked in either life waited for the right practitioner to ask it.
He walked out of Ma's study and stood on the open terrace of the mountain structure, looking north at the upper peaks.
The Tiger's presence was at the mountain base below. Steady. Patient.
The world was very large and very old and the ceiling was somewhere above those northern peaks.
He breathed once, slowly.
Then went to the archive to read.
He had ten days.
He intended to use every one of them.