The Mind of the Empyrean

For two days, Jian Feng maintained his meticulous charade. He spent his daylight hours in the supervisors' office, poring over ledgers with the focused diligence of a bureaucrat. He asked endless, seemingly naive questions about logistics, mineral yields, and personnel shifts. To Elder Jin and Elder Bao, he was becoming a known quantity: a well-intentioned but green young master from the capital, far more interested in paperwork than in the grimy reality of the mines. They grew visibly more relaxed in his presence, their guard lowering with each passing hour.

During this time, Jian Feng was not just acting. He was observing. He confirmed the patrol patterns of the mine's internal security force, noting again the almost superstitious way they avoided the sealed entrance to the abandoned Sector 07. More importantly, he confirmed the schedule of the 'waste rock' convoys. One heavily guarded convoy departed every evening just after dusk, heading for a supposedly barren ravine in the northern foothills.

On the third night, Jian Feng made his move. He left a simple heat-distorting formation in his bed—enough to fool a cursory spiritual scan—and slipped out of his courtyard, a shadow swallowed by other shadows.

He moved with silent purpose, shadowing the rumbling convoy from a high ridge. The guards escorting the carts were not the listless, half-asleep miners from the settlement. These were sharp-eyed, powerful cultivators, their senses alert. They were not guarding worthless rock.

The convoy rumbled for an hour before turning off the main path and entering a secluded, rocky ravine. They came to a stop in a small clearing, hidden from all sides by sheer rock walls. The guards immediately took up defensive positions, their vigilance peaking. They were not here to dump their cargo; they were here for a rendezvous.

Jian Feng, concealed in a crevice high above, watched with dispassionate focus. A few minutes later, a second group arrived from the opposite end of the ravine. They were clad in nondescript dark clothing, their faces obscured by simple masks. Their Qi signatures were unfamiliar, lacking the distinct azure-and-green hue of the Azure Dragon Clan. This was an outside party.

Under the cold moonlight, the transaction took place. The clan guards opened the carts, revealing not worthless stone, but piles of dull, greyish jade ore. It was Husk-Jade—the very material left behind after its spiritual essence had been almost entirely drained away. Jian Feng watched as the masked figures inspected the husks, then handed the lead guard a small, heavy box that emanated the dense aura of high-grade spirit stones.

The masked figures loaded the worthless-looking Husk-Jade onto their own transports and vanished as silently as they had arrived.

The pieces clicked into place in Jian Feng's mind. This was not just theft; it was a sophisticated laundering operation. The unknown organization wasn't stealing the jade itself, but the essence of the jade. They were then paying the supervisors a small fee to haul away the "evidence"—the dead husks—which they could likely use for some other, cruder purpose. The clan was losing its most valuable resource without a single stone ever going missing from the official inventory. Elder Jin and Elder Bao were not just covering up a production decline; they were actively facilitating a parasitic attack on the clan.

However, this discovery only answered a secondary question. It explained the "waste rock" convoy, but it did not explain the primary crime: the siphoning process itself. That had to be happening within the mountain.

After the guards had departed with their payment, Jian Feng slipped away, his focus now singular. He made his way back towards the mine, his destination the one place that was so conspicuously avoided. He arrived before the sealed entrance to Sector 07. The gate was made of heavy, reinforced iron, bearing faded warning signs of structural instability. It looked exactly as a century-old abandoned tunnel should.

He reached out, not to touch the gate, but to let his Spiritual Sense gently brush against it. His face remained impassive, but his mind registered the truth with cold clarity. The dust and rust were a physical facade. Beneath them, woven into the very structure of the gate and the surrounding rock, was a powerful, multi-layered concealment formation. It was incredibly subtle, designed not to repel, but to misdirect and soothe any probing senses, making them register nothing but solid, dead rock beyond. It was a masterwork of deception.

And through the gaps in that formation, he could feel it. A faint, sickeningly sweet scent of decay. A cold, parasitic energy that felt like a spiritual cancer. It was the concentrated source of the illness that permeated the entire mountain.

He now had irrefutable proof. The smuggling operation outside was a distraction. The real secret, the source of the rot, was hidden behind this very gate.

He did not try to break the seal. A formation of this complexity would surely have alarms, and the enemy was clearly cautious and powerful. Forcing his way in would be a tactical blunder. He had peeled back the first layer of the conspiracy. Now, standing before the locked door, he knew his next task was not to break it down, but to find the key, or, failing that, to find a back door that its creators had overlooked.