The Mind of the Empyrean

The dark energy of the serpent talisman pulsed once, a desperate cry for help sent into the night. Jian Feng, hidden and silent, watched as the light from his own tracing disk solidified, pointing like a phantom compass towards the Monastery of the Serene Soul. He now had a confirmed connection, a thread to follow. He settled into a state of deep stillness, his spiritual sense a silken, invisible net cast over the pathways leading from the monastery to the mine. For him, patience was not a virtue; it was a weapon.

He did not have to wait long.

Less than an hour later, his senses detected a figure leaving the monastery. The individual moved with incredible speed and stealth, sticking to the shadows of the forest, their path clearly designed to avoid notice. It was not the Abbot. This person's Qi signature was sharp, arrogant, and filled with a volatile power. This was an enforcer, an agent sent to quell the panic and fix the problem.

Jian Feng was already moving, his own path a silent intersection with the emissary's. He chose the location for his trap with care: a narrow, secluded ravine flanked by sheer rock walls—the very same ravine where he had witnessed the Husk-Jade transaction days earlier. There was a certain poetry in using the enemy's own territory against them.

He arrived minutes before his target, his hands weaving through the air as he laid down a series of his unique, miniaturized formation disks. One at the entrance, one at the exit. A sound-dampening array to ensure absolute silence. A gravity-intensifying formation buried in the soil, ready to be triggered. He was not just setting a trap; he was preparing a surgical theater.

Soon, the emissary entered the ravine. He was a man in the dark robes of a monastery acolyte, his face sharp and severe. As he passed the midpoint of the ravine, Jian Feng, concealed in a crevice above, triggered the formations.

The air grew thick and heavy. The gravity within the ravine instantly tripled, and the man, whose forward momentum was immense, stumbled hard, his knee hitting the ground with a grunt of surprise. At the same moment, the entrances to the ravine shimmered and became walls of solid, unmoving rock—an illusion so perfect it was indistinguishable from reality.

From the shadows, Jian Feng emerged, his aura still suppressed to that of a non-threatening disciple. "Greetings," he said calmly. "I believe you are here to see Elder Jin. He is... indisposed."

The acolyte, Brother Yuhan, scrambled to his feet, his face a mask of fury and shock. "Who are you?!" he snarled. When his eyes registered Jian Feng's weak aura, his shock turned to contempt. "A clan pup, snooping where he shouldn't. A pity your curiosity must end here."

He didn't waste another word. A blade of corrosive, dark Qi formed in his hand and he lunged, aiming to silence this accidental witness permanently.

The fight, if it could be called that, was over in three seconds.

Yuhan's attack was fast and powerful, but to Jian Feng's Star-Chart, it was a clumsy, telegraphed broadcast. He took a single, effortless step to the side, letting the dark blade of Qi slash harmlessly past him. As Yuhan's momentum carried him forward, Jian Feng's hand moved, not in a strike, but in a delicate, precise tap against the acolyte's outstretched arm. He didn't use force. He used a single wisp of Origin Qi to strike the exact meridian node that controlled the flow of energy to the technique.

The dark blade instantly dissolved into nothing. Yuhan stared at his hand in shock, his attack having vanished before it was even completed. Before he could recover, Jian Feng was already behind him. A single, sharp chop to the back of the neck, precisely on a major nerve cluster, sent the powerful acolyte crumpling to the ground, his body convulsing as his connection to his own spiritual energy was temporarily severed.

Jian Feng knelt beside the paralyzed man, his expression as clinical as a physician examining a specimen. "Let us try again," he said, his voice devoid of emotion. He produced the small, grey rock he had taken from the hidden cavern, letting it fall next to Yuhan's face. The rock pulsed with the faint, corrupted energy of the Flesh-Vessel Array.

"Your organization. Its name," Jian Feng demanded. "And its purpose. Why are you farming my clan and its resources?"

Yuhan's eyes, wide with a mixture of pain and disbelief, glared back with defiant hatred. "You think you've won, boy? You have no idea what you've stumbled into! The Umbral Hand will erase you and your pathetic clan from existence!"

The Umbral Hand. The name was logged in Jian Feng's mind. A good start.

"The Umbral Hand," Jian Feng repeated softly. "And what does this Hand intend to do with all the energy it has stolen?"

Yuhan just laughed, a ragged, pained sound. "You will never know. The Great Awakening is almost upon us! The Master will rise, and this entire realm will become his nourishment!"

The Master. A dormant entity. The pieces were falling into place. The scope of the conspiracy was far grander than he had imagined. It wasn't about profit or power; it was about feeding something.

"I believe you will tell me," Jian Feng said simply. He raised a hand over Yuhan's forehead. His hyper-dense Spiritual Sense, usually used for perception, now focused into a razor-sharp needle. He didn't invade the man's mind—that was crude and would destroy it. Instead, he projected a single, perfect illusion directly into his consciousness: the sensation of his own life force being siphoned away, just like the miners, but a thousand times faster.

Brother Yuhan screamed, a raw, terrified sound that was swallowed by the sound-dampening formation. His body didn't have a scratch on it, but in his mind, he was being eaten alive from the inside out.

After ten seconds of this silent, psychological torment, Jian Feng withdrew his sense. "Let's continue our conversation."

The broken, terrified acolyte told him everything. He spoke of a slumbering primordial beast, a creature from an age long past, that the Umbral Hand sought to awaken. The stolen energy from countless mines and "monasteries" like this one was being funneled to a central ritual site, deep in the desolate lands to the far north, to fuel its revival. Abbot Kasyapa was a high-ranking priest of this death cult, and Elder Bao was his initiated subordinate.

Jian Feng now had everything he needed. He looked down at the trembling man, a loose end that needed to be tied. Killing him was an option, but messy. Instead, he gathered his Origin Qi into his fingertip and gently pressed it to Yuhan's forehead, executing a complex "Soul-Stillness Seal." The acolyte's eyes rolled back, and he fell into a deep, death-like coma, his life functions preserved but his consciousness completely suppressed. Jian Feng dragged the body into a deep, dark crevice and concealed it with rocks and another illusion disk.

He now stood alone in the silent ravine. The local mystery was solved. But in its place was a far more terrifying truth. This wasn't a clan matter. This was a threat to the entire realm. He had to make a choice: report his findings and let the clan's leadership handle it, or take matters into his own hands and cut the head off the serpent himself.