Chương 100: 1.98 Where Ning learns about the Main Quest~

"I can officially say I've been more dumbfounded these past few days than I have in years," He Shou said aloud, watching Ning vanish after absolutely going wild on the puppet.

"For once, I'm inclined to agree with you." Hong Zeiling couldn't help himself.

"Not an ounce of hesitation in that boy. He just kept attacking." Amid the growing dumbfoundedness, the young elder Chen quietly took in the shocked expressions on all his fellow Foundation Establishment cultivators. He didn't have the experience to properly judge just how amazing what young disciple Ning had done actually was. Oh, he was impressed, certainly.

But he was more impressed by Ning's sheer mental fortitude than anything else; it took a special kind of person to look at a face so similar to his own and, without a single second of hesitation, attack it with all he got and more. But that was about the extent of his understanding. So Elder Chen had one real question. Why was he here? He didn't mean it metaphorically, rhetorically, poetically, philosophically, or any other way.

He knew the general answer well enough; he was a cultivator who'd earned his place in the Pure Qi Sect through decades of average but consistent effort, and the Heavenly Origin Tower trials were significant enough that Foundation Establishment elders were expected to observe them.

But specifically, why was he here, sitting in the observation hall among seasoned experts, drinking tea that had long gone cold, watching water-mirrors show him things that made everyone around him react in ways he found genuinely difficult to follow? The answer, unfortunately, was Elder Wan. Elder Wan, whose name Elder Chen was never going to say aloud anywhere it might get back to her, had approached him three weeks ago with a request.

Hong Zeiling, she'd explained, was the sort of man who enjoyed explaining things. He was happiest when he had someone to explain things to. She wanted him happy. Therefore, she needed someone to sit near Hong Zeiling and ask questions. Elder Chen had stared at her for a long moment upon hearing such an absurd request. Then he'd said yes, because Elder Wan had pulled him out of a formation accident two years ago that he very much did not want on his record, and favors were favors. So here he was. Asking questions.

Ah, the things a man had to do just to keep living peacefully. All in service of Hong Zeiling's happiness, which Elder Wan apparently required with some urgency. Young Elder Chen had no idea how sitting here asking questions was supposed to help her court a man as strict and uptight as Hong Zeiling, but that wasn't really his department. Overall, Elder Chen had made peace with stranger arrangements before.

What he found genuinely surprising was how spry, if that word could even apply, his Foundation Establishment peers were. Despite being called "young" himself, that label only really applied to how recently he'd reached this stage. He'd built his foundation at fifty-seven, cutting it uncomfortably close to the sixty-year mark, past which the odds of ever achieving Foundation Establishment dropped off a cliff.

So he carried a fair amount of life experience under his belt; his path hadn't been nearly as smooth as most of the people in this hall. For one thing, he knew Ling Xin had built her foundation around twenty or so, meaning age-wise the two of them weren't actually that far apart, all things considered. Perhaps that was exactly why, building foundation so young, she and the others still carried something distinctly childish about them.

Elder Chen mulled this over, because frankly, his peers were rather childish in certain respects. Lou Ren and He Shou couldn't go five minutes without trading barbs. Zhou Chen, despite being older than most of them, still had a genuinely petty streak. Ling Xin was, in her own way, just as childishly proud as the rest. Ah, well. Elder Chen set down his cold tea. This was his cue.

"But why has no one done this before?" Hong Zeiling turned to him with exactly the expression Elder Chen had been braced for. Well, Elder Wan certainly knew her target of affection. Ah! How he wanted a woman who could focus on him like that, but that was just his inner envy speaking.

"Because most disciples don't think like that, and even fewer have the skill to demolish an opponent without giving it a single inch of room to breathe. Someone like Ning, who not only knows his own weakness but has clearly thought about it in advance and built a countermeasure against it, that's rarer still." Elder Chen nodded at that. Who in their right mind would actually draft contingency plans against a hypothetical copy of themselves?

Still, his expression turned complicated as he asked another question he had prepared.

"Then... does this still count as surpassing himself?" He Shou barked a laugh.

"That brat surpassed the trial's intentions, at least." Hong Zeiling nodded slowly.

"That is the essence of the trial, though twisted in an absurd direction. The tower judges results. Since it transported him, it must have recognized the method."

"My disciple has always had a whimsical mind." Even Ling Xin, who'd never once doubted Ning, sounded a little stunned to admit it. Lou Ren's fan moved once.

"With this, Ji Ning will almost certainly be placed on the recommendation list for core disciple candidacy." Elder Chen's eyes widened; this time his surprise was entirely genuine.

"Core disciples?" Core disciples stood above even the elders in some respects, or rather, some elders were themselves counted among the core disciples. Core disciples were nurtured fully by the sect, expected to reach the peak of Foundation Establishment and press onward into the Purple Mansion realm. They would be the pillar of the sect for centuries to come. Hong Zeiling didn't look surprised.

"He's passed the fifth trial of the Heavenly Origin Tower and reached a chamber that hasn't opened in generations. His only real flaw, perhaps, is his spiritual root."

"Bah! Spiritual root isn't everything." Ling Xin cut in immediately.

"My disciple is clever enough to work around it. Heck, I'll help him surpass that limit myself." She was, in fact, considered one of the sect's core disciples herself, her cultivation high, her skills diverse, her talent among the very best the sect had produced.

"Will he manage it, though?" Elder Chen couldn't help asking, and this was his true thought. He carried a mid-grade spiritual root himself, and for him, reaching Foundation Establishment had taken decades, even with help from others along the way. Of course, from everything he'd seen today, Ji Ning was clearly a genius in a way he himself wasn't, despite sharing the same grade of root, which only made him more painfully aware of exactly how much a spiritual root mattered once you climbed past Qi Condensation.

For Qi Condensation, a mid-grade root was more than enough. At Foundation Establishment and beyond, its limits started to show. It was not enough. Not that he was disparaging Ning, mind you; it was quite the opposite. He genuinely found it remarkable that a boy with no background at all had come this far, and had even earned connections most disciples would envy. He Shou snorted.

"A mid-grade root disciple just produced purple-gold light in the Origin Orb Trial and passed the Self-Surpassing Trial in a way none of us had even considered. I'd say he's doing fine." Lou Ren nodded.

"His cultivation speed may not match a high-grade root, but his comprehension, adaptability, and practical judgment are beyond normal standards." Hong Zeiling's gaze stayed deep.

"Core disciples aren't selected by talent alone. They're selected by future possibility. Ji Ning has shown enough to be considered." Ling Xin set her teacup down with a soft tap and said nothing. Lang Feilang finally couldn't help herself.

"If you want to laugh, you know, you're allowed to laugh." She'd caught on ages ago; Ling Xin was holding it in through sheer force of will at this point.

"I see." Elder Chen nodded, doing his best to ignore Ling Xin, who looked ready to burst. For him, even reaching the peak of Foundation Establishment would be something close to a miracle, let alone pressing beyond it. That was the practical ceiling for anyone with a mid-grade root or lower; even a strong background could only push that ceiling so far. Still, he thought, someone like Ji Ning is clearly a rarity. Not many could pull off what he just did.

The thought had barely finished forming before it was promptly slapped out of him. The one doing the face slapping was someone he had just written off.

"Is that-" Elder Chen's mouth fell open.

"Is that fist intent?" In the water-mirror, a faint phantom fist bloomed around Xiao Fan's hand as he stood back up against his puppet. He'd been knocked down more times than anyone could count, and yet he kept rising, his fist wrapped now in something more than qi, something that looked disturbingly like will given shape.

"Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora! Ora!" Xiao Fan punched and punched, his fist blazing gold. For every two hits the puppet landed on him, he answered with one, but each of his hit harder, sharper, better.

"I never expected anyone to comprehend intent during this trial," He Shou sighed, for what had to be the umpteenth time tonight.

"And now it's not just Ji Ning. It's Xiao Fan too." The reason for their collective disbelief was simple, once you understood what the boy had actually done. Scattered Hand. Penetration. Ten Steps One Kill. One Step Ten Kill. And finally, intent. Xiao Fan had simply skipped straight past One Step Ten Kill and landed on intent. Intent was the thing that turned decay into magic. A force multiplier, the reason a fist punched harder, a sword cut cleaner, a spear thrust found the gap it had no business finding.

"The match is over," Hong Zeiling said at last.

"Xiao Fan isn't giving the puppet any room to adapt. His fist intent hasn't fully blossomed; it's barely a prototype, but against a Qi Condensation-tier puppet, using something even most Foundation Establishment cultivators barely brush against in their long lifetimes is close enough to cheating." The young elder's gaze drifted from Xiao Fan's mirror to the empty golden glow where Ning had vanished. One disciple had passed by, refusing to play along. Another was trying to pass by, tearing himself open mid-battle.

Truly, this tower was birthing monsters tonight. Naturally, his attention turned last to the final water-mirror. Until now, Elder Chen had deliberately avoided asking anything about Lei Dong; he had no interest in drawing unwanted attention, or saying the wrong thing about the grandson of one of the sect's most powerful men. Still, compared to the other two, Lei Dong's battle looked almost normal. Which was to say, compared to the other two, he was getting thoroughly clobbered.

He Shou looked over, then back at the mirror.

"Strange," he muttered.

"The normal one turns out to be the grandson of the Purple Mansion Grand Elder." Lou Ren's fan drifted up to cover his mouth.

"Life is full of contradictions."

"That was within my expectations. In fact, the higher your cultivation and the older you are, the more you'll struggle in this test. Young disciples, Ning aside, rarely possess as many techniques as the older ones, so the puppet they face is naturally much weaker. As for the older cultivators with far more experience, the sheer number and strength of the techniques the puppet can access make the trial significantly more difficult," Hong Zeiling said. He Shou's gaze slid toward Zhou Chen.

The elder from Lei Dong's faction had gone unusually quiet. By all rights, Zhou Chen should have been furious, anxious, defensive at the very least. His favored junior was on the verge of defeat, outshone by Ji Ning, surpassed by Xiao Fan's mid-battle epiphany, and now getting beaten bloody by his own damn reflection. He Shou smiled, smug.

"Elder Zhou, why so quiet? You had plenty of opinions about Xiao Fan's talent earlier. Your Lei Dong seems to be having quite the educational experience right now." Zhou Chen didn't explode. Even young Elder Chen found that surprising. This was supposedly the same man who'd once been dead set on wiping out an entire population of black boars because they'd startled him in his younger years, and yet here he sat, entirely unbothered. Then it happened.

Even eyes honed by decades of qi cultivation and training struggled to fully parse it. For one moment, Lei Dong's entire demeanor shifted, and then, without any fanfare at all, he simply struck the puppet down, despite qi that should have been running on fumes, despite injuries that should have put him flat on his back, despite unleashing an attack that frankly had no business coming from a seventh-stage Qi Condensation cultivator. Speechlessness...

"How?" Lou Ren couldn't help but say.

"There was no warning, and the tower forbids external objects like talismans in this trial."

"A hidden trump card?" Elder Chen asked aloud. Personally, he did not care about it that much, but he had to play his part well.

"A trump card still needs a source," Hong Zeiling said, his eyes gone cold.

"A source of energy, or even why, for a split second, Lei Dong's entire demeanor changed." He Shou's gaze cut back to Zhou Chen. Zhou Chen still sat there, calm as ever. And that calmness seemed to be the precursor for something. Suddenly, the jade floor trembled, and tea sloshed out of cups. The formation lights embedded in the walls stuttered in rapid, uneven bursts. From deep below the sect, a terrible rumble rose, like an earth dragon turning over in its sleep.

Then the rumble became a roar as the observation hall rocked as if struck by a giant hand. Elder Chen stumbled.

"An earthquake?" Hong Zeiling pressed one hand flat against the table, his expression shifting fast.

"No. Something's wrong with the Heavenly Origin Tower. The quake is originating from there." The hall went cold in an instant. The Heavenly Origin Tower was the sect's protective treasure. A Nascent Soul artifact. The focal point of countless protective formations threaded through the entire inner sect. If it was shaking, that meant the very foundation of the sect's defenses was being torn at. Ling Xin rose.

"We need to go." He Shou's expression lost every trace of humor.

"Now." Several elders moved at once. Before they could reach the doors, two figures acted first. Zhou Chen. And Elder Mo. Elder Mo, who'd stood near the side of the hall almost unnoticed the entire time, pressed his palm flat against one of the carved pillars. Zhou Chen crushed a jade token in his fist. The formation lines across the observation hall flared, not with a golden, protective glow they were familiar with but blood-red.

Chains of light erupted from the floor, the walls, the ceiling, crossing every exit in an instant. A heavy sealing pressure dropped over the hall like an iron cage snapping shut.

"What are you doing, Zhou Chen?!" He Shou shouted. He struck out with one palm. The blow slammed into the blood-red barrier hard enough to shake the whole hall. But the barrier didn't break.

"Hahahaha! Your pitiful strength can't break this formation." Zhou Chen laughed, half-manic.

"Who's trapped now, hm? I was getting real frustrated listening to your blabbering."

"Zhou Chen, if this is some kind of joke, I might've found it funny," Hong Zeiling said, raising a token of his own.

"But if this is real, you will pay for what you've done later."

"Always so serious. Can't you see what's happening right now?" Zhou Chen only laughed harder. Hong Zeiling narrowed his eyes and crushed his token. The token was a token of authority to manage and control the formations within the sect. Nothing happened.

"Trying to reassert control? Sorry, that's not on the table anymore," Zhou Chen said. The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation. For a moment, the hall fell into tense silence. Everyone understood that Zhou Chen was no longer joking. This had gone far beyond a simple jest. After all, if someone had helped tamper with the sect's greatest treasure and deliberately trapped the elders so they couldn't intervene, there was only one possible conclusion.

He Shou stared at the two of them, disbelief hardening into fury.

"You betrayed the sect." Zhou Chen laughed.

"Betrayed? Such an ugly word. I merely chose the side that will still exist after today." Elder Mo glanced toward the shaking walls.

"We should move." Zhou Chen nodded, then looked back at the trapped elders, his gaze lingering especially on He Shou, who was still pounding harder against the formation.

"Save your strength. This formation was built specifically for this hall. It won't hold you forever. It doesn't need to, but you will not be able to escape until it's all over." Hong Zeiling's hands blurred through seal after seal, his eyes scanning the formation lines, his expression growing uglier with every breath.

"It's linked to the Heavenly Origin Tower's outer array." Lou Ren's fan had vanished entirely, his fingers tracing formation paths through the air.

"The observation hall's restrictions have been reversed. The exits are sealed from the inside." Elder Chen's face went white.

"Can we break it?" He'd realized, somewhere in the last minute, that the situation had gone from normal to shit your pants with alarming speed. He'd always known Elder Zhou had a petty streak, but this was several leagues past petty.

"Yes." Hong Zeiling didn't look up.

"But not quickly." Zhou Chen laughed again.

"Ah, that reminds me." He glanced at He Shou, then Ling Xin, then Hong Zeiling.

"It's a pity about your chosen disciples." The hall went silent. Zhou Chen's smile turned cruel.

"By this point, they're probably de-" In an instant, Ling Xin appeared directly in front of the formation, hair blood-red, her entire aura ablaze, and slammed her fist into the barrier. Fire roared against the barrier. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. Die. The sheer killing intent in that single blow sent Zhou Chen stumbling back a full step.

"I will kill you," Ling Xin said, "if a single hair on my disciple's head is harmed." She poured even more flame into the strike, heat rolling off her fist strong enough to warp the nearby furniture. Elder Mo spoke quickly.

"Ling Xin, I'd strongly advise against reckless action. Force the formation too hard, and the backlash may only grow stronger. At that point, you'll only trap yourself more thoroughly, and be even less able to help your disciple." The fire in Ling Xin's palm went still for a moment. Zhou Chen's expression twitched, just for half a breath, before curling into a sneer.

"Do you really think that threat scares me?" Elder Mo set a hand on his shoulder.

"Enough, Zhou Chen. We must move." Zhou Chen turned toward the exit. Before stepping through the blood-red barrier, he looked back one final time.

"When you finally get out of here, the Pure Qi Sect will no longer be the Pure Qi Sect you remember." His eyes glittered with satisfaction.

"And neither will the Heavenly Origin Tower." Then he and Elder Mo vanished beyond the barrier. The doors sealed shut behind them. For several breaths, the trapped elders stood frozen. Hong Zeiling's expression had gone colder than anyone in the hall had ever seen it.

"All inner sect protective formations use the Heavenly Origin Tower as their focal point," he said.

"If Zhou Chen could reverse the observation hall's formation and trigger an earthquake through the tower itself, then something inside it has been tampered with." Lou Ren's face was grave.

"Zhou Chen alone couldn't have done this."

"No," Hong Zeiling agreed. The others understood at once. Zhou Chen was an elder. Elder Mo was capable. But neither of them had the authority, the resources, or the cultivation foundation needed to move the sect's entire protective structure around the Heavenly Origin Tower. He Shou's fists clenched.

"There's only one person behind all this." Ling Xin's red hair burned like open flame. The answer had already surfaced in every mind in the room: Lei Dong's sudden, unnatural burst of power, the suddenness of Zhou Chen's betrayal, the timing of it all, and the one Purple Mansion Grand Elder tied to both of them, with more than enough power to pull off something like this. He Shou spat the name out. His face was still red from pure anger.

"Grand Elder Lei Fu." The observation hall trembled again. This time, cracks spread across one corner of the jade floor. Ling Xin raised her hand. The white-red flame in her palm burned hotter.

"Break the formation." No one argued. Hong Zeiling's hands blurred through seal after seal. Lou Ren traced the formation lines. He Shou gathered force into both palms. Maybe, Elder Chen thought, throwing his own far more modest methods into the effort, I really shouldn't have taken this job.... Cold dampness pressed against Ning's skin. For a moment, he heard nothing but the slow drip of water from somewhere above. Then his vision cleared, slowly but surely.

He'd gotten a migraine every single time he'd been teleported so far, but credit where it was due, he was clearly getting used to it, because this one barely registered.

"W-where the hell am I?" Ning turned his head, taking in his surroundings. He stood inside a dark stone corridor. The walls were built from black rock, each block etched with old talisman marks and half-faded sealing scripts. Rusted iron bars lined both sides of the passage. Broken chains hung from the ceiling, swaying faintly though there was no wind to move them. The air quality matched the scenery, exactly as bad as one would expect from what was very clearly a dungeon.

Cautiously, Ning reached for his storage bag.

"Not restricted. One point in favor of 'no longer in the tower,' then." He immediately activated Turtle Breathing and drew his spear, ready to stab the first thing that so much as twitched. He was not about to get jumpscared today. Absolutely not. A groan sounded nearby. Ning tracked it instantly, still circulating Cold River Spear Art beneath a carefully subdued exterior. He turned toward the corridor and spotted the source. Xiao Fan sat against the wall, one hand pressed to his forehead.

His robes were torn, his body healed from the last trial, and a bright circular seal glowed faintly on his palm, thin blood-gold lines forming a ring, tiny chain-like patterns spreading out from the center and sinking beneath his skin toward his wrist. Even without qi moving through it, the mark gave off a faint pressure, as though something ancient had quietly taken root inside him. Ning stared at it. Xiao Fan stared back. Ning pointed.

"So. Should I ask what that is?" Xiao Fan glanced at his own palm and grimaced.

"Probably not right now."

"Fair enough." Ning looked around the corridor again.

"Then I'll ask something easier. What just happened?" Xiao Fan pushed himself upright, wincing as his ribs protested.

"Honestly? No clue."

"That answer was less comforting than I'd hoped." Ning could already feel himself getting roped into something ridiculous.

"Probably something Lei Dong did. I remember him throwing a talisman right before everything went sideways." Ning closed his eyes for a moment. Of course it was Lei Dong. A young master who had no business showing up appeared in the final inheritance chamber, chucked a suspicious talisman at the tower spirit, and now the two of them were standing in what looked suspiciously like a dark underground prison. If that wasn't a plot development, Ning genuinely had no idea what qualified anymore.

Xiao Fan looked down the corridor. His expression shifted.

"Wait a second."

"You recognize this place?" Ning asked quickly, reading the knowing look appearing on the protagonist's face. Xiao Fan frowned, then nodded slowly.

"I think so. This should be the sect prison."

"Sorry, I must have misheard that." Ning blinked. He must have gotten disoriented harder than he realized.

"This is the sect prison. You know, the place where the sect keeps its criminals." Xiao Fan repeated it slowly, as though Ning were hard of hearing.

"Don't sass me right now." Ning shot the protagonist a flat look. This was, without question, one hundred percent this man's fault. Stupid protagonists and their stupid gravitational pull toward disaster.

"I feel like you're cursing me in your head." Xiao Fan narrowed his eyes. He had a sense for such things, purely from the sheer amount of time he'd been subjected to it.

"Just your imagination at play." Blame wasn't going to get them out of here any faster, Ning reasoned.

"Anyway, how did you clock this place so fast?" He was a little surprised, honestly, that Xiao Fan of all people had recognized something without needing three paragraphs of exposition first. Xiao Fan coughed.

"Let's just say I came here once, for a mission. Guard duty. Outer disciples weren't allowed past the upper paths, but I remember the layout." Ning suspected there was a deeper story buried somewhere in that sentence, but then again, every single arc involving this man seemed to have deeper layers hiding underneath it, so that wasn't exactly telling him much. Ning studied the cracked talismans on the walls, the broken chains, the open cell doors, the unsettling dark stretching ahead.

"So, given the open doors and the general state of the place, shouldn't there be a lot more prisoners around?"

"There should be," Xiao Fan said.

"Last time I was here, there were quite a few." A tiny golden flicker interrupted them. The tower spirit. Or something that used to be him, after being thoroughly beaten, shrunk, and wrung out like a wet rag. The old man's once-dignified white robes had gone translucent. His body, now barely palm-sized, floated weakly above the stone floor. His beard looked dimmer, his outline kept flickering, and the ancient pressure that had filled the golden chamber earlier was almost entirely gone.

Ning and Xiao Fan both rushed forward.

"Senior Tower Spirit!" Xiao Fan blinked, then realized the tower spirit was now just palm-sized.

"... Is it actually him? He looks a lot less dramatic than before."

"Are you okay?" Ning asked quickly. The tower spirit was their only hope of getting the information they needed. The tower spirit shot Xiao Fan a glare but didn't dignify the comment with a response. He coughed instead, his figure flickering again before stabilizing.

"I am a small fragment separated from the main body, sent to look after you. My main body is busy dealing with this sudden situation." Ning's expression turned serious.

"Was it Lei Dong?"

"Yes," the tower spirit said, voice weak but still sharp.

"Or rather, the talisman he used. Its rank was extremely high. First, you need to understand that the Heavenly Origin Tower is the central anchor for every formation in the entire inner sect. That talisman struck exactly that point. It didn't just disrupt the tower's own formations; it rippled outward through the whole sect."

"A talisman that could do all that has to be at least Nascent Soul-grade, right?" Ning asked slowly.

"Normally, yes. But the tower is not currently operating at the original strength of the true Heavenly Origin Tower. At its peak, nourished directly by the founder, the tower wouldn't have so much as blinked at a talisman like that. But the current version of the tower has been reshaped, from a defensive and offensive artifact into something built purely to cultivate disciples. So even a mere pseudo-Nascent Soul talisman was able to affect it." The tower spirit huffed, deeply put out.

"Otherwise, someone as magnificent as I would never be troubled by such a trinket." Ning and Xiao Fan both rolled their eyes at the boasting, though privately, neither of them argued the point.

"Worse," the tower spirit continued, "the talisman appears to have linked the formations to something else entirely. That's the real problem. Until that connection is severed, I can't restore anything to its original state. And I sensed a trace of demonic intent woven into it." His tiny fist clenched.

"Where-" Ning cut Xiao Fan off.

"That connection you felt, it's somewhere in the sect prison. Here. Isn't it?" The tower spirit blinked, visibly caught off guard.

"... Yes. Good instincts."

"Are you the one who sent us here?" Ning asked point-blank.

"What are you even saying, Ning? Of course the tower spirit wouldn't, " Xiao Fan started, looking genuinely surprised.

"Yup," the tower spirit admitted, blinking too, right past both Xiao Fan's shock and Ning's I-knew-it expression.

"The instant I noticed what that talisman was doing, I traced the connection. They clearly underestimated how magnificent I am, thinking their shoddy little covering array would slip past my detection. I traced it straight to the deepest level of this prison." Ning looked down at the stone beneath his feet.

"So you sent us here. To where the sect keeps its most dangerous prisoners."

"When you phrase it that way, it sounds like I did something monumentally stupid." The tower spirit's tiny face twitched.

"I reasoned that if I hadn't acted in that split second, both of you would've been pulled somewhere far worse, or sealed inside the collapsing inheritance chamber outright. I used what remained of my authority to redirect the teleportation and drop you at the closest stable point tied to the source of the disruption." Ning absorbed this.

"And that was the safe option?" The tower spirit looked away.

"It was the less immediately fatal option as far as I was concerned." Xiao Fan's expression stiffened.

"Wait. If this is the sect prison, won't there be inmates here stronger than us?" He was finally getting why Ning was being so deadpan to the mini Tower Spirit.

"That was going to be my next question," Ning said.

"Two Qi Condensation disciples getting dropped into a prison full of criminals sounds like a very fast way to discover exactly how outmatched you are, followed immediately by death." The tower spirit shook his head.

"Under normal circumstances, yes. Right now, though, most of the prisoners should already have fled." It was quite evident by the open cell doors and how empty this place looked. Ning blinked.

"Ah. That explains it. No wonder nobody's shown up, even though we haven't exactly been quiet." The old man waved one translucent sleeve.

"Listen. The Heavenly Origin Tower wasn't built here by coincidence. It stands directly above the sect prison. Its Nascent Soul-level pressure suppresses the deepest prisoners, while the prison's arrays draw off whatever spiritual energy leaks from them and feed that stolen power right back into the suppression." Xiao Fan's eyes widened.

"So the prison uses the prisoners' own qi to keep them locked down?"

"Correct. Every breath they take, every strand of qi they manage to gather, every attempt at recovery, all of it gets siphoned away by the arrays. The tower is the anchor holding the whole system together." Ning glanced at the broken talismans lining the walls.

"And now the anchor's been disturbed."

"Yes," the tower spirit said grimly.

"The protective arrays across several prison layers have failed. Once the suppression loosened even slightly, most of the upper- and middle-tier prisoners would've fled the instant they felt the opening." Xiao Fan looked slowly down the empty corridor.

"So the empty cells..."

"Aren't good news," Ning finished. This meant that currently outside was also in chaos. Could this day get any worse? Ning turned back to the spirit.

"You mentioned, months ago, that you'd sensed someone tampering with the tower's outer arrays. Did you ever find anything?" Ning still remembered this, partly because Ling Yinran had made it somewhat memorable, though he'd gradually lost interest when it went nowhere. Now, it was clear that this was the foreshadowing for this thing. The tower spirit's expression turned heavy.

"I found nothing. That was the problem. I felt a disturbance in the peripheral nodes connected to the tower, but when I inspected them, nothing looked different. There were no broken lines, no foreign qi, not even altered formations. I assumed it was a false alarm, or some minor fluctuation due to their age." His tiny face darkened further.

"I couldn't understand why anyone would bother touching those nodes and changing absolutely nothing." Ning's gaze sharpened.

"Unless they weren't trying to change anything yet." Xiao Fan's eyes lit with sudden understanding.

"They were setting something up. For later." For a moment, the trio was silent as they processed this. The corridor felt colder somehow.

"Heavens, why is this happening to me specifically?" Ning muttered to no one in particular, setting aside, of course, the fact that this was obviously some plot arc built entirely around the protagonist.

"I'm also confused, for the record," Xiao Fan offered, unhelpfully. Then he went very still, his expression shifting.

"... Wait. I think I understand what's happening."

"You do?" Xiao Fan nodded slowly.

"When I was here on that guard mission, I overheard some things." Ning stared at him blankly. Xiao Fan scratched his cheek.

"It wasn't exactly intentional. It just happened, without my realizing it."

"It never is, with you." Xiao Fan chose not to hear that.

"The outer disciples only guarded the upper paths; we weren't allowed any deeper. But some of the senior disciples were talking, and they mentioned someone important sealed away in the innermost part of the prison." The tower spirit's eyes narrowed.

"A peak Purple Mansion cultivator," Xiao Fan finished. Ning's expression sobered instantly. A peak Purple Mansion cultivator. For Qi Condensation disciples like the two of them, that wasn't merely "strong." It was an entirely different category of existence. Even weakened, half-dead, and sealed, a cultivator at that level could probably kill them both with a stray breath if the restraints ever slipped. Xiao Fan's voice dropped low.

"His name is Lei Shen." The tower spirit's tiny form flickered. Ning caught it instantly.

"So you know him." The tower spirit didn't deny it. Xiao Fan continued.

"Lei Shen was once one of the top candidates for sect leader. He was supposed to compete for the Core Formation opportunity, but Sect Master Ge Xuan got chosen instead."

"And he didn't take that well," Ning guessed. This was a classic enough situation.

"No. He tried to stage a coup." The dungeon somehow felt even quieter. Xiao Fan stared deeper into the dark.

"It failed, of course. So, he was captured for this crime. By all rights, he should've been executed, but his younger brother pleaded for his life. Because of that brother's standing and contributions to the sect, Lei Shen was spared and sealed in the deepest layer of the prison instead." Ning exhaled slowly. Lei Fu. Purple Mansion Grand Elder. Lei Dong's grandfather. Lei Shen's brother. The line connected itself far too cleanly for comfort.

"So," Ning said, "Grand Elder Lei Fu might be trying to break his brother out."

"That's exactly what I'm thinking." The tower spirit's expression turned grimmer still.

"If Lei Shen is still alive, and the deepest suppression array has weakened, " He didn't need to finish. Both of them understood the gravity of the situation.

"How," Ning cut in, turning to Xiao Fan, "do you know this much off of one guard shift?" Xiao Fan hesitated. Ning's eyes narrowed further. Xiao Fan looked away.

"... There was also a girl." Ning just stared at him, unsurprised. Xiao Fan coughed.

"When I was stationed here, I ran into a strange girl near one of the side corridors. She seemed to know a lot about the prison. She mentioned Lei Fu, Lei Shen, and said something cryptic about chains loosening when thunder returns to the root." Ning's expression flattened.

"Of course there was."

"What?"

"Nothing. Keep going. Was she pretty?" Xiao Fan paused and was unsure whether he should nod at this question. Ning sighed.

"Of course she was." Xianxia 101. Jade Beauties were never simple characters.

"She vanished before I could even get her name."

"Of course she did."

"She also said something big was about to happen, but I didn't really understand what she meant at the time."

"Of course you didn't." Xiao Fan frowned.

"Why do you keep saying that?"

"Nothing. I'm just frustrated." Ning blew a strand of hair out of his face. He finally, genuinely understood how every background NPC in every fantasy or xianxia story felt when things just started happening. The main character always got the cryptic hints, the mysterious girl, the foreshadowing dumped conveniently in his lap. Mobs like them knew absolutely nothing and just had to roll with whatever catastrophe arrived next, without a squeak of cause and effect.

The tower spirit ignored their bickering entirely, his eyes gone sharp.

"A nameless girl in the prison who already knew about Lei Shen..." His voice trailed off.

"Do you know who she is?" Ning asked. The tower spirit didn't answer right away.

"That's not important right now." Ning had a special, long-standing hatred for people who dropped half an answer and ignored the rest. It was clearly something important.

"I can sense the escaped prisoners already causing chaos around the sect," the tower spirit went on.

"If this isn't stopped soon, before the sect's formations are disabled entirely, the consequences will be severe: the sect left unprotected, and worse, an easy escape route for anyone still down here."

"So we just need to beat this Lei Shen guy's ass, and that solves everything?" Xiao Fan summarized, entirely too casually.

"That sounds simple in theory," Ning said, "but shouldn't fighting a Purple Mansion cultivator be fundamentally pointless for us? Maybe we should wait for reinforcements." He never understood why protagonists in these stories insisted on charging headfirst into fights leagues above their own level instead of just... waiting five minutes for someone stronger to show up.

"I would very much prefer that as well," the tower spirit said.

"But from what I can tell, most of the prisoners have already escaped, and the formation has sealed the entrance to this prison shut. Right now, the two of you are the only ones capable of stopping this before it gets worse." Well, this was not beyond his expectations. Ning sighed. Seeing that particular flavor of blank, scary expression on Ning's face, the tower spirit tried to sound reassuring.

"At least there aren't many prisoners left to worry about, so you should be able to reach the deepest level safely. And Lei Shen himself is crippled; the tower's already drained most of his qi. If whatever he's attempting actually succeeds, it'll be trouble for you regardless, since you'd already be trapped down here with him. But as things stand right now, he likely can't exert much strength at all. The two of you should be able to handle him."

"Well, that's good news." Xiao Fan brightened.

"If he's really that weak, this shouldn't be impossible. Right, Ning?" Ning wanted to nod along, but he knew better than to assume it would be that easy.

"Tell me what happened to Lei Dong."

"Lei Dong? No idea," the tower spirit grumbled.

"He vanished right after launching that talisman. Otherwise I would have shown him some proper pain, especially after he cheated his way through the fifth trial."

"Hm." Ning's eyes narrowed. The full picture was starting to come together. He'd always found it strange, honestly, that Lei Dong went out of his way to antagonize so many people with such transparently shady tactics. Sure, the man had strong backing, but plenty of people did. As a young master, maybe getting under Xiao Fan's protagonist-shaped skin was somewhat understandable. But antagonizing people he should've been trying to win over, even his own subordinates, that was just poor strategy, backing or not.

And now it made sense. Lei Dong had never intended to play nice in the first place. His goal was to finish the fifth trial by any means necessary. He even knew why, from what the tower spirit had said; the spirit was usually dormant, never appearing outside the tower except in special cases, and only in this way could Lei Dong have contacted this elusive spirit at all. It all made sense. Especially given Lei Dong's actual stats, it was a small miracle he'd passed the fifth trial at all.

Add a seemingly demonic talisman to the mix, and it wasn't hard to guess there was an outside factor at play here, something beyond just Lei Fu pulling strings. And what were demonic cultivators best known for, in every story Ning had ever read? Devouring people. Growing stronger off what they consumed.

If he pushed that theory one step further, accounting for Lei Dong's increasingly erratic behavior the longer the trial went on, and his sudden vanishing act, Ning would bet money that this entire arc was quietly building toward a confrontation between Xiao Fan and Lei Dong specifically. There may also be a plot about Lei Dong getting taken over by his uncle or puppeted by him to evenly match with the protagonist. Ning kept that theory to himself. Partly because it was still just a theory.

Partly because saying it out loud now might make things worse later. With Xiao Fan's protagonist luck in play, the villain would probably want to monologue eventually, and if Ning's meta-commentary cut that monologue short, they might lose information they'd actually need, or even the valuable recuperating time they'd get while it played out. He may also just be getting paranoid. Either way, he wasn't taking the risk.

"So, you two are the only ones who could solve this mess. The sect's survival is, unfortunately, in your hands now. The longer you take, the longer the criminals will be free to wreak havoc, and the sect will be without any protection from the formations. Not to mention, without the formations, and with Lei Fu being one of only two Purple Mansion cultivators currently in the sect, this could get real ugly."

"What about you, then?" Ning asked.

"Look at my form, do you think I can fight? I am just a mere fragment, so the two of you have to do the heavy lifting. My original body needs to focus on reclaiming as much control over the formations as possible, and on handling whatever other disturbances crop up."

"Yeah, you're just a mini tower spirit now." Xiao Fan poked the tower spirit's cheek.

"Hey, don't do that. I may be small now, but you should know my true form is still out there."

"Well. Guess we're really doing this, huh." Xiao Fan looked entirely too pumped for the occasion.

"Wonder what it's like, fighting a weakened Purple Mansion cultivator." Ning didn't answer. He just sighed. He had been doing that a lot. He finally understood, with painful clarity, exactly why the entire tower trial had felt like one long, exhausting training arc. It had all been building to this.... Thanks for reading~ A/N: You guys theorized a lot. I did sprinkle some of the hints in the background pov of the elders, but it seemed to have gone pretty under the radar.