In the cold northern wind, three men bent and bowed in a frantic rhythm, heads dipping so hard their breath puffed white against their chests.

Their robes snapped and tugged at them, but none dared straighten.

Radeon, currently a branch, puppeteered Fay's body and did not bother to look impressed.

Fay's hand lifted with a lazy flick of the wrist, a queen dismissing flies.

"Enough talk. The first work is waiting by the river. Take it up and haul it back." Fay pointed.

The three men stared at Fay as if she had grown fangs. She stepped to the riverbank and did what no sane cultivator would.

She reached down and touched the water with bare fingers. No protective talisman. No gauze. No hesitation.

Their faces went slack with horror. They had heard the stories. This river did not poison the body first.

It went for the mind. If she could handle it, then she was not some gilded core they could measure.

That was a realm spoken in whispers, Nascent Embryo, maybe higher. Spirit Transfiguration, if the old tales were not just drunken boasting.

The three exchanged a quick look. They began to imagine this master had taken pity on their plight.

In their whole lives, they would not get a second chance like this. They moved at once.

Radeon, worn tight on Fay's wrist, let his branch body uncoil from her sleeve.

He twisted as joints tightened and grain shifted, until a plain goblet of wood sat in his palm.

With a casual scoop, she let the river water flow through it.

He lifted the goblet to her lips. Her throat moved once. The surface inside the cup sank as if swallowed.

Not a drop touched her mouth, not really. The wood soaked it up, greedy and silent.

Then Fay turned and tipped the cup toward the three men, an easy offer, almost polite.

They shook their heads fast. They forced thin smiles that did not reach their eyes.

None of them wanted to be the fool who drank a river that peeled thoughts from the skull.

They waded no further than their boots allowed and fished a dark cloak from the shallows with hooked sticks.

It had been left in the river nearly a week. Slick moss clung to it in sheets.

The men handled it like a dead animal, careful not to let the wet fabric touch skin.

Radeon took it. The branch reshaped again, flattening into a fan.

He fanned the cloak with steady strokes until the wet sheen dulled.

Then, with a casual swipe of Fay's hand, the moss that had clung so stubbornly came away clean, as if it had never been there.

The three men watched without blinking. Fay pointed at the ration bags slung over her shoulder.

When she spoke, it was Fay's voice, calm and flat.

"Carry them too," she commanded.

They hurried to obey, taking the weight like it was an honor. One of them, brave enough to ask, kept his head bowed.

"Where are we going, Senior?"

Fay lifted her hand and pointed at the river itself.

"We do not drift. We move as the river moves. By will, not whim."

They looked at the black water, then at her, then down at their own boots.

Skepticism flickered, then died. Masters did things their minds could not hold.

A small pouch came out of Fay's cloak and flew into the nearest man's hands.

"An advance, now. The rest when the work is finished."

The clink told them what it was before he dared look. A hundred spirit stones.

The three men kept glancing at the stones as they split them, fingers quick, voices low.

They walked until dusk, but not in one steady march. Every so often Fay lifted a hand and the line halted at once.

No argument. No sigh. The three men froze where they stood while Radeon, in stick form, was poked into the ground.

He kept Fay still while he read the faint tremors moving through stone and root and packed dirt.

Footsteps far off. Water working under the soil. The weight of living things moving where sight could not reach.

Each pause lasted only a few breaths, but the habit never changed. Stop. Feel. Go.

It was not caution alone. It was a mission. Radeon had carried an image of his own future body like a blade kept hidden under the tongue.

A physique shaped to his will. Vision that did not fail him when the world turned strange.

Before, he had chased devour and the laws of energy, letting everything else lag behind because consumption promised speed.

Now he had time. Now he had a body to borrow, a river that broke minds, and a wilderness full of threats that would punish any blind spot.

Given this chance, he would not settle for being merely sharp. He meant to become impossible.

To build a foundation no one had dared test, not because it was proven false, but because the theory alone frightened them.

"Hold. We wait here." Fay's gaze swept over the three. "One of you will scout ahead at Broken Peak. Bring me a true report, and you'll have one hundred spirit stones. Lie to me..." Her voice went cold. "You already know the price." Fay said.

The lean man stepped forward, he took his bow and left.

The two men with Fay took a break, then not before long. The man panted, clearly had something to say.

"There seemed to be a skirmish up ahead. My eyes spotted three teams but I reckon there are more."

Fay took another hundred stone through her cloak as promised, then they started to inch towards the battle.

Radeon had not chosen this stretch of north road by chance. He wanted that heaviness. He wanted what gathered when people died wrong.

Before Radeon slipped away from the siege, he watched the faces on both sides.

Cultists with blood on their sleeves. Righteous cultivators with clean talismans and hard eyes.

Different banners, same expression. Fury carved deep enough to last a lifetime.

No one who cultivated for a hundred years stayed naive. They all knew. This was not a clash that happened by accident.

It was a design laid from above.

The sect they had fed with their youth. The elders they had knelt for. The doctrine they had swallowed until it became bone.

Now that same sect turned their lives into a vile joke, spent like coopers to buy someone else a seat higher up the mountain.

Radeon watched resentment rise in them like heat off scorched ground.

Misfortune piling on misfortune until it became something you could almost touch.

That was what he wanted. Their bitterness. Their hunger to blame.

The kind of anger that made men easy to steer, and even easier to harvest.

If you find any errors ( broken links, non-standard content, etc.. ), Please let us know < report chapter > so we can fix it as soon as possible.