en understood the look the fat cultivator gave him—disdain wrapped in calculation, the quiet verdict etched behind the eyes: This one's a joke.
So he leaned into it. Played the fool. Let them laugh at his stupidity, his lack of talent. When asked to press his hand to the talent stone, he did so with theatrical solemnity. The reading was the lowest recorded that season. He made it that way.
At the Glass Lotus Sect:
Ren entered without lineage, without talent, without Qi compatibility. The registration crystal twitched once—barely—and the gatekeeper, too confused to reject him, waved him through.
He meditated daily beneath the Windless Pine, a squirrel perched on his shoulder. He called it his spirit beast. It slept through most of his cultivation.
Then came the anomaly.
Fairy Jin—a cultivator of quiet authority, whose voice was rare and deliberate—found him beneath the Windless Pine. She glanced at the squirrel. Then at Ren. And without explanation, claimed him as her first disciple.
The squirrel blinked.
Ren bowed.
Fairy Jin departed.
No ceremony. No justification. Just a shift in the sect's axis.
Beneath the whispering pines of the outer courtyard, Ren's Qi surged with quiet violence, cresting into Peak Step Four. For most disciples, such a feat was rare. For Ren, it was inevitable.
Fairy Jin watched from across the courtyard, arms folded within robes that drank the dusk. Her nod held no flourish. Only recognition.
Then came frost.
Lady Yueh, Sect Leader of the Glass Lotus, stepped into the courtyard like falling snow—elegant, silent, lethal. Her presence carved serenity into the flagstones. Two disciples trailed behind her, beautiful as painted ghosts, their steps gentle, their hunger loud.
They stared at Fairy Jin the way mortals beg deities for warmth. Their desire clung to them like vulgar calligraphy scrawled across sacred parchment.
Ren saw it—the fire behind their eyes. Fierce. Foolish. Unworthy.
He could not say whether the others failed to notice or found comfort in pretending not to. But he knew. He suspected Lady Yueh did too.
Yet she remained silent. Her discipline was glacial—not from lack of judgment, but because her verdict had long since solidified. Those two could stare, fantasise, even weep. They would never taste what lay beyond the veil.
Fairy Jin stood untouched. Not adored—untouchable. She was not a reward for greatness. She was greatness. A trial forged by the Dao to temper mortal longing.
And the two disciples? They had already failed.
Ren understood what they did not.
Lady Yueh did not bother with love. Her cultivation was pure Dao—clarity without indulgence.
Fairy Jin's loyalty was singular. She did not entertain affection, rivalry, or drama. Her every breath orbited Ren—the disciple she had chosen as the vessel of her legacy.
There was no room in their world for romance. Only devotion. Discipline. The sacred geometry of purpose.
The disciples' glares narrowed into blades—eyes full of hatred, jealousy, desperation. Their beauty had bent rooms, drawn praise, earned deference. But none of that pierced the myth encircling Ren.
Fairy Jin had looked at him. Once. And in doing so, rewrote the rules of their sect.
Ren was plain. Forgettable. The kind of man who slipped between courtyard rituals like mist. He never courted attention. Never invited admiration.
But when Fairy Jin paused—just a beat longer than decorum allowed—Lady Yueh's gaze followed.
Not with warmth. With calculation.
As if Jin's interest had pulled something into alignment—a puzzle hidden beneath Ren's quietude.
To those two disciples, it was intolerable. Their beauty, once considered inevitable, now felt ornamental. Useless in the face of something stranger, deeper.
Ren didn't react. Didn't bask. Didn't explain. He remained as he always was—centred, silent, mythically opaque as the storm that once scented his skin.
And if it wasn't enough that he had stolen their place, he had now eclipsed them in cultivation.
Peak Step Three. Combined.
Early Step Five. Approaching. Alone.
There had been a time when those two were the sect's stars. Now they were dust orbiting a new sun.
Their killing intent flared—emotional, juvenile.
But before it could crystallise, it shattered.
Fairy Jin didn't speak. Her glance was enough. A barrier born not of Qi, but narrative: Ren was hers.
Lady Yueh turned, contempt etched like frost across her eyes.
"Cultivators act with clarity. Not like jealous children mourning shattered illusions."
Fairy Jin followed, voice cold, quiet, final:
"If your pride is so fragile, it deserves to break."
The disciples bowed. Not from understanding. From fear.
Ren remained—untouched, unreadable, inevitable.
And just like that, he stepped into Early Step Five.
No grand announcement. No thunderclap. But the ripple through the sect was undeniable.
Few called Shen Wuyin a genius. Most barely acknowledged his existence. But those few who truly saw him saw what he was becoming.
Yet he moved like a fool. Slow. Absent-minded. He forgot formations mid-step. Mispronounced incantations that should have been second nature.
Fairy Jin saw through it the moment she met him.
He wasn't slow. He was hiding.
But she didn't care. Not in the way others might.
She watched, curious to see what a man like Shen Wuyin might become when the mask finally cracked and the truth stepped forward.
Lady Yueh hadn't noticed him at all—not until Fairy Jin did.
It was only through Jin's unspoken recognition that Yueh's attention shifted. Subtly. Imperceptibly. A glance. A pause. The quiet recalibration of someone reevaluating a variable she hadn't realised was in play.
Shen Wuyin had existed all along. The sect simply hadn't been paying attention.
The two disciples kept their expressions neutral, restrained. But their calm was cosmetic—painted serenity over a heart gripped by fear. Not fear of Ren. Fear of the two women who now stood untouchable before them: Fairy Jin and Lady Yueh.
They dared not act. Not here. Not now.
But they could not extinguish the craving. Lust writhed behind their eyes—undisciplined, toxic.
Other women in the sect came easily: through flirtation, through marriage, through what mortals called conquest. The usual path—dominance disguised as romance, cloaked in rituals both sacred and sordid. They knew that route. Too well.
But this was different.
Fairy Jin and Lady Yueh were not objects to pursue. They were forces—refined, unreachable, terrifying.
And yet, the two disciples still wanted.
Not to court. Not to cherish.
To taste. To take.
That was their failing, laid bare beneath the moonlight.
What they mistook for temptation was doctrine.
What they chased was the illusion of possession.
And what they desired most… had already passed judgment.
—
Liáng Xu and Fei Yan.
The most beautiful men in the Glass Lotus Sect. Revered by juniors. Admired by elders. Envied by anyone with a functioning sense of aesthetics. Their elegance was effortless—moonlight on still water. Their smiles rewrote conversations. Their voices tilted even the sturdiest hearts off balance.
But beneath the surface, they were poison spun into silk.
Over the years, they dismantled lives with whispers.
Friendships frayed. Relationships unraveled. Marriages sabotaged.
All without raising a hand.
They never commanded. They suggested.
They lingered in moments that didn't belong to them.
And people followed.
It wasn't just charm.
It was calculated.
Where the sect saw brilliance, Ren saw rot—
Hairline fractures traced across the foundation, strategically placed.
Liáng Xu and Fei Yan weren't cultivating enlightenment.
They were cultivating dependence.
Prodigies to some.
Parasites to those who looked closer.
To Ren, they weren't paragons.
They were the glossy decay of Mìngjié Xianlù.
Gilded shadows dressed like stars.
But now, with Shen Wuyin rising, Liáng Xu and Fei Yan felt their influence slipping through silk fingers.
Their beauty—once a blade that carved through hearts and sect politics alike—now bent uselessly against a presence they could neither seduce nor break. Ren was not immune. He was unmoved. And that, more than anything, drove them mad.
Lady Yueh watched her disciples with a gaze that carried no cruelty. Only gravity.
She had once looked upon them with hope—two boys sculpted by Heaven itself. Cold beauty. Radiant talent. A presence that turned heads before they spoke. When they were young, they were innocent.
But beauty without discipline is just hunger waiting for a face.
Over time, the innocence curdled. Admiration became arrogance. Desire became dominance. Women within the sect had fallen easily—some through charm, others through coercion masked as courtship, even marriages twisted by layered manipulation. It was never about love. It was about winning.
She had waited for wisdom. Prayed for restraint. But now, all that remained was the hollow echo of potential squandered.
And yet Shen Wuyin—quiet, plain, untouchable—began to reshape the narrative. Not by intention. By existence.
He did not rebuke them. He refused to play their game.
And in that refusal, Liáng Xu and Fei Yan found themselves scrambling—not for attention, but for relevance.
Lady Yueh saw it. Felt it—that subtle crack in their mindset—a forced shift, a desperate need to recalibrate.
Ren hadn't meant to challenge them. But by being unchangeable, he had forced them to change.
And perhaps, just perhaps… that was what the heavens had intended.
That evening, beneath the pale shimmer of the Glass Lotus Sect's moonlight, Lady Yueh sat in her private pavilion—a sanctum of cold silence where even the breeze hesitated.
She wasn't meditating. Not truly. Her posture mimicked discipline, but her thoughts wandered.
Shen Wuyin.
Not a name she had ever spoken aloud. Not until Fairy Jin did. Not until that quiet boy touched Early Step Five with the ease of someone tying his robes.
She watched him now through veiled perception—spiritual sight tracing the qi lines that spiralled around his form like forgotten celestial diagrams. His movements weren't elegant. They were inefficient. Sloppy. Unrefined.
But his cultivation responded anyway.
As if the Dao itself indulged him.
She had trained Liáng Xu and Fei Yan to be perfect—refined beauties with flawless technique and doctrinal control. They obeyed the rules. Shaped perception. They were admired.
And now they were recoiling.
Shen Wuyin hadn't challenged them.
He had written them.
Lady Yueh folded her arms, gaze narrowing.
There was no deception in Ren. No ambition. Yet somehow, simply by existing, he was forcing her disciples to recalibrate—rethink their methods, reshape their mindset, adjust strategies honed for conquest, not understanding.
She hadn't raised Ren. Hadn't watched his path. Hadn't even noticed him until Fairy Jin did. That alone irked her.
Fairy Jin's eye was merciless and mythic—she saw potential not as talent, but as fate. Lady Yueh had mocked that instinct once.
But now?
Now she understood.
Shen Wuyin hadn't arrived with brilliance.
He had arrived with inevitability.
And the sect was beginning to bend around it.
Lady Yueh exhaled slowly.
Perhaps she had failed her disciples.
Perhaps beauty had bloomed too early in their hearts, choking out discipline before it could take root.
Or perhaps this was their trial—
To witness someone who didn't chase greatness,
but was chosen by it.