Ren understood the look the fat cultivator gave him. The disdain, the quiet calculation, the unspoken verdict: This one's a joke.
So he leaned into it.
He let his gait stutter. Let his robes hang asymmetrically. He asked what the crystal tasted like before touching it. And when it flickered—barely, begrudgingly—Ren nodded, as if satisfied with the faintest scrap of acknowledgement. The elders laughed behind silk sleeves. Heaven, somewhere, raised an eyebrow.
He wasn't stupid. He just knew the sect wouldn't know what to do with someone pretending to be beneath notice. His mediocrity was a mask. His mask was a strategy.
And so, when he was accepted "by accident," Ren bowed deeply. With clumsy precision. With quiet intent.
At the Glass Lotus Sect:
Ren entered the Glass Lotus Sect under conditions best described as a clerical accident wrapped in spiritual indifference. He wears his robe backwards, claiming "Qi aerodynamics"—a theory untested, unprovable, and loudly rejected by every sect tailor. He meditates daily beneath the Windless Pine with a squirrel perched on his shoulder. He calls it his spirit beast.
The squirrel has never spoken. It's unclear if it's enlightened, cursed, or just too tired to argue. No one asks.
Ren was admitted not through talent, lineage, or Qi compatibility, but seemingly because the registration crystal gave a faint twitch and the fat cultivator at the gate was too confused to say no. His name is recorded in the sect ledger with the footnote:
"Approved, possibly accidentally."
Not long after, Ren came under the personal tutelage of Fairy Jin—a mysterious cultivator whose quiet authority commands reverence throughout the sect. Her voice is soft, deliberate, and rarely used—but when she speaks, even the sect leader listens.
She found Ren meditating beneath the Windless Pine, glanced at the squirrel on his shoulder, and—without explanation—claimed him as her first disciple.
The squirrel blinked. Ren bowed. Fairy Jin departed without comment.
Beneath the whispering pines of the outer sect's courtyard, Ren's qi surged with quiet violence, cresting into Peak Step Four. For most disciples, such a feat was reserved for their second decade of training—if ever. But Ren had moved like a forgotten star reclaiming its orbit.
His master's teachings—twilight-laced, paradox-steeped—had taken hold. She watched from across the courtyard, her arms folded within robes that drank the dusk. Her nod held no ceremony.
"I saw it in you," Fairy Jin said, her voice brushing against wind-carved stone. "The soot in your hair. The thunder on your skin. The way you shattered the Hall of Mirrors when you weren't even trying."
"What others dismissed as chaos…" she paused, "I recognised as convergence."
Her gaze did not linger on his rank. It settled on the shape of his inevitability.
Then came frost.
Lady Yueh, Sect Leader of the Glass Lotus, stepped into the courtyard like falling snow—elegant, silent, lethal. Her path 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 was not subtle—it clung to them like vulgar calligraphy scrawled over sacred parchment.
Ren saw it—the fire behind their eyes—fierce, foolish, unworthy.
He could not say whether the others truly 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 because she lacked judgment, but because it had long since solidified into inevitability. She offered neither rebuke nor mercy. Her silence was a verdict: those two could stare, fantasise, even weep—but they would never taste what lay beyond the veil.
Fairy Jin stood untouched. Not adored, but untouchable. She was not a reward for greatness—she was greatness. A trial forged by the Dao itself 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. They were radiant. Their beauty had bent rooms, drawn praise, and earned deference. But none of that pierced the myth encircling Ren.
Fairy Jin had looked at him. Once. And in doing so, she rewrote the rules of their sect.
Ren was plain. Forgettable. The kind of man who slipped between courtyard rituals like mist. He'd 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 more profound, stranger.
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 bad 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 was 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, and 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. Not a prodigy. Something rarer. A figure whose name would one day tilt the heavens.
Yet he moved like a fool. Slow. Absent-minded. He forgot formations mid-step and 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 had shifted, subtly, imperceptibly at first. A glance. A pause. The quiet calculation 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.
Now, the myth was waking.
The two disciples kept their expressions neutral and restrained, but their calm was merely cosmetic. Beneath the practised serenity, fear curled around their hearts. Not fear of Ren, but 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 couldn't extinguish the craving. Lust writhed behind their eyes, toxic and undisciplined.
Other women in the sect came easily through flirtation, through marriage, through what mortals called conquest. The typical path of dominance disguised as romance, cloaked in rituals both sacred and sordid. They were familiar with that route. Too familiar.
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, like moonlight on still water. Their smiles rewrote conversations. Their voices could tilt even the sturdiest hearts off balance.
But beneath the surface, they were poison spun into silk.
Over the years, they had quietly dissolved friendships, unravelled relationships, and sabotaged marriages—all without raising a finger. They whispered, they hinted, they lingered in places they shouldn't. And people followed.
It wasn't just charm. It was designed.
Where others saw prodigies, Ren saw patterns—cracks intentionally spread across the sect's foundation.
They weren't just cultivating qi. They were cultivating dependency.
In truth, Liáng Xu and Fei Yan were not paragons. They were the scummy anti-protagonists of Mìngjié Xianlù—gilded shadows masquerading as 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 by courtship, even marriages twisted by layered manipulation. It was never about love. It was about winning.
She had waited for wisdom and 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, but 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 just 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—her 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 and 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 and hadn't watched his path. She 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.