Glenn's cultivation journey was far from ordinary. It had been seven days since he left the hospital and, with the help of books and his maids, located the Valley of the Floating Waterfalls. Seven days since the last comfortable cup of tea, and the deadline for the Tournament of Protection was tightening like a rope about to snap.
It was nighttime.
And what a strange night it was.
The sky in the demon territory wasn't made of ordinary constellations, but of moving ones—as if the stars were incandescent birds migrating across a liquid sky. The wind was cool, but it whispered with voices that only fell silent when ignored.
Glenn, for his part, was calm, rested, with enough energy to run to the valley if necessary. But he couldn't.
"Old bones deserve respect, my boy. Set up the tent, my leg's been tingling since midday."
The words had been spoken by Silas, who now swung like a cursed child in a hammock strung between two gnarled trees, an absurdly satisfied expression on his face.
The hammock looked old, made of vines and lianas, but it surprisingly supported the old demon's cracked white body, who kept smoking his long cigarette as if it were all part of some grander plan.
The fire crackled softly, sending sparks dancing upward before they vanished into the night air.
Glenn, sitting on a makeshift log, stared at him with a mix of suspicion and resignation.
"You said you were excited to see how I cultivated... and now you want to stop because of your joints?"
Silas grinned, his white teeth contrasting against the fire-darkened skin of his face.
"Of course! I do want to see it. But first, I want to see you setting up camp while cursing my existence. It's part of the experience."
Glenn snorted and tossed more wood into the fire.
So that was it. The cultivation journey began with the master responsible for him swinging in a hammock like a lazy, mocking spirit.
And something told Glenn this... this was only the beginning.
He nestled into the sleeping bag with a sigh, eyes fixed on the flames dancing gently in the fire. The heat was comforting, but it couldn't warm the doubts simmering inside him. The journey had started off strangely, and with Silas around, it was almost guaranteed it would end even stranger.
Turning his face toward the stretched hammock where the old elder swayed like an elegant bat, Glenn broke the silence:
"Are we far from our destination? At this pace, with a nap every few steps, how many days is this going to take?"
Silas didn't answer right away. First, he took a slow drag from his long cigarette, exhaling a cloud of smoke that took on nearly human shapes in the air, before finally answering in a calm tone:
"Not too far. The biggest challenge of the Valley of the Floating Waterfalls isn't getting there… it's being able to cultivate there without getting interrupted by the weather."
Glenn raised an eyebrow.
"What do you mean?"
Silas removed the cigarette from his lips, vaguely pointing to the sky, the red crystal of his earring shimmering in the firelight.
"The valley is beautiful. Disgustingly beautiful. Imagine massive chunks of land and rock suspended in the sky like floating islands. From each of them, waterfalls tumble down so massive they look like celestial rivers slicing through the air. A spectacle, I assure you."
"But..." Glenn pressed.
"But," Silas continued, "the gravity there is completely unbalanced. In some areas, it's so intense it can crush steel like wet paper. In others, it's so light… your body simply loses weight and you can't even walk. Move the wrong way and you'll float off into the sky like a child's balloon."
As the fire crackled softly, Glenn shifted in his sleeping bag and replied in a tone that was confident—though slightly forced:
"I have gravitational affinity. Honestly, I don't think this gravity imbalance will be much of a problem for me. I can counterbalance the natural effects."
Silas let out a dry, dragged-out laugh—the kind of laugh that felt like it had been stored up for decades, just waiting for a stupid enough comment to set it free.
"Oh, of course, of course… that would be wonderful, young freak, if you had come to cultivate gravitational energy."
He propped his elbow on the edge of the hammock, the cigarette between his teeth, his bandaged eyes aimed straight at Glenn.
"But you didn't. You're going to cultivate spatial energy."
Glenn's expression darkened immediately.
Silas took the cigarette from his mouth, twirling it between his fingers. "You're going to have to absorb extremely volatile and unstable energy, while using another to keep your body intact." The old man leaned forward slightly. "And that, Glenn... that's where the real challenge lies."
His voice lowered, but carried a sharp intensity.
"Do you have the focus for that?"
Glenn swallowed hard. He hadn't considered that. Cultivating already demanded extreme concentration. Now imagine doing that while manipulating an irregular gravitational field around your own body, as if you were walking on ice sheets that could crack with any wrong step.
"But... if gravity is so abundant there, why do people say there's so much spatial energy in the valley too?" he asked, trying to draw a thread of logic from the chaos.
Silas closed his eyes behind the bandages and went silent for a few seconds, as if rewinding through decades of memories.
At last, he murmured:
"Because where gravity collapses... space stretches."
Glenn stared at him silently.
Silas took a long drag from the cigarette and continued:
"The valley isn't a place of balance. It's a place of rupture. Too many forces pushing and distorting each other. Where gravity tries to crush, space tries to flee. That friction creates echoes, folds, and fractures. And that's where spatial energy appears. It's not natural. It's a consequence of the chaos."
He blew the smoke toward the starry sky and finished with a crooked smile:
"A perfect place for you, don't you think?"
Glenn let out a heavy sigh, eyes fixed on the fire's flames dancing in the dark as if mocking his unease.
"Tell me something..." he began, his voice low but laced with suspicion. "Was it really just a coincidence that you were in the castle at that moment? Right when I went looking for someone to authorize my departure from the capital? Because... I don't know, I have this slight feeling that you showed up a little too conveniently."
Silas laughed. Not a quiet laugh, but a carefree, almost theatrical one, as if the question had been the best joke of the night.
"But of course, young freak! I was just... passing by!"
He gestured with his hands as if to say 'totally innocent, you see'.
Glenn raised an eyebrow and let out a skeptical "Uh-huh." The old man was good with words, but Glenn had lived with too many people in that castle not to recognize bait when it was thrown.
Silas, however, changed his tone. Smoke slipped from between his teeth as he commented with disconcerting casualness:
"You know... even though you're going to cultivate spatial energy, there's something curious about you." He slightly turned his face toward Glenn, even with his eyes bandaged. "I feel inside you a mass... an absurd concentration of already condensed spatial energy. And yet, still not enough for ascension. Unusual. Very unusual. Makes me wonder... what else are you hiding in there?"
The silence lingered for a moment. Glenn felt his throat go dry.
'Shit.'
The mana core...
Until now, only four people knew about it: Elian, Lesley, Selene, and Isaac. No one else. And yet, this old man — this blindfolded elder — had sensed something even the most experienced hadn't detected.
Glenn swallowed hard and shrugged, trying to force a look of indifference.
"I don't know what you're talking about, old man..." he said, tossing a stick into the fire.
Silas simply smiled. A smile of someone who didn't need sight to see, nor sound to understand.
"Of course you don't."
And he went back to rocking gently in the hammock, as if that answer was more than enough.
But Glenn knew: Silas saw more without eyes than most did with both wide open.