Han Zhennan did not relent. He pressed, asked again and again in every way he could imagine, probing for loopholes in the gryphon's answers, forcing the beast to clarify until the creature's patience showed thin cracks. The guardian refused to give anything beyond the bounds of the single trial it was set to judge. It even tried to barge around questions with riddles and clipped contempt—searching for legalisms that might allow it to lie without lying—but Han Zhennan would not be finessed. He kept asking until the gryphon, sullen and irritated, broke its evasions into blunt fact.
The trial, the gryphon said at last, was simple to state and terrible in practice: Han Zhennan had to learn a single art and use it within three days to a mastery sufficient to wound the guardian's stone-like hide. Not mastery in the sense of perfection—the inheritance did not demand impossible perfection—only the level the chestbound rules set: an attack strong enough to leave a scratch on the guardian's skin. That single clause tasted like iron in Han Zhennan's mouth. The carved beast had just claimed it would "make sure you die in mine." Now he must scar that same thing within seventy-two hours.
Han Zhennan felt the measure of the task settle over him: the gryphon was an Awakened one, comparable to CoreForged cultivators in men's stories—creatures the size sects built reputations chasing. If even a faint mark mattered, it was because the stone did not give marks lightly. To leave a line on that shell would require something closer to tearing open the sky than swinging a sword.
He swallowed. "I cannot go back without finishing the inheritance trials," he thought. "I cannot disappoint my father. He has sacrificed too much—he did this for us. For our wives, our children, for the name. I will not fail him."
Memory flared of his father's harsh lessons: sudden drills at dawn, the sting of correction, the cold meals eaten while practicing forms until hands blistered. He had once resented that hardness—its relentlessness—but standing beneath the guardian's thunder, he saw the logic. The world only answered strength. If he wished to protect what he had—Xue Lian, He Ruying, his sons—he had to be more than filial gratitude. He had to be powerful enough to hold a place in the world that would not be stolen from him.
The gryphon watched him as if enjoying the slow digestion of this resolve. It opened its great beak and offered the terms, each syllable sharp as a talon. "So be it," it intoned. "Choose: take the chest and leave with your life, or take my trial and go on."
Han Zhennan's hand closed on the hilt of his blade, then relaxed. There was no question in his mind. "I am ready for the trial," he said.
The beast's laugh shredded the silence like a thrown stone. "Very well. Step forward and take this technique." It lowered a talon; in its shadow Han Zhennan saw a thin, weathered manuscript appear on a pedestal—old leather, ink like dried rivers. "It is called the 'Sky-Rendering Talon,'" the gryphon said. "A peak-tier art. You will have three days. I suggest you do not sleep—the moment you touch that manual, I begin to count."
The moment his fingers closed on the manuscript, the world narrowed into work. Han Zhennan read until his eyes blurred. The Sky-Rendering Talon was cold, brutal in its economy: a condensed principle of speed, geometry, and lightning-charged impact. It demanded not only raw force but absolute timing—strike the right point of impact at the exact phase of the enemy's structure and the force multiplies like a snapped chain. Fail the timing and the body shatters before the technique completes; succeed and even layered defenses showed hairline seams.
Three days is a long sentence and a short one. He slept in fits—if at all—siphoning the hours between stabs of study and drills. He peeled the manual into parts, testing the phrasing like a man testing a blade's tang. He practiced the footwork until his calves burned, the pivoting until the tiny muscles at his ankle burned with acid, the breath controls until each exhalation came like a metronome. He taught his hands the angles as if they were new beasts to be tamed: the strike's plane, the shoulder's torque, the exact point where lightning's compression would flow through his fist and into a target.
The gryphon watched at first with a thin amusement, then with an impatience that sharpened into rage as the hours thinned and the boy did not crack. It roared barbed things meant to unhinge him—stories of heirs broken by pride, of small mistakes that split bone—and slid hints into the air about the other trials, baiting curiosity. The guardian tried to distract him, to whisper of hidden pits and demonic shortcuts, to lure him into doubt. It was the kind of taunt meant to shake a man's head from the steady line.
Han Zhennan heard it all and refused to play. Each taunt the gryphon spat he treated like a gust and did not let it change his grip. He took the beast's insults for fuel, each venomous rumor wedging his focus tighter. He knew why the gryphon had become sharp and sarcastic—because the guardian had seen countless would-be heirs snap under pressure. Because it delighted in watching courage fold into desperation. That was its trade. Han Zhennan would not be a trade.
On the second night, halfway through the allotted time, fatigue gnawed at him like a slow animal. His shoulders were a map of ache. His breath was thin. Yet the technique was beginning to settle: a coiling in his forearm, a tightening in the core he could feel like an engine revving. The last piece was reaction—hitting the micro-aperture of the guardian's defense at the exact instant it opened. For that he needed something more than practice: he needed to find the rhythm under the beast's armor.
He began to study the guardian's motion. It had a minute cadence—an involuntary flick in the stone feathers, a tightening in the jaw before lightning arced. Those were not mistakes; they were mechanics. They gave a sliver of time, a hair's breadth in which his hit would not be absorbed but multiplied.
On the dawn of the third day, with cold dew on his skin and the sun a pale coin through the high windows, Han Zhennan stood at the ready, the Sky-Rendering Talon humming in his bones. He had not yet struck the stone. He had not yet seen the gryphon flinch. But the last hours had shaped him into a man who could read the smallest voltages of movement. He rested his blade against his palm and breathed until his mind stilled.
The guardian watched, the carved lightning around its wings dull as if anticipating the end of a long boredom. It rolled its eyes, annoyed and strangely eager. "We will see who screams first," it said.
Han Zhennan did not speak. He let three days of hunger, three days of frost, three days of scraped skin and aching joints fall behind him like a cloak and stepped forward. He would not waste a moment on childish satisfaction; he would find the micro-window he'd trained his life to see—and strike.
Han Zhennan gripped his blade and surged forward.
The Sky-Rendering Talon answered him — not as a single motion but as a living geometry. Lightning arced up from his palm and braided itself into the shape of a hawk: a shimmering raptor that crouched behind him, wings folded, talons gleaming. Its presence synchronized with his strike; when the hawk's talon moved, his blade followed. Every muscle in his body rebelled against the effort. Pain knifed through his limbs—his temples began to bleed, veins standing like cords along his neck, teeth grinding so hard they cracked a little. The technique was crude, raw; three days of training could not grant the perfect flow of a veteran. It was an unstable tower built on hunger and will.
The guardian did not flinch. The gryphon's carved feathers snapped with static, its stone eyes watching him like a judge watching an accused man throw himself at a verdict.
Han Zhennan lashed out. The lightning hawk shrieked—a cry of compressed thunder—and his blade drove true. A thunderous impact rolled through the hall as lightning detonated against stone. The force threw him back; he slammed into the far wall and crumpled, smoke and ozone choking the air.
When the dust cleared, the guardian remained where it had stood: unbowed, barely altered. Han Zhennan lay at the chamber's edge, blood streaking his face and body, shoulder out of place, jaw nearly shattered, every breath a ragged concession. He could not see clearly; the world had narrowed to pain and the slow, precious insistence of his heartbeat. Still, his gaze found the gryphon. He waited—because whether the guardian moved to finish him or remained still would speak the truth: success or death.
The gryphon's voice came this time without venom, without the mocking lilt that had colored its earlier words. It was flat and neutral, as if reciting law.
"You have left a small mark on me that meets the conditions. You are now free to stay here and rest, and then continue to the next stage before you reach the second guardian," it said. "But be warned: you have only three more days before you will be forced to move forward or be sent out of the inheritance."
Han Zhennan let out a breath that could have been a laugh or a sob. The corners of his mouth twitched into a smile—weak, wounded, feral. Relief and exhaustion folded into one another until his limbs betrayed him. He smiled again, then the world went black.
He fell unconscious where he lay.
The gryphon did not gloat. It merely closed its carved eyes as if shutting a book. In the hush that followed, the chamber smelled of singed stone and blood; the chest of Aether shards on the table glowed faintly, patient and indifferent.