Just as the young female alchemy genius was wrestling with the frustrating puzzle of how that intruder could have bypassed her supposedly impenetrable ward formations, a piece of Dao Fulu suddenly flared to life from her dressing table.
Kim Selena's voice emerged from the transmission Fulu, carrying both concern. "Simona-chan, how are you holding up right now? Has your condition stabilized?"
Simona felt warmth spread through her chest at her elder clan sister's genuine concern. She responded quickly, "Selena eonni, please don't worry yourself."
"I've successfully completed the body tempering process this time without any complications. Now I'm completely recovered, actually better than ever. My breakthrough to Eighth Layer went smoothly and my cultivation base is solid."
She paused, then redirected her curiosity toward the matter her clan sister had been handling on her behalf. "Eonni, how did things go on your end?"
Kim Selena's voice crackled through the transmission human skin, dripping with chilling satisfaction. "Just got off the freaking arena platform, and dang, that felt good. Look, I held back—barely—because of Sect Successor Fairy Lith. Didn't want to start shift with the upper brass by outright killing the bastard."
"But I made sure Kinson Wexford got the message loud and freaking clear. Beat his ass bloody in front of everyone—and I mean everyone. Then I shattered both his legs in multiple places. That piece of mother… moron won't be walking straight for months, healing elixirs or not."
Her tone turned ice-cold. "Maybe now he'll think twice before letting his little lackeys run their mouths about our family. He wanted to play games? Well, he just learned what happens when fu… bark with the wrong people."
The transmission fulu crackled with warmth against Simona's palm as her older sister's voice filtered through, each syllable colored with that particular brand of exasperation.
Simona pressed her lips together, trying desperately to contain the laughter bubbling up in her chest as she listened to Selena carefully navigate around the truly colorful curse words she clearly wanted to unleash, substituting them instead with these adorably sanitized alternatives that somehow made the whole curse even more entertaining.
The mental image of her fierce, intimidating older clan sister—the same one who could reduce elite Foundation Stage cultivators to trembling messes with a single glare—stumbling over her own tongue to avoid corrupting her baby sister's innocent ears was almost too much to bear.
Finally, unable to hold it in any longer, Simona let out a bright peal of giggles that echoed through her chambers. "Eonni, don't swear," she chided with mock seriousness, though her voice still trembled with barely suppressed mirth. "You know what happened last time Uncle overheard you. He made you transcribe the entire Book of Virtuous Conduct three times over, and you complained about hand cramps for a week!"
That did it. The floodgates opened, and Selena's carefully maintained composure shattered like glass. A stream of her hometown dialect came pouring through the transmission fulu.
"야, 개집애! 너진짜짜증나는애다!" (ya, gaejib-ae! neo jinjja jjajeungnaneun aeda!)
The words crackled through the spiritual connection with such vehemence that Simona could practically see her sister's face turning red, could imagine the vein that always popped out on her forehead when she got truly worked up. "You absolute menace! You know exactly what you're doing, don't you? Sitting there all innocent and sweet while you use me like some cheap chore maid! I swear to the abyss, when I get back to the Outer Sect, I'm going to—"
Simona couldn't help herself—the giggles transformed into full-bodied laughter that made her sides ache. There was something absolutely delicious about being able to push her sister's buttons like this, about knowing exactly which words would make Selena forget all her careful cultivation of poise and dignity. "Oh no, Eonni's using the scary voice," she managed between gasps, her tone dripping with theatrical fear that fooled absolutely no one. "Whatever shall I do? However will I survive such terrible wrath?"
She paused for dramatic effect before adding with perfect innocence, "Should I start preparing my apology now, or should I wait until Uncle finds out about this conversation too? I'm sure he'd be fascinated to hear about your colorful vocabulary lessons."
"You wouldn't dare!" Selena's outraged shriek came through so loud that Simona had to hold the Fulu paper away from her ear. But even through the mock anger, Simona could hear the smile in her sister's voice, that particular warmth that only emerged when it was just the two of them, no formal sect business or fraction politics to navigate. "I take back every nice thing I've ever said about you. You're not my adorable little sister—you're a demon sent to torment me specifically. I must have committed some terrible sin in a past life to deserve this."
"Probably," Simona agreed cheerfully, settling more comfortably into her cushions.
For several more minutes, they continued like this, throwing barbs and jokes with the ease of long practice, their laughter intertwining across the distance that separated them. Selena threatened increasingly implausible punishments while Simona countered with increasingly ridiculous justifications for her behavior. Despite the roles they had to play and the faces they had to wear, they were still just sisters who could make each other laugh until their stomachs hurt.
But eventually, as all good things must, their playful exchange began to wind down. Simona could hear the subtle shift in her sister's breathing through the talisman, the way Selena's voice gradually settled from that bright, teasing register into something more measured and serious.
"Okay, okay," Selena said at last, and Simona could picture her wiping tears of mirth from her eyes before straightening her robes and reassembling that mask of competent authority she wore so well. "Enough playing around, Simona-chan. I've actually got some other important information for you."
The shift in atmosphere was palpable even across the spiritual connection. Simona felt her own smile fading as she sat up straighter, her fingers tightening unconsciously around the Fulu.
"I found him. Regarding the individual who broke into your courtyard dwelling that night and committed those violations against you. The name is Lordi Payne. Currently cultivating at the Eighth Layer of Qi Refinement Stage, which honestly is fairly remarkable for someone his age in our sect. His background though? Completely and utterly mundane—we're talking about someone from an insignificant backwater town that you've definitely never heard of, the kind of place where the most exciting event of the year is probably the harvest festival. His family history is equally uninspiring. I dug through genealogical records going back six generations, and they've never produced even a single Foundation Stage cultivator throughout their entire documented lineage."
There was a pause, and Simona could almost imagine the solemn on her sister's face as she chose her next words carefully. "Under normal circumstances—and I want you to understand this clearly—killing such an insignificant person would barely register as noteworthy. We're talking about someone with no powerful backing, no influential connections, no clan resources to leverage in revenge. We could eliminate him tomorrow, make it look like a cultivation accident or a beast attack, and face virtually no consequences whatsoever. The sect wouldn't blink. His family certainly couldn't do anything about it."
"But?" Simona prompted, because she could hear that word hanging unspoken in the air between them.
"But," Selena echoed with audible frustration, "this is where the situation becomes significantly more complicated than I would prefer, and you know how much I hate complications. This particular individual doesn't actually operate under Wexford's Deathveil authority like I initially suspected. Instead after conducting much deeper investigation and calling in some favors from people who move in more elevated circles than I typically frequent, I've learned that Lordi Payne is someone that Sect Successor Lith herself has personally taken an active interest in cultivating. Her highness is actively investing resources into developing this nobody from nowhere for reasons that are known only to Fairy Lith herself, because she certainly hasn't deigned to explain her thinking to anyone else, and nobody's brave enough or stupid enough to question her decisions directly."
The weight of that revelation settled over their conversation like a heavy blanket, suffocating the last remnants of their earlier playfulness.
The transmission Fulu grew hot against Simona's palm, not from any malfunction of the spiritual mechanism but from the sheer intensity of the rage that suddenly blazed through her meridians like wildfire consuming dry tinder.
Her clan sister's carefully worded explanation about Sect Successor Lith's patronage, delivered with all the diplomatic precision that Selena had cultivated over years of navigating treacherous sect politics, did absolutely nothing to cool the inferno of humiliation and fury that burned in Simona's chest. If anything, it only stoked the flames higher, adding the bitter taste of injustice to the already toxic cocktail of emotions roiling inside her. Her voice, when it finally emerged, came out sharp enough to cut steel. "So what if he enjoys Sect Successor Lith's favor? So what if Her Highness herself has deigned to notice this pathetic worm and decided he's worth investing resources into? What possible difference does that make to the fundamental injustice of what he did to me?"
"Even if he's operating under her highness's direct protection, even if Fairy Lith has personally chosen to sponsor his advancement through the sect ranks and shower him with opportunities that more deserving cultivators could only dream of, I absolutely refuse to swallow this humiliation like some meek, obedient little Outer Sect junior who knows her place!"
"He violated my home, Eonni. My home! The one place in this entire sect where I was supposed to be safe, where I should have been able to cultivate in peace without worrying about some entitled thief deciding my possessions were his for the taking. He stole elixirs that took me months to finally alchemy, treasures I'd carefully saved and planned to use for my own advancement. He nearly killed me through his actions—and let's not pretend it was anything other than deliberate, because we both know exactly what kind of 'accident' leaves someone in the state he left me in. And now they expect me to just accept all of that, to bow my head and pretend it never happened, simply because some powerful immortal overlord finds him interesting enough to use as a tool?"
Her voice cracked slightly on the last word, raw emotion bleeding through the anger. "I can't—I won't!"
Through the transmission Fulu, the young genius alchemist could hear Selena taking a deep, measured breath. When her sister spoke again, the voice carried that particular blend of firmness and gentleness that she only used when she genuinely feared Simona might do something catastrophically stupid.
"Please, Simona-chan, I'm begging you to calm yourself for just a moment and listen to what I have to say before you make any rash decisions that we'll both regret. No one could know your anger better than me—truly, I feel you. If someone had done to me what this Lordi Payne did to you, I'd want to tear him apart with my bare hands, political consequences be damned. But that's exactly why you need to let me finish explaining the situation before you go charging off to challenge him to a duel or whatever."
Selena paused then continued. "I haven't been idle since our last conversation, you know. I've made extensive inquiries about Sect Successor Lith's character and behavioral patterns, gathering intelligence from multiple sources who've had opportunities to work under her highness's fraction over the years. I've talked to Inner Sect disciples who've served in her faction, Board members of Sect Elders who've witnessed her making decisions about resource allocation, even a few Grand Elders of Holy Sect Cabinet who were willing to share their impressions in exchange for appropriate considerations. And from everything I've learned through this investigation, I can paint you a fairly comprehensive picture of exactly who and what Fairy Lith actually is beneath all the legends and mystique."
"It was said she first gathered Qi at three summers old, an age when other children of her exalted house were still mastering the shapes of words. While they formed clumsy sentences, she was deciphering the language of the universe itself. Through the legendary Cosmic Path Foundation Establishment Technique, a method so profound it was whispered to strain the very fabric of a soul, she walked. No—she sprinted."
"In a mere nine months, the foundation was laid. Nine months. Several season's turn, and the unshakable Dao pillar of her cultivation was complete, placing her firmly, impossibly, in the Foundation Stage."
"To understand the tremor this sent through the ancient sects and hidden clans, you must hold the old records in your mind. Before her, the earliest known soul to breach that threshold in all of recorded history was a venerable prodigy of sixteen. Her peers, the other jewels of this generation in our holy Sect—Fairy Chou of the Verdant Hydra, Master Zeus of the Thunder Nebula—achieved it at nineteen and eighteen, respectively, and were hailed as epoch-defining talents."
"Do you comprehend the difference?"
"Before Her Highness could string together a comprehensive dialogue about the world, she had already reshaped its energy to her will. Before her thoughts could fully form in the realm of mortals, they were echoing in the realm of the cosmic."
"This placed her not merely among the elite of her generation, but as a solitary peak visible across the fog of megaannum. Given such a nature, is it any wonder where her gaze falls? She exists in a rarefied atmosphere, and thus breathes a different air. She is drawn, almost by a law of celestial physics, to those who burn with a similar exceptional fire."