After telling his mother he was going out, he left the Rathore family compound. The town of Devgarh was a bustling, chaotic place. The streets were narrow, packed earth, teeming with merchants hawking their wares, farmers driving carts pulled by sturdy oxen, and children darting through the throng. The air was a thick mix of cooking spices, livestock, and unwashed humanity.
To the old Aryan, it had been a suffocating atmosphere. To the new Aryan, whose senses were sharpened, it was a vibrant tapestry of life. He could pick out individual conversations from the general din, smell the sweet scent of roasted nuts from a stall fifty meters away, and sense the subtle shifts in the crowd's movement, allowing him to navigate it with ease.
He noticed the change immediately. No one pointed. No one whispered "trash Aryan" as he passed. His transformation wasn't just internal. The way he carried himself was different. His posture was straight, his gaze was calm and steady, and his aura, though he kept it suppressed, had a subtle weight to it that made people subconsciously give him more space. They saw not a weakling to be scorned, but a young man with a quiet, confident presence.
He was heading toward the market square when a familiar, arrogant voice cut through the noise.
"Well, well. If it isn't the Rathore family's famous invalid. I heard you almost died. What a pity you recovered."
Aryan paused and turned slowly. Leaning against the wall of a tea shop was Sameer Sharma, flanked by two burly cronies. Sameer was the son of the head of the Sharma family, the Rathores' main rivals in Devgarh. He was dressed in fine silks, a sneer plastered on his face. This was the same young master who had humiliated him with a single shove weeks ago, an act that seemed forgotten in the wake of his near-death experience.
"Sameer," Aryan said, his voice flat and devoid of emotion.
Sameer's sneer widened. He clearly mistook Aryan's calm for fear. "What's the matter, Aryan? Cat got your tongue? I heard you had some kind of miracle recovery. Let's see if it was real." He pushed himself off the wall and advanced, his cronies spreading out to block Aryan's path. The nearby crowd began to scatter, eager to avoid trouble.
"I have no business with you," Aryan said, preparing to walk around them.
"Our business is what I say it is," Sameer snapped, his voice rising. "I'm at the 6th layer of the Qi Condensation Realm. You're trash at the 1st layer. That's all the reason I need." He lunged, not with a punch, but with a contemptuous shove at Aryan's shoulder, intending to send him sprawling in the dust.
It was a test, a casual display of dominance. The old Aryan would have stumbled back in humiliation. The new Aryan barely seemed to notice.
Sameer's hand connected with Aryan's shoulder, and it was like hitting a stone pillar rooted to the center of the earth. Sameer's own momentum, expecting no resistance, carried him forward. His eyes widened in shock as his hand tingled painfully from the impact.
Aryan didn't move an inch. He simply glanced down at Sameer's hand on his shoulder, then back up at Sameer's face. He didn't say a word. He didn't need to. In that instant, he sent a subtle thread of Qi, no more than the tip of a needle, into the point of contact.
Fwump.
It wasn't a sound, but a feeling. A dull, invisible pulse of force. Sameer felt as if he'd been hit by a charging bull. He was thrown backward, tripping over his own feet and landing in a heap on the dusty road. His two cronies, who had been moving to surround Aryan, froze in place, their jaws slack.
Aryan hadn't moved. His expression hadn't changed. To the few onlookers who hadn't fled, it looked as if Sameer Sharma had simply tripped over his own feet in a bizarre fashion. But Sameer knew better. He scrambled to his feet, his face pale, one hand clutching his chest where a phantom ache was blooming. He stared at Aryan, no longer with arrogance, but with a dawning, fearful confusion.
Aryan met his gaze, his mind calmly cataloging the details: the widening of Sameer's pupils, the slight tremor in his hands, the way the onlookers took a collective step back. It was all data. Useful data. Then, without another word, he turned and continued his stroll toward the market square, the crowd parting before him like water before the prow of a ship.
He left Sameer Sharma standing in the middle of the road, a problem temporarily solved. Aryan felt no satisfaction, no anger just a cool confirmation of his hypothesis. This was a world of flies. Some were small and annoying others would be larger, more venomous.
Swatting them was easy, but true efficiency required the right tool. He needed to buy a flyswatter. A very big one.