Kaelen knew his time at the Valerius outpost was limited. The "accident" had bought him breathing room, but it was a temporary reprieve. Sooner or later, his growing power would become impossible to hide, or Lucius's paranoia would fixate on him once more. He needed a new identity, a new sanctuary where he could cultivate in peace.
His chance came in the form of a recruitment notice posted in the nearby mining town. The Iron Serpent Sect, a small and perpetually struggling local power, was seeking new outer disciples. To the Valerius clan, the Iron Serpent Sect was less than an afterthought, a pack of ants they could crush at any time. To Kaelen, it was the perfect hiding place.
Faking his own death was surprisingly simple. He staged another "accident," a fall into a deep, abandoned mine shaft during a work detail. He left behind a torn piece of his own clothing and a few drops of blood for effect. Then, he vanished into the desolate wilderness of Cygnus X-1. For two weeks, he lived off the land, hunting the strange, six-legged creatures that roamed the plains and cultivating in secret, fueling his progress with a small bag of raw Aetherium ore he had stolen from the Carrion Pit before his escape. The chaotic energy surged through him, pushing him rapidly through the stages of Body Refinement.
By the time he arrived at the gates of the Iron Serpent Sect, he was a different person. He was still lean, but the pathetic gauntness was gone, replaced by a wiry strength that his rough traveler's clothes couldn't entirely conceal. He gave them a new name—"Ash"—and a simple backstory: an orphan from a remote settlement destroyed by magical beasts.
The entry test was simple: lift a series of heavy cauldrons. The sect elders watched with bored indifference as aspirant after aspirant failed. When Kaelen's turn came, he deliberately held back, lifting only the third cauldron, enough to pass the minimum requirement for an outer disciple. He feigned great effort, letting his arms tremble and his face flush. It was a convincing performance. He was accepted, another unremarkable face in the sea of new recruits.
The Iron Serpent Sect was nestled in a rocky valley, its buildings old and weathered. It was a place of quiet desperation. They lacked resources, powerful cultivation arts, and true experts. But for Kaelen, it was paradise. He had a small, private room, a structured training schedule, and, most importantly, a degree of anonymity.
He quickly learned the sect's internal dynamics. There were the arrogant inner disciples, the struggling outer disciples, and the powerful elders who seemed perpetually worried. He kept his head down, performing his duties diligently and showing only mediocre progress in the sect's basic cultivation techniques. In the privacy of his room, however, the real work began.
Night after night, he would sit in meditation, a single, shimmering piece of raw Aetherium in his hand. The Chaos Furnace in his Dantian would roar to life, siphoning the violent energy and transforming it into pure, potent Qi. His cultivation soared. He broke through the ninth and final stage of Body Refinement and began to assault the bottleneck to the next great realm: Qi Condensation. This was the true beginning of the cultivation path, the moment a practitioner first learned to sense and gather the ambient Qi of Heaven and Earth. For Kaelen, his furnace provided a shortcut, allowing him to condense his own perfectly purified energy.
He succeeded in a matter of weeks, a feat that would have been considered monstrously fast even for the greatest prodigies of the Great Houses. He was now a true cultivator, a Disciple of the Qi Condensation realm. And no one in the entire Iron Serpent Sect had a clue.