After Solar Clone asked his questions, he simply waited.
The leader trembled under that inhuman pressure. Cold sweat soaked his back, every instinct screaming at him to obey.
"We… we're undercover agents from the Freedom Union," he stammered. "We've been stationed in India for years. Our leaders sent us here—this mountain range where *your* people first detected the essence‑flow anomaly. Since your government refused us access, they ordered us to destroy the area with explosives. We thought the mission would be easy, but you…"
His voice faded into a resentful whisper as he looked at Solar Clone, eyes full of grievance. Solar Clone's gaze stayed calm and unreadable. He asked a few more precise questions, confirmed the details, then spoke in a gentle tone that did not match the sentence at all.
"Thank you. Goodbye."
Before the leader could react, his body went stiff. Sensation vanished from his limbs; his subordinates collapsed the same way, eyes wide yet unable to move. Their vision blurred as something hot and merciless passed through their brains, then spread cell by cell.
Solar essence flooded their nervous systems, then their flesh, then their bones—burning everything from the inside out without leaving a mark on the surface. Tissues, organs, skeletal framework, every last cell quietly disintegrated into nothing; not even ash or blood was left behind.
In a few breaths, the mountain clearing held only scattered equipment and a faint distortion in the air where living beings had stood. Nothing of the white‑clothed intruders remained—Solar Clone had erased them completely.
He had not done it out of rage, but out of cold calculation. If those men succeeded in detonating their bombs, the shockwaves killing countless people in the surroundings and shredding the forests and cliffs Ankit had already claimed in his heart as his mountain. To Ankit, this entire range was a fortress and a garden for his family's future; he refused to allow strangers to scar it or disturb their peace.
In contrast, the Indian teams stationed deeper in the mountains had not attempted any reckless destruction, so they remained untouched under his silent protection. If they ever tried to copy the Freedom Union's methods and threaten the land or his home, Solar Clone would show them no mercy either.
Ankit might not care deeply for outsiders beyond his own family, but as long as he had the time and strength, he would still shield his country from invaders—on his own terms, and so long as it did not endanger the people he truly treasured.
He turn after collecting the grenades and a single blink, he appeared back inside Dark Haven Fortress, in front of Ankit and the resting family. In a few concise sentences he relayed everything he had seen and heard.
Kamal's expression darkened. "So the Freedom Union is reaching its hands here now," he said coldly. "Before this, they didn't even look at us. Now that we've something they want, and after refusing they try to blow it up. Truly shameless."
Neelam nodded. "Prime Minister Mordan was right not to give them the blueprint or access to this place. Because of that, they can't march in openly—and they still failed to disturb us."
They discussed it a little longer, then let the matter go. As long as no one could find the underground fortress, distant politics were just noise. The mountain range could be sealed; the government would handle the rest. Solar Clone had already laid multiple concealment Vyuhas over Dark Haven—no satellite, drone, or scout would ever see more than ordinary rock.
Eventually, the family drifted off to sleep.
Only Ankit, Solar Clone, and Sacral Clone remained.
"I'm going to break through to Sub‑stage Four," Ankit said quietly. "You two keep things running. You've done well so far; keep doing even better. Tell Mom, Dad, and Sanya I won't be able to see them for a while."
He didn't need to say it—every memory and intention flowed freely between them—but some words were for the heart, not the mind.
Ankit vanished from the corridor and reappeared in his cultivation room.
He sat down cross‑legged and turned his awareness inward.
***
Inside his body, three cores pulsed with steady light:
one at the base of the spine, one in the lower abdomen, one in the upper abdomen. Around them stretched a lattice of meridians and Essence pathways.
His focus fell on the lowest core—the RootCore.
Until now, it was filled with neutral Essence Flow: pure power with no fixed nature. Sacral and Solar Cores carried water‑dark and blazing‑sun attributes; the Root Core, by contrast, had remained "colourless." But the ancient notes he'd studied all agreed: the root of all stability was earth. The fact that he hadn't awakened that nature yet didn't mean it wasn't there.
Previously, he simply couldn't sense earth‑aligned Essence clearly enough to grasp it. That changed after he developed his new perception techniques. With them, the slow, deep pulse of earth energy below the fortress felt as obvious as a heartbeat.
He had already tested those methods and confirmed that he could awaken the Root Core's earth nature.
He just chose to wait.
The neutral Essence in his Root Core had been the shared "fund" that awakened Sacral and Solar Cores and birthed his clones. If he converted it too early, he would have choked his own growth. Now that both clones were stable and strong, that restraint was no longer needed.
Underground, surrounded by dense earth Essence, the time had finally come.
He began the awakening.
***