The night was a thick, velvet curtain as Li Fan led the three thugs toward the boundary stone of the Third Ancestor.
The path was choked with the same stubborn weeds and gray moss that plagued the rest of the mountain, but Li Fan walked with a sure-footedness that left Ma and his lackeys stumbling in his wake. In his chest, the Refined Breathing hummed like a subterranean hive—a vibration that went deeper than his flesh.
"Right here," Li Fan said, stopping before a massive, weathered pillar of stone half-buried in a drift of dry earth.
Ma spat on the ground, his iron gauntlets gleaming in the faint starlight. "This? This is just a grave-marker, boy. You're playing with your life."
"A grave for kings, perhaps," Li Fan replied. He didn't look at the thug. Instead, he placed his palm against the cold surface of the stone.
In the Year 10,000, he had seen this pillar shattered, its base hollowed out by greed. He knew that beneath this very spot, a pocket of air had been preserved by a specific layering of white clay and spirit-oak planks.
He began to breathe. No, he began to vibrate.
The Stellar Depths technique was more than just a way to hold Qi; it was a method of resonance. As his lungs rhythmically compressed, a low-frequency hum began to emanate from his chest. It was a sound that reached into the earth, shaking the microscopic pores of the white clay.
Crack.
A thin, crystalline sound echoed through the silence. The earth at the base of the pillar groaned and shifted. Ma stepped back, his hand flying to the hilt of his saber.
"What did you do?"
"I spoke to the mountain," Li Fan whispered.
The ground gave way. A small sinkhole opened, revealing the edge of a blackened oak chest. The air that escaped the hole didn't smell of rot; it smelled of sunlight, dried peaches, and a fire that had been burning for a thousand years.
Ma lunged forward, shoving Li Fan aside with a strength that would have shattered a normal mortal's ribs. Li Fan rolled with the impact, the Refined Breathing cushioning his organs like a layer of dense water.
Ma reached into the hole and pulled out a single, clay-stoppered jar. It was small—no larger than a man's fist—but the moment he held it, his eyes went wide. The jar was vibrating. The liquid inside was so potent that its sheer presence caused the air to shimmer.
"Sunset Nectar..." Ma breathed, his voice trembling with a greed that made him forget his anger.
"The marrow of my ancestors," Li Fan said, standing up and brushing the dust from his robes. "Take it, Ma. Take it to your Master. Tell him the Sunset Sect pays its debts in history, not copper."
Ma looked at the jar, then at his lackeys, and finally at Li Fan. He saw a boy who should have been broken by the shove, yet stood there with an expression of weary pity.
"We're going," Ma rumbled, tucking the jar into his tunic. "This buys you a moon, boy. But don't think this makes us friends. If the liquid isn't pure..."
"It is pure enough to make your Master a Peak expert in three days," Li Fan said.
The thugs didn't wait. They scrambled toward their horses, the sound of their departure a frantic rhythm of hooves and heavy breath.
As the silence returned to the mountain, Li Fan leaned against the boundary stone. He felt office, his "Void Sink" body pushed to its limit by the first true use of the future technique.
Then, the shimmer returned.
The ethereal scroll of the Mirror of Resonant Fate unfurled in his vision, but there was a new inscription—a shimmering golden thread that hadn't been there before.
[RECURSIVE RESONANCE DETECTED]
[DIVIDEND: THE PATH HATH BEEN WEIGHTED]
Li Fan's brow furrowed. He looked at the scroll and felt a sudden, dizzying sense of dual-vision. For a split second, he didn't just see the Sunset Mountain of the Present; he saw the snowy wasteland of the Year 10,000 shift.
The broken pillar he had seen in the future... it was no longer broken. It was whole. Shaded by a tree that shouldn't have been there.
Because I protected it today, Li Fan realized, his breath catching. By bluffing Ma and saving the stone, I have changed its history in the future.
This was the true "Compound Karma." Every action he took in the Present to preserve his sect didn't just change his life—it evolved the ruins he would explore in his next jump.
If he made the sect strong now, the loot he would find in the year 10,000 would be exponentially more powerful.
"It's not just a jump," Li Fan whispered to the empty mountain. "It's a garden. And I have just planted the first seed."