Leaving Lushun City was easier than arriving.
To the world, Scholar Wei had simply faded.
A final medical report—backed by a low-grade illusion and a bribed physician who would forget the transaction within ten minutes—recorded that the Archivist had been transferred to a coastal sanatorium for terminal lung failure.
In a city preparing for martial law, sect occupation, and the arrival of the Young Sovereign, the disappearance of a sickly paper-pusher didn't even register.
Wei Yuan was gone.
He traveled west, then south, deliberately avoiding spirit-boat routes.
No flying swords.
No shortcuts.
He bought a slow mule and dressed as a salt merchant.
[Ripple Value: 0.0000]
[Status: Ghosting]
[Travel Log – Day 45]
You have avoided 3 Bandit Encounters and 1 Heroic Rescue by taking longer, muddier paths.
Wei Yuan patted the mule's neck.
Bandits are inconvenient, he thought calmly.
Heroes are catastrophic.
If he saved a merchant's daughter, he gained a wife he didn't want and a father-in-law with enemies.
If he killed bandits, their hidden master came knocking.
Mud was reasonable.
After two months, greenery surrendered to white.
The Silver Salt Expanse stretched to the horizon—crystalline, blinding, lifeless. The air was so dry it felt abrasive. Spirit energy was nearly absent, leached away by endless salt.
For most cultivators, this place was death.
For Wei Yuan—
He smiled.
[Environment Scan: Silver Salt Expanse]
[Spirit Density: 0.02 – Abysmal]
[Karmic Density: 0.001 – Excellent]
[Stillness Multiplier: 2.5×]
The System converts stillness into Qi, he reasoned.
External spirit density is irrelevant. In fact, it's protection.
A Golden Core cultivator would feel suffocated here.
They wouldn't stay an hour.
He surveyed for a week—not for water or shelter, but for boredom.
Eventually, he found it.
A perfectly flat, featureless plain, three hundred miles from the nearest settlement.
He began to dig.
Not with tools, but with vibration—liquefying the salt crust and sinking without leaving a trace.
Eighty feet down, he carved a dodecahedral chamber, each angle calculated to distribute pressure evenly. The walls were lined with lead-zinc alchemical plates—spiritual sense deadening, resonance absorbing.
"This will do."
[Long-Term Seclusion Zone Established]
[New Ability: Calculated Probability of Detection]
[Current Detection Chance: 0.000004%]
Wei Yuan sat at the center and opened a new ledger section.
Phase 3: Golden Core Transition
Golden Core formation fails because of Heart Devils—karma, regret, ambition.
I have none.
My only fear is being noticed.
He claimed his rewards.
[Daily Reward]
20 Hours Pure Qi × 2.5 = 50 Hours
1 Salt-Crystal Marrow
With the multiplier, progress accelerated brutally.
The final 8% of Foundation Establishment vanished in under a year.
Age: 44
Wei Yuan felt it—the Foundation Pillars glowing, Qi thickening like molten gold.
He stopped.
Golden Core birth creates a Heavenly Phenomenon.
Even here, it would be visible for hundreds of miles.
He needed cover.
The archives from Lushun provided the answer.
A Great Salt Storm—once every fifty years. Weeks of airborne crystal, static interference so violent it could drown out even a Nascent Soul's birth.
The next storm was due in three years.
Wei Yuan didn't hesitate.
For three years, he did not move.
He entered Hermit's Burrow, compressed Qi using the Nine-Fold Compression Seal, stacking power until it bordered on self-destruction.
The System continued to whisper.
[World Update]
Myriad Sword Gate has occupied Lushun City.
Lin Fan named Supreme Commander of the Southern Front.
[Update]
Lin Fan triggered the Sun-Swallowing Emperor's Tomb.
Volcanic eruption eliminated 5,000 Demonic Cultivators.
Title Granted: God of War.
Wei Yuan felt a chill.
If I had stayed… I'd have been logistics.
At the base of that volcano.
Lin Fan survives.
Everyone else becomes narrative texture.
He shut the thought down.
The salt did not care about gods.
Then—
Vibration.
Not footsteps.
Wind.
Above him, the Great Salt Storm began.
[Environmental Interference: Maximum]
[Detection Chance: 0.0000000001%]
"It's time."
Wei Yuan released the seal.
Energy collapsed inward.
Foundation Pillars shattered and spiraled. Pain erased all physical sensation, replacing it with pressure—grinding, compressing, annihilating.
He activated Heart of the Unmoved Rock.
His mind remained glass-smooth.
Above him, purple lightning—salt-charged—struck the ground.
Wei Yuan didn't resist it.
He guided it.
Clang.
The lightning hammered his forming Core.
Clang.
Space folded inward.
Clang.
[Spiritual Resonance Detected]
[Void-Dampening Array – Enhanced: Active]
The vortex slowed.
Gold solidified.
A perfect sphere formed—no cracks, no impurities.
[Golden Core Stage Achieved – Early]
[Core Quality: Grade 1]
[Longevity +500 Years | Total: 1,012 Years]
[New Passive: Echo of the Void]
Wei Yuan sagged against the chamber wall.
Golden Core.
An Old Ancestor.
Power enough to found sects.
He felt… nothing.
"Good," he murmured. "I've earned the right to watch."
He tested Echo of the Void.
[Destiny Seed Detected]
[Target: Lin Fan]
[Distance: 480 Miles]
[Status: Severely Wounded]
[Event]
Lin Fan fleeing Traitorous Elder.
Heading toward Silver Salt Expanse for 'Forbidden Healing Spring'.
Wei Yuan's exhaustion evaporated into fury.
"He's coming here?"
There was no spring.
He had surveyed this place for a year.
Which meant—
The world was improvising.
Creating destiny on the fly.
"Not this time."
"System. Cost to relocate this chamber five miles north. Now."
[Cost: 5,000 Stillness Essence]
"Do it. And spend the remaining 200 to create a fake healing spring five miles south. Explosive poison. Make it convincing."
As Lin Fan staggered into the salt flats, destiny pulled him south.
Toward a gift he would never understand.
Five miles away, a lead-lined dodecahedron vanished into deeper earth.
Wei Yuan exhaled.
Golden Core achieved.
First action taken?
Run.
He smiled faintly.
"Perfect. I'm improving."