The following night, the Huo Clan's high command tightened security on the eastern territories. Fearing that the exposed spirit stone veins would draw more than just iron-fanged wolves—perhaps opportunistic scavengers from the rival Lin Clan or rogue cultivators—rotating watches were established.
Huo Chen drew the third shift. The "dead watch"—four hours of bone-deep silence stretching from midnight until the first grey streaks of dawn. He was stationed alone at an observation post a few li from the eastern gate, a small wooden tower that overlooked the primary transport path.
He arrived with nothing but his standard gray robes and his short sword. To any passerby, he looked like a weary disciple resigned to a boring night. He settled against a sturdy wooden support beam, his eyes scanning the darkened treeline. Once certain no one was watching, he closed his eyes.
Deep within his dantian, his Earth Clone stirred. His clone materialized behind the tower's base, perfectly shielded from the gate guards' distant line of sight. It emerged like a shadow detaching from a wall and departed eastward without a sound.
The experience was seamless. Huo Chen sat in the tower while simultaneously running through the darkness. Two bodies, one mind. Both experiences felt equally real—the cold wood against his back and the night air rushing past his face as his clone ran.
His clone moved at full speed, covering the eighteen li in under fifteen minutes. "Finally, time to get a hold of better resources. No more scraping by on the clan's scraps." His clone arrived at the mine's jagged entrance while the moon was still high.
It slipped into the marked secondary fissure where Elder Rong had placed the yellow array beacon. Inside, the air was heavy with the weight of the mountain. His clone knelt at the exposed section of wall, pressing its palm against the stone.
Huo Chen could feel the dense resonance of the spirit stones just beneath the surface through both bodies. "So close. So many." With precise earth manipulation, his clone focused on the density of the rock. No pickaxe—those would leave marks, evidence. Instead, it used its innate affinity to "nudge" the surrounding stone, coaxing it to release its treasures.
The first stone came free with a soft grinding sound. His clone's hand closed around it, and Huo Chen felt a surge of satisfaction so intense it nearly broke his meditation back in the tower. A mid-grade spirit stone. His first. His clone held it up, and even in the darkness of the tunnel, the stone's ochre light was fierce and beautiful.
Fist-sized, radiating pure earth Qi that made the air itself feel heavier. A low chuckle escaped his lips—the clone's lips, his lips. The sound echoed softly in the tunnel. "Finally," he murmured through his clone, voice barely above a whisper. "After all these years of nothing." His clone worked carefully, extracting four more stones. Each one felt like a small victory, a reclamation of what the world had denied him.
They were beautiful, perfect crystals that pulsed with concentrated energy. Five mid-grade spirit stones. More wealth than a branch disciple could ever see in a lifetime. His clone secured them in a makeshift pouch formed from the hem of its robes. "This is just the beginning. The vein runs deep. There will be more opportunities."
His clone retraced its route, moving swiftly through the night. When it reached the observation post, it dissolved back into his dantian in a swirl of warm energy. The five stones appeared in his sleeve pouch as if they had been there all along. Huo Chen opened his eyes in the tower, feeling the weight of them against his arm.
His heart was racing—not from exertion, but from pure satisfaction. These weren't low-grade stones meant for Qi Refining disciples. These were mid-grade stones, resources meant for Foundation Establishment cultivators. For someone at his level, attempting to absorb one directly would be like trying to swallow a mountain.
The meridians would shatter under the pressure. "But I'm not like other disciples. I have something to reply on". Huo Chen selected three of the stones and arranged them in a small triangular array on the wooden floorboards.
He stared at them for a moment, admiring the way they glowed in the darkness. He extended his hand, channeling the thinnest possible thread of his Qi to tap into the first stone. The influx was immediate and immense.
Even with his restrained contact, the purity of the energy made his bones hum. It felt like liquid fire rushing through his arm, dense and overwhelming. The pressure in his meridians rose instantly, reaching the point of pain within seconds.
His clone within his dantian activated, absorbing the initial shock and grounding the excess energy. Even with this help, he could only manage to absorb roughly one percent of the stone's total reserves before his body reached its limit. One percent. But one percent of a mid-grade stone is worth more than an entire low-grade stone.
He withdrew the connection, his breath coming in short bursts. The stone remained nearly undiminished, still glowing with fierce internal fire. He repeated the process with the second and third stones, drawing minute portions of Qi from each.
It was slow, careful work. By the time the moon began to set, he had integrated energy equivalent to a week of intensive meditation with normal resources. The gap to the fifth layer—the threshold where his Qi would become dense enough to nourish his bones—had narrowed significantly.
He could feel his foundation becoming more solid, more grounded. "Worth every risk." The remaining two stones he stored in a concealed inner pocket. His private reserve. Insurance for future breakthroughs, or leverage if he ever needed to buy his way out of trouble.
As the first cold light of dawn touched the horizon, Huo Chen rose and stretched. A mild mental fatigue lingered from hours of maintaining the dual-awareness link, but it was nothing compared to the satisfaction of success. The watch had passed without incident.
The mine remained quiet, the path empty. To the rest of the Huo Clan, he was just another disciple who had sat in a tower for four hours. He returned to the compound at the end of his shift, walking with the steady, unremarkable gait of a tired worker.
But inside, triumph burned bright. "The system works. My clone gives me access to resources I could never touch otherwise. This is my path to greatness." He touched the stones in his sleeve one last time before entering the gate. The path to the fifth layer was no longer a dream. It was an inevitability.