The journey to the Emerald Capital was not a flight of soaring swords or shimmering carriages. For Han Feng, it was a slow, painful crawl through the red dust of the lowlands. His Dantian felt like it was filled with jagged glass, a constant reminder of Envoy Verde's casual strike. Every time he tried to circulate his Qi, the crack in the Purification Mirror—now tucked against his chest—throbbed with a dull, rhythmic ache.
"You're walking like a man with a broken spine," Lin Xiruo remarked, her voice softened by a rare hint of concern. She had traded her snow-white sect robes for the rough, grey burlap of a traveling mercenary. Her silver eyes were hidden behind a wide-brimmed straw hat.
"My spine is fine," Han Feng rasped, wiping a mixture of sweat and grime from his forehead. "It's my pride that's dragging on the ground."
"Good," a cheerful voice piped up from behind them. Su Yue was leading a pack-mule laden with dried meat and basic medicinal herbs. "Pride is heavy. We travel faster without it."
They had reached the Great Southern Road, a vein of packed earth that stretched toward the horizon, choked with the traffic of the Empire. Unlike the mountain peaks, where the air was thin and cold, the lowlands were a humid pressure cooker of humanity.
Thousands of mortals moved in long, swaying caravans—merchants, peasants fleeing drought, and laborers bound for the Imperial mines. Over them hung the "Imperial Canopy," a low-hanging layer of toxic green mist that acted as both a barrier and a collar. It kept the mortals weak, their lungs perpetually scarred, making them easy to rule.
By noon, they came across a scene of quiet desperation. A merchant caravan had been forced to the side of the road. Three wooden wagons sat with shattered axles, and the oxen were lowing in distress, their hides covered in weeping green sores—Miasma Rot.
A group of guards, little more than thugs in rusted leather, stood by, looking bored. In the center of the wreckage, a young girl, no older than ten, sat in the dirt, cradling the head of an elderly man. The man's breath came in ragged, wet rattles.
"Please," the girl begged as Han Feng's group approached. "A drop of Clean-Water? My grandfather... he breathed too much of the Green-Mist when the axle broke."
One of the guards spat a glob of dark phlegm. "Save your breath, brat. The Old Man's a 'Grey-Lung' now. Unless you've got a hundred Spirit Stones for a Low-Grade Purification Pill, he's fertilizer by sundown."
Han Feng stopped. He looked at the old man's face. It was the same grey, ash-like color as the peasants of his own home village.
"Han Feng, don't," Lin Xiruo whispered, her hand touching his shoulder. "If you use the Mirror, the resonance will alert any Imperial scouts within ten miles. We are fugitives."
Han Feng looked at the girl's tear-streaked face. Then he looked at the cracked Mirror beneath his robes.
The strength to stay clean while submerged in the dirt, the Mad Alchemist's words echoed in his mind.
"I don't need the Mirror to be a cultivator," Han Feng said.
He didn't pull out the artifact. Instead, he knelt by the old man and took his hand. He channeled a tiny, needle-thin thread of his Stage 4 Crystalline Qi. It was painful—the crack in his Dantian flared—but he controlled it with a precision he had never used before.
He didn't try to "blast" the corruption away. He treated the old man's meridians like a delicate silk tapestry. He used his Qi to gently "hook" the green toxins and pull them into his own body.
"What are you doing?" Su Yue hissed, dropping the mule's lead. "You're absorbing his rot!"
"I'm filtering it," Han Feng grunted.
His own face turned a sickly shade of emerald. His veins began to bulge. But as the toxin entered his body, it hit the "Sanitized Zone" around his heart—the Void-Filter Heart concept he had glimpsed during his enlightenment.
Within his own body, the toxin didn't destroy him. It was crushed by the sheer density of his Crystalline Qi, stripped of its malice, and expelled through his breath as a harmless, white vapor.
The old man's eyes fluttered open. The grey tint left his skin. He gasped, his lungs suddenly clear for the first time in years.
"Grandfather!" the girl cried, throwing her arms around him.
The guards straightened up, their boredom replaced by a sharp, predatory greed. "Hey! You're a healer? An Alchemist?"
Han Feng stood up, his legs shaking slightly from the effort. "I'm just a traveler."
"A traveler who can cure Miasma Rot with a touch?" A man stepped out from behind the lead wagon. He was portly, dressed in stained yellow silks, with a mustache that looked like a pair of dead caterpillars. "I am Master Zhou, head of the 'Small-Profit' Trading Company. My wagons are broken, my oxen are dying, and my best Alchemist ran off with my mistress three days ago."
Master Zhou looked Han Feng up and down. "You look like you're heading for the Capital for the Great Refining Competition. But you also look like you're one step away from collapsing. How about a deal?"
"We aren't looking for a job," Lin Xiruo said, her hand tightening on her straw hat.
"Oh, it's not a job, it's a 'Cultural Exchange'!" Zhou cackled. "I have a permit to enter the Capital's Western Gate—a merchant's pass. It allows me to bypass the Qi-Scanning Pillars. If you help me get my goods to the market and keep my workers from dying of the rot, I'll hide you in the back of the wagon. No questions asked."
Han Feng looked at the horizon. The green mist of the Capital was visible now, a towering wall of energy that would surely detect a fugitive like him.
"Why help us?" Han Feng asked. "You could just report us to the guards and collect a bounty."
Master Zhou leaned in close, the scent of stale garlic and cheap wine hitting Han Feng's nose. "Because the Empire's bounty is a one-time payment. A man who can purify the rot with his bare hands... that's a lifetime of profit. I'm a businessman, boy. I prefer the long game."
For the next three days, Han Feng worked.
He didn't practice with the sword. He didn't meditate on the Mirror. Instead, he spent his hours moving from worker to worker, animal to animal, pulling the green filth out of their bodies.
By the second night, he noticed something strange. The crack in his Dantian wasn't getting worse; it was starting to smooth over. By using his Qi as a filter rather than a hammer, he was "polishing" his own foundations.
The Void-Filter Heart wasn't a technique he could learn from a book; it was a state of being. He was learning that the more he cleansed others, the more "room" his own spirit had to grow.
"You're changing," Su Yue said as she sat by the campfire, handing him a bowl of thin watery soup. "Your aura... it's not as sharp as it was in the Sect. It's becoming... quiet."
"Quiet is good," Han Feng replied. "In the Sect, I was a fire. Everyone saw me coming. Now, I want to be the water that flows under the ice."
However, the road was never truly safe.
On the final night before they reached the Capital's outskirts, the camp went unnaturally silent. Even the crickets, which usually chirped a discordant, toxic rhythm, had vanished.
Han Feng stood up, his hand sliding inside his robe to touch the cracked Mirror. He felt a cold, oily sensation in the air—the same feeling he had felt before the Shadow Guard attacked, but much, much denser.
"Master Zhou," Han Feng whispered, waking the merchant. "Get the workers under the wagons. Now."
"What? Is it bandits?" Zhou stammered, clutching his money-pouch.
"No," Han Feng said, looking into the darkness where the road met the forest. "It's something much hungrier."
A figure emerged from the shadows. It wasn't a man. It was a Miasma-Beast—a wolf that had been mutated by centuries of Imperial runoff. It was the size of a carriage, its fur composed of matted, black needles, and its eyes glowing with a pulsating, emerald light.
But it wasn't the wolf that worried Han Feng. It was the man sitting on its back.
The man was dressed in the tattered remains of an Alchemist's robe, but his skin was a bruised purple, and his jaw was missing, replaced by a series of clicking, silver gears.
"So..." the clicking voice echoed, "the merchant found a 'Pure-Seed.' Master Zhou, you really do have an eye for quality. But the Ghouls of the Emerald Palace have been looking for this particular boy for a long time."
Han Feng stepped forward, his heart beating with a steady, calm rhythm. He was Stage 4. The Ghoul was Stage 6.
He didn't draw his sword. He didn't call on the light. He simply opened his palms.
"I hope you've said your prayers, Ghoul," Han Feng said, a faint, crystalline glow appearing at the tips of his fingers. "Because I'm about to wash you away."