The white thread of energy sank straight into Shawn's forehead and vanished.
Nobody moved.
Nobody screamed.
The underground chamber remained silent. The golden platform continued emitting its dull glow, and the rows of arrays hummed steadily across the floor.
The servants stationed at the secondary boundary pillars stared at the platform, waiting for a blast of heat or a shockwave that never came.
One of them cleared his throat, glancing uneasily around the dark chamber.
"...Is that it?"
Morgan didn't call him out for breaking protocol.
He couldn't.
His eyes remained fixed on Shawn's chest.
He had spent his entire life watching people awaken, waiting for the sudden spike in blood pressure, the rupture of weak veins, or the violent thrashing of a soul struggling to contain raw power.
But Shawn's body simply accepted the energy and remained perfectly still.
The thread didn't even leave a ripple across his skin.
It was simply gone.
Morgan's fingers twitched against his robes.
"...Where did it go?"
Boulder didn't answer.
The old man wasn't even looking at the platform anymore.
His head was tilted back, his eyes fixed on the heavy stone ceiling above them, listening to something far beyond the rock and the foundations of the manor.
Then a second thread of light appeared.
It didn't punch through the roof.
It didn't flash against the protective wards Morgan had spent a fortune constructing.
It passed through thirty feet of solid stone and layers of silver inscriptions as though they were nothing more than mist. It drifted across the cold air before slipping into Shawn's chest.
Then came a third.
Then five more.
Then a dozen.
They arrived from every corner of the chamber, silent and completely indifferent to the laws of cultivation.
Morgan spread out his divine sense across the platform, trying to catch the energy, trying to understand how Shawn was refining it.
His breath caught in his throat.
"...He isn't moving his core."
"He doesn't have one to move," Boulder replied, his voice dropping into a low, rough murmur.
"Then why isn't he bloating? His meridians should be shredding themselves right now!"
Morgan stepped closer, his eyes widening.
"Look at his pulse. It isn't even accelerating. He isn't refining a single drop of this."
"He doesn't need to refine it," Boulder said.
"Look closer."
A normal cultivator had to draw World Energy into their meridians, struggle against its wild nature, and force it into submission before making it their own.
Shawn wasn't struggling against anything.
The white threads simply slipped into his body because there was no resistance left within him.
His new body resembled dry, cracked earth beneath a steady rain.
It wasn't choosing to absorb the water.
It was simply allowing every empty space to be filled.
Outside the manor, the wind died without warning.
The leaves on the ancient oaks surrounding the courtyard no longer rustled.
They became completely still.
The birds nesting beneath the eaves fell silent, and even the insects hidden within the tall grass ceased their song.
It wasn't the silence that came before a predator.
It was the absolute stillness of a world holding its breath.
High above the estate, the grey clouds drifting across the blue sky simply stopped moving.
On the outer wall, one of the Sovereign Manifest guards suddenly lifted his head.
His hand instinctively settled upon the hilt of his blade as he spread his senses toward the distant tree line.
Nothing.
Nothing was breathing out there.
The air had become strangely thick, heavy, and faintly sweet.
"Sir?" a younger guard called quietly from the lower platform.
"The arrays..."
"Quiet," the senior guard snapped without turning around.
"Raise the banners. Activate the boundary shield. Immediately."
"But there isn't an enemy..."
"I said activate it!"
An enormous pale blue dome slowly rose above Vonte Manor, sealing the entire estate beneath its protective barrier.
The guards had no idea what was happening beneath their feet.
They simply assumed Lord Morgan was attempting to break through another major bottleneck.
Protecting his breakthrough was their duty.
None of them realized that the true storm was gathering hundreds of meters below the ground.
Back inside the laboratory, the air had grown so dense Morgan could barely draw a full breath.
Every trace of naturally existing World Energy within the chamber was being pulled relentlessly toward the center of the platform.
Morgan hurried over to inspect the monitoring arrays.
The silver inscriptions carved into the stones had faded to grey.
The stones themselves had gone completely cold.
"The room is empty," Morgan whispered, his hands trembling slightly as he stepped back from Shawn.
"Boulder... there's nothing left in the air."
"Every array we built has been drained."
"He's still drawing it in," Boulder replied.
"From where?"
Morgan's voice rose slightly.
"There isn't any World Energy left in the mountain."
Before Boulder could answer, a heavy, muffled thud echoed through the stone walls.
It wasn't thunder.
It wasn't machinery.
It was a deep, subterranean groan that vibrated through the entire chamber and into the soles of their feet.
Outside the boundary shield, the clouds had turned black.
They weren't drifting in from the north.
They weren't approaching from the south.
They were forming directly above the manor itself, slowly revolving in a massive circle around a single point.
Invisible rivers of World Energy descended from the upper atmosphere, twisting together into a vast funnel aimed directly at Shawn's chest.
Boulder slowly closed his eyes.
"...You have a lot to explain to the main branch after all if this."