Then his Second grandfather continued " As for the manpower deployment,"
"Patrol routes remain the same," Second Grandfather went on. "We'll rotate patrols to prevent pattern‑reading."
"No raids till now in the last two cycles."
Buying fields with spiritual soil isn't just about paperwork—it's a commitment to protect them, even in the middle of the night when beasts attack and danger creeps in.
Then he looked to Eldest Grandfather. A tiny nod passed between them.
"ok then let's end it here." Said his eldest grandfather.
He ended the report on a neat cadence—second grandfather's numbers, the harvest, the hunt. Chairs scraped, cousins whispered, the younger hunters traded grins about the Rank 1 boars they'd brought down. And under it all, Kaito kept still.
Kaito waited until the last footsteps faded from the hall.
He caught his grandfather's eye and gave the slightest tilt of his chin. Stay. His grandfather's brow lifted in understanding; he remained where he was, palms folded behind his back like a steel-sheathed wand.
When the last attendant closed the double doors, Kaito rose, crossed the room, and turned the lock with a firm click. The eldest and the second grandfather exchanged a look—curiosity, yes, but also something older and heavier; the instincts of men who'd kept a family standing through lean years and storms.
"I'm sorry to be abrupt," Kaito said, facing them squarely. "But before I speak freely… is there a place where no one can possibly hear us?"
The eldest grandfather's gaze sharpened. The second's mouth twitched with a dozen questions he did not ask. After a heartbeat, the eldest turned on his heel.
"Follow."
They led Kaito and his grandfather down a quiet corridor and behind a lacquered panel Kaito would've sworn was part of the wall itself. A narrow stair plunged into stone. Cool air, the scent of old cedar. At the bottom: an unadorned door, reinforced with metal ribs and fitted with a turnlock that sang faintly of spiritual threads.
Only the elders entered here. Always had. Right now, only three men in the world knew it—until Kaito stepped through.
The underground room was austere—no trophies, no ancestral tablets. Just a low table, three chairs, and a muted glow-strip in the ceiling. A place for decisions without witnesses.
"It's been a long time," Kaito's grandfather murmured, eyes moving across the bare walls with a wry fondness.
The eldest snorted. "If you remembered it better, you'd have visited it more."
Kaito's grandfather accepted the jab with a small smile and took a seat. The others sat as well. Kaito remained standing between them, steady and deliberate, feeling the weight of the moment settle on his shoulders.
He reached inside his inner coat and drew out a scroll case, dark and innocuous beneath the lamplight.
The eldest grandfather's eyes narrowed. The second leaned forward despite himself.
Kaito set the case on the table and slid it toward them. "Before we speak of anything else," he said quietly, "I want you to see this."
The eldest broke the seal and unrolled the scroll. The air seemed to tighten, as if the room itself had taken a breath. Symbols, neat as winter frost, unfurled across aged vellum—lines of cultivation guidance that glimmered faintly with restrained power. The title alone drew the eye like a blade's edge:
Celestial Ascension Codex.
The room went silent. The eldest grandfather's usually stern face softened into something Kaito had never seen—pure awe. He read the scroll quickly at first, then slowed, and finally stopped as he reached the end. The last lines were clear: this technique didn't stop at Rank 6 or 7—it went all the way to Rank 9.He closed the scroll and looked up. For a moment, he wasn't the family's elder, but a martial artist who had spent decades staring at a ceiling he could never break through.
"This…" His voice came out low, hoarse. "This reaches Rank 9."
The second grandfather swallowed. "Rank 9?" he breathed, as if the words themselves might vanish if he pushed too hard. "Brother—are you sure?"
The eldest's reply was a simple, grave nod.
Kaito's second grandfather surged to his feet, then caught himself on the table's edge, color high in his face. He darted a look at Kaito's grandfather, at the easy, infuriating little smirk there.
"How?" the eldest asked at last. Not suspicious—hungry. "Where did you get this?"
Kaito drew a breath. He met each of their eyes in turn. "We excavated an ancient ruin," he said, voice calm. "On our farmland. Buried behind the ridge."
Kaito told them just enough to let their minds picture it—the sealed alloy gate, the ancient array that had slept in silence for centuries, and the endless shelves kept intact by dim, fading light. Inside, there were manuals for warriors and for those who shaped the world in other ways—spiritual cooks, alchemists, blacksmiths, array masters. The knowledge was complete, covering entire cultivation paths as well as life-skill systems written by masters who had measured time differently from the people of today.
Alongside the manuals were the resources to match them—carefully stored spiritual herbs, rare ores, precious materials, and unique ingredients that were almost impossible to find in the current era. These weren't mere trinkets or curiosities; they were the exact components needed to practice and perfect the techniques described in the scrolls. Every path had its supporting resources, as if the creators had planned for their heirs to pick up exactly where they had left off.
And also, more than one martial path rose far beyond the limits most people believed possible. Not Rank 6, not Rank 7, but to Rank 9 itself. With the right discipline and use of these resources, Kaito told them everything.
He watched their faces change. The second grandfather's hands curled, uncurled. The eldest kept very still, the way men do when something long buried into the body threatens to come loose—hope, fear, the memory of hunger.
Kaito let them sit with it, as he had sat with it days earlier—with that bright, shaky feeling in the center of the chest that was not quite joy and not quite terror.
Then he said, "Also We didn't come empty-handed."
He slid a second bundle onto the table—this one a reinforced case, triple-latched and warded. He undid the catches and lifted the lid. Inside, nestled in shockfoam cradles, three vials, glass—clear, faintly luminous, each vial labeled in precise script.
"Potions," Kaito said. "Enough to move people, not just ideas."
"These are just samples"
"We have brought a total of, One thousand vials of S‑grade." He watched the second grandfather flinch at one thousand. S‑grade had been the stuff of favors and festivals in their history. "A hundred vials of EX‑grade. And ten vials of Mythic‑grade."
Silence filled the room again, but this time it was different. It wasn't the sharp stillness of being shocked—it was heavier, deeper. The kind of silence that comes when men start recalculating everything they thought they knew. In their minds, they were already tracing supply lines, figuring out where the flow of resources could speed up or slow down. They thought about the bottlenecks that had kept their progress limited for years. They pictured the long, slow struggle of bodies stuck at the same level, unable to break through. And most of all, they saw the faces of their children, grandchildren, and disciples—each one training under a sky that had always seemed to press down too low, a ceiling they had no way to break.
The second grandfather's voice came out rough. "I've… only ever heard rumors about EX," he said. "And Mythic—" He shook his head. "That's a storyteller's lie. You expect us to—"
"It isn't a lie," Kaito said gently. "And they're not the same family as S."
He set the three vials on the table—S, EX, Mythic—side by side. Under the lamplight the differences were subtle but undeniable. The S‑grade held a faint tint, the kind of color you only notice after staring. The EX looked cleaner, a clarity that made the glass around it seem dirty. The Mythic… was nothing and everything, a stillness so pure it made the skin prickle.
"I know, S-grade potions are already considered rare treasures in most markets. They give a big boost to strength and recovery, but their effects are limited compared to higher grades. EX-grade potions go far beyond that—they contain much purer energy, letting a martial artist break through bottlenecks faster and recover from injuries far more effectively. Mythic-grade potions stand at the very top. They carry an extremely dense and refined form of spiritual energy that can greatly increase a person's power in a short time. But they are also harder for the body to absorb, meaning only higher-ranked martial artists can use them properly without wasting their full potential." continued Kaito.