The flight through the night was a silent glide over a dark world. Gen stood on Madame Su's shimmering disc, the wind pulling at his clothes. The hollow quiet inside him was still there, but it felt smaller now, pushed back by the buzz in his veins.
Then, as the sky lightened ahead, he saw it.
The Tower of Wonder.
Up close, it was not a needle. It was a mountain made by gods. A cylinder of seamless white stone, wider than ten Jade Palaces, shooting straight up until its top vanished into the morning clouds. It glowed from within, a soft pulse like a sleeping heart. A river of people, tiny as ants, flowed in and out of archways at its base.
"It's… huge," Gen said, the words feeling weak.
Beside him, Liang stared, his mouth slightly open. He blinked, as if trying to count the endless stream of cultivators. "I can feel them," he murmured. "So many. The air is thick with it. Like standing in a field of torches. I don't know any of them."
Madame Su guided the disc down to a crowded landing field. "It has been nine months since the Immortal fell," she said, her voice steady over the growing noise from below. "In our world, that is time enough for saplings to become trees and for trees to be cut down. People have changed. This time of year makes it plain." She glanced at Gen. "You may see faces you know. Do not be surprised if they are not the people you remember."
Gen shook his head. "I'm not blind. I'll know them."
Liang nudged him, a grin playing on his lips. "What about Lorel? You'd spot her, right?"
Gen forced a smirk. "Who's Lorel?" he said, like the name was from a half-remembered story. But inside, his thought was clear. *She'll be the same. Quiet. Staying out of the way.* He didn't think she was weak. He just couldn't picture her here, in this roaring, hungry crowd. The Damocles in the sky were his fire, his reason to fight. He had never seen that fire in her eyes.
They landed and joined the stream pouring into a giant arch. The noise inside was a solid wall—shouts, laughter, arguments, and beneath it all, the deep, unsettling hum of hundreds of cultivation auras pressing against each other. The lobby was a vast, round hall of the same glowing white stone. In the very center was a wide, flat platform set into the floor. There were no stairs, no ramps, no doors in the smooth walls that curved up into shadow.
"Look," Gen said, pointing. "How do you go up?"
Madame Su scanned the space, her brow furrowed. "I do not know. I have never been here. Its ways are part of its mystery."
"Maybe it's the first test," Liang said, squinting at the platform. "Figuring out how to start."
"Gen! Liang! Here!"
Kang Mao pushed through the crowd toward them. He looked a bit leaner, his fine robes less flashy than before. He stopped before them, ignoring the dirty looks from a few who recognized the Kang colors.
"I knew you'd make it!" Kang Mao said, his voice an eager rush. "That's why it's called the Tower of *Wonder*! The ways up aren't just stairs! They say each one is a trial itself!"
"We're good," Liang said, taken aback by his energy. Gen gave a short nod, his eyes still locked on the mysterious platform.
Kang Mao leaned in close, dropping his voice to a whisper. "So… your Jingdao. Is it…?"
Gen's eyes went wide. He slapped a hand over his own mouth, then made a frantic cutting motion across his throat. Liang, in a panic, lunged and clumsily clamped a hand over Kang Mao's mouth, pulling him into a headlock. "Quiet! Are you trying to paint a target on his back?" Liang hissed in his ear.
Kang Mao wrestled free, smoothing his robes, his face red. "Right, sorry! Is it at least… there?"
Gen relaxed a fraction. He gave a small, sharp nod. "It's there. Sleeping. But the poison is gone. I'm not dying anymore." He said it with a flatness that held more weight than any shout.
Kang Mao's face softened with what looked like real relief. He opened his mouth again, as if to say something else, something important, but the air around them went cold.
"Mao."
Kang Hao stood a few paces away, a pillar of silent disapproval. He did not look at Gen or Liang. His gaze, hard as river stone, was only for his brother. "Stop wasting time with dead-end remnants. The Kang look forward, not back. Come."
The command left no room. Kang Mao's shoulders slumped. He offered Gen and Liang a quick, apologetic jerk of his head, then scurried to his brother's side.
As Kang Hao turned to leave, his eyes—cold, flat, and utterly dismissive—flicked over Gen for less than a heartbeat. It wasn't hatred. It was the look you give a stain on the road.
The brothers were swallowed by the crowd.
"I don't like him," Gen muttered, the brief look leaving a bad taste. "Can't say why."
"That's Kang Hao. The eldest," Liang said quietly. " He doesn't seem… cruel. Just… made of different stuff. All hard edges."
"That," Madame Su said, her voice low, "is the level you face. Did you feel his aura? The weight of it?"
Both boys nodded. It had been like standing next to a cliff.
They turned back to the crowd, listening to the fragments of conversation buzzing around them.
"—gotta reach the top floor!"
"You're a fool. Unless you're Wujian, don't even dream of the fiftieth level."
"Well, Wujian's the Tower Master's disciple. It's different for him."
Gen's attention was pulled by a shift in the crowd near another arch. People weren't scrambling away, but they were gently parting, making a lane. Something, or someone, was coming through.
Curious, Gen tapped Liang and they both leaned, peering over shoulders to see.
And then he saw her.
He froze.
It wasn't the quiet, hesitant shadow from his memories. The young woman walking into the hall moved with a calm, grounded surety. Her twilight hair was tied back, showing a face that had lost its softness, all clean lines and a quiet focus. She wore simple travel robes, but an aura hung around her—not loud or blazing, but deep and still, like a pool that reflected a vast sky. A broad, earnest-looking young man followed her like a loyal guard.
It was Lorel. But it wasn't.
Before the shock could fully settle, a stranger bounded into the space beside her. A young man with a bright, open face and a jar around his neck. He was talking to Lorel with an enthusiastic volume, waving his hands as if afraid the noise of the hall would swallow his words. She was laughing at something he said, a real, unguarded sound Gen had rarely heard from her. Next to her, a round-faced, solid-looking boy hovered protectively. Further back, Gen's eyes picked out the sharp, cold silhouette of Baili, and the calm, watchful presence of Ning.
Lorel had… changed. More than he could ignore. Her form had matured, curves where there had been none, a woman's bearing replacing the girl's slouch.
For a single, strange instant, Gen thought of walking over. Not for any reason. They had seen each other. It was the normal thing to do. But the scene—her laugh, the strange young man, the cluster of powerful auras around her—made his stomach twist. It felt wrong. She was in the middle of everything, not on the edges where he'd left her.
Liang nudged him hard, a knowing smirk on his face. "You're not jealous, right, Gen?"
Gen shoved him away, as if brushing off a fly. His face felt warm. "Jealous? Don't be stupid. She's older. Looks it, too. Why would I be jealous? I'm here to climb this tower, not play your games." He turned his back on the scene and shouldered his way deeper into the crowd, toward the central platform, needing to move.
Madame Su, watching from a few steps behind, let out a soft, weary breath. She had seen Lorel. The girl had become a young woman who could stand straight in a storm of auras without being blown over. She saw the change in her, the new strength.
She also saw Gen's reaction. The stiffening, the quick turn, the hot denial. He felt nothing for her as a wife, that was clear as day. But the disturbance was there. It was the shock of a assumption shattered, of a symbol from his old life suddenly alive and transformed in the heart of his new one, surrounded by people he didn't know.
*He is still too young,* she thought, a familiar sadness touching her heart. *Too wrapped in his own pain and pride to see the person she has become. His father's will ties them, but only time—and growing up—can build a bridge across that gap.* For now, she could only hope that one day, Gen would see past the girl he'd ignored to the woman she was becoming.