They settled in a hollow beneath a massive, glowing root. With no healing arts among them, they could only bind Kang Mao's wounds with strips of torn cloth. Liang worked with quiet focus, his hands steady. Gen watched from a mossy stone, his sharp gaze taking in every detail. Lorel sat a little further back, head slightly bowed but listening to every word. Chubbs was a silent, solid presence beside her.
Kang Mao began, his voice tight but clear. "The bad blood between my family and the Li is older than any of us. To understand, you must understand the Four Kingdoms as they are now. Heaven's Gate, ruled by the last of the Royal Jou line. The Crimson Plateau, led by the Doom College. The Bamboo Marches, where my family holds sway. And Chesshaven, the domain of the Li."
He took a careful breath. "They were not always four. Long ago, they were one land. A united realm. Then an event happened—something lost to common histories, whispered in family archives. It shattered the union. It broke the one into four."
Gen's brow furrowed. "So the Li are hounding you over some ancient crack in a map?"
"It is more immediate," Kang Mao said, his expression grim. "Prince Jou Si's siblings. All three died under… mysterious circumstances. Poison, a 'training accident,' a sudden spiritual deviation. Each death followed a meeting with one of the other great families—one with the Li, one with the Doom College, one with the Kangs."
Liang nodded slowly, his face somber. "The rumors in the capital… they say the accidents were not accidents. That one of the Four Families is cleansing the royal line. The Kang name is the one most often whispered."
"I am no assassin," Kang Mao stated, meeting their eyes. "I have no proof of my family's innocence, nor evidence of another's guilt. Only my own word."
Gen studied him, then a brief, sharp grin appeared. "Your word's enough. You can't even kill a bug, let alone a prince."
A weary, genuine smile touched Kang Mao's lips. "You have a high opinion of my martial prowess."
"It's not about prowess," Gen said. "It's about intent. You don't have the smell of a backstabber."
Kang Mao leaned back gingerly. "The Tower of Wonder is at the heart of it now. It sits in unclaimed land, a mystery that answers to no kingdom. Its secrets, its power… it is the greatest prize on the continent. A reunification of the Four Kingdoms, or even a firm alliance of three, would be enough to claim it outright. Control the Tower, and you control the destiny of all."
On the periphery, Chubbs leaned close to Lorel, his voice a low rumble. "My lady… in the alleys of Stonewatch, I heard other stories. Old tavern tales. They said the Kang family… they were the ones who struck the blow that broke the first kingdom. That they reached for power that was not theirs to hold. Could the Tower have been the thing they reached for?"
Lorel kept her eyes on the moss between her feet. The web of history and ambition felt vast and suffocating. "We have too little of the past to draw clean lines," she murmured, dismissing the speculation. Her mind was occupied with the fresh sting of Li Zhan's words and the hollow space where Gen's defense should have been.
Gen clapped his hands together. "Enough history. We're in the Tower now. The Li are hunting you. That makes them our problem. We hunt together. Stronger that way."
It was a statement, not a request. Liang nodded. Kang Mao bowed his head. Chubbs grunted. Lorel stood, a silent, distant assent.
***
The next hours were a tense exercise in survival. They moved as a unit, Lorel holding the rear. When a Second Wheel beast—a serpent of coiled shadow and thorns—struck from the canopy, Liang acted. **Kalash of Elements** appeared before him. From its mouth erupted a crackling net of **white electricity** that snapped across the creature's body. The beast convulsed, its muscles seizing, pinned in place by the stinging energy.
Gen shot forward, his steps aided by a push of wind. His bamboo rod whipped out, striking the stunned serpent's skull with a sound like splitting stone. From twenty paces back, a thin beam of pink light from Lorel's **Unbound Lantern** lanced through the air, piercing its core. It dissolved into smoke.
They worked with grim efficiency. Liang controlled the field with his Kalash. Gen delivered the shattering blows. Lorel provided the finishing strikes, her face a mask of detached focus. Chubbs and the wounded Kang Mao guarded the flanks.
One by one, their pendants glowed. Liang's lit two segments after they trapped a crystalline boar in a cage of earth summoned from his Kalash. Kang Mao, with their support, saw a single segment shimmer to life. Chubbs, with a desperate, roaring charge, managed to land a crushing blow on a wounded Flaming Moon Tiger, and his pendant glowed with one faint segment.
Lorel's pendant, already holding one blue segment, gained two more after she severed the spirit-strings of a shrieking wind-hawk with a sustained, humming beam from her **Supremacy Sword**. Her technique was flawless and cold.
Only Gen's pendant remained a dull, five-wedged grey. He had fought in every clash but ceded every final blow. A stubborn vow had taken root: his light would not be borrowed.
"This is absurd," Liang said, wiping sweat from his brow. "We've fought the Bear-Dragon, the Icy Crown Spider, the Tiger… what Infant beast could possibly be left? Unless a being as big as the sky drops from the canopy, we've cleaned this place out."
"I'm not a glutton," Gen shot back, his eyes scanning the shadows. "Shut up."
Kang Mao, leaning against a tree, managed a weak smile. "You two… I've missed this. The bickering."
Both Gen and Liang jerked their heads toward him, identical looks of exaggerated disgust on their faces. "So strange," they said in near unison, then turned and walked ahead.
From the back, Chubbs let out a low chuckle. "Interesting bunch, to say the least."
Lorel watched Gen's back, the familiar set of his shoulders. "He has a knack for gathering people," she said softly. "Even when he's pushing them away."
Chubbs's chuckle faded. He looked at her profile, at the quiet resolve that had replaced her timidity. "Only my lady's grace is keeping this caravan from flying apart. You're the mortar between these cracked bricks."
A small, genuine smile touched Lorel's lips, the cold knot in her chest softening. She understood what he meant, and she appreciated him for seeing it. "I'm happy to have you around, Chubbs."
The words, simple and sincere, did not land lightly. They struck Chubbs with the force of a revelation. In his life as a thief and a survivor, praise had been for a job done, a threat made. No one had ever been *happy* just to have *him* around. Not for his skills or his bulk, but for his presence. It wasn't love—it was something rarer. Recognition. For the first time, someone saw past the useful fists and the flattering tongue to the person underneath, and found him worthy.
A solid warmth spread through his chest. In that moment, his loyalty—a pragmatic choice, a habit, a fear—crystallized into something unbreakable. *Protect her,* he vowed, the thought etching itself into his heart. *Not because I have to, but because she sees me. To do that, I need to be strong. Not just loud. Strong.*
"My lady," he said, his voice uncharacteristically grave, all theatricality gone. "One day, I'll become so strong that the likes of Li Zhan and his snake's tongue will never dare get close to you. They won't even look your way."
Lorel's smile widened, touched by the ferocity of his loyalty. "Good luck," she said. "But don't take his words to heart. They're just poison meant to weaken from within."
Chubbs placed a fist over his heart, the gesture solemn. "This heart's too stubborn for poison, my lady. And now it's got proper armor on it."
***
A deep, resonant *thud* shuddered through the earth. Then another. The tremor was followed by a distant chaos—roaring energy, shattering trees, a harmonic drone that vibrated in their bones.
They moved as one toward the sound.
They emerged at the edge of devastation. A river had been torn from its bed. In the center of the churning basin stood the source.
It was a creature of nightmare and blasphemous grandeur: a colossal, androgynous statue of clay and obsidian, alive. It stood thirty feet tall. From its torso erupted *thousands* of writhing, multi-jointed limbs of stone and shadow. Its face was a smooth oval with a single, pulsing violet slit. This was no Infant. This was an **Adult Milky Beast**, a young one. The **False Deity**.
Arrayed around the basin were the strongest of their generation. **Baili** floated upon his **Cloud Juggernaut**, analyzing with icy contempt. **Ning** stood serene, hand on his sheathed sword. **Juxian** was poised, his face alight with focus.
The girl from the Doom College, **Dou Yi**, was shrouded in a personal micro-tempest. She used **Shidow** to gather the wild forest winds, spinning them into a visible, shimmering vortex of compressed air that swirled around her like a protective, cutting cloak. With subtle manipulation of light, she bent the rays around her form until she seemed to flicker at the edges, a semi-invisible phantom.
The False Deity moved. A hundred arms swept forward in a crushing tide. A cultivator met it with a brilliant **Jingdao** shield. Twenty stone fists struck as one.
***BOOM-CRACK-SHATTER!***
The shield exploded. The cultivator was hurled through the air like rubble.
On the bank, Gen felt a fierce, wild grin split his face. All the frustration, the grey pendant, the political whispers, Lorel's quiet distance—it all burned away in the pure, clarifying fire of an impossible challenge.
*This is it,* he thought, eyes locked on the thousand-armed titan. *Not an Infant. An Adult. The strongest thing here.*