Chapter 28
One ascends, one refines.
After a long battle, on the other side of the field, Ling Xu stood silently beside her team's flagpole—the one she had successfully secured—feeling something strange happening within her chest.
It was not the Cancer Plague that rested comfortably within her consciousness, but rather a warm, steady pulse, like a heartbeat that had suddenly shifted into a faster, stronger, fuller rhythm, and when she looked down, she saw a golden light seeping out from the gaps of her robe, from the gaps of her skin, from the gaps of her bones—a light that did not hurt, yet could not be stopped, a light that came from the 51 fragments of the Humanity Star residing in her chest and the other 800,000 fragments she had painstakingly gathered, all spinning, pulsing, trembling, and then exploding.
Not a destructive explosion, but a constructive one—one that restructured every strand of Qi in her body, elevating her from Eighteenth-Level First Star to Twenty-Third-Level Supernatural Star within seconds, like a flower blooming in a recording sped up a thousand times.
"Congratulations, Miss Lin Xue," said the female team leader sincerely, though her eyes carried a hint of envy she could not hide.
"Your advancement is truly... spectacular."
Ling Xu did not respond.
She merely clenched her fists, feeling the new flow of Qi coursing through her veins with a strength she had never imagined before, and when she counted the number of fragments now residing in her chest, her eyes widened.
55,000,000 fragments of the Humanity Star—exactly as she had once heard from Huan Zheng about the threshold of the Twenty-Third-Level Supernatural Star.
"Fifty-five million," she whispered to herself, her voice barely audible amid the crowd that was beginning to recover from its shock.
"I didn't expect... it to happen this quickly..."
Meanwhile, beneath the shade of the artificial cherry blossom tree, Huan Zheng lay down once again on the lush grass, feeling the same vibration slowly spreading within him—but unlike the sharp surge experienced by Ling Xu, he responded only with a faint smile.
Within his chest, 8,888,888,888,888,888 fragments of the Humanity Star pulsed gently, a number that nearly reached the highest threshold of the Thirty-Second-Level Supernatural Star, placing him just one step away from the gateway to the First Level of the Bright Sky Realm.
While Ling Xu was still surrounded by sect envoys competing for her attention—congratulations and recruitment offers coming like a swarm of flies drawn to honey—Huan Zheng remained lying calmly beneath the artificial sakura tree.
His eyes were closed, his breathing steady, his pulse stable, as if his entire being was immersed in a deceptive tranquility.
Yet deep within the silence of his inner world, in the deepest space that no one but himself could reach, a process was unfolding with a complexity far beyond the laziness he displayed on the surface—a silent dynamic of intensity that even the cultivators he had just defeated with a single pull could never begin to imagine.
For during the thirty minutes he lay on his back upon the lush grass, using his hands as a pillow and occasionally yawning, Huan Zheng was actually undergoing every trial and obstacle within the 10 Vast Cosmos Falling Crystals.
Not physically, but spiritually, within a dimension of consciousness accessible only to those who had reached the realm of the Humanity Foundation and beyond, where time flowed differently and every decision could reshape the foundation of cultivation forever.
"You know, Miss Poison," he murmured inwardly, his inner voice sounding like someone speaking to their own reflection in a foggy mirror.
"My earlier rest was not ordinary laziness. I was reconstructing my foundation—transforming it into the realm of the Supreme Dao and Humanity, so that when I truly need to advance, I won't have to struggle like last time."
He smiled faintly—a smile unseen by anyone as his eyes remained closed—feeling each crystal in his body pulse with a new rhythm, one that was more stable, stronger, more prepared, like an orchestra that had finished warming up before a grand performance that would shake the world.
It was the success of this foundational transformation that explained why, when Huan Zheng decided to interfere in the flag-pulling game—with a single lazy pull he did not even consider effort—the opposing cultivators, numbering more than forty, felt an abnormal burst.
Not only physical but also spiritual, not only within flesh and bone but within the deepest layers of their cultivation foundations, as if that single pull did not merely tug a flag but disturbed the balance of the world around them, disrupting their Qi flow, overturning their perception of space and time in a fraction of a second—just enough to send them all tumbling across the ground with minor injuries that were more humiliating than severe.
"I've learned from the sea city, Ling Xu," Huan Zheng continued inwardly, and for a moment, the image of that night in the tavern resurfaced—an image where he had nearly destroyed himself because of his ego, his foolishness, his laziness in failing to see that Ling Xu had been right from the very beginning.
"I won't repeat the same mistake. I won't let my ego kill us both."
He opened his eyes briefly, gazing at the sky of Tianzhu that was too blue to be real, then closed them again, letting his consciousness sink deeper into the ongoing vortex of transformation—because even though he had successfully stabilized his foundation within the realm of Humanity, there was something more important he needed to decide, something that would determine his future relationship with Ling Xu, something he had never imagined would become a priority in his lazy and indifferent life.
"And for that," Huan Zheng whispered inwardly, his voice suddenly softer.
Not soft like silk, but soft like iron repeatedly forged until it lost its hardness but never its strength.
"I've decided not to advance my cultivation realm yet. I will wait for Ling Xu to catch up."
He let that decision settle within his chest, among the 888,888,888,888 fragments of the Humanity Star that pulsed gently, and for the first time in decades, he felt something strange.
Not loss, not sacrifice, but a calmness that came from choosing not to be the strongest alone, but to be strong together.
Because the gap between the Thirty-Second-Level Supernatural Star and the Twenty-Third-Level Supernatural Star was not that vast—only nine levels, only a few billion fragments, only a difference that could be bridged by time and effort—but if he stepped into the Bright Sky Realm First, if he left Ling Xu behind with the Cancer Plague she only half understood and half feared, then the gap between them would become an unbridgeable chasm, and two beings meant to complete each other would once again become strangers merely walking the same path.
"Her Cancer Plague," Huan Zheng continued inwardly, and between those words, he could feel a strange pulse within his own chest—not from the fragments of the Humanity Star, but from something deeper, older, darker, something he had long hidden behind his mask of laziness and indifference, "and my terrifying adaptation—if the two work together, protecting and completing each other, then nothing can stop us. Not the gods in the sky city, not the bounty hunters, not the Supreme Court of Humanity—no one."
To be continued…