Three days after Ethan's fiery breakthrough to Foundation Phase Level one , the city bled in silence.
Hospitals burned. Medical clinics collapsed. Cultivators, healers, mostly were vanishing, their bodies later found drained of Qi, meridians surgically severed. Whoever was behind it wasn't just killing.
They were harvesting.
Elena slammed the latest report onto Vane's desk. This one was a Foundation Phase Level six. His spine meridian was flayed open like a dissection model. No human doctor could do this.
Vane glanced at the image, his face grim.
It's him. The one they call the White Lotus Killer.
Ethan, resting nearby and cycling his Qi, opened his eyes. He's not Crimson Altar?
No, Elena said. He used to be a Jade Pulse prodigy. My brother, Kade Wren.
The name struck Ethan like a blade. He remembered the name, whispered from the stitched lips of the silencer who'd burned to death in front of him.
Marked. The Eye is watching.
And he's stronger than all of us, Vane added.
Rumors place him at Foundation Phase Level nine, but with forbidden techniques. Some think he's pushing into Transcendence.
Ethan stood,
His Qi still fluctuated unpredictably, but he was adapting learning how to pull energy from within, shape it, and project it outward. A few techniques were beginning to form Spectral Needle Burst, Qi Thread Lock, and a passive enhancement to reflexes called Pulse Skin.
I want to see him,
Ethan said.
Elena turned sharply.
You're not ready.
Then I'll observe no combat.
Just reconnaissance.
Reluctantly, Vane agreed.
They tracked Kade to a collapsed herbalist school on the outskirts of central town. Its roof caved in, windows blackened by smoke, but the air inside was worse thick with death and the sterile sharpness of surgical work.
Ethan swept through the halls, heart steady, breathing shallow. He had one Silent Step Talisman, one Qi Shield Pill, and a vial of Ember Antitoxin, brewed from moonroot and tiger sage.
In the center of the ruined surgery room, a body lay suspended in the air—hovering unnaturally, as though caught in a web of invisible threads.
And beside it stood Kade.
He was tall, broad-shouldered, wearing no robe just a vest of soul-stitched leather, and gloves that gleamed wet. His face was calm, almost serene, but his eyes were void.
You're not Jade Pulse, Kade said softly, without turning. You've got my sister's scent. But your energy it's new.
Ethan didn't move.
I won't kill you, Kade continued, slicing cleanly through the corpse's final meridian. Not yet. I want to see if the scroll chose well.
He raised his hand.
A single black needle formed from raw Qi hovered an inch from Ethan's throat.
Then vanished.
Run back to your masters,
Kade whispered,
Tell Elena the White Lotus blooms again.
He disappeared into the smoke.
When Ethan returned to the safehouse, Elena was waiting.
Kade's alive, he said.
And he's worse than you remember.
She met his gaze.
He's not just killing.
He's preparing.
For what?
Elena's voice was barely a whisper.
A breakthrough ritual.
He's going to force his way into the transcendence phase and he'll burn the world doing it.