Adam finished cooking the at and portioned it neatly into the plastic containers. They were sealed, clean and anonymous.
If anyone saw it now, they would see nothing more than prepared food. No one would ever guess where it ca from.
The scent filled the room, it was rich, savory, and heavy with spices. It was the kind of sll that made the stomach tighten and the mouth water, the kind that promised warmth and satisfaction with a single bite.
It did nothing for Adam.
He had no intention of eating it.
The reason he’d gone through all this trouble was simple. Adam had already told Vanessa that two of Henry’s followers had been vaporized in the explosion. If rumors ever surfaced, rumors about him handling human corpses, about strange thods tied to his sudden rise in strength, they could spiral quickly.
People loved simple explanations, and "dark techniques" was the simplest one of all. Leaving them in his storage ring was the safest option, but doing so would make it difficult to equip the cultivation talent.
Instead, he cooked it to draw attention away from the fact that it was a corpse.
No ritual. No symbolism. No theatrics.
Just efficiency.
Cooking the corpse erased suspicion, and left behind sothing that looked entirely mundane.
Even with surveillance in place, all anyone would see was Adam preparing food in his room.
Overkill? Maybe.
Effective? Absolutely.
Adam placed the sealed containers back into his storage ring. To the outside world, it would look like he’d stored cooked at for later.
In reality, he would dispose of it properly when the opportunity ca.
Problem solved.
But he wasn’t done yet.
His gaze lingered inwardly, as it beca thoughtful.
The second corpse still has its cultivation talent...
That alone was valuable information.
Adam wanted to know how long a talent could persist after death, how decay, or lack of it, affected usability. Monsters or humans, the chanics mattered.
Talents degraded over ti, and understanding the window of decay would prove invaluable in the long run.
I’ll test that later.
For now, everything that needed to be hidden was hidden.
Adam straightened, rolled his shoulders once, and let out a slow breath.
Ti to see what difference a D-rank cultivation talent actually makes.
This was the real mont of truth.
****
In the control room, an Acolyte finished delivering his report. Vanessa listened without interruption, her posture straight, and her expression unreadable beneath the veil.
When he was done, she gave a small nod.
"That will be all."
The Acolyte bowed slightly and left.
Vanessa leaned back against the console, eyes drifting to one of the surveillance feeds. Her gaze lingered for half a second before she spoke aloud, more to herself than anyone else.
"I wonder what he needs all that at for."
She shook her head. "Pointless thought."
After the Henry incident, she had tightened security across the entire sector. Surveillance density increased. Patrols doubled. Nothing, moved without being logged.
Compared to now, her previous surveillance across the sector could be considered child’s play. But even with that, there was nothing suspicious about a man cooking himself a al.
Paranoia wastes focus, she reminded herself.
Just then, hurried footsteps echoed behind her.
"Boss."
Vanessa turned as another Acolyte approached, his expression tightly controlled, but barely masking urgency.
"The team just found sothing."
Her eyes sharpened instantly.
"Show ."
She didn’t wait for further explanation.
Vanessa exited the control room at a brisk pace, her coat fluttering slightly.
The scene shifted quickly, and soon she was in front of the arcade. She had stepped out from the large tent that had been erected near the building, its edges secured and reinforced. The entire area was barricaded off despite the sector-wide lockdown. Procedure was procedure, especially now.
Acolytes stood guard at strategic points, weapons ready, senses alert.
Vanessa entered the arcade, following the reporting Acolyte through silent halls that only hours ago had been filled with noise and laughter.
They stopped in front of a door.
Inside was the power room.
The first thing Vanessa noticed was the hole.
A massive one.
The reinforced floor had been torn open, a clean-edged cavity descending into darkness. The slab that once sealed it had been violently thrown aside, cracked along its edges. Nearby, scattered but deliberately placed, were several compact, sleek and fairly humming devices.
Vanessa recognized them imdiately.
Energy dampeners and signal cloaks.
Devices designed to hide massive fluctuations.
Her jaw tightened.
One of the Acolytes crouched near the hole, instrunts glowing as they scanned the depths. He looked up as Vanessa approached.
"Boss," he said, voice steady but grave. "We’re getting extrely high energy readings from down there."
For the first ti since entering the room, Vanessa allowed herself a hint of satisfaction.
So Adam had been right.
But that feeling didn’t last.
The Acolyte hesitated, then continued, "But... we’re also detecting the presence of life."
Vanessa’s fingers curled slowly at her side.
"How many?"
The Acolyte swallowed. "Just one."
The air in the room seed to grow heavier.
Vanessa stared into the dark hole, her thoughts racing.
Back in his room, Adam sat on the edge of the bed, his tablet balanced loosely in one hand as he browsed the web with a clear objective in mind.
He needed a new essence absorption technique.
The one he was currently using was nothing more than a standard-grade technique, the cheapest option available to martial artists.
It was the very first iteration ever created, dating back five hundred years to the early days of essence cultivation.
Back then, humanity had been experinting blindly, and the result was a crude system filled with redundant movents, inefficient circulation paths, and practices that wasted more essence than they refined.
It had served its purpose.
But Adam had now outgrown it and he wanted an upgraded cultivation technique, one that had been revised, optimized, and refined through generations of research.
These newer techniques stripped away unnecessary steps, improved essence conversion efficiency, and maximized growth per cycle.
Before, such a technique would have been pointless for him.
A G-rank cultivation talent simply couldn’t draw out the full potential of an upgraded technique. The strain alone would have outweighed the benefits, making the investnt a complete waste.
But that was no longer the case.
With a D-rank cultivation talent, Adam finally had the foundation needed to use an upgraded technique properly, and to reap its true benefits.
His eyes narrowed slightly as listings scrolled past his screen.
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