Below, Han Yu glanced up mid-bite, eyebrows rising slightly.
"Oh?" he said, voice calm. "Finally lost patience, huh?"
Wei Pan snarled. "You’re finished, brat!"
But Han Yu’s eyes twinkled. "Maybe. But not before I return the favor."
He slapped his palm against the cave floor and sent a burst of Spirit Qi out like a wave. It shot down into the bones he’d tossed casually around his little camp—bones that had looked like leftovers from his als.
In truth, each was hollowed and stuffed with a compressed pill from Li i’s "Aggressive Variant" series—specifically designed to erupt when destabilized by spirit energy.
The effect was imdiate.
BOOM!
The bones exploded in a thick, noxious cloud of choking smoke. A dense yellow-green fog spread rapidly, laced with compounds that irritated the lungs, blurred vision, and scrambled spiritual perception. Han Yu had carefully applied a protective nasal salve beforehand—no way he’d suffer from his own prank.
"ACK—what is this!?" Wei Pan coughed violently.
"Poison? No—hallucinogen?" Lu Ping stumbled, eyes reddening.
Han Yu didn’t waste a second.
He charged directly toward the closer silhouette—Wei Pan—his shiny glaive shimring as it cut through the smoke with a sharp arc. "GOT YOU!"
The weapon landed cleanly against the target’s side—
CLANG!
It was like hitting a spirit-forged wall.
The force of the impact rebounded through Han Yu’s arms, sending a jarring pain down his shoulders. He stared, eyes wide.
Wei Pan turned his head, eyes gleaming through the haze. "That’s cute."
Han Yu’s face paled.
"Early Stage of the Core Condensation Realm?!"
He leapt back instinctively, eyes flicking to the second figure—Lu Ping—who had also begun dispelling the smoke with a sweep of his fan-shaped spiritual artifact.
Han Yu’s mind ran like lightning before a vague mory resurfaced. He recognized the faces of the two n.
’Aren’t they under Murong Xie as well... Crap.’ Han Yu finally realized who was targeting him. ’It was an old foe all along.’
"We were planning to take our ti with you," Lu Ping said with a wicked grin. "But now that you’ve shown so spine, maybe we’ll make this fun."
Han Yu didn’t respond imdiately.
His brain was spinning.
This wasn’t supposed to happen. Core Condensation? Both of them? Murong Xie must’ve pulled strings—this wasn’t just a side grudge. This was an assassination attempt. Another one!
He retreated a step, clutching his glaive tighter.
"Alright..." he muttered. "Ti for Plan B."
Behind him, a cluster of spirit-inscribed stones began to glow faintly—a secondary trap he’d placed the first night in case things went sideways. These were sothing he had copied from Li i’s alchemy set up.
These were just low grade spirit stones but the runes inscribe on them made them unstable. When a little force was applied, they could explode. Li i mostly used them for an energy surge whenever she needed a large amount of energy cheaply.
Of course, they were quite dangerous and only soone as crazy as Li i would use sothing like this.
Still, Han Yu had prepared for many things.
Fighting two Core Condensation cultivators wasn’t one of them.
But escaping from them?
That, he was very good at.
Han Yu didn’t hesitate.
With a flick of his wrist, he sent the cluster of low-grade spirit stones clattering down the slope. Each one was marked crudely with volatile detonation runes, copied hastily from the corner of Li i’s lab notes. He hadn’t understood all of it—just enough to know that a solid hit of spirit force would trigger them.
And that’s exactly what he did.
He fired a compressed pulse of qi into the group of stones, then turned and ran.
The last thing he expected was the sky—well, the ceiling—to nearly collapse from the force of the explosions.
BOOM!! BOOM!! CRACK—BOOOM!
It was as if ten thunderclaps went off in unison, echoing through the narrow, winding tunnels of the cave. The unstable spirit stones didn’t just detonate—they amplified one another, setting off a chain reaction far more powerful than anything Han Yu had anticipated.
Unknown to him, back in Li i’s lab, those sa rune-carved stones had always been used within a suppressive array designed to limit their damage during testing. Han Yu had never seen the true effect.
Until now.
Flas, smoke, and concussive force erupted behind him like the angry breath of a dragon. The shockwave alone sent both Wei Pan and Lu Ping hurtling backward into the stone walls, groaning and bloodied.
Han Yu barely spared them a glance as he sprinted forward, teeth clenched, glaive strapped to his back and robes flaring.
He was almost free—
Then it happened.
A low, ominous groan echoed through the depths of the cavern.
The kind of sound that makes your spine twitch and your heart drop.
The walls began to tremble.
Dust and pebbles fell from above, followed by larger rocks.
Han Yu’s feet stopped instinctively.
"No..." he muttered.
A second later, the ceiling began to collapse.
Huge boulders fell like a rain of doom. The entire passage behind him crumbled into a violent landslide of jagged stone. He turned, eyes wide as he watched the chaos unfold—
And suddenly, a wave of deja vu hit him so hard it nearly made him stumble.
This happened before.
That sa trembling earth.
That sa sound of stone cracking apart.
That sa helpless fall into darkness—
—The ravine. His first death.
For a mont, Han Yu’s breath caught.
Not again.
He was yanked back to the present by the whine of a collapsing ceiling just ters ahead. No ti to freeze.
No ti to process.
Just survive.
He bolted sideways into a narrower side tunnel, half diving through as a massive chunk of the ceiling slamd down behind him. The blast of air and stone followed, scraping his back as he rolled forward and slamd into a wall.
Everything went dark with smoke and dust.
Han Yu coughed, barely conscious, ears ringing, chest heaving. His body ached from the impact and a few bruises dotted his skin. Still, he had managed to stay alive.
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