I woke up from sleeping in the grass as the early morning sun hit my face. The blades beneath me were still wet with dew, cool against my skin, and the earthy scent of damp soil and greenery filled my nose.

I took a deep, cold breath and let the crisp air seep into my lungs. It was sharp at first, like ice water splashed into my chest, but then the freshness settled, relaxing my body with each slow exhale.

The world was quiet and peaceful in a way that felt almost heavenly. For a few precious moments, I just lay there, letting the stillness of dawn nestle me, as if the entire world had paused to give me this moment of calm.

I should spend more time outside the sect in the future.

Wu Yan had broken through to Foundation Establishment. Song Song hadn’t been taken over by her father and likely wouldn’t be any time soon. Enemies like Song San and Ye An had come to terms with us and weren’t likely to outright try to murder us.

Overall, it was the most peaceful situation I’d had in a long time. Perhaps only rivaled by the time I spent with Xin Ma and Shan Sha.

Wu Yan sat two steps away from me in a meditative position, Qi coiling around her. At such close range, I could sense the way she breathed and how the Qi moved inside her.

There was a quiet resonance to her Qi, and none of the unstable flares that usually came when someone had just broken through to Foundation Establishment. She must have already developed her first foundation technique.

I was genuinely proud of how far she had come. Despite having a hard time mastering the techniques at first, she had worked hard and could now use all the Earth Grade techniques I had taught her. She had even created a new technique of her own.

A sense of pure joy blossomed in my chest, part pride, part fascination at how she was living through all this, with no side effects from her element so far.

Wu Yan stopped cultivating, opened her eyes, and smiled at me. She had a bright smile, showing off her white teeth. It looked genuine. For some reason, though, it didn’t quite sit right on a face that resembled mine.

“After a lot of thinking yesterday, I’ve decided to engrave my first technique. I now have an image of what my core technique will be,” she stated.

She decided that overnight? If this were Song Song, I wouldn’t be too worried. But rushing into something like this with an element like ‘change’… that was dangerous.

“Don’t tell me you just brooded a bit and then made your decision. Because I didn’t raise you to be careless or stupid,” I said.

“Of course not. I’ve been planning this for a while and have thought of a dozen techniques I could create,” Wu Yan said.

I narrowed my eyes. “And you wouldn’t do something dumb like jeopardize your breakthrough chances by making a silly technique just to help me.”

“No,” she replied, but looked to the side, avoiding my gaze as she scratched her cheek awkwardly.

This girl… she still had some silly ideas about helping me.

I sighed and raised a hand, signaling her to come closer. “Alright, show me your first technique.”

Usually, foundation techniques were kept secret. Demanding to see one was considered rude. But Wu Yan and I weren’t strangers, and I needed to make sure she hadn’t gone against me and wasted her potential.

Wu Yan was likely the most talented cultivator the world had ever seen. She had no weaknesses, except her mindset. If that talent was even slightly lowered just because she wanted to help me, I wouldn’t be able to accept it.

“What kind of technique is it?” I asked.

She smiled, stood up, and walked closer, her hand reaching toward me.

A touch-based technique? That was limiting.

She touched my cheek briefly, then pulled her hand away.

“As you said before, a foundation technique doesn’t need to be a fighting technique. Even though people often use the power granted by cultivation to destroy, cultivation itself isn’t evil. It just reveals someone’s true self,” she said. “This is a technique I made to test whether my element could let me morph my body, even when I tried to stop the transformation by force.”

So… she used the technique to deliberately oppose her body’s natural resistance, just to see what would win?

Her face shifted. Bumps formed. Her hair shortened, her body changed… though the face still resembled mine.

She now stood a little taller, looking me directly in the eye. Her frame was more masculine. Her Qi signature perfectly matched mine.

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“I call this technique Imitation,” she said, in my own voice. “Even though I tried to resist the transformation with my physique, my element and technique overwhelmed my efforts.”

Oh? Smart. She had proved that her element could override her physical condition. A successful experiment, if that’s what she wanted to test. That also meant her physique couldn't overcome her element in case something went wrong.

“I took your advice,” she said. “I didn’t think every foundation technique had to be about combat.”

Hearing my own voice and face speak like that was deeply weird. But the technique was useful. With it, she could escape even Core Formation cultivators by pretending to be someone else.

No doubt, this would lead her to a more profound understanding of her physique and element, and a chain reaction of breakthroughs would follow.

“Did you get things like my memories or experience?” I asked.

Being an otherworlder was a secret I guarded carefully, even if some immortals saw through it with ease. Not that I’d ever hurt Wu Yan just to protect a secret, especially not over this.

Still… I was curious how far her imitation went.

“No, nothing like that,” she said, shaking her head. “Though there might be other things that come with it, since I haven't practiced this technique a lot.”

Her tone was calm and analytical. Coming from a face that looked like mine, it didn’t sound too strange, but knowing Wu Yan was behind it? That was surreal.

“What about personality? Your element is volatile. You should be careful,” I reminded her.

“Of course–” Wu Yan started to reply calmly, but then frowned. “It was hard to notice until you mentioned it, but I feel some sense of wonder about the whole situation… and the world around me.”

“Stop using the technique,” I told her quickly.

Wu Yan rubbed her chin. “So, it seems like I’ll slowly begin inheriting personality traits or perhaps even deeper things about the people I imitate. This sense of wonder is growing, so this takeover isn't instantaneous. More like a gradual process, depending on how long I stay in their form. I wonder if it’s like this for everyone, or if your overwhelming personality made it more prone to happen?”

I frowned and was about to scold her for staying in my form too long, but before I could say a word, her body began to morph. Her face stayed somewhat similar, just a bit more feminine, but the rest of her hair and physique returned to her usual form.

“Teacher, I can still feel that sense of wonder from before. But now it’s like a burst of inspiration slowly fading away,” Wu Yan said, her voice still a bit too stiff. “It seems using the technique too often isn’t a good idea. We’ll work on it later and try it on some normal civilians.”

I watched her carefully.

“That last part was that you speaking, or a leftover part of my will?” I asked. “Survey yourself closely.”

We’d always expected her element to have drawbacks, but this? Perhaps it wouldn’t be some big, catastrophic change that undid her; it might be small things, piling up quietly over time.

While Wu Yan had survived and stayed sane after choosing her unheard-of element, there were clearly still challenges ahead. We needed to stay on guard.

“Sorry, teacher,” Wu Yan bowed. “Though I held the form for barely a few minutes, perhaps your will is strong enough that it almost overrode mine. We should try to target weaker people for tests.”

I frowned at that last part. Her eyes widened, and she went quiet.

This technique had a major flaw. Even knowing the risks, she was still tempted to push it. I’d have to keep a closer eye on her going forward.

Hopefully, this wouldn’t be a recurring theme in her cultivation path. Perhaps her element didn’t just enable her to force change; it invited that change into her as well.

“For now, just be careful and think hard about what techniques you create in the future. As long as I’m around, you don’t have to overuse your techniques to protect yourself. I’ll make sure nobody even touches you,” I said.

She nodded, still clearly lost in thought. There wasn’t much more I could do right now, other than remind her to always be careful.

“Anyway, do you think your techniques will work well together to eventually form your core technique?” I asked. “And keep in mind what we learned today.”

Normally, asking someone who had just reached Foundation Establishment about their core technique was jumping the gun. But Wu Yan wasn’t “normal.” If nothing unexpected happened with her element, she could likely reach Core Formation before the year ended.

“This revelation doesn’t change much. I already have an idea of what I want,” she said calmly. “But I’ll work on the techniques one by one to make sure I don’t make a mistake.”

Even though she had returned to her usual self, her voice carried a cold detachment. It seemed my desires and personality had lingered inside her longer than I’d thought. Hopefully, it would fade with time now that she wasn’t using the technique.

“Good. You should be taking this seriously,” I said, nodding.

Theoretically, Wu Yan’s talent was so overwhelming that she could reach peak Foundation Establishment in a month or two. But she needed to plan out her techniques, understand her element, and grasp her future path.

Charging ahead like a headless chicken wouldn’t work.

Wu Yan was different. So different that most tips and tricks for cultivating simply didn’t apply to her. They were designed for individuals within a “normal” talent range.

If I wasn’t careful, if she got cocky or rushed ahead, she might lose her potential. But if she stayed the course, Wu Yan was the one person I truly believed could become an Immortal.

I still didn’t fully understand how someone became one. As far as I knew, they just… stopped aging. But that didn’t explain the enormous power gap between them and Nascent Soul Cultivators. The Blazing Sun Immortal had proven that clearly.

It wasn’t just about Qi. It was something else. Something akin to a mindset that disrupted the natural order. Like being a bug in the system.

I shook my head, brushing away thoughts of such a distant future. Even for Wu Yan, immortality was still far off.

For now, I needed to focus on something simpler.

Like figuring out how to get Wu Yan back into the sect without anyone noticing what she had become or what element she had chosen.