CHAPTER 283: HER OWN DECISION

Author’s Note: Do Not Unlock Yet. Chapter Is Still Under Construction.

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A rival from an outside sect called Black Lotus, stepped forward with a smirk. "So be it. May I?"

The guests were immediately fired up, drawing the attention of the City Lord up ahead.

"Our celebrant is here to be celebrated not challenged. I demand you show him..." City Lord Xuan Wenzhou was about to stick up for Victor when he interrupted.

"Lord Wenzhou, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with a little friendly challenge," Victor was very welcoming of the current situation.

"Are you sure?" The City Lord inquired.

Victor nodded and then the City Lord gave instructions for the center of the hall to be cleared.

Tables and seating areas were moved to the edges of the massive hall to provide a large enough space for sparring.

The same disciple from Black Lotus sect stepped forward once more and performed a quick sequence of hand seals, summoning a small vortex of wind that sent silk banners fluttering.

"Brother Fang, show us this ’technique’."

Victor stepped forward with a calm look and activated his Void Emperor Bloodline.

[ Void Emperor Bloodline Activated ]

His skin suddenly emitted a milky glow as arrow shaped marks appeared all over.

The surrounding crowd were instantly stunned.

"Is that...?"

"The aura of the void Emperor!"

"He truly possesses the Void Emperor Bloodline..."

At first they doubted it but seeing and feeling the energy of the void Emperor surround them, the guests were starting to believe what this celebration stood for.

The black lotus disciple narrowed his eyes in dissatisfaction and charged forward.

---sss

He bowed slightly. "Next time, invite the entire grove."

Polite applause rippled through the hall, mingled with stunned silence. The City Lord clapped vigorously, Xuan Qing squealed in delight, and Commander Vex Rhane nodded in approval.

But the challenges did not end there. A third-year disciple from the Azure Mountain Sect dared approach with a flask of anti-qi spray, hurling it at Victor’s feet. Ignoring it, Victor activated his void cloak—an ethereal shimmer made the spray harmlessly evaporate. Cheers erupted.

By the time the tables emptied, Victor had offered pointers on wind manipulation, broken down basic seal techniques, and even joked with his former feedhub colleagues, now distinguished guests in academy livery. He moved through the crowd with courtesy, never once drawing his sword.

Xuan Qing never left his side, beaming with pride. "Father, see how they listen? He’s the truest hero."

Xuan Wenzhou offered a goblet of wine, eyes moist. "Fang Chen, your name will be etched into history."

Elder Mo came forward as well, silent but beaming. He placed a scroll in Victor’s hand—an emblem of formal recognition from Violet Spring. The weight of its seal was heavy with meaning: forgiveness for past neglect and a mandate for future service.

Victor bowed deeply. "Thank you, Elder Mo. I swear to fulfill my duties henceforth."

As the banquet drew to a close, torchlight reflecting in jade fountains, Victor found himself surrounded by admiration rather than suspicion. Even the toughest critics—those who had questioned his accomplishment—now wore softened expressions, as though realizing they’d been doubting the impossible.

He took one last look around the hall—the gathered dignitaries, the flashing smiles, the fluttering banners—then stepped outside into the cool night. Overhead, lanterns drifted against the dark sky like fireflies, and the distant city spires glowed with promise.

Tomorrow, he would answer the sect’s summons. But tonight, he allowed himself the rare luxury of triumph—an honored guest in a city he had saved, celebrated by all who once doubted him.

And in his heart, he carried one thought: the seals in the ancient groves were safe—for now. But greater challenges lay ahead, both in the world beyond and within the depths of his own ambition.

The night was young, and Fang Chen’s legend had only just begun.

----sss

By the time the tables emptied, Victor had offered pointers on wind manipulation, broken down basic seal techniques, and even joked with his former feedhub colleagues, now distinguished guests in academy livery. He moved through the crowd with courtesy, never once drawing his sword.

Xuan Qing never left his side, beaming with pride. "Father, see how they listen? He’s the truest hero."

Xuan Wenzhou offered a goblet of wine, eyes moist. "Fang Chen, your name will be etched into history."

Elder Mo came forward as well, silent but beaming. He placed a scroll in Victor’s hand—an emblem of formal recognition from Violet Spring. The weight of its seal was heavy with meaning: forgiveness for past neglect and a mandate for future service.

Victor bowed deeply. "Thank you, Elder Mo. I swear to fulfill my duties henceforth."

As the banquet drew to a close, torchlight reflecting in jade fountains, Victor found himself surrounded by admiration rather than suspicion. Even the toughest critics—those who had questioned his accomplishment—now wore softened expressions, as though realizing they’d been doubting the impossible.

He took one last look around the hall—the gathered dignitaries, the flashing smiles, the fluttering banners—then stepped outside into the cool night. Overhead, lanterns drifted against the dark sky like fireflies, and the distant city spires glowed with promise.

Tomorrow, he would answer the sect’s summons. But tonight, he allowed himself the rare luxury of triumph—an honored guest in a city he had saved, celebrated by all who once doubted him.

And in his heart, he carried one thought: the seals in the ancient groves were safe—for now. But greater challenges lay ahead, both in the world beyond and within the depths of his own ambition.

The night was young, and Fang Chen’s legend had only just begun.

By the time the tables emptied, Victor had offered pointers on wind manipulation, broken down basic seal techniques, and even joked with his former feedhub colleagues, now distinguished guests in academy livery. He moved through the crowd with courtesy, never once drawing his sword.

Xuan Qing never left his side, beaming with pride. "Father, see how they listen? He’s the truest hero."

Xuan Wenzhou offered a goblet of wine, eyes moist. "Fang Chen, your name will be etched into history."

Elder Mo came forward as well, silent but beaming. He placed a scroll in Victor’s hand—an emblem of formal recognition from Violet Spring. The weight of its seal was heavy with meaning: forgiveness for past neglect and a mandate for future service.

The musicians had just shifted from flutes to zithers when the first challenge floated across the lantern-lit hall like a stray ember.

"Hero of Blueflame," a pale youth in teal robes called, the crest on his chest depicting a spiral mountain, "would you grant me the honor of pointers?"

A hush fell, then the hush broke into a low tide of whispers. Azure Mountain Sect—prestigious, stubborn, never quite gentle.

Victor set his wine aside. "Pointers I can give," he said, smiling. "Bruises are extra."

A ring opened in the center of the banquet garden where the marble tiles gave way to raked sand and moonlight. Palace masters raised a thin barrier to keep stray qi from flaying the hedges. The youth saluted with two fingers, then stepped into a flowing stance, feet light, sleeves like wings.

He moved first—Azure Gale Eight Steps, a respectable movement art. His blade flashed, riding a compressed line of air toward Victor’s collarbone.

Victor didn’t draw steel. He turned his wrist, and wind gathered to his palm like a tide finding shore. The Azure Gale bent toward him, curved, and went out with a sigh, as if embarrassed to be seen.

The youth’s eyes widened. He tried again, this time layering a thrust with a threaded razor of qi. Victor took half a step, the simplest pivot in the world, and let the thrust pass his shoulder by a whisper. His off hand rose, two fingers extended—Frost Bloom touched the youth’s forearm, a kiss of winter that slowed qi at the wrist into syrup. The boy fumbled his grip and nearly dropped the sword.

Victor caught the blade by the flat with two fingers and gave it back hilt-first. "Your steps are fine. Your breath is loud enough to wake dogs two courtyards over. Again—in silence."

Laughter, quickly muffled. The youth flushed to his hairline, bowed, and retreated, cheeks burning but eyes brighter than when he’d come.

Another stepped forward before the applause died: a woman in black lotus silk, hair pinned with obsidian thorns. Her sect’s reputation preceded her—deadly, elegant, fond of humiliation. She drew a narrow saber that sang a mean little song.

"Friendly pointers," she murmured. "Try not to die."

She moved like burned sugar—fast, brittle, liable to stick. Shadow-stepping footwork laid four afterimages around Victor, all striking at once, angles calculated to overwhelm a lesser core disciple. He let her have them, just once. Three feints, one meant to bite.

His sheathed sword lifted a finger’s breadth. Not even a draw—just the hint of it. A crescent of shadow slashed the sand into a clean furrow that passed through all four phantoms; the three false ones shred like smoke, the real one froze as the nape of her neck prickled with the memory of steel.

She looked down. The shadow crescent had trimmed a single thread from her hem and etched her saber’s reflection into the marble at her feet.

Victor tipped his head. "If you cut in four places, leave at least one for me to block. Courtesy," he added mildly.

Her smirk cracked, then she laughed—sharp, unbothered. "Noted." She bowed deeper than pride would normally permit and stepped aside.

The third came with no courtesy at all. A brash fellow in iron-red livery shouldered through courtiers, two scabbards rattling. "So this is the savior?" he announced. "Let’s see your edge."

Victor finally loosened his sword in the scabbard by a thumb’s width. The brash one twin-drew, throwing twin arcs of flame that curled together into a grinning maw.

Victor’s breath deepened. The Dragon Breathing Art stirred his chest like a furnace finding its voice. He let a ribbon of pale flame lick along the sheath, then cut downward in a single, deliberate line—Shadow Crescent married to Skyfire. Darkness rode the flame, then the two parted in a hiss. The red maw split and guttered, the backlash wobbled the iron youth’s knees. When the smoke cleared, he was on his rear in the sand, hair slightly singed, looking up at a man who hadn’t moved his feet.

"Your edge," Victor said, sliding the blade home, "is fine. Your temper needs a scabbard."

Cheers broke decorum. Even the City Lord’s stony chamberlain clapped once before catching himself. The brash one scrambled up and performed a stiff bow, pride leaking out like air from a punctured wineskin.

That should have satisfied the hawks, but challenges multiply like lanterns after dusk. A pair from Cloud Temple attempted a tandem formation, one pressing with earth, the other with water. Victor took it as a polite exercise and dismantled them like picking burrs from a cuff—gentle, precise. He never struck to injure; he tripped them with wind, slowed them with frost, tapped tendons with two fingers of void-numbness until their formation sagged. When they conceded, he helped them up with genuine respect.

By then the faceslapping had accomplished what faceslapping always does—turned skeptics into recruiters. Envoys slid in with sugared smiles and cardamom breath.

"Have you considered further tempering at Cloud Temple? We possess a waterfall that inverts qi flow—"

"Azure Mountain has an ancestral cave that—"

"Black Lotus would sponsor—"

Violet Spring’s disciples tightened around Victor like a velvet gauntlet. Elder Mo didn’t raise his voice; he didn’t need to. "Our core disciple," he said, every syllable a warm stone. "Violet Spring’s Fang Chen. Your interest honors us. Your poaching dishonors you."

It wasn’t a threat, simply a fact stated in a room now tuned to that fact. The envoys bowed, some more stiffly than others, and changed tactics: gifts, not offers.

Boxes and scroll tubes and velvet pouches accumulated like snowdrifts. Refined spirit stones that hummed at a touch. A Thunderseed Pearl the size of a thumbnail. A prayer fan painted with cranes that smelled faintly of sandalwood and old rain. Every hand presented with more care now that whispers of his lineage had confirmed themselves—Void Emperor blood stirred the hungry reverence that old bloodlines always do.

The City Lord rose, hands open, and the room shifted again. Servants carried in a rectangular coffer of dark stormwood bound with bronze. Xuan Wenzhou himself undid the clasps. Inside, nested in silk, lay a slim, black-glass talisman veined with threads of violet. Lightning crawled across its face like a shiver, then quieted.

"A Palace-Warden Talisman," he said. "Access to our archives and training courts, and safe passage through Blueflame’s gates, day or night. My city is your city."

Victor bowed from the waist, and this time it wasn’t for show. "I accept, City Lord. I’ll try to deserve it."

The banquet thinned into quieter pockets of talk. Music softened. Lanterns burned down to amber cores. Victor drifted to the terrace to breathe cooler air—only to be hooked by the sleeve and tugged between two moonlit cypresses.

Xuan Qing had swapped formal brocade for an ink-dark jacket and a silk ribbon tying back her hair. Her eyes were star-bright, daring and soft all at once. "Close your eyes," she commanded.

He did not. She pouted. He compromised and looked at the ribbon in her hands. It wasn’t a ribbon. It was a thin length of silk bound around a bead of milky jade carved with tiny arrow marks—his marks—like the ones that appeared on his skin when he called his void blood.

"I made it," she said, suddenly shy. "It’s ugly. You’re not allowed to say so."

"It’s perfect," he said, and meant it.

She stepped closer, tied it at his wrist with slow, careful fingers, and then stood on tiptoe to kiss his cheek. The touch was warm and bold. She lingered one heartbeat longer than bravery required, then hopped back, face pink, eyes sparkling. "One day," she blurted, "I hope I can try the other cheek. Or—well—"

He laughed softly. "You’re incorrigible."

"I am," she said, delighted, and then fled in a shimmer of laughter, vanishing into the palace like a moonbeam chased by a cloud.

He touched the bead. "Did an NPC just fall for me?" he murmured, amused at himself for using the word as if it meant anything here, where the lines blurred in ways he never quite wanted to examine.

He spent the night in a guest pavilion that smelled faintly of clove and cedar. In the morning, he collected his new trinkets and scrolls—packed like a magpie with more treasure than intention—and returned to Violet Spring with the sun high and the city bright beneath him.

The sect felt different. Curiosity had turned to welcome. NPC disciples bowed with open smiles, and even the players—easy to spot by the clipped slang and the way their eyes kept flicking to invisible notifications—sidled up with friendly audacity.

"You’re Fang Chen, right? The grove guy? We’re putting a team together for the Black Briar outskirts—need someone who won’t die."

"Any chance you’d look at my footwork? I can’t get the second beat to sit under the breath—"

"We’ve got a shard-hunt in the Moonbright Caves. You in?"

He didn’t overpromise. He shook hands, traded a few tips, added a couple of player tags to his friends list. "Next time," he told them honestly. "I owe the sect first."

Which brought him to the Missions Hall, a quiet building of honeyed wood and transparent paper screens. A steward recognized him and, with a flustered bow, guided him past the general boards to a small chamber with a single table and a lacquered drawer. Inside lay a slate of core disciple missions—fewer than he expected, heavier than they looked.

He skimmed: mediate a border dispute between minor clans; eradicate a blood-leech hive in the southern marsh; retrieve a lost heirloom from a haunted pagoda where the floors remember the last battle and replay it nightly.

Then one line caught him: "Supervise and safeguard a team of new Violet Spring disciples in the Glassstep Wilds. Purpose: experience, minor bottleneck breaking. Threats: mid-tier spirit beasts, opportunistic bandit companies, terrain anomalies."

He saw it in an instant: a way to square the circles. He could teach, repay the sect, and test a few of his newly gleaned Lingyun forms in live conditions—all without collapsing anyone’s ancestral home.

He signed the slate. The steward exhaled as if he’d been holding his breath since dawn and stamped the mission seal.

"When do they leave?" Victor asked.

"Three days," the steward said. "You’ll brief them at dawn in the south courtyard. They’re green, but eager. They’ll need a firm hand."

Victor nodded. "They’ll get one."

Outside, the sect’s pines sang in a passing gust. He touched the bead Xuan Qing had tied at his wrist and felt, for one clear moment, the braided strands of his strange life tug in agreeable harmony: the city he’d saved, the sect he owed, the path ahead lined with beasts and bandits and young disciples looking to him for more than a spectacle.

Faces had been slapped. Promises had been made. Now came the part he liked best—walking into the wild with steel sheathed, breath steady, and the quiet conviction that he would bring his people home.

---sss

Victor kept his head down for two days, doing nothing but breathing, drilling footwork, and letting white-hot qi roll in slow tides through bone and tendon. He logged out before dawn on the third day, eyes gritty, body loose. Morning routine was a blur of cold water and colder lanes, weights cinched at his waist as he cut through the academy’s pool while beam traps scribbled sizzling lines under the surface. He slipped between them out of habit. Muscle remembered what mind forgot.

There was only one warrior lecture slotted—an obvious sign. Once the Outland excursions began, classes would thin to bones and sinew. Half the auditorium buzzed about sectors and rumored routes; the other half compared loadouts like kids trading cards. When the bell chimed and the instructor dismissed them early, Victor didn’t drift toward his dorm or the feedhubs. He veered into the admin ring, where the lights were too bright and everyone spoke in low voices.

Accommodations first. S-rank perks included private quarters in the upper ring, with a personal training chamber and a med bay cubby. He wanted the training chamber, and he really wanted the soundproofing.

The clerk at Housing glanced up, did a double take, and then recovered into professional neutral. "Congratulations on your... upgrade," she said, not quite hiding her curiosity. "We’ll need your student file to reflect S-tier before we release a suite. Documentation and Processing can push the update."

"On it," Victor said, and cut across the mezzanine.

Documentation smelled faintly of ozone and mugwort from the mana scrubbers. Counters, screens, runic badges on lanyards, the whole ritual. He queued. He waited. He told himself not to fidget and failed. When it was his turn, a balding tech with a sharp nose waved him to a chair and swung a scanner arm down over his chest.

"Name, cohort, camp."

"Victor Revenant, first-year, Camp 11."

The tech’s brows rose. Everyone knew the name now, which was annoying. He typed anyway, the screen flickering with his file. "We’re refreshing rank privileges," he said. "Baseline scan, mana profile, system sync."

Victor reclined, heart steady. The wand hummed, sliding bands of light across his sternum, his temples, the inside of his wrists. Lines of data scrolled. Then they stopped. Then the cursor blinked and the screen threw up a gray box.

DATA INCONCLUSIVE.

The tech frowned. "Huh."

More humming. The arm dipped lower. A second wand tapped his forearm, drawing a globule of blood into a little crystal reservoir. The runes flared, seeking signatures that weren’t there.

DATA INCONCLUSIVE.

"This... happened at intake, didn’t it?" the man said slowly. "I remember the note. ’Anomalous reading—defer to field assessment.’"

"Something like that," Victor said, face blank. Inside, he could feel his qi holding perfectly still, a lake at midnight. He’d learned to hide it without trying.

"We can’t finalize S-tier without a confirmed level," the man murmured, more to the screen than to Victor. "The algorithm won’t unlock housing, training allotments, nothing." He lifted his head and barked, "One sec—hey, Mira, can you—"

Sparks popped at the far bank of terminals. Three desks down, a cable hissed and spat where it entered a floor conduit. Heads jerked. A woman swore. Somebody grabbed a wand, someone else a fire charm. The tech stood up halfway, craning to see.

Victor breathed in and let the world blur at the edges. Void qi spilled down his arm in a thin sheet, sank between floor tiles, and slid through the belly of the terminal like a ghost hand. He had already mapped the keyboard with his echo-sense—every ridge, every key’s throw, the microscratch that marked the enter key. The invisible hand touched keys in order, as gently as if he were playing scales.

L-e-v-e-l: 4-5.

He didn’t rush. He breathed. He lifted the sheet of qi away before it snagged. When the tech sat down again and jiggled the mouse, the screen flashed once, as if embarrassed, then updated.

LEVEL: 45. RANK: S.

The tech blinked. "Well I’ll be—looks like the cache held the field read and the sync just... caught up." He sounded relieved, which was convenient. He tapped through three confirmations, affixed a stamp rune, and the system chimed politely as a new block of privileges unrolled across Victor’s file. "All right, Mr. Revenant. S-tier privileges unlocked. You’ll get suite selection, training chamber access, advanced armory checks, and a few other goodies. You can pick up your key-sigil in Housing."

"Appreciate it," Victor said.

The man hesitated. "Off the record? Your baseline signature is low for forty-five. Either you don’t leak, or you’re using some suppression trick you shouldn’t know yet."

Victor shrugged. "I’m a quiet guy."

The tech snorted, handed over a temporary pass, and waved him on.

Back at Housing, the same clerk smiled more brightly. "We have three openings in the upper ring," she said, swinging a holo of the academy’s dome into the air. "Unit A-19, exterior view. Unit A-22, interior atrium. Unit B-3, corner, partial reef outlook."

"Exterior," Victor said automatically. He liked watching the sea.

She keyed it in, and a sleek metal sigil slid out of a slot, stamped with the academy crest and tuned to his aura. "Key-sigil, mana lift access, training chamber allotment. Your suite’s cultivation chamber is calibrated for mana users; you’re free to retune within safety thresholds. Oh, and—" She lowered her voice, conspiratorial. "There’s a jacuzzi."

He blinked at her. She grinned. He took the sigil and tried not to laugh.

The upper ring housing was threaded with glass corridors that showed the dome’s skin curving away like a whale’s ribcage. Schools of silver fish flickered past, pulsing as if lit from within. In the far dark, something vast drifted and turned a single luminous eye, then moved on. Victor found A-19 and thumbed the sigil against the plate. The door sighed open.

Space. Actual space. A lounging area, a bed that could have slept a small squad, a kitchenette with an autoclave and a feed slot that promised decent coffee. The balcony was a projection—nobody opened anything in a dome—but it felt like a balcony, and it looked out into blue-black, where currents twined like scarves.

He set his sword against the wall and checked the training room. It was a cube of pale stone veined with silver, floating nodes suspended in the corners like patient fireflies. He stepped inside and exhaled. Qi unrolled, testing the enchantments. The room ate vibration, drank sound, smoothed pressure waves until even his breath felt heavier.

Good.

The watch on his wrist buzzed softly. Group chat. Selene had sent a picture of her standing on an Outland ridge with wind whipping her hair and a ridiculous lollipop in her mouth, Kai in the background pretending not to be smiling. Rylan had added text: Stop telling people you stabbed a Drakenar with candy.

Selene replied: i DID tho 😘

Reed: Victor u see this? Sector K-10 is a dump. Stay in your dome, pretty boy.

Victor smirked and typed, just moved into my palace. jacuzzi sand.

Danny: don’t let it go to your head, king. also dibs on your couch.

He set the watch down and walked the suite once, mentally measuring distances: door to training room, training room to wash, wash to bed. He padded back to the training room, shut the door, and rolled his shoulders.