CHAPTER 129: STAGNATION

Clarity returned only after the searing pain—like a molten iron rod boring through his skull—finally subsided. Even then, several long moments passed before Damien could truly think straight.

He gasped for air, the lingering sting behind his eyes still pulsing in time with his heartbeat. Sweat trickled down his temples, but he barely noticed.

"So this is the Imperial Fist," he muttered under his breath.

He threw a casual punch into the air.

Whoosh!

The force behind the motion stirred the air itself, releasing a sharp gust that whipped through the small room. The curtain hanging beside him fluttered violently, flailing like a banner in a storm.

Damien lowered his hand slowly.

As expected—nothing had changed.

The world remained silent. The dust still drifted lazily in the air, the old curtain still fluttered, and the wooden walls stood as unmoved as ever.

But within him, something was different.

This time, he had executed the foundational form of the Imperial Fist. Despite its grand name, the technique wasn’t just some crude, brute-force martial art. It was a precise, layered method—divided into three distinct stages.

In the first stage, the practitioner learned to condense thirty percent of their full strength into a single focal point. A controlled release, potent yet stable.

At the second stage, the compression reached nearly sixty percent. The blow, while still manageable, could fracture stone and bone alike with ease.

And then there was the third stage—the unity realm. A mythical point where all of one’s force was funneled perfectly into a singular instant, a singular impact. A strike of terrifying clarity and unmatched devastation.

According to legend, the original creator of the Imperial Fist had once shattered the armor of warriors a full realm above his cultivation. But Damien wasn’t convinced that this was the true purpose of the technique.

No—there was something else.

He remembered what he had seen in that strange, blood-soaked realm. The voices, the eyes, the pressure that made his soul quiver. The power of the Imperial Fist wasn’t just in its ability to crush. It was in its precision, its stillness before the storm, the quiet before an annihilating blow.

It was a technique meant to deliver judgment, not mere destruction.

Damien’s gaze slowly rose. His eyes drifted to the ceiling, as if peering through the layers of wood and stone to the heavens beyond. The room around him faded into the background.

He raised his right hand skyward, his fingers half-curled into a loose fist, and his expression turned distant, contemplative.

Something was stirring in his soul. A memory... or perhaps a promise.

And this time, he wouldn’t run from it.

Unlike most techniques that gradually refined the bones over time, the Imperial Fist technique was brutally direct. It didn’t nurture or comfort the body. Instead, it funneled every trace of circulating mana into a single point, igniting the bones one by one with searing pressure until they were reshaped, strengthened, and reborn.

It was an agonizing process. But it was also incredibly efficient.

Damien’s eyes flickered with a dangerous glint.

He smelled an opportunity.

He didn’t know if he could reach the fabled third stage—where every ounce of strength converged at a singular point, crushing even those a full realm above him—but he knew one thing:

With this technique, he could mass-produce Iron Stage warriors across the Valthorn Kingdom.

It would change everything.

Before he could fall deeper into his strategic daydream, Little White’s voice sliced through his thoughts, distant yet laced with chilly clarity.

Her tone this time... was colder than before.

"Don’t get too full of yourself. Imperial Fist is the basic technique that every disciple has a chance to learn."

Damien’s expression stiffened.

Her words weren’t wrong—but there was a strange irritation buried beneath them.

"But I don’t understand how you could fail. Everyone in the past managed to save the Strength Saint’s sister and clear one of his obsessions... and in return, they learned one of his secret techniques."

Damien’s eyes narrowed.

There it was—something off. The spirit had misinformation about the trial. She thought it was straightforward... but he had seen a version unlike anything he expected.

As if reading his thoughts, Little White sighed and quickly poured a cold bucket of reality over his head.

"Don’t start building castles in the sky. Everyone knows the first trial."

"Save the Strength Saint’s sister from her diabetic disease. Simple enough, right? She’ll cry, she’ll beg, she’ll plead for that chocolate cake. You’re supposed to resist. That’s it."

Her tone dipped with a faint scoff.

"But you—you actually bought the cake! And not just any cake... tell me, Damien, how the hell did you even manage to gather enough money to buy that ridiculously expensive chocolate monstrosity?"

Hearing her words up to this point, Damien’s eyes turned solemn.

"Saving the sister from the diabetes... not from the demons."

His brow furrowed.

"No, there’s something wrong."

Thousands of thoughts surged through his mind like a tidal wave. Without realizing it, his body instinctively slipped into Accelerated Cognition—the mental state where his thoughts raced six hundred times faster than reality.

In the time it would take for an ordinary person to blink, Damien had already constructed and deconstructed dozens of theories.

"Saving the sister from the diabetes."

"How did you manage to gather enough money?"

He replayed Little White’s words again and again, analyzing every syllable, every implication. Something about it felt off.

The world slowed to a crawl.

His breath was calm, his heartbeat steady—yet inside, his thoughts were a whirlwind of deduction and intuition.

Then, all at once, clarity struck him like a thunderbolt.

"Wait a minute... why did she say ’how you managed to gather’, not ’how he managed’? I was just a spectator. Yu was the one making all the decisions. Unless..."

His eyes widened as the pieces began to slot together.

"Could it be... I was supposed to interfere? That this wasn’t just a passive memory dream—but a divergence point? A test of judgment... not empathy?"

A chill ran down his spine.

If that were the case, then the failure wasn’t because of Yu’s choices...

It was his.

Suppressing the unease bubbling up within, Damien took a step back and exhaled.

He turned toward the spirit.

"Something’s off with the dream you put me into," he said bluntly. "That wasn’t a memory—it was a forked path. A deliberately warped version."

The spirit known as Little White stared at him blankly, as if still trying to comprehend the gears turning behind Damien’s gaze.

She blinked.

"...Impossible! That’s not possible! There has never been a single instance where you..."

Her voice trembled, cutting off mid-sentence. "Don’t you lie to me! We spirits have the authority to review the dreams experienced by disciples!"

She had barely finished speaking before the light in her eyes dimmed. A heavy silence settled over the hall.

Damien watched quietly.

She was doing exactly what she claimed—scanning his dreamscape, diving into the realm of thought and memory.

As her spiritual consciousness drifted away, Arctic saw his chance.

The genie-like spirit in pink slowly crept closer, his footsteps light, but his gaze sharp—locked onto Damien as if trying to peel back the layers of his soul.

"Tell me, kid... what did you really experience in there?"

Damien turned his head, locking eyes with him.

Then, with a cold snort, he looked away.

"Tch."

If this oversized pink clown thought he was going to spill everything just like that, he could keep dreaming.

Arctic’s eye twitched. Steam practically hissed from his ears.

"Damn you, kid!" he cursed internally, clenching his teeth.

Still, despite the tantrum building in his chest, Arctic wasn’t the type to give up so easily. The glint in his eyes didn’t fade—in fact, it only sharpened.

"Heh... stubborn little brat," he muttered. "Let’s see how long that lasts."

However, before Arctic could continue pressing him, Little White’s eyes suddenly lit up.

She turned toward Damien, and in that moment, her gaze became razor-sharp—so intense that even someone like him, a hardened gang leader, felt a chill crawl down his spine.

It was the kind of look a predator would give its prey.

And yet, just as quickly as it appeared, that dangerous glint vanished—like it had never existed.

Still, it didn’t escape Damien’s sharp senses. His instincts flared, and unconsciously, his vigilance rose a notch.

This so-called Little White... she’s not as simple as she seems.

Noticing the shift in his posture, Little White chuckled softly, her bountiful bosom rising and falling with her laughter.

"There’s no need to be so tense," she said, her tone airy yet cryptic. "You’ll get to enter the dream... next year."

"However," Little White’s smile grew more pronounced, her voice dipping slightly, "let me warn you beforehand..."

Her gaze locked onto Damien’s, and this time there was no hint of playfulness in her tone.

"If you fail again... then next time, you’ll only be able to enter the dream two years later. Fail that, and it becomes four... then eight... and so on."

Her words echoed through the quiet hall like a solemn oath.

The lightness from before had vanished completely—what remained was a quiet, cold certainty.

It wasn’t just a warning. It was a sentence.

Each failure would stretch the waiting time, compounding endlessly... until the opportunity was lost to time itself.

Damien’s eyes narrowed slightly. He understood.

This wasn’t just a test.

It was a trap that punished stagnation.