The Azure Flame Sect's Hall of Ascension was not a hall in the architectural sense. It was a natural cavern, its walls jagged with living flame crystal, glowing with trapped heat and age. Here, promotions were earned. Talents tested. And secrets—when they surfaced—were usually drowned in fire before they could ripple too far.
Elder Xu Ming sat alone on a raised dais, fingers drumming the lacquered arm of his seat. The chamber was quiet, but his mind churned.
Li Shen cannot be allowed to vanish into obscurity again.
Three times now, formation matrices in his presence had flickered. Spiritual instruments went out of tune. A report came just this morning: an inner disciple's technique failed mid-casting when Li Shen passed nearby—not through sabotage, but destabilization.
Something in the boy distorted patterns. Law. Intent.
And Xu Ming hated patterns he couldn't predict.
"We will test him," he said aloud.
Later that day
The call came without warning.
A notice nailed to the central message board:LI SHEN. OUTER DISCIPLE. SUMMONED FOR ASCENT TRIAL.
Most didn't react. Some scoffed. Trials were rare for outer disciples without backing. More often than not, it was a death sentence wrapped in ceremony.
But Li Shen did not flinch.
He appeared before the Hall of Ascension at dusk.
Wore his worn robe. Carried no weapon.
Elder Xu Ming watched from the shadowed ledge above as the youth entered. There was no fear in his steps. No arrogance either. Just… calculation. The way he stood equidistant from every potential entrance. How he turned his head slightly before each torch flickered—as if mapping heat threads with casual indifference.
"You've been quiet, boy," Xu said from above. His voice echoed. "But silence doesn't last forever. The sect tests those who linger in its cracks."
Li Shen looked up. "You mean those who don't play by its structure."
A flicker of amusement crossed Xu's face. "Perhaps. Your trial is simple: survive a formation I've prepared."
He snapped his fingers.
The ground shifted.
From the stone rose a dozen mirror-wraiths—shapes of smoke and light, each mimicking Li Shen's form. His height, his stance, even his energy. But they moved with borrowed speed, untethered from real physics. Each step they took bent reality slightly wrong.
"Each is a projection of possibility," Xu said. "Reflections of who you could be. Stronger versions. Faster. More refined. You must unmake them all."
Li Shen stepped forward once, calmly.
Then stopped.
"You mirrored my forms," he said softly. "But not my threads."
The wraiths surged forward.
Li Shen inhaled.
He saw them—not as bodies, but as collections of rules. Each one bound by a system of mimicry: movement threads tied to his past, response threads drawn from memory.
And one by one, he began to sever them.
He didn't move with speed. He didn't need to.
He broke the rules within the projections.
The first wraith staggered as its causality thread was unraveled—it tried to move, but its action no longer produced reaction.
The second dissolved mid-strike, undone by the removal of its conceptual "mass."
The third screeched and split apart as Li Shen reversed its timeline thread, returning it to nonexistence.
By the fifth, Elder Xu was leaning forward.
By the eighth, the other watching elders grew silent.
By the twelfth, the chamber was still.
And only Li Shen remained.
He exhaled and bowed—not low, just enough.
"I assume that passes?"
Elder Xu's voice came carefully. "More than passes. But now… you're visible."
Li Shen said nothing. But he knew what that meant.
Whispers would begin. Spies sent. Maybe recruitment. Maybe worse.
He'd stepped out of the shadows.
Time to start pulling the strings that mattered.