The walk back to the Elder's Pavilion was a solitary procession through a storm of whispers. The academy, which had first scorned him as a failure and then gawked at him as a brute, had now settled on a new, more unsettling consensus: Ren was an incomprehensible enigma. The students parted before him, their faces a mixture of fear and awe. They didn't understand what they had seen, and their ignorance made them afraid. Ren felt their fear like a physical barrier, isolating him more completely than the walls of his dormitory ever could.
He didn't wait for a summons. He knew it was coming. He walked directly to the quiet courtyard garden, his steps sure and steady. The path was becoming as familiar to him as the scars on his memory.
He found Elder Tian not by the stone slabs or the trickling stream, but standing before his crystalline tree, his back to the entrance. The Elder did not turn as Ren approached and came to a silent stop.
"The official report from the Trial Hall has been logged," Elder Tian said, his voice calm and even, devoid of any discernible emotion. He was speaking to the tree as much as to Ren. "It states that an initiate with a registered Aetheric sensitivity of zero successfully navigated the Loom's most complex projection. The Spirit Lumina Pagoda's own diagnostic matrix has concluded that the only possible explanation is a one-in-a-trillion statistical anomaly. A miracle."
He finally turned, his ancient eyes fixing on Ren. The gaze was heavy, analytical. "I, however, have lived for a great many years. I have seen empires rise and fall, and I have learned that miracles are merely the manifestation of principles we do not yet understand. Explain your method."
There was no accusation in his tone, only a quiet demand for data. Ren recounted the experience, explaining how he had used the constant, skin-tight barrier of his will as a sensory organ. He described the feeling of the maze's Aetheric walls as a tangible pressure against that shell, a tactile map he could follow without needing to "see" it in the conventional sense.
The Elder listened without interruption, his expression unchanging. When Ren finished, he was silent for a long moment, his gaze distant.
"The Aetheric Loom is a masterpiece of the Spirit Lumina Pagoda," he said at last, his voice low. "They are an organization of scientists and artificers, not cultivators in the traditional sense. They do not believe in ancient bloodlines or the unknowable nature of the soul. They believe that all things, even the Aether Weave itself, can be measured, cataloged, and replicated."
He took a step closer to Ren, his eyes holding a new and serious light. "Their machine has registered an event that their science cannot explain. They have your name. They have your results. You are now an anomaly in their data, a ghost in their machine. And the Pagoda is relentless in its pursuit of knowledge. They will want to study you, Ren. Their interest is not a gentle thing. They will want to put you on a table, surround you with their diagnostic tools, and take you apart, piece by piece, to understand how you function."
The threat of Lin Fei and his brutish friends seemed like a childish game compared to this. The Spirit Lumina Pagoda was one of the great powers of the Empire, their influence second only to GAMA. To fall under their unwanted gaze was a danger of a completely different magnitude.
"Your ingenuity has, once again, outpaced your subtlety," the Elder stated, his tone shifting back to that of an instructor. "You have shown the world a new trick, but in doing so, you have painted a target on your back for an enemy you cannot hope to fight. Therefore, your training must adapt."
He gestured to the air around Ren. "You have learned to create a barrier. You have learned to shape force. Now, you must learn to hide in plain sight. Your control over the 'skin' of your will must become absolute. It must not only be a perfect defense, but a perfect camouflage. You will practice modulating its external signature until it perfectly mimics the ambient Aetheric field of a true, powerless commoner with an Innate Power of zero. You will learn to be invisible not just to the eye, but to the deepest Aetheric senses and, more importantly, to the prying diagnostic tools of your new admirers."
This was yet another impossible task, a new layer of control so fine it was almost unthinkable.
"Furthermore," the Elder continued, "your studies in the archive must be redirected. Cease your research into the Cataclysm for now. Your new subject is the enemy who now seeks you. You will read the foundational texts of the Spirit Lumina Pagoda. You will study the biographies of their Chief Artificers. You will learn their philosophies, their methods, their greatest achievements, and their most telling failures. You must understand how they think before they come for you."
He dismissed Ren with a curt nod. The game had changed. Ren walked away from the garden, the weight of the world on his shoulders feeling heavier than ever. He now had rivals who wished to harm him, and a new, far more dangerous potential adversary that wished to understand him. His path was no longer just about mastering himself; it was about making himself a ghost, a perfect void, before the hunters realized what they were looking for.