CHAPTER 30: Fifth Session

Two days later. Back in the forest.The guardian doesn't wait for us to reach the main chamber this time. It meets us at the ruin entrance, points at me, and says one word in the old language.Now."Good morning to you too," I say.Bao Fengtian, standing at my right shoulder with the blade out, mutters, "Friendly as ever."The guardian turns and walks inside.We follow.---The assessment hits before I'm fully seated.No buildup. No warning. The probe slams into the seal like it's done this four times before and knows exactly where the existing fractures are — because it does.My back hits the floor."Zephyr—""Staying down this time," I say, through my teeth. "Easier on the knees."Bao Fengtian snorts. Doesn't move from his position covering the chamber entrance.The fractures from the last session rip back open immediately. The seal screams — not literally, but that's the closest word for what it feels like when a suppression structure built by someone else starts unraveling faster

CHAPTER 31: What Elder Qian Does When He's Scared

Elder Qian's reaction to the Overseer is not a being, it's a structure is to stand up, walk to his window, and stare at the mountain outside for about forty-five seconds without speaking.I wait.Bao Fengtian, who came with me and is eating leftover kitchen bread he had in his pocket, waits too.Finally Elder Qian turns around. His eyes have the specific look of a man who has been researching something for sixty years and just had the final piece land."A self-sustaining cosmic formation," he says, very carefully. "That developed consciousness.""Or had it from the beginning," I say. "The Void Dragon showed me the oldest layer. There was something before the hunger. Before the structure. Something that looked—" I stop."Looked like what?" His voice is steady but his hands, folded in front of him, aren't."Like a person," I say. "The shape of it. At the bottom. Before everything else."The room goes very quiet.Bao Fengtian stops chewing."Someone became the Overseer," Elder Qian says.

CHAPTER 32: Bao Fengtian's Intelligence Network VS. Ancient Secret Organization

He comes back three hours later.I'm in the storage building running Astra circulation exercises when the door opens and he drops down onto his crate with the expression of someone who has just had a very interesting evening and is choosing the right moment to deploy the information.I wait.He waits longer."Bao Fengtian.""I'm building suspense.""You don't need to build suspense. Just tell me.""There are two of them," he says. "A woman and a man. Mid-thirties, maybe older but they cultivate well enough that it's hard to tell. The woman does all the talking. The man carries everything and looks at the exits constantly." He pulls a meat bun from somewhere — his pocket, apparently, he always has food — and eats. "They've been tracking the Void Lineage pulse signatures for eighteen months. The pulse from the Black Hollow Forest last month is what brought them here specifically.""What do they want?""To talk to you." He takes another bite. "The woman said — and I'm quoting because it

CHAPTER 33: Everything the Pavilion Knows

Her name is Liang Yue.She tells me this like it's an afterthought, after we've moved to Elder Qian's research chambers and she's spent twenty minutes setting the jade container's contents out on his desk in a specific order that suggests she's done this in her head many times before."Your name," I say."Liang Yue." She doesn't look up from the arrangement. "Director of field operations, World End Pavilion. I've been running the monitoring formation interference personally for eleven years.""Before you?""My predecessor. Before him, his predecessor." She finally looks up. "The Pavilion operates on long timelines.""Clearly."Elder Qian is standing at his own desk looking at someone else's research laid out on it with the specific expression of a scholar encountering information they want and finding the social situation required to be very patient about it."Start from the beginning," I say.She picks up the first jade slip. "The World End Pavilion was founded 214 years ago by six c

All Chapters of The Heavenly Menace: My System Won't Stop Making Me a Legend: Chapter 31 - Chapter 34

CHAPTER 30: Fifth Session

CHAPTER 31: What Elder Qian Does When He's Scared

CHAPTER 32: Bao Fengtian's Intelligence Network VS. Ancient Secret Organization

CHAPTER 33: Everything the Pavilion Knows