The Phoenix's Nest. That's what the euphoric elders had named the mountain peak that was now Xiao Lan's private domain. To Lin Feng, the name was a comical understatement. This wasn't a nest; it was a five-star paradise for celestial tyrants, and he, apparently, was the new butler, janitor, and guinea pig.
The spiritual energy here was so dense and pure you could almost chew it. Waterfalls of Qi-infused water cascaded into hot spring ponds that steamed with a mystical mist. The main pavilion, built from mind-soothing spiritual sandalwood, was a masterpiece of elegance and opulence. There were herb gardens that would make an alchemy master weep with envy and a private training dojo with a white jade floor that was probably worth more than all the outer disciples combined.
As he unpacked his single, pathetic bundle of belongings—consisting of a change of threadbare clothes and the vague hope of not dying in a too humiliating fashion—in his modest but immaculate servant's quarters, Lin Feng couldn't stop a bitter, silent laugh from bubbling up in his chest.
"Trash's Survival Manual, addendum 47," he muttered to himself as he propped his shovel—his one true possession, which he had insisted on retrieving—against the wall. "How to go from shoveling divine manure to living in a luxury cultivation resort. Step one: become the indispensable human battery for a war goddess with scientific tendencies. Step two: survive an apocalypse. Step three: pray that room service doesn't include poison as the dish of the day."
Xiao Lan stood on the balcony of the main pavilion. She wasn't admiring the panoramic view of the sect stretching out below her. Her jade eyes were fixed on the horizon, but her mind was light-years away, analyzing, calculating, and processing the dizzying cascade of events that had catapulted them into this new, precarious existence.
She was the queen of the mountain, the new hope of the sect, but Lin Feng knew the truth. She was a queen on a borrowed throne, whose power fundamentally depended on the same "trash" everyone else despised. The irony was so thick you could cut it with a sword.
That night, there were no celebrations. No banquets. Just a purpose-laden silence in the private training dojo. Moonlight filtered through the intricate panels, painting the jade floor with silver patterns.
"The Primordial Library granted you the knowledge of the 'Cycle of the Abyss and the Star'," Xiao Lan said, breaking the silence. Her voice, as always, was an instrument of cold precision. "Explain its principles. Omit no detail."
Lin Feng, sitting cross-legged before her, sighed. Recovery time was over. The relentless tutor was back to work.
"It's... a method for not exploding, basically," he began, scratching the back of his neck. "An instruction manual for my internal disaster. The technique defines us as a three-part system. I am the Crucible, where the chaos energy is born and churns."
His gaze landed on Xiao Lan.
"You are the Refining Fire. Your Dao of order and purity doesn't fight my chaos, but gives it form, stabilizes it, turns it into something usable. And Glob..." he glanced at the small puddle of darkness pulsing quietly beside him, "he is the Stabilizing Anchor. As a manifestation of my own chaos, he can act as a bridge, a buffer that smooths the flow between us and keeps us from annihilating each other if we make a mistake."
Xiao Lan nodded, her face impassive.
"A crucible, a fire, and an anchor. A triangular cycle of power. In theory, it allows us to strengthen our Daos simultaneously. Your chaos becomes more stable, my fire becomes conceptually more powerful, and your... familiar grows stronger by feeding on the residual energy. It is efficient. It is dangerous. We will test it."
"Right now?" Lin Feng whined. "My meridians still feel like they were used to unclog a celestial drain."
"Pain is an excellent reminder not to make mistakes," she retorted without a shred of sympathy. "Our lives will depend on our mastery of this cycle. We cannot afford to be clumsy. Hands."
The command was absolute. With the resignation of a man heading to the gallows for the umpteenth time, Lin Feng held out his hands. Xiao Lan placed her palms against his. The now-familiar contact sent a resonance through their bodies, a strange harmony of opposites. Glob, sensing their intent, slid between their crossed knees, connecting their circuit.
"Begin," she ordered. "Slowly. Just a thread."
Lin Feng closed his eyes and dove into the storm in his dantian. For the first time, he didn't try to suppress it. Following the principles of the technique, he coaxed it, guided it, willingly releasing a single strand of that dark, primordial power.
It was like trying to walk a leviathan on a silk leash.
The thread of chaotic energy flowed down his arm and into Xiao Lan. He felt her flinch, the way her newly formed Golden Core vibrated in response. She didn't fight back. With iron concentration, she drew the chaos into her own Purifying Fire.
BOOM.
A small fluctuation, a miscalculation in the energy ratio. One of the white jade tiles beside them cracked instantly; a thin black line spiderwebbed across its surface before the tile turned to dust and vanished into nothingness.
Lin Feng let out a choked cry, cold sweat beading on his forehead.
"My sincerest apologies to the floor! I didn't mean to redecorate with conceptual annihilation!"
"Focus!" Xiao Lan snapped, her voice tense. "Your control is as delicate as a wild boar's in a glass shop! Feel it! Don't force it!"
They re-established the flow. This time, it was smoother. Lin Feng felt his chaotic power flow into her, be enveloped by her fire, transformed, and then, a portion of that fused energy returned to him. It was not a pleasant sensation. It felt like pouring molten metal into his meridians, but the pain came with a purpose. It was forging, widening, and strengthening the channels that before could barely contain a trickle of Qi.
At the same time, Glob pulsed with a rhythmic frequency, absorbing the erratic fluctuations, its small mass acting like a lightning rod for the rampant spiritual energy.
They lasted thirty seconds before breaking apart, gasping. Lin Feng slumped backward, feeling like he'd run a thousand li. Xiao Lan remained upright, but the paleness of her face and the slight tremor in her hands betrayed the extreme strain she had been under.
"Partial success," she declared, her voice a controlled whisper. "Transfer efficiency was 42%. Nine seconds were lost in the initial stabilization. The feedback to your meridians was 13% more violent than optimal. Unacceptable. We will do it again tomorrow."
Lin Feng could only groan in response. His celestial partner had all the charm and warmth of an instruction manual for an apocalyptic weapon.
The following days became a routine of glorified torture. In the morning, they practiced the "Cycle of the Abyss and the Star" until Lin Feng was on the verge of collapse. In the afternoon, the second phase of his training began: normal cultivation.
"It's the most basic technique of the sect, the 'Gentle Wind Manual'," Xiao Lan told him one day, tossing him a jade scroll. "Any outer disciple with half a brain can master it in a month. You should be able to feel the Qi in the air and guide it to your dantian. Try it."
Lin Feng tried. He sat for hours, trying to sense the ambient spiritual energy that, for Xiao Lan, was as obvious as the air she breathed. For him, it was like trying to fish in a desert.
"I... I don't feel anything," he finally admitted, frustrated. "It's like the world is empty."
Xiao Lan frowned. She walked over and placed a finger on his forehead.
"Your body was reforged by the energy of the Thousand-Year Ice Lotus. Your meridians, though they need refinement, are wider and stronger than any expert in the Meridian Opening Realm. It's impossible for you not to feel Qi."
Then, her eyes widened with sudden understanding.
"Ah. I see. The problem isn't your body. It's your soul. Your Chaotic Heart is so dominant, so... arrogant, that it rejects any energy that isn't its own. It considers normal Qi an impurity, a lower form of energy. You're trying to invite a stream into an ocean that only accepts tsunamis."
Lin Feng's jaw dropped.
"So my own power is stopping me from cultivating like a normal person? That's ridiculously stupid!"
"It's a living contradiction," she corrected. "We will have to force it. From now on, you will spend four hours a day meditating. If you can't draw the Qi in, we will push it into you."
But where he failed miserably in ethereal cultivation, he excelled on the physical plane in a way that left her perplexed.
"The Unmovable Mountain Stance," she instructed him in the dojo. "Lower your center of gravity. Feel the connection to the earth. Become a rock that not even ten oxen could move."
She demonstrated the stance. It was a simple yet profound pose, requiring perfect balance and alignment. Lin Feng watched her, then mimicked it.
And it just... worked.
Instantly.
There was no clumsiness, no imbalance. His body settled into the stance as if he'd been born in it. Xiao Lan stared at him, bewildered. She walked around him, searching for flaws. She found none.
"Try to push me," Lin Feng said, a rare spark of confidence in his eyes.
Xiao Lan raised an eyebrow but complied. She gave him a gentle shove. Lin Feng didn't budge. She gave him a stronger push, infused with a hint of her Qi. It was like pushing an actual mountain. His feet seemed to have merged with the jade floor.
"How?" she asked, her voice devoid of its usual certainty, tinged with pure disbelief.
Lin Feng smirked.
"I guess years of taking beatings from Zhang Fu without falling down has its perks. My body knows how not to move when it doesn't want to."
The pattern repeated itself. She taught him a series of evasive steps, the "Ghostly Leaf Step." They were fluid, complex movements designed to dodge attacks in tight spaces. What would have taken a genius like Jian Yue a week of intense practice, Lin Feng mastered in less than an hour.
He wasn't thinking about it. His body simply moved. Every time Xiao Lan feigned an attack, his muscles reacted with an instinctive efficiency that bordered on precognition. His body, forged in survival and now reinforced by celestial energy, was a weapon that didn't need to think. It knew how to dodge, it knew how to endure, it knew how to survive.
Xiao Lan stopped the training, looking at him as if he were an impossible puzzle.
"You don't have a single shred of Qi flowing through your movements," she said, her analytical mind working at full speed. "And yet, your speed and timing surpass most inner disciples. Your body and your combat instincts are on a completely different level from your cultivation base. You are the greatest paradox I have ever seen."
"I've always prided myself on being disappointing in new and creative ways, Senior Partner," he replied, panting but still standing, a crooked smile on his face. "Glad to see I haven't lost my touch."
That night, as Lin Feng soaked in a bath of medicinal herbs to soothe his tortured muscles, Xiao Lan remained on the balcony, contemplating the moon.
Her "project," her "battery," her "assistant," was becoming more complicated with each passing day. He was weak and powerful, clumsy and prodigious, a walking contradiction that defied all cultivation logic. She knew the outside world, the other sects, were preparing for the grand spectacle at the summit. They saw a phoenix in her. But here, in the solitude of her nest, she faced a disturbing truth: the phoenix couldn't fly without the strange, chaotic dragon that pretended to be a worm. And that dragon was learning to move. Far too quickly.
One month. They had only one month to turn their strange, precarious, and painful symbiosis into a weapon capable of facing the world. The task seemed impossible. And to Xiao Lan, for the first time in her life, the idea of the impossible seemed strangely... stimulating. The summit wouldn't just be a challenge; it would be a grand-scale experiment. And she was eager to see the results.