The moment Shenli’s words faded, the chamber trembled. The stele flared, its inscriptions searing with light as if recognizing the presence of intruders. The golden furnace pulsed, embers rising from its surface like fireflies. A voice, deep and unrelenting, echoed from the stone itself, rippling through the air like a judge delivering a sentence.

  “The path of fire and root is not for the unworthy. Those who fail shall be reduced to ash and dust.”

  The space around them warped. A force gripped Tao and Jian, yanking them apart like puppets cut from their strings. The chamber, the stele, the furnace, all of it collapsed into nothingness.

  Tao hit the ground hard. He coughed, forcing himself upright, eyes darting around. He was no longer in the chamber. Around him, plants grew at unnatural speeds, twisting toward the sky, their leaves unfurling with desperate hunger. The scent of soil was thick, almost overwhelming, but something was wrong. The roots beneath his feet pulsed, writhing like veins, and the moment he moved, the earth lurched, dragging him down knee deep into the dirt.

  A whisper curled through the air, the same voice from before, colder now, merciless.

  “The land does not suffer those who take without understanding. Restore what has been broken or be swallowed whole.”

  The ground tightened. Tao fought against it, but the more he struggled, the deeper he sank. The plants were draining the life from the soil too quickly, gorging themselves on its essence. The balance was collapsing. He needed to stabilize it, but how? Panic clawed at the edges of his mind. This wasn’t just a test; the trial meant to kill him.

  He forced himself to think. The scrolls he had taken from the pavilion, the soil refinement techniques, the balance of Qi circulation in cultivation fields. He had briefly looked through them but never tested them. He closed his eyes, pushing his Qi downward, not to fight the pull, but to mend the imbalance. His breath came sharp as he wove his energy into the land, threading it through the roots, forcing them to take only what was necessary, to hold back their greed.

  The resistance was immense. The soil fought him, the plants resisted, but Tao gritted his teeth and pushed harder, his Qi flickering under the strain. The land trembled beneath him. Then…

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  Stillness.

  The roots loosened. The plants ceased their frantic feeding. The ground released its hold on him, and Tao stumbled forward, gasping for breath. The oppressive weight in the air eased, and though the plants still swayed, they no longer reached hungrily for him. The voice whispered once more, this time quieter, almost approving.

  “You understand.”

  Then the world shattered.

  Jian barely had time to cry out before he was consumed by fire. It coiled around him, rising in pillars of crimson and gold, seething with the promise of destruction. A pill floated before him, its form unstable, shuddering as though caught between completion and ruin. The heat licked at his skin, and the flames surged closer. He raised his arm on instinct, but the fire did not burn him, it tested him, pressing against his very essence.

  The voice returned, no less merciful than before. “Alchemy is not for the reckless. To forge without control is to shatter the balance of life itself.”

  Jian clenched his teeth. He had never refined a pill before. He barely understood alchemy beyond what little he had read in passing. But the text he had taken, the alchemical script from the pavilion, had been profound. He had left it with Tao but could still remember parts of what he had read. He tried desperately to scour his memories for a method that could help him stabilize the flames.

  The script had detailed the harmony of fire and Qi, how to balance conflicting energies during pill refinement. His mind raced. The flames weren’t just fire, they were fighting each other, devouring the pill instead of tempering it. Jian adjusted his Qi, mimicking what he had seen alchemists do, controlling the flow as if he were redirecting an opponent’s blade. The flames resisted, twisting violently. He forced himself to move with them instead of against them, finding the natural rhythm in their chaotic dance.

  The pill pulsed. The fire grew wild. Jian gritted his teeth and held firm, steadying the energy, forcing it into balance. The fire stabilized.

  The moment it did, the trial collapsed around him.

  He staggered, breath ragged, and found himself back in the stone chamber. Tao was there, panting, dirt still clinging to his robes. The golden furnace hummed softly between them. The stele’s inscriptions, once unreadable, now blazed with clarity, their meaning laid bare.

  A passage opened beneath the stone, a staircase leading downward into the unknown.

  Shenli’s voice returned, velvety and smug. Not bad. I was almost convinced you were going to die.

  Jian exhaled sharply, hands still trembling. “What’s next?”

  Tao straightened, gaze locked on the open path ahead. “We keep going.”

  They had passed the trial. But the inheritance had yet to be claimed.