A panel opened across the width of his vision and waited, polite and unhurried, for him to start spending.

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[ SHOP - TIER 1 ]

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[ Balance: 10,000 Origin Points. ]

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[ The browser is all yours, host. Items, weapons, ingredients, techniques, pills, all of it. Navigate the same way you’d navigate that internet thing your memories keep flashing at me. Each item opens its own page. ]

He scrolled by reflex, the modern reflex of a man who’d once spent half a college afternoon adding things to virtual carts he couldn’t afford. The categories slid past in soft gold. Yuncheng’s pre-dawn quiet pressed against the shutter behind him.

’Mira. Hold on. Do these have reviews on them?’

[ ...Excuse me. ]

’You know, stars, comments. A nice "five out of five, saved my life in the alley" kind of thing.’

[ Xuan. ]

’I’d buy faster from the one with testimonials, I’m just saying.’

[ What you have instead of testimonials is my all-powerful command of the catalogue, which is available twenty-four hours a day and is never wrong. ٩(ˊᗜˋ*)و ]

’Not the same thing.’

[ It’s way better, so keep moving. Ten thousand points are not going to spend themselves. ]

A second small panel slid into the upper margin. Grey. Sealed.

[ Tier 2 - LOCKED. ]

[ Requirement: Complete active quest Crown of Yuncheng. ]

[ You remember the deal, right? ]

’I remember.’

He let the panel sit there a breath longer than he needed to. The line of grey at the top of his vision was a promise with a price tag he could read by now. Fifteen thousand more points, the title, the bonus reward sealed under a fog he could not see through. All of it sitting on top of two fights and one peak Qi Gathering rival who happened to be one breath under Foundation.

’Mira. Listen. About the technique you handed me. I’m not going to use it against Su Qingyue.’

[ Oh? That’s a choice. Walk me through it. ]

’It’s not sentimental, before you start on me. It’s strategic. If I use Falling Stars in the semifinal, Yan Wuji gets to study the entire thing before we step onto the stone together. I’d rather have him meeting the technique for the first time when we’re actually fighting. Saves me a few unpleasant surprises he could have prepared for.’

[ Lawyer’s son to the bone. Approved. ]

’Right, then. There are two things I’m going to need to fix before tomorrow.’

The voice he was using inside his own skull dropped half a register. He was past the banter. He had the math in front of him.

’I need to break through to Stage Five tonight, and I need a bigger cup. Six per cent of dantian isn’t going to cover Falling Stars and leave me anything for the rest of the combat. I’m going to need at least double that. And if I can walk onto the stone tomorrow at Stage Five, the realm gap in the final reads two, not three.’

[ Yeah, I’m hearing you. I have the loadout for you already. ]

A new panel unfurled, the curated kind Mira opened only when she was confident her customer was not browsing for fun.

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[ RECOMMENDED LOADOUT ]

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[ ▸ Realm Breakthrough Pill - Stage 5 4,500 ]

[ ▸ Dantian Widening Pill (Mid) 2,500 ]

[ ▸ Marrow-Settling Pill (Medium) 2,000 ]

[ ▸ Qi Restoration Pill 500 ]

[ ▸ Minor Defensive Talismans x3 500 ]

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[ Total: 10,000 ]

[ Remaining balance: 0 ]

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He read it once, then read the totals column twice.

’You priced it down to the last point.’

[ I did. ]

’All right. Take it.’

[ Taking it all. Goodbye, wallet. ]

A short, almost ceremonial pulse ran through the panel as the system processed the purchase, and the panel that replaced it was the tightest list of items he had seen in months.

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[ INVENTORY UPDATED ]

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[ ▸ Realm Breakthrough Pill (Stage 5) x1 ]

[ ▸ Dantian Widening Pill (Mid-grade) x1 ]

[ ▸ Marrow-Settling Pill (Medium) x1 ]

[ ▸ Qi Restoration Pill x1 ]

[ ▸ Minor Defensive Talismans x3 ]

═══════════════════════════════

He breathed out, sat himself up against the back of the bed, and started the sequence the way Mira had laid it out.

———————————————

The Marrow-Settling Pill went down first because the body asked to be the floor before it asked to be the ceiling. The pine of Lian’s preparations had nothing on the cold mineral taste of a system-grade pill, and the moment it cleared the back of his throat the two cracked ribs on his left side did the small private work of unstitching themselves from the wrong angle and pulling back into the right one. The lung lining stopped feeling like a thing that lived under glass.

The Dantian Widening Pill followed. He let the meditation posture pick itself, the way the body did when forty days of cultivation had taught the spine where to fold and which knees to set against which palm. The pill warmed in the dantian and stayed warm. The walls of the small chamber under his navel pushed outward in the orderly way an unseen mason pushed a room of a house out from inside. Six per cent broadened into something his Qi could swim in instead of pool in.

The Breakthrough Pill went last because Stage Five was First Purification, the stage the Skyedge manual called the cleaning of the cup. Heat traveled up his spine, and the impurities of three months of tournament travel left him through the pores at the back of his neck in a thin dark sweat. Bad sleep, bad food, the residue of two near-deaths, draining out at last in a sour line that Lian was going to pretend not to see in a few hours. The dantian filled to the new walls. He swallowed the Qi Restoration Pill at the top of the climb and let it carry him to a hundred.

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[ HOST STATUS - POST-BREAKTHROUGH ]

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[ Realm: Qi Refining - Stage 5 ]

[ Dantian Capacity: 6% → 12% ]

[ Qi Reserve: 100% ]

[ Body integrity: stable ]

[ Sword Absolute Physique: 17% → 19% ]

[ Origin Points: 0 ]

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He opened his eyelids. The grey at the edge of the shutter had paled into the first thin layer of morning. Outside, Yuncheng was getting up.

[ Rest one hour, Xuan. Your brother fights at noon. ]

He nodded once, lay back, and let the body do the last of its accounting. Plain Steel rested against the wall within arm’s reach. The Arena was four streets and one bridge away.

Somewhere on the far side of the city, the first horn of the day sounded over the rooftops. Lin Kai had four hours and one breakfast left before he met Yan Wuji on the polished stone.