As Lin Mu continued to eavesdrop on the conversation, a third voice joined in.

It was an inner court disciple, a lot older and more composed. "You two are foolish. Do you not remember what happened to the Drowned Crescent Sect? Do you not remember the one who destroyed them and drove the Ephemera Sect into hiding? Do you want to attract that monster to our doorstep?"

Lin Mu felt his step falter for the briefest moment as the words reached his ears.

His name was not spoken, but the description was unmistakable. He had been expecting whispers of his deeds, yet to hear his reputation spoken within the very heart of an enemy sect struck a strange chord. He kept walking as if nothing had happened, his face calm and unreadable.

A little further down the street, two older disciples sat at the edge of a pavilion, sharing cups of spirit wine. Their voices were low but clear enough for Lin Mu to catch.

"The young ones will always grumble," one said with a faint chuckle. "They have no patience. They do not understand that the sect has gone through many such hibernations before. The cycle is normal."

"That is true," the other agreed. "When I was a novice, we spent nearly two centuries in seclusion. The Patriarch says that hiding ourselves is the surest way to outlast our enemies. We survive not by flaunting our strength but by letting the world forget we exist."

Lin Mu absorbed every word, piecing together the threads of truth.

The so-called "hibernation" was not a new measure but a tradition stretching back thousands of years. The Hidden Cave Sect had endured by withdrawing completely from the world whenever danger rose too high, emerging only when conditions were favorable again. It was a survival strategy rather than cowardice, though to the impatient younger generation it seemed like imprisonment.

The pattern explained much.

The elders were firm in their resolve, while the younger disciples felt caged. Still, the promise of abundant resources provided during hibernation kept rebellion from boiling over. Lin Mu saw disciples carrying boxes of immortal stones and trays of elixirs, supplied directly from the sect’s stores.

Training did not stop simply because the outside world was cut off.

His wandering brought him near a larger hall where groups of disciples were gathering in small clusters. Snippets of conversation drifted toward him, each one another fragment of the larger puzzle.

"I heard the scouts are the only ones allowed to leave," a girl murmured. "And even they are forbidden from interacting with outsiders."

"Of course," her friend replied. "If anyone learns of our location, the hibernation will be meaningless. We cannot risk exposure."

Lin Mu walked past without slowing, his mind quietly sorting the information he had collected. The Hidden Cave Sect’s defenses were not of walls or weapons but of secrecy and isolation. That explained the lack of alarms and security arrays. The sect had placed its faith not in vigilance but in invisibility.

As he turned another corner, Lin Mu considered his next steps.

The outer atmosphere of the sect was calm and almost idyllic, but beneath it lay centuries of calculated survival. He would need to go deeper, to discover whether this tranquility was genuine or only a mask hiding something far more sinister.

For now, however, he had achieved what he needed. He had blended seamlessly into the flow of disciples, gathered knowledge about their current state, and confirmed that his presence went unnoticed. Elyon, hidden in the shadows somewhere nearby, would continue to cover his tracks. Together, they could peel back the layers of this sect one by one.

Lin Mu’s eyes narrowed slightly as he moved toward the central plaza of the sphere.

The Grand Pavilion rose at the center of the hollow like the heart of a sleeping animal. Its eaves were carved with spirals of stone and inked sigils that shimmered faintly with flowing formation energy.

Around it the central plaza opened wide, paved with pale tiles that reflected the dispersed light of the sphere. Bridges spanned small gaps, hanging gardens drifted on tethered platforms, and lines of disciples moved like threads across the pattern, each step careful and unhurried.

At the threshold of the Grand Pavilion the air felt thicker.

Lin Mu slowed, feeling the familiar nudge of an identification formation sweeping over the crowd like the turn of a tide. It was not hostile. Rather it was a living, patient weave that scanned each approaching face for proof of rank and right to enter.

The formation’s senses brushed over him and then stilled as they found the Identification Token at his side. The token buzzed once, accepted, and a soft chime sounded, invisible to all but those attuned to the formation. The passage opened.

He moved through with the easy gait of a man who belonged. His disguise as a Core Disciple covered on him like a well tailored robe, not merely in outward form but in the manner with which he held himself.

A quick, subtle feeling of satisfaction passed through him.

His rewrite on the token had taken only moments to do, but here that small alteration mattered more than any blade. Forms of authority were often held together by paper, seal, or glow. A forged signature that matched the bearer’s qi was sometimes more powerful than any proclamation.

Elyon’s presence was sensationless.

He had slipped in through the eaves and the shadows, a moving absence rather than a figure. The wolfkin’s mastery of the Darkness Dao allowed him to press into corners where formations could not reach, to fold himself into pockets of shade and travel unseen.

Lin Mu had watched him melt into a lantern’s shadow earlier as if he were only a trick of the light. Where identification formations sought the presence of a token or the pattern of a known aura, Elyon’s darkness simply refused to register. He drifted through the plaza like a rumor and took post where he could watch several avenues at once.

A young disciple stepped from the shadow of a pillar and called out a name.

"Brother Xiong,"