He looked old, the face of a man who had seen the height and decline of generations, but the signs of age did not equal weakness. His Qi was like a deep river, wide and controlled, and it surged where needed with the slow confidence of amassed years.

Beneath him the formation was a lattice of sustaining lines, a support array more complex than most defensive rings. From Lin Mu’s close assessment he could see how it fed Qi and regulated the Patriarch’s internal flows.

It was a masterfully designed structure within the sphere’s greater framework.

The innermost lines matched those of the sphere itself, as though the Patriarch’s private array had been woven into the body of the refuge to form a single living system. Those connections were a blessing and a curse. They amplified his cultivation, but they also made his position visible to someone skilled enough to read the formation’s signature.

’They probably never expected anyone to enter this place in the first place, so never bothered with keeping this hidden.’ Lin Mu reckoned as he silently watched the old man.

The Patriarch seemed to cultivate in solitude.

A pile of small talismans lay to one side, neat and ordered. A rack of modest weapons leaned against a pillar. A single window looked outward into the artificial sky, showing the faint shimmer of the inner dome.

The silence of the chamber carried with it a comfortable rhythm. There were no sentries pacing the outer halls, none of the petty traps that marked a guarded room. The man had chosen seclusion and arrayed systems of support as his shield.

’Hmm... Decently strong.’ Lin Mu’s estimation of the man’s cultivation sat at the Peak of the Immortal Realm, perhaps a breath short of Transcendent Immortal.

A few gestures, a slight movement of breath, and the man’s aura coalesced into latent explosions of potential. He had not yet taken the step to transcendence, but the pressure of his qi reserves and its refinement showed that he had the capacity and the discipline to do so.

He still had quite a bit of his longevity left.

’Probably why he has not taken that last step...’ Lin Mu thought.

He measured the time between the Patriarch’s breaths, noting the tide of Qi that rolled in and then settled. He read the formation’s pulse, timing the small fluctuations to place his action where it would cause the least noise.

If the Patriarch was to be removed with a single strike then it must be done when the sustaining array’s cycles were in a momentary lull.

’I’ll have to be quick and precise.’ Lin Mu’s mind ran a thousand calculations at that moment.

He allowed his Sword Intent to thrum, and the sensation guided him as surely as a compass. The combination of his Sword Intent and Immortal Sense let him pinpoint the point where a strike would sever the central flow without sending the entire array into alarm.

Attacking the array directly would raise echoes through the whole sphere. Attacking the Patriarch at the heart of his breathing, by contrast, could be a surgical cut, invisible to the outer sections until too late for reaction.

Elyon’s faint presence in the shadows outside was a comfort.

The wolfkin had melted into the darkness below a balcony, occupying a vantage point that could sever lines of retreat or cut the throats of disciples or elders who might run to raise an alarm.

If any attempt at detection rose from the outer floors, Elyon’s darkness could blot it out while Lin Mu acted.

Lin Mu thought through his steps twice.

Blink would place him near, and flicker would let him pass through the faint isolation barrier between them, Phase would hide his body in pillar near the old man, and then a single strike would end the Patriarch.

Still a single strike to end an expert at the Peak of the Immortal Realm would not be easy. While Lin Mu had many powerful skills, not all were suitable for this.

He did not plan to use the Mountain Collapsing Fist here. That technique was loud by intent and released force that it would destroy the entire hall. Instead he chose precision, a technique woven from a blend of space and sword intent.

His hands moved without sound.

Lin Mu drew out Afternoon Pine and activated his fifth Spatial Skill, Meld.

SHUA

Covering his sword with meld, he let the Sword intent flow within the ’container’ he had just made. But that wasn’t all he did, he further drew out Spatial qi, remembering how he had done when he had made the Knot Of the Weaver to seal the Heart of Gravity.

Applying the same principal, he ’sealed’ the overwhelmingly sharp Sword Intent within the container of Meld.

Not a single wisp of qi, flicker of sword intent or even a bit of aura could be felt.

HUUU

’It’s now or never,’ Lin Mu thought as he watched the Patriarch.

The old man’s breath rose and fell. The formation pulsed in a measured cycle, the smallest pause a crack in a table.

It was time.

SHUA

Lin Mu’s arm moved, and the strike was an art.

His intent did not scream. It passed like a grain of dust through the space where the Patriarch’s control and cultivation overlapped. The attack sought the soft place where man’s natural qi fluctuations and array met, where a man’s hold on breath could be broken without collapsing the house around him.

If the blow struck true then the man would fall without cries. The arrays would not ring like broken glass. They would register a loss that might take time to parse. That time was everything. Lin Mu had measured it, and he trusted his Blade covered with intent and Spatial Dao to do what normal steel could not.

He felt at the edge of his perception, the subtle shift as the Patriarch’s mind faltered, just a hair of uncertainty. Even that fraction was a victory.

The fluctuation of formations did not trigger an alarm.

The great hall’s elders did not leap instantly into action.

For a heartbeat, the world contained only the soft rustle of inner robes and the falling of a body.