The tripwire was invisible, but Yun Che was no longer relying on his eyes. His reopened profound veins gave him a spiritual sense that extended ten feet in all directions — not far, but enough. He stepped over the wire and continued through the forest, counting the ambush positions as he passed them.

Three assassins. Two in the trees, one behind the fallen log to the east. Their Qi masking was excellent — he couldn't sense their cultivation levels at all — but their positioning gave them away. The Shadow Division trained its operatives to follow a standard ambush formation that was brutally effective against normal targets and utterly predictable against someone who had studied it.

He had studied it.

'You can come out now,' he said, stopping in the middle of the trail. 'I've been tracking you for six miles. Your footwork is sloppy.'

Silence. Then laughter — dry and humorless — from the treeline.

'You really have recovered,' a voice said. A man stepped out of the shadows beneath a cypress tree, taller than the average assassin, with a scar that ran from his left temple to the corner of his mouth. 'The reports undersold it. But it doesn't matter. Three Earth Profound cultivators against one Spirit Profound. Those are not survivable odds.'

Yun Che didn't argue. He had fought Earth Profound cultivators before, and he had lost every single time. The gap between Spirit and Earth was not a step but a chasm — Earth Profound cultivators could manipulate the ground beneath their feet, call stone and metal to their command, and crush Spirit Realm opponents with the weight of the earth itself.

But Yun Che had another advantage, and it was one the assassins would never anticipate.

He activated the Sky Poison Pearl — not for combat, but for cultivation. In the half-second it took the assassins to close on him, he channeled the Pearl's energy into his seventh profound vein and pushed his cultivation from Spirit Profound Level One to Spirit Profound Level Three in a single, reckless leap.

It was not sustainable. It would damage his meridians. It was absolutely, certifiably insane.

But it was enough.