Bloodline Plant Lord: Rise of the World Sovereign

It happened during the afternoon break, in the small courtyard between the annex and the main building.

Ren had gone outside to get some air after the morning session. The group tests were winding down, and Selene had given them an hour before the final round. Most of the others had scattered — Cassian went to find food, Lyra was reviewing her notes in the corner of Room 3-C, Iris had disappeared without explanation, and Kaelen had left the annex entirely. After the Voss visit that morning, nobody was eager to be in the same room as him.

Ren sat on the bench near the outer wall — the same bench where he had first learned Kaia’s name — and closed his eyes for a moment. The courtyard was quiet. The wards hummed faintly around the perimeter. A breeze moved through the gap in the wall.

He heard footsteps and opened his eyes.

Lin Yueying was standing a few meters away, looking at the formation script carved into the base of the annex wall.

— • —

She didn’t seem to be here for him specifically. She was studying the ward lines the way she did everything — calmly, precisely, without giving anything away about what she was thinking. Her fingers traced the air above the script, not quite touching it, reading the patterns the way a scholar reads old text.

Ren watched her for a moment. In the week and a half he had spent in this class, Lin Yueying was the person he understood the least. Kaelen was cold but readable — his grudge had a shape, even if Ren didn’t know the full story. Iris was sharp but predictable — she watched, she analyzed, she filed. Cassian was an open book. Lyra wore her heart close to the surface.

But Yueying was a closed door. She performed well, spoke rarely, revealed nothing. She was from the Azure Kingdom, one of the strongest nations on Edius, and she had been sent to a mid-tier Rose Country school for reasons nobody had explained. She answered questions in class with the minimum number of words. She never asked questions of her own. And she had reacted to the Valis name twice — once on Day 5 when Selene read the rankings, and once during the foundation test — in ways so small that Ren was still not sure he hadn’t imagined them.

He had not imagined them.

He was sure of that now.

”The wards here are unusual,” Yueying said, without looking at him. Her voice was calm and smooth, the same measured tone she always used. ”The script pattern is Alliance-standard, but the base layer is older. Much older. Whoever designed this building’s foundation knew techniques that aren’t commonly taught anymore.”

Ren glanced at the ward lines. He had SCANNED them on his first day and gotten similar information — Alliance-authorized, high quality, layered. But he hadn’t caught the age of the base layer.

”You study ward patterns?” he asked.

”In the Azure Kingdom, all high-born cultivators study formation theory from a young age. The royal archives have records going back thousands of years.” She paused. ”Some families leave traces in the things they build. If you know what to look for, you can tell which bloodlines influenced a formation’s design, even centuries later.”

She said it the way someone talks about weather. Casually. As if she was sharing a general fact and not pointing at something very specific.

Ren felt the back of his neck prickle.

— • —

”Are you saying you recognize the base layer here?” he asked carefully.

Yueying looked at him for the first time. Her expression was perfectly composed, her dark eyes calm and still. But something in the quality of her attention shifted — the way a person’s focus changes when a conversation moves from small talk to something that matters.

”I’m saying that old bloodlines leave marks,” she said. ”In formations, in buildings, in the energy patterns of a region. The Azure archives have catalogued many of them. Some families that are considered forgotten today were once very important.”

She held his gaze for two seconds.

”Some of them still are. Even if no one remembers why.”

Then she turned back to the ward script, and the moment closed like a door shutting quietly.

Her face was calm again. Her posture was perfect. She looked exactly like a student examining an interesting piece of formation work during a break. Nothing to see. Nothing unusual.

But Ren had heard it. The specific weight on the word forgotten. The pause before still are. The way she had looked at him when she said it — not with curiosity, or suspicion, or warmth. With recognition. The kind that came from knowing something she was not allowed to say out loud.

— • —

Ren sat on the bench for a while after she left. Kaia was warm in his chest, a low steady pulse that told him nothing specific but felt alert. Watchful.

He thought about what Yueying had said. Stripped of the careful phrasing and the diplomatic distance, her message was simple: I know your family name matters. I know it’s connected to old things. And I know more than I can tell you right now.

First Kaelen’s grudge. Now Yueying’s recognition. Two people from two different directions, both reacting to the same three syllables. One with cold hostility. The other with quiet respect.

’What did my family do?’ Ren thought. ’What did they build, or protect, or lose, that still makes people react like this generations later?’

He didn’t have an answer. His parents had never talked about old family history — they were explorers, practical people, more interested in the next expedition than in dusty records. And the original Ren’s memories didn’t include anything about a family legacy.

But someone knew. Caelan Veyr, probably. Lin Yueying, definitely. And whoever had built the base layer of the wards on this building, a long time ago, with techniques that weren’t commonly taught anymore.

Ren stood up and headed back inside. The final round of group tests started in twenty minutes, and he had a mask to put on.

But underneath it, the list of questions was growing. And the Valis name sat at the center of all of them, getting heavier every day.

— • —

Author’s Note: Thanks for reading! The mystery around Ren’s family runs deeper than even he realizes. Next Chapter — Ren, Lyra, and Iris are pushed together under pressure, and both connections take a step forward. See you there!