ARK SPIRIT

At that moment, Hao Nhien caught a rare flash of alarm in Lieu Thien Van’s eyes.

It was not the reaction of a man who had simply heard that a courier had been ambushed. Nor was it merely caution at learning that military tokens had been misused. It was more like the City Lord had just heard the name of something that should never have appeared here.

Lieu Thien Van looked directly at Quan Nha.

“You said... an eye? Tattooed in the center of the palm?”

Quan Nha nodded.

“Both of them.”

Lieu Thien Van’s hand remained on the edge of the stone table. He was silent for several breaths before slowly sitting back down, but the composure he had shown before was no longer quite as complete.

“Describe it again.”

Hao Nhien answered.

“The tattoo was very small, right in the center of the palm. The lines were black and violet, almost as if they had been embedded beneath the skin. Both men had the same mark in the same place.”

“Any spiritual fluctuations?”

“Very faint.” Hao Nhien thought for a moment before adding, “Junior could not determine whether it came from a rune, some kind of poison art, or another method entirely.”

Lieu Thien Van did not respond immediately.

His gaze shifted to the two military tokens resting on the table. After a moment, he asked,

“Are you certain those two were targeting the courier mission?”

Hao Nhien did not answer too quickly.

“I cannot say they knew for certain from the beginning.”

He briefly explained what had happened.

“After realizing we were being followed in Black Wind Valley, Quan Nha and I could not tell whether they were allies or enemies, so we set up a test. Junior prepared a false letter and deliberately let them glimpse it while pretending to have been exhausted by the Black Wind.”

Lieu Thien Van narrowed his eyes slightly.

“The real letter was never exposed?”

“No.”

“Continue.”

“The moment they saw the false letter, their reactions changed noticeably. One moved closer, and the other immediately focused on it as well. Then they attacked.”

Hao Nhien paused.

“The early Foundation Establishment cultivator died in the fight. The other was at mid Foundation Establishment. Quan Nha and I worked together to destroy his dantian, but before we could interrogate him, he bit down on poison and killed himself.”

Lieu Thien Van studied him for a long moment.

At last, he nodded.

“You handled it well.”

His gaze moved to Quan Nha.

“If those two truly intended to seize the confidential letter, discovering them before you reached the camp may have prevented something far worse. I will record the military merit for both of you.”

Neither Hao Nhien nor Quan Nha responded immediately. Military merit was clearly not what concerned them most. What mattered was Lieu Thien Van’s reaction to the eye mark.

The City Lord noticed.

After a moment of thought, he placed Leng Huyen’s letter back on the stone table.

“In this letter, Leng Huyen reports that Third City has begun to suspect infiltration within the military system. He asked me to quietly inspect the communication routes, military tokens, and the personnel responsible for transport, but not to alert anyone before we had evidence.”

Lieu Thien Van looked at the two tokens recovered from the ambushers.

“What you brought here may be the first thing close to actual proof.”

Hao Nhien slowly tightened his hand.

The scattered events of the past few days seemed to be drawing closer together.

The disrupted communication routes. Cultivators carrying genuine military tokens appearing inside Black Wind Valley, following the couriers, then killing themselves when they failed.

And now the eye tattoo in their palms.

Even so, there was still not enough evidence to force everything into a single conclusion.

Hao Nhien raised his head.

“City Lord.”

“What is that eye mark?”

Lieu Thien Van did not answer immediately.

He stood and moved to the map of the Western Wastes spread across the stone table. One finger came to rest over the deeper western region, where defensive lines and red markings overlapped far more densely than elsewhere.

Only after a while did he speak.

“This mark appears in several ancient records concerning the Western Wastes.”

Hao Nhien and Quan Nha listened in silence.

“The ancients called one branch of the tribes living deep beyond the Western Wastes the Heavenly Eye Tribe.”

“Heavenly Eye?”

Quan Nha frowned slightly.

Lieu Thien Van nodded.

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“Very few people today know much about them. The surviving records are not entirely consistent, but there is one event mentioned repeatedly.”

His gaze remained on the map.

“More than a thousand years ago, this land was not the Western Wastes you see today.”

Hao Nhien’s eyes shifted slightly.

Lieu Thien Van continued.

“It was once part of the Western Spirit Province. Its spiritual veins were far more complete, and there were many cities and sects. Then this region became the battlefield of an enormous war.”

“Between whom?” Hao Nhien asked.

Lieu Thien Van was silent for another beat.

“The Spirit Cloud Continent.”

“And a force from beyond it.”

He turned to look at them.

“In the ancient records that survived, that force was known by a single name.”

Lieu Thien Van’s voice lowered.

“Firmament.”

The moment those words were spoken, Hao Nhien’s body went rigid.

For an instant, the sounds around him seemed to recede. The shouting from the training grounds, the hammering from the refining district, the formation flags snapping in the wind, all of it became distant and indistinct.

Since awakening on the Spirit Cloud Continent, this was the first time he had heard that name from someone else.

Not from the broken fragments of his own memories.

Not from speculation.

It was a name that truly existed in the history of this world.

The image of frozen space suddenly surfaced in his mind.

The wind had stopped.

The people on the street had become motionless.

A hand had torn open the void.

Anh Nhien had been dragged away from his world while he could do nothing.

Then came the words spoken by the one they had called Royal Father.

“Everyone, prepare yourselves. I will activate the Time Compass and return you to the Firmament Continent. This world will be reset after we leave.”

Hao Nhien’s fingers tightened unconsciously.

If the Firmament Lieu Thien Van spoke of was truly connected to the existence in his memories, then the Western Wastes might be the first real clue leading him toward Anh Nhien.

Quan Nha stood beside him, but her attention had shifted completely to Hao Nhien. When she saw his clenched hand, her brows drew together slightly. She clearly realized that his reaction was unusual, but she did not ask.

Lieu Thien Van noticed as well.

He studied Hao Nhien for a moment.

“You have heard this name before?”

The question brought Hao Nhien fully back to himself.

He knew his reaction had been far too obvious.

An early Foundation Establishment cultivator hearing of an ancient force for the first time should have shown ordinary surprise or caution.

He should not have reacted as though he had just heard the name of something he had been searching for all along.

Hao Nhien took a deep breath and slowly relaxed his hand.

“Junior has heard those words before.”

Lieu Thien Van looked at him.

“Where?”

Hao Nhien was silent for a beat.

“In a very vague fragment of memory.”

“Junior does not know whether it refers to the same Firmament.”

Lieu Thien Van did not immediately press him further. His gaze remained sharp, but there was no killing intent in it.

After a while, he turned back to the map.

“The war more than a thousand years ago nearly destroyed this entire region. The space throughout the Western Wastes was severely damaged, and many of the abnormalities you see today originated from that battle.”

Quan Nha asked,

“Is the Heavenly Eye Tribe directly connected to Firmament?”

Lieu Thien Van shook his head.

“No one today dares claim that with certainty.”

He pointed to the western part of the map.

“Some records say that part of the invading force was unable to withdraw when the battlefield collapsed. Some may have died. Others may have become trapped here and gradually merged with the local tribes.”

“After many generations, bloodlines, inheritances, and identities became mixed.”

“Whether the Heavenly Eye Tribe is truly descended from them, no one has enough evidence left to prove.”

Lieu Thien Van paused before continuing.

“What concerns me now is not the name Heavenly Eye.”

“It is the fact that a mark associated with those ancient records appeared on two cultivators carrying genuine military tokens from Third City.”

Hao Nhien looked at the two tokens on the table.

“You mean they infiltrated the military system?”

“Or someone within the military system was replaced,” Lieu Thien Van replied.

“Or the genuine tokens of real soldiers fell into their hands.”

“At present, we cannot know.”

He did not rush to a conclusion.

That only made Hao Nhien feel the situation was even harder to untangle.

Quan Nha looked toward the deeper western region on the map.

“If the Heavenly Eye Tribe really is connected to Firmament, why are they only becoming active now?”

Lieu Thien Van considered the question.

“There are several possibilities.”

“The Western Wastes have never been completely peaceful during the past thousand years. The tribes have clashed with cities and sects in the east many times, but most of those conflicts remained local.”

“This time is different. They are coordinating more systematically. They know to target communication routes, healing teams, and support points.”

He indicated several red marks on the map.

“Some believe certain tribes want to escape the deeper Western Wastes because of the spatial limitations here. But that is only one possibility.”

Hao Nhien looked at him.

“Spatial limitations?”

Lieu Thien Van nodded.

“The space of the Western Wastes was damaged too severely during that ancient war.”

“The stronger the aura, the greater the rejection.”

“Golden Core cultivators are not completely unable to enter. In some outer regions, they can still move about with difficulty if they suppress their aura and avoid using their full power.”

“But the deeper they go, the greater the danger.”

“If a Golden Core truly fights with full force, the amount of spiritual power released may destabilize space that is already fragile. Once that happens, even a Golden Core may not escape the resulting spatial currents.”

Hao Nhien remembered the warnings he had heard before entering the Western Wastes.

Lieu Thien Van continued,

“That is why Foundation Establishment cultivators form the main fighting force here. Even peak Foundation Establishment cultivators can provoke a spatial reaction if they fight too fiercely in certain unstable regions.”

Quan Nha frowned slightly.

“Then if the Heavenly Eye Tribe truly wants to leave the deeper Western Wastes…”

“They may want to escape those limitations,” Lieu Thien Van said.

“We do not forbid them from entering the Eastern Plains.”

“So there may be another reason.”

“We simply do not know yet.”

Hao Nhien fell silent.

One question had remained lodged in his mind ever since he heard the name Firmament.

In the end, he asked it anyway.

“City Lord.”

Lieu Thien Van looked over.

“Has Firmament ever appeared anywhere beyond the Spirit Cloud Continent?”

The hall fell quiet.

The moment the question left his mouth, Hao Nhien knew he had gone a little too far.

Lieu Thien Van studied him for a long time.

“I do not know.”

His answer was direct.

“The records I have read only concern the war in the Western Wastes. As for whether Firmament is a world, a single power, or a broader name for several forces, even the ancient texts disagree.”

Hao Nhien felt his heart sink slightly.

Lieu Thien Van looked at him.

“You are more interested in this matter than I expected.”

Hao Nhien cupped his fists.

“Junior was discourteous.”

Lieu Thien Van did not answer immediately.

Hao Nhien knew he could not ask more.

Not here.

Not before someone he had only just met.

And certainly not about Anh Nhien or the world he had once lived in, when he himself still did not understand what had truly happened.

He tightened his hand slightly, then released it.

“It is only that the name reminded junior of something extremely important.”

Lieu Thien Van watched him for another moment, but in the end, he did not press further.

“I understand.”

He put away the letter, then looked at the two military tokens on the table.

“I will deal with the Heavenly Eye matter and the infiltrators immediately.”

“You have traveled a long way and already fought on the road. Rest first and recover.”

Lieu Thien Van looked toward the doorway.

“Phi Long.”

Only a few breaths later, Phi Long entered.

“Your subordinate is here.”

“Arrange two rooms for Hao Nhien and Quan Nha.”

“Do not allow outsiders to disturb them.”

“At the same time, quietly increase inspections of military tokens and personnel moving in and out of the camp.”

He paused.

“Do not cause a disturbance.”

Phi Long cupped his fists.

“Understood.”

Hao Nhien and Quan Nha bowed and took their leave.

Before stepping out of the hall, Hao Nhien instinctively looked back.

Lieu Thien Van was still standing behind the stone table, one hand beside the two military tokens, his gaze fixed on the deep western region of the map.

The stone door slowly closed.

Hao Nhien withdrew his gaze.

Outside, the sounds of the frontline camp immediately returned around him. The clash of weapons, shouted drills, and formation flags snapping in the wind were no different from when he had entered.

But for Hao Nhien, something had changed.

The name he had just heard remained fixed in his mind.

Firmament.

For the first time since awakening in this world, the name that had remained buried deep within his memories no longer belonged only to his past.

It had appeared here.

In the heart of the Western Wastes.