Shattering the Celestial Loom

For the next three days, Amrit became the finest actor in the kingdom. The change was subtle at first, a masterpiece of gradual decline.

On the first day, during his "discussion" with Sword Master Jian, his parries were a fraction of a second slower. He allowed one of Jian's probing thrusts to slip past his defense and tap him on the shoulder, a mistake he hadn't made since their first encounter. Jian's eye narrowed with concern, but he said nothing, assuming the prince was merely distracted.

On the second day, he visited the library, but instead of his usual voracious reading, he was seen by a court scholar staring blankly at a single page for nearly an hour. When the scholar offered assistance, Amrit seemed confused, murmuring that the words were blurring together. The rumor began to spread like a faint, unpleasant smell: the Third Prince's miraculous insight was fading.

On the third day, the performance reached its peak. While practicing his Ghost-Flash Steps in the secluded courtyard, he deliberately faltered. He attempted a translocation and stumbled, his form dissolving mid-step, leaving him gasping for breath with a hand pressed to his chest. The Royal Shadow Guard observing from a hidden perch noted the event with cold, professional detachment, his report to the King that night stating: "Subject's unique movement technique is showing signs of instability. Prana expenditure appears to be causing significant physical strain."

The palace atmosphere, which had been tense with awe and fear of Amrit, began to shift. Whispers replaced silence. Skepticism replaced belief. Arjun's initial assertion—that it was all a temporary trick, a dying candle burning brightest before it goes out—began to seem prophetic.

Amrit observed it all with a cold, internal calm. He was the spider at the center of a web, feeling the vibrations of every reaction. He felt the renewed hope and smugness radiating from the direction of Grand Steward Kavi's offices. He felt the concern from Bhim and Jian. He felt the deepening confusion and suspicion from his father. The viper was comfortable. It believed its venom was working.

While his public persona weakened, his private efforts intensified. At night, in the locked solitude of his chamber, he was not cultivating. He was hunting.

He would sit in meditation, but instead of drawing Prana, he would push his spiritual sense out into the palace. It was a delicate, invisible net, woven from the boundless energy of his Divine Ocean. He did not use it to spy on conversations or peek into rooms. That was crude. Instead, he used it to feel the emotional and spiritual landscape of the palace, searching for anomalies.

He was looking for the emotional signature of the viper: a combination of anxiety, hope, malice, and the unique spiritual residue of someone who had recently handled a high-grade spiritual poison.

For two nights, he found nothing. The culprit was careful, their emotional control impeccable. But on the third night, he found it.

It was a faint, discordant thread in the palace's grand tapestry, emanating from a small, unassuming residence in the administrative sector. It was the home of Grand Steward Kavi. Amrit focused his sense, not on Kavi himself, but on the lingering emotional energy in the man's study. He felt it—a smug satisfaction layered over a deep-seated anxiety. It was the feeling of a conspirator waiting for his plan to bear fruit. And mixed with it, so faint it was almost non-existent, was the ghostly, spiritual echo of the Soul-Devouring Orchid Pollen.

He had found the viper's nest. But he still had no concrete proof. A lingering emotional signature would not stand up in a royal inquiry. He needed something more. He needed to force the viper to show its fangs.

If the poison wasn't working fast enough, a patient conspirator would wait. An impatient one, however, might try to accelerate the process. Amrit decided to give his enemies a reason to be impatient.

The next day, he made a formal request to the Royal Treasury for a single, high-value item: a Sun-Stone, a rare mineral known to purify and invigorate spiritual energy. It was a common tool for cultivators who felt their Prana becoming sluggish or impure. It was the perfect request for someone who felt their power "fading" and was desperately trying to hold onto it.

The request was, of course, approved. But Amrit knew the news of it would travel straight to the ears of his enemies. It would be interpreted as a sign of his desperation, but also as a potential threat to their plan. If the Sun-Stone actually worked, it might counteract the poison. They couldn't allow that. They would have to escalate.

And escalate they did. That very night.

Amrit was in his chamber, feigning a deep, exhausted sleep. The Sun-Stone he had acquired rested on his bedside table, glowing with a gentle warmth. But Amrit was not asleep. His consciousness was wide awake, floating in the boundless ocean of his Spirit Sea. His physical body was in a state of near-hibernation, but his spiritual senses were sharper than ever, his entire being coiled like a waiting predator.

Around midnight, he felt it.

Two subtle presences, moving through the palace with a silence and stealth that surpassed even the King's Shadow Guards. They were like wisps of smoke, their auras deliberately suppressed to be nearly undetectable. A normal Spirit Sea master would have missed them entirely.

But Amrit's Divine Ocean was no normal Spirit Sea. He could feel the tiny, sharp pinpricks of their killing intent, meticulously shielded but still present, like two drops of ink in a vast sea of clear water.

They were professionals. Assassins.

They did not come through the door. They did not come through the window. One of them, a specialist in earth-element techniques, phased silently through the stone floor of his chamber, emerging from the ground like a vengeful spirit. The other, a master of shadow arts, coalesced from the darkest corner of the room, his form detaching from the darkness itself.

They were both at the peak of the Body Tempering Realm, but their threat level was far higher. They moved with the terrifying efficiency of men who killed for a living. Their weapons were short, black daggers, coated in a substance that Amrit's senses instantly identified as Wyvern's Bane—a fast-acting neurotoxin that could paralyze a Spirit Sea master in seconds.

Their plan was brutally simple. The slow poison had been stage one, designed to weaken him and create a plausible narrative for his death. Stage two was the direct assassination, making it look as though the fading prince had been tragically killed by common opportunistic thieves who had underestimated his remaining strength, a sad and ignoble end.

The two assassins converged on his bed, their movements perfectly synchronized. The one from the floor would stab him through the heart. The one from the shadows would slit his throat. It was a killing blow from which there was no escape.

They raised their poisoned daggers.

And the "sleeping" prince's eyes snapped open.

They did not hold the grogginess of sleep or the panic of a man ambushed. They held the cold, ancient calm of his Divine Ocean, and in their depths, the Constellation of Passage swirled.

Pop.

In the instant before their daggers could descend, Amrit's body vanished from the bed.

The two assassins froze, their daggers stabbing into empty sheets. Their professional calm shattered, replaced by a surge of pure shock. Where did he go?

A calm voice spoke from the center of the room. "Were you sent by Grand Steward Kavi? Or does he merely pay your bills?"

They spun around. Amrit was standing there, clad only in his simple night robes, his expression as serene as if he were discussing the weather.

The assassins recovered with inhuman speed. They did not speak. They were not paid to talk. They were paid to kill. They abandoned their stealth and burst into motion, flanking Amrit, their poisoned daggers aimed for his vital points in a pincer attack.

Amrit watched them come. The world slowed down. His mind, amplified by his Spirit Sea, processed their movements, their trajectories, their intent. They were fast, deadly, and efficient. They were mortal.

He did not reach for the Obsidian Kiss. He didn't need it.

As the assassin on the right lunged, Amrit took a single Ghost-Flash Step, not away, but forward. He moved directly into the assassin's attack, a move so counter-intuitive it was suicidal.

But as he moved, he raised his hand. He channeled a tiny wisp of power from his Divine Ocean, not to attack, but to execute the principle of his impossible movement technique on another object.

The target: the poisoned dagger in the assassin's hand.

Pop.

The dagger vanished from the assassin's grip. In the same infinitesimal moment, it reappeared in the air behind him, its momentum conserved, its orientation reversed.

The assassin, lunging forward with all his might, impaled himself on his own blade.

His eyes went wide with shock and pain as the Wyvern's Bane flooded his system. He let out a choked gurgle and collapsed to the floor, his body already convulsing from the potent neurotoxin.

It had all happened in less than a second.

The second assassin, coming from the left, saw his partner fall and felt a chilling terror he had never known. This was not a prince. This was a demon of space itself.

He tried to halt his attack, to retreat. But it was too late.

Amrit was already there. He had used the first assassin's death as a distraction, closing the distance with another silent step. He raised his hand, his fingers extended in a simple sword-hand strike. He channeled the conceptual power of his One Sword technique—the principle of a perfect, clean cut—into the edge of his hand.

His hand, glowing with a faint, obsidian light, chopped down on the assassin's extended dagger arm.

There was no sound of breaking bone. There was only a soft shlick.

The assassin's arm, from the elbow down, fell to the floor with a wet thud, his dagger still clutched in its lifeless fingers. The cut was perfectly clean, the wound instantly cauterized by the spiritual energy, not a single drop of blood spilling.

The shadow-master stared at the stump of his arm, his mind shutting down from the sheer, horrifying impossibility of it all.

Amrit leaned in close, his voice a cold whisper in the assassin's ear. "I will ask you one more time. Who sent you?"

The assassin looked up, his face a mask of terror, and saw the swirling, star-like constellations in the depths of Amrit's eyes. He saw a universe of power that he could not comprehend.

The shadow of assassins had fallen upon the palace. But they had not found a weakened prince. They had found a god in mortal form, and their hunt had ended in a terrifying, silent, and absolute failure.