Chapter 206: Questions and Mending

The pressure did not ease.

Lian stood under the broken aura and kept his breathing controlled. The weight of it remained constant, pressing across his shoulders and chest with the same unyielding force as before. Elara stayed locked in place beside him. Ryzek’s crystalline ridges remained flared, the only visible sign of how hard he was resisting.

The dead man watched them in silence for a long time.

His eyes moved slowly from one face to the next, measuring, weighing, giving nothing away. When he finally spoke again, the authority in his voice had not lessened.

“You.”

The word landed on Lian first.

“Where are you from?”

Lian met his gaze without looking away.

“A frontier mining world. Khar-9.”

The man held his eyes for another moment, then shifted his attention.

“You.”

Elara answered with the same controlled tone she always used under pressure.

“I was raised in the outer colonies. No fixed home world.”

The man’s gaze moved to Ryzek last.

“You.”

“Veyrani territory,” Ryzek said. “Beyond the lower core routes.”

The dead man accepted the answers without comment. No approval. No dismissal. He simply stored the information and continued observing them. His eyes tracked the state of their bodies next — the residual wounds, the drained energy, the way each of them stood under his aura. The examination was thorough and impersonal.

Then he raised one hand.

A thin thread of pale energy left his fingers and split into three strands. Each strand settled over one of them without warning. Lian tensed on instinct, but the energy did not attack. It sank into his body and spread through damaged tissue with cold precision.

The effect was immediate.

Pain in his ribs dulled, then faded. The deeper bruises along his shoulder and side closed in steady waves. Residual internal strain from the earlier battles eased as the energy forced damaged structures back into place. It was not gentle. It was efficient. The healing ignored comfort and focused only on function.

Elara exhaled sharply as the cuts along her arm and thigh sealed. Ryzek’s stance improved as the worst of the drain on his body was corrected, though the crystalline ridges along his arms still carried visible stress marks.

The strands of energy withdrew as cleanly as they had arrived.

The dead man lowered his hand.

“You will not enter the tests in a broken state,” he said. “That would measure injury, not capacity. I have removed what would interfere. Nothing more.”

The broken aura remained heavy over them. Healing had not reduced his presence. If anything, standing fully upright under it now made the pressure clearer.

He continued to observe them.

Lian felt the man’s attention return to him more than once, lingering on the quiet density of his foundation and the black substance that remained sealed inside him. The examination never became a direct probe, but it was close enough that Lian kept his energy tightly controlled and his expression neutral.

Elara stood still under the same scrutiny. Ryzek did not look away.

The dead man finally spoke again.

“You come from different places. Different conditions. Different reasons for reaching this far.” His eyes moved across them one last time. “That is enough for now. The first test will begin when I decide. Until then, remain where you are. Do not waste what I have restored.”

He fell silent.

The ocean stayed calm. The dark boundary on the water held. Lian flexed his fingers once, feeling the absence of pain where it had been, and kept his focus steady under the dominating weight of the man’s remaining aura.

The inheritance was still ahead of them.

So were the tests that would decide who left with it.

Power Scale / Cultivation Realms (Quick Reminder)

Foundation Realm (Layers 1–9): Body forging, no external Qi.

Circuit Awakening Realm (Early–Peak): First Qi loop, internal bursts.

Core Condensation Realm (Early–Peak): External Qi release, short flight.

Stellar Circuit Realm (1–9 Stars): True flight, Qi armor, energy projection.

Nebula Dominion Realm and higher: Domain control, galaxy-level power, etc

Power Scale Reminder

Lian Yu: Stellar Circuit Star 1.

Elara Voss: Core Condensation Peak

Keep it as reminders