**Chapter 4: The Imperial Court's Misunderstanding and the Tribulation of Reality**
The Great Qian Dynasty's Imperial Court was not a place of governance; it was a battlefield where words were daggers and decrees were executioner's blades.
The Supreme Harmony Hall was a gargantuan structure supported by ninety-nine pillars of Tier-6 Dragon-Vein Gold. At the far end, elevated above the sea of kneeling ministers and royal princes, sat Emperor Li Jianxing. He was a man whose mere gaze could crush a Foundation Establishment cultivator. He had ruled for two hundred years, and his cultivation was a closely guarded state secret, though rumors whispered he had touched the threshold of the Late Nascent Soul realm, or perhaps even Soul Formation.
Today, the atmosphere in the hall was suffocatingly tense. The air itself felt thick, weighed down by the competing auras of the Empire's most dangerous individuals.
Standing perfectly straight in the center of the hall, refusing to kneel, was Mu Qingxue. She wore her crimson military cape over court robes of stark black and silver. She was the only person in the entire dynasty permitted to bear a weapon—her halberd—in the Emperor's presence, a concession granted purely out of fear of her Northern Army's rebellion.
"General Mu," Emperor Li Jianxing's voice rumbled, echoing like distant thunder. "We have received reports of a disturbance at the Vermillion Bird Gate yesterday. The heir of the Marquis of Iron was crippled. In broad daylight."
Mu Qingxue did not flinch. "He insulted the Imperial Decree, Your Majesty. He insulted my betrothed, the Ninth Prince. I merely disciplined him for his lack of respect toward the Royal Family."
A murmur rippled through the ministers. It was a flawless political parry. By claiming she was defending the Ninth Prince—the Emperor's own son and the man the Emperor had assigned her to—she wrapped her violence in the flag of royal loyalty.
To her left, standing among the princes, the Third Prince, Li Mingze, narrowed his eyes. He held his crane-feather fan tightly, his knuckles white.
*Play your games, Asura,* Li Mingze sneered internally. *Act haughty. Act invincible. Let us see how arrogant you are when the court eunuchs announce that your pathetic husband was slaughtered in his bed under your 'elite' Vanguard's watch.*
Li Mingze had been waiting all morning. He had purposely arrived early to the court assembly, eagerly anticipating the frantic messenger who would burst through the doors, crying out that the Ninth Prince had been assassinated. He had already drafted a speech condemning Mu Qingxue's incompetence, demanding she be stripped of her military seal as punishment for failing to protect royal blood.
But the morning had dragged on. The sun was fully in the sky, and no messenger had come.
*Ghost-Blade Ye is a professional,* Li Mingze reassured himself, a bead of sweat forming on the back of his neck. *He likes to take his time. Perhaps he left the body in a way that hasn't been discovered yet. Yes, that must be it. The Trash Prince sleeps until noon anyway. They simply haven't checked on him.*
"Discipline is the purview of the Imperial Censors, General Mu, not the military," the Emperor stated coldly, leaning forward on his throne. "However, given your recent return and the upcoming nuptials, We shall overlook this indiscretion. How fares the Ninth Prince? We understand he was... overwhelmed by your arrival."
"His Highness is resting in the estate," Mu Qingxue replied, her tone perfectly flat, betraying neither affection nor disgust. "He requires peace and quiet. My Vanguard is ensuring he receives it."
Suddenly, a shadow-guard slipped out from the hidden alcoves behind the pillars and rapidly approached the Third Prince. The guard knelt, pressing a sound-isolating jade slip into Li Mingze's hand before vanishing back into the shadows.
Li Mingze's heart leapt. *Finally! The news of the assassination!*
He injected a thread of Qi into the jade slip to read the encrypted message. He prepared his face to show a mask of brotherly grief and absolute outrage.
The message inside the jade slip read:
*[Your Highness. Critical failure. Ghost-Blade Ye did not return to the rendezvous point. Our spies outside the Ninth Prince's estate report no alarms, no blood, and no panic. At 8:00 AM, the Ninth Prince was observed through a telescope eating three bowls of lotus-seed porridge and instructing a gardener on how to prune a plum tree. Ghost-Blade Ye's life-slip in the Shadow Pavilion has shattered. He is dead.]*
Li Mingze froze. The color drained from his face entirely. His Mid-Stage Golden Core Qi shuddered violently, almost causing him to cough up blood right there in the Supreme Harmony Hall.
*Dead?* Ghost-Blade Ye, the Peak Golden Core assassin, the wielder of the Void-Walker Cloak, a man who had successfully assassinated a Nascent Soul Elder three years ago... was dead?
And the Ninth Prince was eating porridge?!
Li Mingze's mind spun into a terrifying vortex of paranoia and miscalculation. He stared at Mu Qingxue's unyielding back.
*Impossible. Mu Qingxue is only at the Peak of the Golden Core realm. Even if she detected Ye, a battle between them would have leveled the entire estate! It would have shattered the wards and alerted the entire capital! But there was no sound. No battle. Ye simply ceased to exist.*
There was only one logical conclusion in the brutal, hyper-paranoid world of cultivation politics.
*The Mu Family has a Dao Protector hidden in the capital,* Li Mingze realized, cold terror gripping his heart. *An old monster. A Mid or Late Nascent Soul supreme expert, hiding in the shadows, protecting Mu Qingxue and her new estate. Ye walked into the domain of a Nascent Soul ancestor and was swatted like a fly before he could even trigger a distress talisman.*
Li Mingze slowly closed his fan. His hands were trembling. If the Mu Family had smuggled a Nascent Soul ancestor into the capital, the balance of power was completely broken. If he continued to provoke her, that invisible ancestor might visit his bedchamber next.
*I must halt all operations against the Ninth Prince,* Li Mingze decided instantly, his survival instincts overriding his pride. *Li Xuan is a bait. He is the cheese in a trap designed by the Mu Family to lure out their enemies and execute them silently. I will not fall for it. Let the First Brother test those waters. I am out.*
Up on the throne, Emperor Li Jianxing noticed the Third Prince's sudden pallor but chose not to comment. The Emperor had his own calculations to make. He decreed the date of the royal wedding to be set in exactly ten days and dismissed the court.
As Mu Qingxue turned to leave, her aura parting the sea of ministers like a blade through water, she had absolutely no idea that her cowardly, porridge-eating fiancé had just single-handedly terrified the Third Prince into permanent submission, securing their estate from further political sabotage.
### The Paranoia of Gardening
While the grand machinations of the empire shifted and twisted, Li Xuan was currently up to his elbows in premium, spiritually enriched dirt.
He was in the Eastern Courtyard of his estate, wearing a set of rough hemp clothes over his impenetrable Black Tortoise armor. A wide-brimmed straw hat shielded his pale face from the sun.
"No, no, you idiot! Dig shallower!" Li Xuan squeaked at the Vanguard soldier who had been assigned to 'watch' him.
The soldier, a hardened veteran named Shi, glared at the prince with an expression that screamed, *I have killed fifty demon-wolves with my bare hands, and now I am taking gardening tips from a castrated royal pig.*
"Your Highness," Guard Shi ground out between clenched teeth, leaning on his shovel. "It is just a cabbage. You put the seed in the hole, and it grows. Why do we need a three-foot trench lined with crushed Jade-Fire stones?"
"Because of the root rot!" Li Xuan lied flawlessly, wiping fake sweat from his brow. "Northern cabbages need warm soil! If you don't line it with Jade-Fire stones, they'll freeze at night! Dig!"
Grumbling under his breath about the indignity of his assignment, Guard Shi went back to digging the trench.
Li Xuan watched him carefully, his Peak Soul Formation divine sense mapping every single inch of the courtyard.
He wasn't planting cabbages. He was constructing a Tier-5 "Nine-Palace Absolute Annihilation Array."
After the incident with Ghost-Blade Ye, Li Xuan had realized that his bedroom was secure, but the courtyard was a glaring vulnerability. If a sniper with a top-tier artifact bow shot him from two miles away while he was walking to the bathroom, his armor might take the hit, but the kinetic force could still give him a concussion. A concussion meant vulnerability. Vulnerability meant death.
Therefore, he had spent the morning mentally raiding the Imperial Library again, downloading an ancient, forbidden defensive array manual.
The crushed Jade-Fire stones weren't for warming roots; they were the explosive triggers for the array. The 'cabbage seeds' he was carefully placing in the soil were actually heavily compressed spheres of his own Soul Formation Qi, disguised with his Phantom Void Concealment art.
If anyone with hostile intent stepped into this courtyard without Li Xuan's explicit mental permission, the 'cabbages' would detonate, instantly transforming the courtyard into a localized spatial meat grinder that would atomize anything below the Nascent Soul realm.
"Perfect," Li Xuan mumbled to himself, patting the dirt down. "A beautiful, organic defense system. And I didn't even have to dig the trench myself."
"Did you say something, Your Highness?" Guard Shi asked roughly.
"I said, I love nature!" Li Xuan beamed, a dopey, harmless smile on his face. "Nature is so peaceful!"
Just then, the heavy oak doors of the Eastern Courtyard swung open. Vice-General Lin strode in, his single eye scanning the yard with deep disgust. He saw the prince playing in the dirt like a peasant child.
"Your Highness," Lin barked, his voice dripping with condescension. "The General has returned from the Imperial Court. She has issued a strict lockdown of the estate. No one is to make any loud noises, no one is to approach the Western Courtyard, and no one is to channel any aggressive Qi."
Li Xuan dropped his trowel and immediately cowered behind Guard Shi, shivering. "W-why? Is she angry? Is she coming to beat me?"
Lin snorted. "You flatter yourself, worm. She doesn't even remember you exist. The General was pressured by the Emperor today. She has decided that waiting is no longer an option. She is entering secluded meditation immediately. She is going to shatter her Golden Core and force a breakthrough to the Nascent Soul realm. Today."
The courtyard went dead silent. Even Guard Shi dropped his shovel, his eyes widening in awe.
Breaking through to the Nascent Soul realm was a monumental, catastrophic event. It wasn't just gathering Qi; it was a fundamental metamorphosis of the soul. It required drawing upon the Heavenly Dao, which in turn summoned Heavenly Tribulation—massive, destructive lightning storms designed by the universe to test the cultivator's worth.
Most peak Golden Core cultivators spent ten years preparing for this. They built massive lightning rods, gathered dozens of protective artifacts, and invited elders to guard them.
Mu Qingxue, the absolute madwoman, was doing it on a Tuesday afternoon because she was annoyed with court politics.
*She's insane,* Li Xuan thought, his eyes wide with perfectly genuine alarm. *She is a combat genius, yes, but forcing a breakthrough without preparation? The Tribulation Lightning will be massive! It could level half the estate!*
"Vice-General Lin," Li Xuan stammered, grabbing the man's armored sleeve. "I-if there's lightning... is it safe here? Should I hide? Can I go to the basement?"
Lin violently yanked his arm away, shoving Li Xuan back into the dirt. "Stay in your courtyard, coward. The Vanguard has activated the Tier-4 Grand Defending Array over her chambers. You are perfectly safe. Just don't interfere, or I'll cut your head off myself."
Lin spun on his heel and marched out, bellowing orders to the troops to fortify the perimeter.
Li Xuan sat in the dirt, brushing off his robes. His cowardly facade remained, but internally, his mind was racing at a million miles an hour.
*She is breaking through to Nascent Soul,* Li Xuan analyzed. *Which means her cultivation base is about to jump up an entire major realm.*
A cold, creeping dread began to spread through Li Xuan's veins. He suddenly remembered the exact wording of his System's core directive.
**[System Core Directive:]**
*The Host's cultivation base will permanently be locked to exactly **Two Major Realms** above the primary spouse's current highest cultivation level.*
"Oh no," Li Xuan whispered, all the color draining from his face.
If Mu Qingxue successfully reached Nascent Soul...
*Two major realms above Nascent Soul...*
Nascent Soul -> Soul Formation -> **Void Refinement.**
Li Xuan scrambled to his feet. Panic, pure, unadulterated, primal panic seized him.
He didn't just walk to his bedchamber; he sprinted. He slammed the door shut, locked all nine deadbolts, threw himself onto the floor, and scrambled into his hidden floorboard compartment. He pulled the soundproof, Qi-concealing spider-silk blanket entirely over his head.
*Void Refinement!* his mind screamed.
In the Great Qian Dynasty, a Soul Formation expert was a nuclear deterrent. A Void Refinement expert? They were myths. They were ancient deities who lived in the higher realms. They could collapse space with a thought. They could walk through the void of the universe.
Jumping from Soul Formation to Void Refinement wasn't an upgrade; it was an existential transformation. The amount of cosmic energy required would be equivalent to swallowing a sun.
"System!" Li Xuan hissed in the dark. "System, can we delay the upgrade?! Can I put it on layaway?! If I jump to Void Refinement right now, the sheer force of the spatial laws will leak out! I'll accidentally erase the capital from the map!"
**[Negative. The AFK Spouse-Dependent Cultivation System operates in real-time to ensure maximum Host safety. Any delay in power-matching would leave the Host vulnerable for a microsecond. Unacceptable.]**
"Vulnerable?! I am a Peak Soul Formation expert hiding in a bunker surrounded by an army! I am the opposite of vulnerable! Please, I don't want to bend reality!"
**[Host, please prepare. Primary Spouse has shattered her Golden Core. Tribulation is forming. Power transfer sequence initiating in 3... 2... 1...]**
### The Tribulation of the Asura
Outside in the physical world, the sky above the Imperial Capital rapidly darkened.
It was noon, yet the sun was blotted out by a swirling, unnatural vortex of pitch-black clouds. The air grew impossibly heavy, smelling of ozone and burning metal. Crimson lightning, thick as ancient tree trunks, began to snake through the clouds, illuminating the terrified faces of the capital's citizens.
At the epicenter of the vortex, sitting cross-legged in the center of the Western Courtyard, was Mu Qingxue.
Her silver armor was discarded. She wore only a simple white martial robe, her black hair whipping wildly in the spiritual gale. Above her head, a phantom image of a Golden Core hovered, covered in cracks.
With a roar that sounded like a dying dragon, the Golden Core shattered.
From the fragments, a miniature, glowing version of Mu Qingxue emerged—her Nascent Soul.
The Heavens reacted instantly. To birth a Nascent Soul was to steal immortality from the universe. The universe did not like thieves.
*BOOOOOOM!*
A pillar of pure, destructive crimson lightning crashed down from the heavens. It struck the Tier-4 Grand Defending Array projected by the Blood Vanguard. The array, powered by three thousand battle-hardened soldiers, cracked instantly but held.
Mu Qingxue didn't even look up. She sat in the eye of the storm, absorbing the ambient, violent Qi of the lightning to temper her new Nascent Soul. She was bleeding from her nose and eyes, the pressure immense, but her expression was one of absolute, unyielding defiance.
*Strike me down if you can,* her aura screamed at the sky. *If you fail, I will conquer you.*
While the epic battle between a peerless genius and the Heavens raged in the Western Courtyard, a completely different, infinitely more terrifying struggle was occurring in a dark hole beneath the floorboards of the Eastern Courtyard.
### The Silent Apocalypse
**[Ding! Primary Spouse has successfully formed a Nascent Soul.]**
**[Adjusting Host's cultivation to: Peak Void Refinement Realm.]**
**[Initiating power transfer.]**
Li Xuan bit down on a piece of thick leather he kept in his bunker specifically for emergencies, and gripped the sides of his compartment.
The universe didn't just explode inside him this time; it collapsed, inverted, and rebirthed itself within his dantian.
The golden ocean of his Soul Formation Qi began to boil. It turned white-hot, shrinking and condensing until it became a microscopic singularity of infinite gravity. Then, that singularity shattered, releasing a wave of energy that didn't just fill his body, it rewrote his existence.
His mortal flesh ceased to be truly physical. His cells became tethered to the fundamental laws of space. He could feel the rotation of the planet. He could feel the microscopic tears in the fabric of reality caused by the lightning storm outside. He could feel the exact karmic threads of every single living being within a ten-thousand-mile radius.
*Peak Void Refinement.*
The power was so absolute, so overwhelmingly god-like, that for a single terrifying millisecond, Li Xuan lost control of his concealment.
A ripple of his aura escaped.
It wasn't an attack. It was simply the passive exhalation of a being that had touched the laws of the void.
The ripple expanded outward at the speed of thought.
In the Western Courtyard, the second bolt of Heavenly Tribulation lightning was falling toward Mu Qingxue. It was twice as thick as the first, guaranteed to shatter the Vanguard's defensive array and force her to block it with her flesh.
As the lightning descended, Li Xuan's microscopic aura ripple passed through it.
The Heavenly Tribulation—the manifestation of the universe's wrath—simply *froze*.
The crimson lightning halted in mid-air. The swirling black clouds stopped moving. The wind died. For exactly one-tenth of a second, the entire capital city was trapped in a stasis of pure, unadulterated spatial lockdown.
The Tribulation Clouds, sensing an entity of such unfathomable, terrifying power directly beneath them, actually exhibited a reaction that could only be described as cosmic panic. The 'Wrath of the Heavens' realized it was hovering over a being that could literally reach up and tear the sky in half.
The crimson lightning didn't strike. It dissolved. It evaporated into harmless, sparkling mist. The massive, swirling vortex of black clouds rapidly dispersed, fleeing the area as if chased by a predator, leaving behind a perfectly clear, sunny blue sky.
In the Western Courtyard, Mu Qingxue opened her eyes, gasping for breath. She looked up at the clear sky in absolute bewilderment.
*What happened?* she thought, her mind reeling. *The tribulation... it vanished? Did I... did my willpower intimidate the Heavens themselves?* Her Nascent Soul fully solidified, radiating a cold, majestic power. She had done it. She was nineteen years old, and she was a Nascent Soul expert. The youngest in the history of the Great Qian Dynasty.
Vice-General Lin and the Vanguard soldiers, who had been bracing for death, erupted into thunderous, fanatical cheers.
"The Asura commands the Heavens! The sky itself yields to the General!" Lin roared, raising his broadsword.
Mu Qingxue stood up, her aura washing over the estate. She felt a surge of invincible pride. She had conquered her limits. She was a god of war.
Meanwhile, beneath the floorboards of the Eastern Courtyard, the true cause of the Heaven's retreat was currently curled into a tight fetal position, hyperventilating into a leather strap.
Li Xuan was sweating buckets. His eyes were wide with pure, unadulterated terror.
With desperate, agonizing effort, he marshaled every single drop of his willpower to chain the monstrous Void Refinement power deep within his soul. He utilized the Phantom Void Concealment art, pushing it past its theoretical limits, wrapping his new, reality-bending aura in a billion layers of imaginary stealth-Qi.
It took him an hour to fully stabilize his internal universe.
When he finally crawled out of his hole, he looked like he had aged five years. His hands were shaking so hard he could barely slide the floorboard back into place.
"I am a danger to public safety," Li Xuan rasped, clutching his chest. "I am a walking extinction-level event. If I sneeze right now, I might accidentally erase the concept of Tuesday."
He walked over to his bronze mirror. He looked at his pale, terrified face.
*Rule number five,* Li Xuan decided instantly, his paranoia reaching stratospheric new heights. *Never, ever, under any circumstances, get angry. Do not experience strong emotions. Do not stub your toe. If I lose control of my temper, I will destroy the atmosphere.*
He realized that his camouflage had to be perfect. He couldn't just act like a coward anymore; he had to *become* the coward. He had to embody the concept of harmlessness so thoroughly that even the universe would ignore him.
He splashed some water on his face, intentionally made his hair look messy, and forced a few tears into his eyes.
He unlocked the heavy oak doors of his bedroom and stumbled out into the courtyard. Guard Shi, who was still celebrating the General's breakthrough, looked at him with contempt.
"I-is it over?" Li Xuan wailed, dropping to his knees in the dirt and clutching his head. "The thunder... it was so loud! I thought the roof was going to fall on me! I hid under my bed the whole time! Don't let the sky boom anymore, please!"
Guard Shi laughed harshly. "The sky boomed because your wife is a peerless genius, you pathetic worm! She forced the Heavens to retreat! You should be on your knees thanking her for protecting your miserable life!"
"I am! I am!" Li Xuan cried, kowtowing toward the Western Courtyard. "Thank you, General! Thank you for scaring the thunder away!"
Deep inside, beneath the tears, beneath the trembling, Li Xuan's omniscient Void Refinement senses expanded.
His divine sense effortlessly swept over the entire Great Qian Dynasty. It expanded past the borders, mapping the demonic beast territories to the North, the vast oceans to the East, and the ancient sects hidden in the Southern Mountains.
He could see the Emperor in the palace, secretly nursing an old wound. He could see the Third Prince in his study, tearing up assassination contracts in a blind panic. He could see the ancient, dusty ancestors of the royal family sleeping in their tombs, completely unaware that a god now walked among them.
*They are all so fragile,* Li Xuan thought, a chilling, mechanical detachment overlaying his paranoia. *A single thought, and they would all be dust.*
But he immediately shoved that thought down, burying it under a mountain of engineered fear.
*No. Hubris is death. The moment you think you are invincible is the moment a wandering immortal from a higher plane drops a meteor on your head because he didn't like your shoes. Hide. Survive. Play dead.*
Li Xuan stayed on his knees in the dirt, wailing about the loud noises, perfectly content to let his terrifying wife take all the glory, all the fear, and all the targets.
He was the Ninth Prince. He was a piece of royal trash. And he was going to live forever.