Chapter 41: Sage Eyes

The journey continued beneath an endless curtain of crimson snow. The brewing blood blizzard still lingered on the horizon, its towering scarlet clouds slowly spreading across the frozen wasteland, but for now the weather remained calm enough to travel.

Leon sat quietly atop the mount behind Maya, maintaining Sage Guidance without a single interruption for hours. Then, something changed. The final strand of Qi flowing through his internal network stopped moving, its pathway completely saturated.

He blinked, tracking the stagnation. "...Full."

The sensation was unmistakable. Every meridian throughout his body was completely saturated with Qi, prompting Leon to slowly release Sage Guidance. The steady inward current immediately ceased. Next, he released Sage Breathing as well, watching the energy inside his meridians begin to leak away painfully slowly. His eyebrows rose at the sluggish pace.

"So that's the natural dissipation rate..." Leon murmured, noting that even after several breaths, the volume had barely changed. He looked over toward Lyra. "I can already tell this is going to take forever without Sage Eyes."

Lyra nodded, guiding her own mount right beside his. "It would. Most people never experience what you did."

Leon glanced over. "You mean maintaining Sage Guidance while living normally?"

"Exactly," she smiled, adjusting her cloak against the wind. "Normally, Sage Guidance requires complete meditation. You sit perfectly still, regulate your breathing, guide the Qi, and that's all you can do. You don't walk, you don't fight, and you certainly don't spend an entire day traveling while maintaining it."

Leon nodded slowly, parsing the logistics. "So once someone fills their meridians, they wait, they cultivate, they let the Qi dissipate, they cultivate again, and repeat that eighty-one times." He stared ahead into the falling snow. "...That sounds miserable."

"It is," Lyra let out a faint laugh. "Which is exactly why almost everyone who eventually reaches Qi Condensation first awakens Sage Eyes. Those who don't... usually never leave Qi Condensation."

Leon understood the bottleneck immediately. Without Sage Eyes, every cycle would require hours of rigid meditation followed by countless hours waiting for the Qi to naturally disperse, causing their cultivation to crawl almost to a halt. "Then let's fix that."

Lyra nodded, her expression shifting into an instructional tone. "You already know the theory. The breakthrough itself is actually quite simple." She pointed lightly toward his eyes. "When you learned Sage Guidance, what did you do?"

"I first guided the Qi through one small part of my body, then expanded it to the rest."

"Exactly. The principle is identical. This time, instead of drawing Qi inward, remember that sensation and reverse it."

Leon closed his eyes, centering his awareness. *Reverse it...*

"The Qi previously entered because it flowed from a region of higher concentration into a lower one," Lyra continued calmly. "Now you'll actively push it against that natural gradient. It requires considerably finer control."

Leon immediately understood why; absorbing Qi worked with nature, but releasing it meant working directly against nature. "No wonder it's harder."

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Lyra smiled. "Start small. Don't attempt your entire body. Guide the Qi only toward your eyes. Once you can maintain that... the rest will follow naturally."

Leon took a slow breath, then another. Inside his body, the Qi resting within his filled meridians began to move once more—outward this time. At first, nothing happened as the current scattered before reaching its destination. He tried again, and it collapsed. He tried a third time, and the internal flow became slightly smoother.

Leon remained completely focused, letting his Universal Vessel quietly analyze every single failure, deviation, and microscopic inefficiency. It adjusted, refined, and corrected the internal paths. The next attempt traveled farther, then farther again, until finally, a fine thread of Qi reached both eyes.

Leon felt an unfamiliar pressure over his vision. It wasn't painful, but carried a sudden, hyper-focused awareness. He continued exerting the flow, directing more Qi until the pressure stabilized, and then his eyes slowly opened.

A faint glow emerged from within them. His dark brown irises gradually brightened into a warm, luminous amber, the light remaining subtle beneath the falling red snow. Yet the world around him transformed completely. The drifting Qi that had previously felt like vague currents now appeared astonishingly clear; tiny streams danced through the air, the mounts radiated a faint life force, and even the crimson snowflakes carried distinct wisps of environmental Qi as they drifted downward.

Leon instinctively extended his perception farther, and the visual range increased immediately, the sharp details locking into place. His control over the Qi inside his own body became noticeably smoother, and the entire world suddenly felt closer.

Lyra smiled the moment she saw his eyes change. "...Congratulations. You've awakened Sage Eyes."

Leon blinked several times, testing the visual sensation. "So this is what everyone was talking about." He directed a little more Qi through his eyes, and the amber glow intensified slightly before stabilizing. Unlike Sage Guidance, this process actively consumed the Qi stored inside his meridians, but now that stored energy finally had a meaningful purpose. Instead of waiting hours for it to slowly leak away, he could actively expend it.

Leon smiled faintly. "So every cycle just became dramatically shorter."

"Exactly," Lyra nodded. "Now you can begin cycling properly. And from this point onward... your Body Tempering Foundation has officially entered the Late Stage."

Leon looked toward the distant blood blizzard. One more foundation milestone was completed, leaving only one left.

Lyra stared at him for a long second, her awe breaking through her mask. "...You actually did it."

Leon blinked a few times, allowing the faint glow in his eyes to fade back to normal. "I assume that was fast?"

Lyra let out a slow, amazed breath. "...Ridiculously." She shook her head with a helpless smile. "I expected you to struggle for at least a few hours. Even the most talented cultivators usually need repeated attempts before they learn to reverse the flow properly."

Leon simply nodded, accepting the feedback. "So that's the late stage. Is the peak harder?"

"It is," she began, but before she could continue, her expression suddenly changed. The relaxed smile vanished instantly as her eyes narrowed toward the distant snowfield. "...Quiet."

Everyone instinctively stopped the mounts, leaving only the howling of the crimson wind. Lyra slowly raised a hand, pointing toward a ridge. "There."

Leon followed her gaze through his newly awakened sight. Far across the frozen plain, a silver-white blur darted between jagged rocks before disappearing behind a ridge. It was fast, moving far faster than the Gazer Crab. Another blur flashed, and this time everyone saw it clearly: a wolf. Its snow-white fur blended almost perfectly with the crimson blizzard, making it seem like a ghost drifting through the storm, while around its neck shimmered faint, elegant strands of pale blue Qi.

Lyra's eyes widened in genuine surprise. "A Frost Spirit Wolf..."

"What?" Leon asked.

"They're incredibly rare," she kept her eyes fixed on the direction it had vanished. "They don't possess much offensive power, but their blood essence is exceptionally pure. Aside from that, everything about them is valuable—their fur, teeth, and core. Starting from Grade Two, beasts possess cores, but this is the only Grade One beast to possess a core." She glanced directly toward Leon. "If your spirit blood is compatible with it... the improvement would be enormous."

Leon didn't hesitate. "Then let's catch it."

Lyra grinned, her military instinct taking over. "I knew you'd say that." She immediately turned toward the others, her voice snapping across the wind. "Move!"

The two mounts burst forward together. Snow exploded beneath their hooves as they raced after the fleeting white silhouette disappearing deeper into the frozen wilderness, heading straight toward where the crimson blizzard continued to gather.