Sharing a Secret

"Just a *little* more?"

Li Qinghe blinked, eyeing him with curiosity. "How much more, exactly?"

Lu Yuan's gaze swept over the three of them. Taking in their expressions, his mouth twitched.

"...Roughly eight hundred thousand or so."

Li Qinghe: ???

Si Tingyu: ???

Shuangyue: ???

All three of them stood there, utterly blank-faced.

Silence crashed down. The mood turned decidedly awkward.

A moment later, Shuangyue's mouth gave a violent twitch, a strange expression spreading across her pretty face.

"...You call that *a little more*?!"

Lu Yuan looked perfectly innocent. "It's not that different — we're all in the tens of thousands range, aren't we?"

"..."

The three fell quiet again. Then Li Qinghe seemed to remember something, and she fixed Lu Yuan with an odd look.

"Yuan-didi, you've been with us the whole time — how on earth do you have so many more Merits than us?!"

At that, Si Tingyu and Shuangyue both caught up and turned puzzled eyes on him.

He had been hoping they wouldn't ask.

No such luck.

Lu Yuan let out a dry laugh.

"I used a few techniques to close the Spatial Rift in the Dark Night Forest, and helped those three Battle Saints deal with a bit of a problem along the way... Don't breathe a word of this to anyone."

He still wanted to keep a low profile and train in peace — at least until he broke through to Battle Emperor. Once he reached that stage, he could evolve all his genes to Divine Grade, and even facing a War God wouldn't rattle him. He might not be able to win outright, but with his Spatial Type Transcendent Gene, no one in the world could stop him from walking away if he chose to.

But right now, he was still a fraction short of that threshold.

Better to remind Qinghe-jie and the others — he couldn't risk them letting it slip.

Given how well he knew these three, they should understand why.

At his words, all three women's eyes went wide, shock written plainly across their faces.

They had spent enough time in the Upper Layer of the Land of Origin to know precisely how difficult sealing a Spatial Rift truly was.

None of them had imagined that while Lu Yuan had been standing right there beside them, holding back the Beast Tide, he had somehow simultaneously sealed the Rift on the side.

Honestly, even a Battle Saint might struggle to pull off something like that.

At that thought, both Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu felt a jolt run through them.

Li Qinghe suddenly sent a voice transmission to Lu Yuan: *"Yuan-didi... was it you? The one who killed the Green Dog in the real world that time?"*

Si Tingyu's voice followed a heartbeat behind: *"A-Yuan — are you the mysterious figure who killed the Saint-grade Aberration Feral Beast on Great Qi Star?"*

Both transmissions landed at once. Lu Yuan blinked.

*They actually guessed it?*

He glanced at the two of them and said nothing to deny it.

He sent back a calm reply: *"How did you figure that out?"*

His question was answer enough. Both women now had their confirmation.

Their eyes widened; joy and excitement flooded their faces.

*"I knew it had to be you! It's because you weren't around that time, obviously. Last time, we had our suspicions — but you hadn't shown anything that clearly proved you could kill a Saint-grade Aberration, so it stayed a guess. But here in the Dark Night Forest, the power you've shown is far beyond even a Battle Emperor. So we started to wonder whether you'd already reached Battle Saint level."*

Li Qinghe's transmission came through clearly.

Beside her, Si Tingyu gave a quiet nod of agreement.

It clicked for Lu Yuan then. Compared to old man Li Xinghai and the others, Qinghe-jie and his mentor knew him best. He had always kept a low profile — only ever showing a fraction of his real strength during ranking attempts — but between their familiarity with him and everything that had unfolded on this trip, they'd had enough pieces to assemble a reasonable guess.

Of course, the Merit count had really been the nail in the coffin.

Without that, they probably would have stayed at mere suspicion.

Lu Yuan's mouth quirked. *Who could have predicted the party distribution would expose him like that?*

He replied through the transmission, smiling: *"It was me, yes — but please keep it between us for now. I still have a lot of training to do."*

Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu exchanged a glance.

Li Qinghe transmitted back, puzzled: *"Of course we won't say anything — but how did you get this strong, Yuan-didi? You were already brilliant back in Xili City, but nothing like... this..."*

She had watched Lu Yuan grow step by step, more so than Si Tingyu had, which made his current level all the more baffling to her.

Lu Yuan went quiet, turning the question over in his mind. Should he tell Li Qinghe about his ability to evolve Transcendent Genes?

It was a serious matter, to be sure. But after thinking it through, he decided a rough telling wouldn't hurt — not with these two. He knew them well enough.

He trusted them to keep it to themselves.

He sent back a quiet reply: *"The genes I've recorded can evolve. Keep it secret."*

Both women froze.

They stared at him, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, utterly dumbstruck.

The impact of those words hit harder than either of the other revelations — the eight hundred thousand Merits, the confirmation that he was the mysterious Saint-grade killer. Genes that could evolve after recording — this was something neither of them had ever heard of.

Li Qinghe's transmission came back trembling: *"Yuan-didi, is that true?! They can really evolve?? That... that's almost impossible to believe."*

And it wasn't just her — Si Tingyu, whose expression was normally composed and measured, now wore something almost dazed, her voice faintly unsteady through the link: *"If that's true... then all of your Transcendent Genes right now, are they...?"*

Since he'd already come this far, Lu Yuan smiled and answered: *"That's right. All of my Transcendent Genes are currently Saint Grade."*

Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu both drew a sharp breath, staring at him.

Beside them, Shuangyue had been watching their expressions cycle through a dozen emotions in silence. She frowned slightly.

"What are you all talking about? It feels like you three are keeping something from me."

Lu Yuan gave a polite cough. He had known Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu for over three years — he understood them well and trusted them completely. Shuangyue, though, he only ever saw once a year around the New Year; they simply hadn't spent enough time together for him to share something like this.

Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu came back to themselves. Seeing that Lu Yuan hadn't included Shuangyue, they said nothing more. They trusted Shuangyue with their lives — but this was Lu Yuan's secret to tell, and if he wanted to share it, he would do so himself.

Li Qinghe broke into a cheerful grin and clapped Shuangyue on the shoulder. "Oh, nothing much — just something interesting. If you're really dying to know, why not marry my Yuan-didi and let him tell you himself?"

Shuangyue's expression stiffened. She shot Li Qinghe a glare, a faint flush creeping across her cheeks, then glanced sideways at Lu Yuan.

"Ahem... we can talk about that later."

"Oh? You didn't actually say no, Stinky Yueyue?"

Li Qinghe was genuinely caught off guard, and even Si Tingyu shot a surprised look Shuangyue's way.

They both knew exactly how Shuangyue usually reacted to other men.

Shuangyue gave the two of them a sweet smile.

"Oh? And the two of you haven't said no either, have you?"

Li Qinghe and Si Tingyu both went rigid. They quietly looked away.

At the center of all this, Lu Yuan cleared his throat awkwardly.

"...Do you want more Feral Beasts to fight?"

That snapped all three back to the present. Li Qinghe's grin returned in full.

"Sure, send a few more our way."

Lu Yuan nodded, easing the Spatial Vortexes just enough to let a handful of beasts through. The three women moved to meet them.

The Beast Tide was still ongoing. Before long, three streaks of light came flying back from the distance.

Lu Yuan glanced up — Gladys and the other two Battle Saints.

The Shadow Clone he had left in the Dark Night Forest had already spotted them returning, so he felt no particular surprise.

Upon returning, the three Battle Saints immediately took in the dense field of Spatial Vortexes still blanketing the sky, then looked over at Lu Yuan's slightly pale complexion.

Silas let out a quiet sigh of appreciation. "This human youngster is something else. He's held back more than half the entire Beast Tide practically on his own."

Even the wild-auraed Dengba gave a small nod, his voice low and rumbling:

"The kid has a real future. Wouldn't be surprised if he ends up stronger than the lot of us someday."

Gladys's thoughts drifted to the Heavenly Calamity Cult Apostles from earlier. A weight settled into her expression.

"The question is whether he'll have the time to get there."

At those words, the same gravity fell over Dengba and Silas.

After a moment of silence, the three said nothing more and returned inside the city. They made no move to suppress the Beast Tide themselves — they simply watched the assembled Gene Warriors cut down the Aberration Feral Beasts.

The beasts posed no real threat to Saints. Ending the tide would have cost them almost no effort at all. But for the other Gene Warriors, these kills were hard-won Merits and hard-fought growth. The three Battle Saints weren't about to take that from them.

Before long, however, the green flames blazing through the Dark Night Forest began to slowly gutter out, pressed down by the will of the Land of Origin. The Aberration Feral Beasts pouring from the forest thinned by the minute, and the Beast Tide gradually began to die down.

This left the Gene Warriors who had been happily racking up kills looking confused and caught off guard.

"What's going on? How is the tide already ending?"

Anastasia stood wreathed in swirling dark-crimson flames, the fire condensing into a spear that drove clean through a Battle Sovereign-Grade Aberration Feral Beast. She frowned faintly, staring at the rapidly dwindling beasts with visible surprise.

Nina, Xia Zhi, and the other Nightshade talents alongside her were equally wide-eyed.

"By any reasonable measure, with an Aberration Source that size, this tide should've run for days."

"Wait — look at the Dark Night Forest."

Xia Zhi's voice was uncertain as she pointed ahead.

Everyone looked up. Eyes widened one by one.

The green glow that had blazed through the Dark Night Forest was dimming fast. Darkness was reclaiming it, swallowing the eerie light — as though everything was slowly reverting to its natural state.

Surprise rippled across every face among the Nightshade talents.

Then a Nightshade Battle Emperor standing guard nearby spoke up:

"Looks like Saint Gladys has suppressed the Aberration Source. It won't be long before the tide is fully over."

That earned a round of understanding nods from Anastasia and the others.

"Ah. That makes sense."

It wasn't just the Nightshade side — Gene Warriors across the entire defensive line were all noticing the same thing. And more than a few of them looked quietly disappointed.

"It's over already?!"

"Way too fast. With Brother Lu Yuan holding the line for us, hunting was practically risk-free — I was really hoping to pile up more Merits this time. Can't believe it's already done."

"Tell me about it. I've only scraped together a little over a thousand. That's barely anything."

"Same here, only around two thousand. Could've done with a few more hours."

"..."

While the rest of the line buzzed with grumbling chatter, Lu Yuan and Li Qinghe's group felt no particular surprise. They all knew the Aberration Source had been suppressed — they'd received the Merit reward for it, after all.

Even if the three women hadn't exactly earned those Merits themselves.

As the beasts continued to dwindle, Lu Yuan dismissed the Spatial Vortexes. What remained wasn't worth competing over, and he had no real interest in scraping together the last few stragglers.

Sealing the Aberration Source alone had netted him 850,000 Merits. His haul from the Beast Tide itself had come in at nearly 400,000 on top of that.

Combined, the total came to a staggering 1.22 million Merits.

An astronomical figure by any standard — for a Battle Sovereign, certainly, but even for a Battle Emperor. Only a Battle Saint should have been able to pull in numbers like that.

Lu Yuan felt a quiet thrill. *With this many Merits, my cultivation resources for the foreseeable future are completely sorted.*

Beyond the Merits, there was also the matter of the unknown aura from all the dead Aberration Feral Beasts.

As the Evolution Cube continued its ongoing transformation, the range over which it could absorb unknown aura had been growing steadily wider. At a minimum, every trace of unknown aura from every dead Aberration Feral Beast within a radius of several hundred kilometers was drawn into him — including that from the five Saint-grade Aberrations.

Even so, the Evolution Cube had still not completed its evolution.

The amount of unknown aura each new metamorphosis demanded was clearly increasing with every cycle.

Still... he was planning to make a quick trip to the site of the former Spatial Rift, to check whether the unknown auras left behind by the dead Heavenly Calamity Cult members might still be lingering. Unknown aura dissipated over time after death, but only a few hours had passed. Saint-grade and Battle Emperor-grade auras shouldn't have faded this quickly.

With that thought settled, Lu Yuan turned and smiled at the three women behind him.

"The tide's over. Let's head back and rest — I'm a bit worn out."

None of the three had any objection. They all knew he had been holding back the Beast Tide while simultaneously sealing the Spatial Rift. That alone must have demanded an enormous toll.

Li Qinghe was quick to nod. "Right, let's go back."

Si Tingyu nodded as well.

Shuangyue's smile turned playful. "Want me to offer some close, personal massage services?"

Li Qinghe shot her a glare. "What are you even saying, Stinky Yueyue?"

Lu Yuan was, in fact, a little tempted. But he still needed to slip away and check the Spatial Rift site, so he swallowed the thought with some reluctance.

He smiled. "Let's get back first."