Damon stood, and Neko immediately slid off his shoulder with a small sound of protest.

"Stay here, Neko. I’ll be back" he told her.

She lay back onto the sofa cushion with her ears dropped down.

Ariel caught his eye from across the room and gave him a small nod.

He followed Mei out.

****

The path up to the Sect Leader’s residence cut through the upper mountain, where the air thinned and the stone steps were wide enough for three people to walk side by side.

Mei walked next to him without any urgency, her purple hair catching the wind off the cliff edge.

She didn’t speak for the first few minutes, which was unusual for her.

Damon glanced sideways.

Her expression was calm, but her eyes were doing that thing where they moved slightly too much, reading the path ahead like she was calculating something.

"You already know what he wants to tell me?" Damon said.

She smiled without looking at him.

"Well,I know many things," she said, the faintest curve touching the corner of her painted lips.

"That’s not a denial."

"No," she agreed pleasantly, tilting her head just enough that a curtain of deep purple hair slid forward across her shoulder. "It isn’t."

She offered nothing more after that, her eyes returning to the path ahead with that same unhurried, calculating stillness.

He let it go.

****

The Sect Leader’s residence sat at the highest accessible point of the Azure Dragon Sect, a broad stone structure built into the mountain face with a wide open balcony that overlooked the entire sect grounds below.

The doors were already open when they arrived.

Sect Leader Hector stood at the balcony railing with his hands clasped behind his back, looking out over the terraced rooftops and training grounds far beneath him.

He was a broad man, not tall but built like something carved rather than grown, with iron-grey hair pulled back tight and a cultivator’s stillness that made the air around him feel heavier than it should.

He heard them enter without turning.

"You finally out," he said.

"It’s only a few months," Damon answered.

Sect Leader Hector turned then, and his eyes dropped to Damon with the automatic assessment of someone who had spent decades reading cultivators at a glance.

He went still for a momment.

Not the polite stillness of a man waiting for conversation.

The actual stillness of someone whose expectations had just been quietly dismantled.

His gaze moved across Damon once, then again, slower.

"You already at Earth Spirit Realm" Hector said.

"Yep." Damon confirmed.

"I didn’t expect that."

Sect Leader Hector exhaled through his nose and turned back toward the balcony, bracing one hand on the stone railing.

"I sent you into that cave expecting you to scrape into the True Spirit Realm peak before the tournament," he said, his voice even but carrying the weight of someone recalculating a long-held assumption.

"With the Heaven Grade pill from the auction, I thought you might, if everything went perfectly, touch the threshold of Earth Spirit Realm on the final day."

He paused.

"There is still a month remaining."

"Well, maybe because I’m a genius?" Damon said as he shrugged his shoulder.

Sect Leader Hector glanced back at him with an expression that said he understood that answer was technically true and also completely insufficient as an explanation.

Mei, standing slightly behind Damon’s left shoulder, said nothing, but the small curve at the edge of her mouth suggested she was enjoying the moment.

Hector straightened and moved away from the railing, gesturing toward the low stone table near the center of the balcony.

Then they sat at the chair.

A disciple appeared from inside with tea and vanished again without a word.

Hector wrapped both hands around his cup and looked at Damon directly.

"There has been a change to the Eastern Continent Tournament format," he said.

"The organizing council sent formal notice two weeks ago. The representative count has been raised from five to seven."

Damon picked up his cup.

"And? There is more right?"

Sect Leader Hector’s eyes sharpened slightly, the way they did when something surprised him.

"Raised to thirty," he said.

"Which changes the field considerably. Several sects that previously had no viable candidates under twenty-five now have experienced cultivators who qualify."

He set his cup down.

"This tournament will be harder than any in the past decade. The council has not explained the reason for the change, but the timing suggests pressure from the larger factions, likely the ones whose strongest young cultivators were aging out of eligibility."

Damon considered that.

Raising the age limit to thirty meant the gap between a genuine prodigy and a carefully cultivated veteran narrowed significantly.

An eighteen-year-old at Earth Spirit Realm was exceptional.

A twenty-nine-year-old at the same realm, with a decade more combat experience and technique refinement, was a different problem entirely.

"So... Seven representatives, How are you selecting them?" " Damon ask.

Hector leaned back.

"That is why I called you here."

He folded his hands on the table.

"I am holding a sect tournament. Open to any disciple who meets the minimum cultivation requirement of Earth Spirit Realm First Level. The top seven finishers will represent the Azure Dragon Sect."

He let that sit for a moment.

"In practice, the field will almost entirely be core disciples. Earth Spirit Realm is not a threshold that outer or inner disciples typically reach, and those who do are usually promoted to core disciple shortly after."

"Usually," Damon said.

"You are an exception," Hector said without inflection.

"As is Ariel Aquaria, She just broke through also."

Sect Leader Hector stopped for a second and nodded.

"Then she qualifies to enter. Whether she can place in the top seven against core disciples is another question."

He looked at Damon steadily.

"I expect you in that top seven. I expect you to be the reason this sect does not embarrass itself on the Eastern Continent stage."

The wind came off the mountain and moved through the open balcony, carrying the faint sound of training grounds far below.

"When is the sect tournament?" Damon asked.

"Three weeks," Hector said.