The moment Tang Shuo stepped through the portal into the Eternal Winter Realm, the bitter cold hit him like a physical blow. His breath crystallized in the air, and frost immediately began forming on his expensive gray robes despite the protective qi he wrapped around himself.

The landscape that greeted him was a harsh expanse of white—endless snow-covered plains stretching to the horizon, broken only by jagged ice formations that jutted from the ground like the bones of some ancient, frozen beast.

But the cold wasn't what made Tang Shuo's blood freeze in his veins.

Standing forty paces away, seemingly unbothered by the sub-zero temperatures, was his opponent.

Ke Yin looked exactly as Tang Shuo had expected from the tournament recordings: young, perhaps even younger than Tang Shuo himself, with the kind of pale, refined features that spoke of decent breeding. He wore the simple robes of an outer disciple, nothing fancy or expensive about his appearance.

And yet.

The spiritual pressure radiating from the village boy hit Tang Shuo like a mountain avalanche. It wasn't just the raw power, though there was plenty of that, it was the quality of it. Dense, refined, controlled.

Pseudo-Elemental Realm cultivation base pressed down on Tang Shuo's eighth-stage qi like a master's hand settling on a child's shoulder. Not threatening, exactly, but making it very clear who held the power in this relationship.

Tang Shuo's knees wanted to buckle. His carefully maintained composure nearly cracked as the reality of facing a Pseudo-Elemental Realm cultivator sank in. This wasn't some equal he could intimidate with his family name or overwhelm with superior resources. This was a genuine monster who had carved his way through the Fallen Realm like it was a casual stroll through a garden.

"No," Tang Shuo thought fiercely, forcing steel into his spine. "I am Tang Shuo, heir to the Celestial Hammer Clan. I have faced greater challenges than this village nobody."

He straightened to his full height, letting his aristocratic mask slide into place with practiced ease. The expression he wore had been perfected over years of formal dinners and clan politics: confident, slightly bored, with just a hint of benevolent condescension. It was the look of someone who had never doubted his own superiority.

"You should surrender now," Tang Shuo announced, his voice carrying clearly across the frozen wasteland. He clasped his hands behind his back in the classical pose of a young master addressing an inferior. "I am Tang Shuo of the Celestial Hammer Clan."

He paused expectantly, waiting for the flash of recognition that always followed when he revealed his family name. The widening of eyes, the subtle step backward, the dawning realization of just how outmatched his opponent truly was. It was a moment Tang Shuo had savored countless times before.

But Ke Yin's expression remained completely blank. Not dismissive, not impressed, just utterly neutral, as if Tang Shuo had announced he was from some random farming village rather than one of the most prestigious cultivation clans in the Eastern Continent.

A flush of embarrassment crept up Tang Shuo's neck, though he tried to keep it from showing on his face. Perhaps this village boy was simply too ignorant to understand the significance of the Celestial Hammer Clan. Yes, that had to be it.

"You're facing centuries of accumulated cultivation wisdom, resources that could buy your entire village, and techniques that have been refined across generations," Tang Shuo explained, his voice gaining strength as he pushed past the awkward moment. "The outcome was decided the moment we were matched against each other. There's no shame in acknowledging the gap between us."

Ke Yin's reaction was... not what Tang Shuo had expected.

The older boy blinked once, slowly, as if he'd just witnessed something so absurd that his mind needed a moment to process it. His head tilted slightly to one side, and Tang Shuo caught a glimpse of something that might have been amusement flickering in those pale eyes.

"Did you just..." Ke Yin started, then stopped, his expression cycling through confusion, disbelief, and what looked suspiciously like concern. "You do realize I'm at the Pseudo-Elemental Realm, right? And you, someone at the eighth stage of Qi Condensation, is telling me that I'm the one who is outmatched?"

The genuine bewilderment in Ke Yin's voice made Tang Shuo's cheeks burn with embarrassment, but he pushed forward anyway. This was his only chance. If he could just buy enough time, if he could activate his family's secret technique properly, he might actually have a shot at winning this impossible matchup.

"You think cultivation level is everything?" Tang Shuo scoffed, taking several casual steps backward while gesturing dismissively. "Clearly you don't understand what it means to be chosen by heaven itself. Let me enlighten you about the kind of opponent you're truly facing."

As he spoke, Tang Shuo began reaching inward, connecting with the vast marble expanse of his inner world. The Faithforge Sanctum stretched out before his spiritual consciousness, a realm of pristine white stone beneath a starless sky that never quite became day or night. And there, in the shifting shadows cast by monuments to his own beliefs, the Ideashapers stirred to life.

"From the moment I was born," Tang Shuo continued, his voice taking on the practiced cadence of someone who'd told this story many times before, "the heavens marked me as special. When I took my first breath, a phoenix appeared in the sky above our family estate, circling three times before flying toward the rising sun. The clan elders said it was a sign of imperial destiny."

In his inner world, one of the shadowy sculptors, barely more than a humanoid outline with glowing chisel-points for hands, began carving into a fresh block of concept-marble. The phoenix took shape with each strike, wings spread wide, eyes blazing with celestial fire.

As the sculpture neared completion, Tang Shuo felt his cultivation base stir, drawing power from the manifested belief.

The Eternal Chisel Scripture was perhaps the most peculiar cultivation method in existence. Where other techniques drew power from external qi or internal refinement, his method derived strength from the fundamental force of belief itself. The stronger his conviction in his own destiny, the more real that destiny became.

In the beginning, he'd thought it was simply an advanced form of positive thinking. But as he'd progressed through the early stages, he'd come to understand the deeper truth. Reality was malleable at its core, especially within the confines of one's inner world. Belief was the chisel that carved meaning from chaos, purpose from randomness. And when that belief grew strong enough, it could reshape even the laws of cultivation itself.

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But therein lay both the technique's greatest power and its inherent limitation.

At his cultivation realm, the Eternal Chisel Scripture's belief-based enhancements were temporary, lasting only minutes at most before the carved "truths" would naturally dissolve back into raw marble.

This was precisely why Tang Shuo couldn't have prepared these carvings beforehand.

The technique required constant, active reinforcement.

Simply believing something wasn't enough, Tang Shuo had to be actively proclaiming it, living it, breathing it into existence through the sheer force of his conviction. The moment he stopped talking, stopped reinforcing these carefully constructed narratives, the temporary power would begin to fade.

That's why Tang Shuo had to keep talking, had to keep reinforcing these stories he'd told himself a thousand times. Each tale carved into marble by his Ideashapers would temporarily boost his cultivation, but only as long as he maintained absolute focus on making them real. The sculptures fed on his active belief, growing stronger and more detailed the more passionately he proclaimed their truth.

"At age three," he continued, still backing away while gesturing grandly, "I discovered a thousand-year-old spirit herb growing in our family garden. The gardener said it was just a weed, but I knew better! When I touched it, it bloomed into the Celestial Lotus of Infinite Potential!"

Another Ideashaper began work on a second sculpture, this one depicting young Tang Shuo reaching toward a glowing plant that seemed to bend reality around itself. The carved child's eyes held hints of the divine, suggesting someone touched by forces beyond mortal understanding.

"At seven, I accidentally wandered into a spatial rift that should have killed me. Instead, I found myself in a pocket dimension where time flowed differently. I spent what felt like months there, trained by the spirit of an ancient sword saint who'd been waiting eons for a worthy successor. When I emerged, only hours had passed in the real world, but my understanding of cultivation had advanced by decades."

A third sculpture joined the growing collection, showing a small figure kneeling before a translucent master whose sword seemed to cut through the very fabric of reality. The spiritual pressure in Tang Shuo's inner world grew stronger as more of his personal mythology took solid form. His eighth stage spiritual pressure began to climb, meridians flooding with energy drawn from the manifested stories of his exceptional nature.

"When I was ten," he declared, backing even further away from the still-bemused Ke Yin, "the Azure Peak Sect's former Sect Master personally visited our clan to beg me to become his successor! I turned him down, of course, the Celestial Hammer Clan was honor enough for someone of my caliber!"

This carving was more elaborate, a regal figure in flowing robes prostrating himself before a child Tang Shuo, who stood with arms crossed in magnificent refusal. The Ideashaper working on this scene took particular care with the details, adding expressions of awe and reverence to the faces of watching clan members.

The power surge that followed this "memory" was stronger than the others.

Tang Shuo's spiritual pressure exploded outward as he ascended from the eighth stage to the ninth stage of Qi Condensation. For a moment, he felt truly invincible, riding high on the rush of advancement and the solid weight of belief made manifest.

"You see?" Tang Shuo laughed, spreading his arms wide as if to embrace the frozen wasteland around them. "This is what it means to be a child of destiny! While you struggled with village techniques and sect scraps, I was being forged by providence itself!"

Still, he wasn't done yet. He could push further, could manifest enough belief to temporarily match even Pseudo-Elemental Realm power. He just needed to keep the stories flowing, keep the sculptors working, keep building the monument to his own exceptional nature.

"And just last month," Tang Shuo continued, his voice rising with manic energy, "I discovered I was the reincarnation of the Jade Emperor! The memories came flooding back during meditation - eons of celestial knowledge, techniques that predate the current cultivation system entirely. I've been holding back my true power out of mercy for my opponents, but perhaps it's time to—"

Ke Yin vanished.

One moment he was standing there with that same expression of concerned bewilderment, and the next there was only empty air and swirling snow. Tang Shuo's words died in his throat as his eyes darted frantically across the barren landscape, searching for any sign of his opponent.

"What…where did he…" Tang Shuo spun in a circle, his ninth stage spiritual sense probing outward desperately. "Some kind of movement technique? But I should be able to…"

The palm strike came from directly in front of him.

Ke Yin materialized like he'd stepped through a fold in space itself, his hand already in motion. Tang Shuo barely had time to register the attack before it connected with his chest, spiritual energy erupting through his body like liquid lightning.

The impact sent him flying backward across the snow-covered ground, his expensive robes tearing as he skidded to a halt against a boulder. Pain exploded through his ribs, and he tasted copper in his mouth, but what hurt worse was the casual, almost gentle way the attack had been delivered. Like swatting an annoying insect.

Tang Shuo lay there for a moment, gasping for breath and trying to process what had just happened. His carefully cultivated ninth stage cultivation was already beginning to waver as shock and doubt crept into his mind. The sculptures in his inner world flickered, their marble surfaces developing stress fractures as his conviction faltered.

Through the haze of pain and humiliation, he became aware of footsteps crunching through the snow. Lifting his head with tremendous effort, Tang Shuo found himself staring up at Ke Yin, who looked down at him with an expression of genuine concern.

"You should seek some help," Ke Yin said quietly, his tone holding none of the mockery Tang Shuo expected. Instead, there was something almost kind in his voice, the way someone might speak to a person suffering from a serious illness. "Really. I think... I think you might need to talk to someone about these stories you're telling yourself."

With that, Ke Yin turned and walked away, his footsteps already fading as he headed toward the tournament exit portal that had materialized in the distance, apparently considering the match concluded. Which, Tang Shuo supposed through his haze of pain and shock, it effectively was.

Tang Shuo struggled to sit up, his eighth-stage cultivation struggling to heal the worst of his injuries. Everything hurt, but nothing seemed permanently damaged. Ke Yin had controlled his strength precisely, enough to end the fight definitively, but not enough to cripple or kill.

Somehow, that casual restraint hurt worse than the physical beating.

But even as Tang Shuo dragged himself upright, wiping blood from his split lip, he became aware of something far worse happening in his inner world.

The Ideashapers were still working.

He could sense them in the Faithforge Sanctum, their shadowy forms hunched over their tools with grim determination. But they weren't carving monuments to his destiny anymore. They were sculpting something else entirely.

"No," Tang Shuo thought desperately, trying to assert control over his own inner world. "Stop. I command you to stop."

But the sculptors ignored him. They served belief, not conscious will, and right now the strongest belief in Tang Shuo's heart had nothing to do with his own greatness.

The monument took shape with horrifying speed and precision. A massive statue, larger than any previous sculpture, carved from black stone that seemed to absorb light rather than reflect it.

The figure was unmistakably Ke Yin: every detail perfect, from the simple outer sect robes to the mild expression of someone dealing with a minor inconvenience.

But it was the eyes that made Tang Shuo's blood turn to ice water in his veins.

The statue's gaze looked down with gentle pity, the kind of sympathetic sadness one might show a child who'd hurt themselves trying to do something far beyond their capabilities.

The sculpture settled into place at the very center of his inner world, dwarfing his Core Statue and casting everything else into shadow. Already, Tang Shuo could feel his cultivation beginning to stagnate, his confidence cracking under the weight of that pitying gaze.

The Eternal Chisel Scripture was indeed a Peak Heaven-rank method, powerful beyond conventional understanding. But what separated it from being a Beyond Heaven-rank technique was its fundamental weakness; the same source of its strength could become its destruction.

Belief was a double-edged blade. Conviction could reshape reality, but doubt could shatter the very foundations of existence. And right now, in the deepest core of his being where the sculptors carved eternal truth, Tang Shuo believed with absolute certainty in his own inadequacy.

He had developed a heart demon.

And that heart demon wore Ke Yin's face.

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