ABILITIES ASSESSED

As Li Hua followed, she knew she would never approach techniques the same way again. The Permission Barriers, False Cores, Dimensional Shifts—they were no longer tools to be used, but remembrances of a time before she understood. She had become something else entirely—not a practitioner of concealment arts, but a being who could exist in the spaces between existence itself.

Her brothers waited at the forest's edge, their faces showing a mix of exhaustion and curiosity. Li Wei sat cross-legged on a fallen log, his scholarly mind already analyzing their experience, while Li Hao paced restlessly nearby. Both looked up as Li Hua and Grandmaster Yu emerged from the mist.

"Six days," Li Wei said, a note of admiration in his voice. "You lasted six days against Grandpa."