Consuming the Chakra Fruit, Leaving

Cang's hand did not hesitate.

He held the fruit up before his eyes. Its surface was icy cold, like a stone polished by a river for a thousand years. Fine patterns flickered beneath the pale violet glow—like veins, like tree roots, like some living thing slowly breathing in his palm.

Thirty years.

It had been exactly thirty years since he first opened his eyes beside the Dragon Vein. Thirty years since he crushed Isshiki's essence, swallowed it, then slept in darkness while waiting for this fruit to ripen.

He brought the fruit to his mouth.

A muffled boom came from the distant sky. It was not thunder, but something deeper—like one world crashing into another. Cang's web of Causality trembled violently deep within the Pure Land, strand after strand stretched to its limit, making faint sounds like strings about to snap.

The Sage of Six Paths.

Cang's lips curved slightly. Then he opened his mouth and swallowed the entire fruit.

There was no blinding light the instant the fruit entered his mouth. No explosion, no deafening roar. But Cang's body suddenly went rigid—as if someone had ignited a sun inside him.

That power poured down from his throat, through his esophagus, stomach, and intestines, all the way down before erupting. Not exploding, but "expanding." Like a thousand rivers flooding into a tiny lake at once, the water level surged in an instant, the dam trembled, cracked, screamed.

Cang's hands clenched sharply, his nails digging into the flesh of his palms.

"—!"

He did not cry out. But his body was shaking. It was not from cold or fear—it was because he could no longer contain it. His meridians were stretched to their limits, like a pipe meant for a small stream suddenly flooded by a great river. Chakra rampaged through