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Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38271
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Source: https://writers.stackexchange.com/a/38271
License name: CC BY-SA 3.0
License URL: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

### Hang a lantern on it.

If possible, I would revise your story to make the MC's transformation secret but brief, in fact you can take a chapter where the rest of the group is trying to find the MC, and succeeds. Then the MC conceals from them what happened to them, makes up an excuse. "I don't remember, the last thing I remember is eating some berries, then I must have passed out, I did not recognize where I woke up..."

The reader can suspect something happened, but not what happened. So can the other characters.

From your Wuxia example (which I know is not your story), that MC could have found the scroll which revealed many secrets to him, but instead of disappearing could have just been reading and practicing this new art in private, intentionally keeping it a secret and making excuses for his absences.

This won't work if the narrator is privy to the thoughts of the MC, of course. If that has been the case earlier in the book, you will be breaking an implicit contract with the reader, that the MC cannot lie to them. In that case, the only way to pull this off is if the MC doesn't even know the change has happened to them. That can be done with magic powers, for example, a person could become more powerful without realizing it. But in THAT case, you would need hints so the **reader** suspects this has happened, and is expecting the greater power to manifest itself sooner or later, otherwise the greater power will seem like a deus ex machina.

Original score: 4