Chapter 200: Rivalries Ignite: The Prophecy's Descent
The weight of a thousand expectant eyes pressed down—a physical sensation that had by now grown as familiar as the air itself. Yet Su Tianhao registered none of it. Not the hushed murmurs rippling through the crowd, not the distant voice of Elder Gu Lie, not even the faint lingering sting of Lu Ruyi's gaze from somewhere above the clouds. What registered, if anything registered at all, was the subtle shift in the atmosphere as his turn arrived. The way the very light seemed to bend slightly toward the center of the waiting ground.
The stage was set. He stepped into it—not with Jin Yulong's arrogance, not with Wang Bing's radiant certainty, but with the quiet, unshakeable calm of still water that has never been disturbed.
His gaze settled on the steles. Cold, ancient stone that had measured the fates of so many before him.
'What result will I get?' he thought, the question drifting through the vast silence of his mind without particular urgency.
He wasn't entirely certain. According to his father's soul fragment, his talent already surpassed any grade that existed in this world. The memory of that conversation surfaced clearly—
---
"What grade of talent have I awakened? You can tell, right?"
"It wouldn't be interesting if I simply told you. What I can say is that it surpasses any talent grade that exists in this world."
"Higher than nine stars?"
"Hmph! Nine-star talent is complete trash! How could the son of a Supreme Immortal awaken something as pathetic as mortal-rank talent?"
"Supreme Immortal? Mortal-rank talent? What do these terms mean?"
"Knowing too much right now won't do you any good... You'll come to understand all of this naturally as your strength grows."
---
He hadn't known then. He still didn't know now. And these steles wouldn't tell him either. He'd already heard what had happened to Lu Ruyi—the Aptitude Rating Stele had shattered, unable to contain her result. He knew what to expect.
He exhaled. Not the exhale of someone lacking, nor someone relieved. The exhale of someone carrying the quiet, persistent weight of being a mystery even to himself.
'Better not to think about it,' he decided—a familiar refrain. 'As long as I grow stronger, more of my inherited memories will unlock. More answers will come.'
He stepped forward with calm, deliberate steps and placed his hand on the Qi Measuring Stele. The ancient stone was warm to the touch and rough at the surface. He ran a finger along the intricate symbols with quiet curiosity in his eyes.
The array symbols ignited immediately—blazing from line to line like lightning tracing the veins of a sleeping titan.
He felt it at once.
A mysterious energy, warm and soothing yet violent in its precision, invaded his body faster than he could react.
His eyes widened slightly.
Boom!
His aura erupted—golden spiritual energy flaring outward like a radiant burst, sending visible ripples through the air around him.
The Shrouded Dragon Veil unraveled.
The stele confirmed it.
9th level Martial Adept Realm.
The crowd watched in stunned silence—observing, weighing, measuring what they were seeing against the expectations that had been building since the elimination round.
"Peak-stage Martial Adept Realm!"
"Heavens—but that's not the kind of aura a Peak-stage Martial Adept should have. He's different. More domineering."
"And that spiritual energy... golden?"
Longzhou Country was no stranger to unusual spiritual energy colours. But golden—truly golden—was something else. Something most of them had never seen and couldn't immediately name.
In that moment the crowd's expectations shifted again, climbing several degrees higher. Wang Bing had called him superior. Duan Fei had called him an anomaly. Now they were waiting to see if the title would hold.
---
High above, Lu Ruyi watched with emotions she wasn't moving quickly enough to sort.
"How..." The word came out heavier than she intended. "How did he grow impossibly strong in so little time?"
She had expected something extraordinary. She had told herself she was prepared for it. But seeing and expecting were not the same thing.
She could still hear his words from three months ago—spoken not to her, but to himself, as she watched from Qiongqi's back while the distance between them grew. 'Next time we meet, I won't be someone you need to worry about.'
At the time he had been a 6th level Martial Apprentice still finding his footing. She had acknowledged his potential quietly, without thinking too much of it. Now that acknowledgement felt laughably inadequate.
"What kind of trials does a person have to walk through to change this completely?" she murmured, brows tightening.
Now that his aura was no longer suppressed, she could see it clearly. It wasn't just the physical changes, or the cultivation advancement. It was everything fundamental about him—aura, demeanour, presence. It was like watching an entirely different person wearing a familiar face.
Qiongqi was not untouched by it. The moment Su Tianhao's aura unfurled fully, a wave of something instinctive moved through her from deep within her bloodline. Not just fear. Reverence. The kind that left the body with a choice between submission and flight—and right now she found herself leaning toward the former without having decided to.
Her eagle eyes widened with something that looked uncomfortably close to worship.
She could see what even the Grandmasters could not. The power radiating not from his cultivation but from his bloodline itself.
The Heavenly Devouring Dragon Bloodline.
---
Below, Su Tianhao turned to the second stele.
His expression hadn't shifted. His eyes held the same indifferent calm that had been unsettling the Elders since the examination began.
The moment his hand moved toward the Aptitude Rating Stele, the atmosphere changed.
Heavier. Charged. Dense with something unspoken.
Everyone held their breath—the Grandmasters included. The youngsters felt it in their chests without knowing why. Sound itself felt like a transgression. The silence was absolute, almost sacred, as if the world had decided to be still for this moment.
Su Tianhao placed his hand on the stele.
The symbols lit up like moonlight bleeding across still water—slow, silent, inevitable. He had expected the same invasive energy as before. What came instead was something tranquil, unhurried, carrying a quality that reminded him faintly of the Ethereal Mind Crystal. Serene. Welcoming. The kind of energy that moves through you like a tide coming in at its own pace.
Ding.
The first star lit. Then the second. The third.
It didn't slow. Not for a single beat. One by one the stars blazed to life like cosmic firecrackers igniting in sequence, each burst brighter than the last.
Fourth. Fifth. Sixth.
At six, Su Jian's knuckles went white. The Su family's upper echelon watched with wide, unblinking eyes.
Seventh. Eighth.
"Heavens..." someone whispered—not a shout, barely even a breath.
Jin Yulong had stopped breathing. He stared at the stele with the expression of a man silently pleading with the universe, hoping for things to end.
The ninth star flared.
Silence.
For one suspended moment, nine stars hung on the stele—perfect, complete, undeniably extraordinary. The same as Wang Bing's. The same as the legends.
Then the unprecedented happened.
The stele began to shake. Slowly at first—a faint, barely perceptible trembling. Then faster. Harder. The earth beneath it threatened to crack open from the pressure building inside the stone itself.
The younger participants nearest to it stumbled back in panic.
Crack.
A jagged line split across the stele's surface. The stars blazed with brilliant blue light. The crack began to glow along every edge. Then another crack followed. And another.
Su Tianhao's eyes widened. His golden irises reflected the growing light.
The trembling intensified. Fragments began to fall from the surface. As more cracks appeared the brighter the glow became—shining like a dying star that had chosen to spend its last light all at once rather than fade quietly.
"GET BACK!!!"
The warning cut through the air.
Su Tianhao reacted instantly—the dragon Instinct in his bloodline already screaming before the words reached him.
"Dragon Burst!"
Spiritual energy surged toward him like a tide answering a call.
Boom!
The air distorted. He hauled sideways like a bolt loosed from a divine bow—speed beyond anything a Martial Adept should be capable of—and vanished.
Boom!!!
The explosion that followed shook the ground. Shockwaves tore outward in every direction. The seniors present moved immediately—spiritual energy deployed in shields that absorbed the worst of the force before it reached the younger generation.
The Aptitude Rating Stele did not shatter. It did not crumble. It exploded—reduced to rubble and fine dust in an instant, leaving a small crater sizzling between the two remaining steles, curling smoke rising from the charred earth like incense from an altar after the ceremony has ended.
The other two steles remained standing—undamaged. A testament to the material they were made from, and to the scale of what had just passed through the second one.
Su Tianhao stood twenty metres away, gaze lingering on the small crater and the rising smoke. His brows drew together slowly.
"I hope everyone is safe."
The voice drifted through the settling dust like light through a window—calm and unhurried, the kind of voice that makes a space feel less dangerous simply by occupying it.
He didn't need to turn to know who it was.
"Lord Duan. Thank you for the warning."
His voice was calm and sincere. Although he had reacted before the words reached him—the dragon instinct had seen to that—the intent behind the warning still deserved acknowledgement regardless.
Duan Fei's smile arrived without effort, the kind that had been making grown men lose their composure all morning. But Su Tianhao held her gaze without wavering.
Her smile widened very slightly. "It's nothing. I'm certain you would have made it out regardless."
Su Tianhao's pupils tightened—a single beat of genuine surprise, recovered before it could become anything visible. "...Sorry for destroying your treasure."
"Hahahaha!"
Huo Changfeng's laughter tore through the tension like a river breaking through a dam—warm, uncontained, completely genuine.
"Don't worry about it!" He waved a broad hand. "It's nothing! Go ahead with the final test."
Su Tianhao nodded once and turned to the Bone Age Discernment Stele. He walked toward it with the quiet indifference of someone who had already moved past the chaos and was simply attending to what came next.
The crowd snapped back to attention.
He placed his hand on the stone. A blinding light responded immediately—intense but not blinding enough to steal his vision entirely.
He felt the array probing him. His hand turned semi-transparent under the glow, and for just a moment he could see through his own skin—bones, veins, muscles rendered faintly visible beneath the surface. His bones carried strange rune-like carvings he couldn't immediately identify. His veins shimmered, not with the cool jade-green of ordinary cultivators, but with something warmer and stranger.
Molten gold.
Not mundane. Not ordinary. Something that belonged to a different category entirely.
'Dragon Vein,' he recognised immediately. Awakened during that agonising transformation in the Verdant Mist Forest.
Before anything else could be discerned—by him or anyone watching—the light faded. Gone in an instant, as if it had decided its work was done and withdrawn before anyone could ask further questions.
Two characters appeared on the stele in steady, clear light.
16.
"SIXTEEN YEARS OLD?!!!"
The crowd erupted—a single voice made of a thousand—rolling off the mountain and carrying outward to distant peaks. Birds fled from the nearest trees in panicked flocks, their wings beating into sudden sky.
---
Meanwhile, deep within the Qingyun Sect—in a dim cave somewhere within the seventh peak—a pair of ancient eyes opened in the darkness.
Pale jade at the iris. Black at the pupil. The sclera threaded with deep azure.
The same eyes that had looked at Su Tianhao through the gate calligraphy and faded before anyone else could see.
"The second pillar has arrived."
The voice that followed was deep, sacred, and impossibly old—the kind of voice that makes the air feel thinner simply by existing within it.
Footsteps approached from outside. Soft, measured—the shuffle of ancient sandals on stone. An old man appeared at the cave's mouth. He did not step inside.
He stood nearly two metres tall, his back curved slightly with the particular grace of someone who had carried great weight for so long the posture had become natural. A long cane supported him, both hands resting on its head. His face was ancient in the way that went beyond years—the face from old paintings, from myths, from the kind of stories told to children and then quietly told again to adults. Long white hair and beard that fell like twin waterfalls. Long white brows that drooped several inches past his eyes. A face of deep wrinkles that had somehow become distinguished rather than diminished by time.
And his eyes—pale grey, clouded at first glance. The kind of eyes a casual observer would assume were blind.
They were not.
This was Yun Wuji. Ancestor of the Qingyun Sect. Descendant of the Cloud Severing Monarch.
He bowed deeply toward the cave before raising his gaze to the ancient eyes within it. His voice carried the weight of a man choosing his words very carefully.
"You felt it too, Great One. The prophecy—it's coming to pass."
No immediate response. The silence stretched. Then the ancient voice came—low, measured, carrying something that sounded almost like nostalgia.
"With the coming of a new age, three individuals would be born. Individuals of remarkable talent and destiny—the likes of which Longzhou has not seen before. Anomalies whose talent would break the conventional limits of measurement. The Three Pillars. When this happens, evil will rise. Ancient darkness will resurface. Be prepared. May the Three Pillars be ready—for only they can shield this nation from what is coming."
"Yes," Yun Wuji said quietly. "That prophecy." A breath. "Last year, Mei Yuelan's disciple—Lu Ruyi—awakened a talent that broke the Aptitude Rating Stele."
A pause.
"Now this young man has achieved something greater still. The stele did not break. It exploded."
The ancient voice hummed—low, deliberate.
"They are the first and second pillars. And I fear the third pillar's arrival is closer than any of us would prefer."
"What do you mean, Great One?" Yun Wuji asked carefully.
"The first pillar was found in the Lianhua Sect. The second arrived at the Qingyun Sect." The voice paused, as though giving the pattern time to speak for itself. "This is not coincidence. There is a greater destiny at play—one that even I cannot see through entirely."
"Lianhua Sect... Qingyun Sect..." Yun Wuji turned the words over slowly, his pale grey eyes widening. "Then next would be the Xuanhu Sect. The first among the Three Great Sects."
"Exactly," the voice confirmed. "The Xuanhu Sect holds their entrance examination one month from now. That is the stage upon which the third will emerge."
"This—" Yun Wuji's brows drew together, his long white hair stirring in the cave's slow air.
"There is no use in worrying," the voice said flatly. Then quieter—
"We must simply be prepared."
The words trailed away like wind finding the end of a corridor.
Then—it filled all corners of the cave.
"All of us."