The passage of time in the Realm of the Eternal Dawn had transformed the Citadel. It was no longer a simple floating refuge; it was a perfect biological and war machine, sustained by the Stellar World Tree and protected by the Tectonic Guardian beating beneath the stone.
But a castle, no matter how impregnable, needs pillars to hold up its roof. And Samael Morningstar knew that the foundations of his empire were not the young geniuses of the Sequences, but the veterans. Those who had been by his side since the first day, when the clan was nothing more than ruins and bloody promises.
Deep within the mini-world of the eternal dawn, exactly between the colossal roots of the Stellar Tree, lay the Origin Dragon Pond. The natural white quartz basin was filled with a thick "Vital Essence," whose colors danced between amber, gold, and crimson red. The vapor rising from the water took the shape of tiny dragons roaring in silence. It was a biological crucible designed to purify bloodlines and rewrite mortality.
At the edge of the pond, kneeling on the cold stone in perfect formation, awaited the Core Elders of the Morningstar Clan.
Samael walked slowly in front of them, his footsteps echoing in the cavern illuminated by the glow of the vital essence. Beside him, Vexia held her holographic Codex, ready to record the metrics of the evolution.
"Look up," the Patriarch ordered.
The elders obeyed. In their eyes, there was absolute reverence. There was Marcus, the First Elder and Master of the Forge, a mountain of calloused muscle. Beside him, Torian, the Second Elder and Supreme Master of Weapons, whose posture was as rigid as a drawn sword. They were followed by Sela, the Third Elder, almost invisible in the shadows of the cavern, and Livia, the Fourth Elder, emanating an emerald calm and the scent of an ancient forest.
Alongside them, Samael had summoned two more figures, veterans who had shown unquestionable loyalty and who would make up the last two pillars of the Sextet of Elders: Astarion, Supreme of Reconnaissance and Aerial Assault, a man whose eyes crackled with contained lightning; and Thalassa, Supreme of Aquatic Prisons, a woman with a cold, abyssal gaze.
"You six have been the backbone of this clan," Samael commented, stopping in front of the pond. "You have forged our weapons, trained our Dead Blood soldiers, distilled our pills, and assassinated our spies. You have reached the peak of the Stage 1 Saint Realm. To the outside world, you are legends."
Samael lowered his voice, and the air in the cavern became heavy, saturated with the immense pressure of his own cultivation. "But for what is coming, a legend is not enough. The outside world will send Great Saints, Saint Kings, and Quasi-Emperors to crush us. If we want to devour the continents, my Elders cannot be simple advanced mortals. They need the blood of the gods."
Samael raised his hand and, with his index fingernail, made a small cut on his palm. Six drops of his Primordial Dragon Blood floated in the air, shining like miniature suns, before falling directly into the Origin Dragon Pond. The amber water instantly began to boil. The mana in the place became so dense that gravity doubled.
"Enter the pond," Samael ordered, his eyes turning absolute crimson violet as he connected his mind to the System's Palace of Primordial Inheritance. "Survive the pain of transmutation. Burn your human bodies and claim the bloodline I have prepared for you. Become calamities!"
Without hesitating for a single second, the six elders stood up and marched toward the boiling water. There were no screams of fear, only the fanatical conviction of those who would give their souls for the Patriarch. As they submerged, the Origin Pond reacted violently, enveloping each one in a cocoon of primordial liquid.
Chapter 172: The Awakening of the Six Primordial Pillars
The first to break his mortality was Marcus. Inside his amber cocoon, the Master of the Forge roared. It wasn't a scream of agony, but the bellow of a mountain being born. The Earth and Magma Qi in his veins was devoured by Samael's blood, rewriting his DNA.
BOOOM! The cocoon burst in a heatwave that evaporated the moisture in the air. Marcus landed heavily on the edge of the pond, the rock beneath his feet cracking under his immense weight. His human appearance had been annihilated. He had achieved a 28% Awakening of the Iron Mountain Dragon Bloodline. Scales [Refractory Obsidian Dermis]. Black plates of pure volcanic rock, intertwined with thick veins of molten iron that pulsed with an orange light, covered his torso, arms, and neck. It was biological armor that granted him Absolute Thermal Immunity.
When Marcus opened his eyes, his amber pupils had been replaced by the [Geological Crucible Eyes], two orbs of incandescent orange. Looking at one of the cavern's columns, he immediately saw its micro-fractures and stress points. His vision could now disassemble the structure of reality.
The pressure of his aura skyrocketed like an erupting volcano. The stagnation at Stage 1 was broken. The laws of earth and metal bowed before him. Stage 3 Saint... Stage 5... Middle Stage 8 Saint! His cultivation base stabilized, but the density of his mutated body granted him a transformed battle power equivalent to a Low Stage 1 Great Saint. He was no longer just an elder; he had the strength to create his own Tectonic Domain.
Marcus clenched his immense fist, applying his new [Primordial Metal Authority]. The quartz beneath his feet instantly transmuted into Heaven-grade steel. He no longer needed a physical hammer; he was the forge. He gritted his teeth and tested the flow of his energy. Thanks to his [Tectonic Root Heart], as long as he was in contact with the ground of the realm of the eternal dawn, his Qi regenerated at a terrifying speed, making him virtually inexhaustible.
"[Doomsday Hammer Impact]," Marcus murmured, with a voice that sounded like grinding rocks. He punched the air. Not the ground, the air. The immense tectonic pressure and the heat of his magma concentrated in his fist. A seismic wave collapsed space ten meters away, generating a visual distortion where gravity and heat melted the dust particles. An enemy caught there would have seen their bones pulverized by the pressure of a mountain falling onto a nail.
Vexia adjusted her runic glasses, nodding coldly. "Record updated," the Marshal said, noting it in her Codex. "Elder Marcus, optimal state. Logistically, the mini-world is now an indestructible metal organism. He ensures that, even if the outside world burns, the Eternal Dawn remains immovable."
Barely had Vexia's words ended when the second cocoon in the pond was sliced cleanly from the inside, not by an explosion, but by an edge of microscopic precision.
Torian, the Supreme Master of Weapons, stepped out of the water walking with perfect rigidity. His awakening reached 30% of the Black Steel Dragon Bloodline. His concept was not brute force like Marcus, but the "Sword of Reality." His body had transcended flesh to become a [Saint Artifact Body]. His muscles and skin had been transmuted into intertwined black steel fibers. He didn't need armor; his own forearm was an indestructible Saint Grade shield. From the small cuts the pond had caused in his transition, red blood did not flow, but a dense, silvery mercury that solidified instantly, sealing the fissures.
Torian looked up. His [Edge Calibration Eyes] were now two gray pupils, devoid of emotion, acting as molecular density scanners. He could see the "material fatigue" in the air itself, detecting where the ambient Qi was less dense to strike a perfect Rupture Blow.
His cultivation, fueled by the pure heritage of metal, roared upward. He matched Marcus in a blink, shattering his bottlenecks until reaching the Middle Stage 8 Saint Realm, with a transformed battle power of Low Stage 1 Great Saint.
The air around Torian began to hum with a sharp metallic sound. His [Sovereign Metal Authority] passively activated. Within fifty meters, the spare swords Vexia carried in her dimensional inventory trembled in terror, recognizing their absolute king. Torian didn't need to unsheathe. His [High-Density Mercury Marrow] granted him abyssal destructive inertia. He raised two fingers and pointed at a rock a hundred meters away.
"[Apex Thrust: The End of Resistance]." A fine beam of black metal Qi shot out from his fingertips. There was no explosion. The beam pierced the rock as if it were air, perforating it at the molecular level. A Great Saint's energy shield would have been ignored by the pure density superiority of that attack.
Vexia continued typing, her eyes glowing with golden data. "Elder Torian, optimal state. The most stable asset. No magic, no illusions; just metal and a target. The vanguard's tactical balance has been secured, Master."
But the pond was not finished yet. While Marcus's heat and Torian's edge dominated the space, the shadows at the edges of the cavern began to lengthen unnaturally, and the scent of ancient forest and jade sap flooded the heavy air. The cocoons of Sela and Livia, along with those of the two new elders, were about to rewrite the laws of stealth, life, storm, and the abyss.
The ecosystem of the deep caverns of the Citadel of the Eternal Dawn had changed irreversibly. The mere presence of Marcus and Torian, now converted into living avatars of tectonic magma and black steel, had distorted the flow of Qi in the air. Their breaths sounded like the bellows of a divine forge and the scraping of drawn swords.
But the Origin Dragon Pond still boiled. Samael's Primordial Dragon blood, acting as the most aggressive catalyst in the universe, continued working on the four remaining cocoons. The amber and crimson water swirled in a perfect vortex, and the expectant silence reigning in the subterranean vault was about to be shattered by subtlety, life, the storm, and the abyss.
Samael Morningstar watched from the edge of the pond, his hands clasped behind his back. Beside him, Vexia endlessly processed algorithms on her holographic Codex, her golden eyes shining behind the runic crystals as the clan's probabilities skyrocketed toward infinity.
The third cocoon did not explode. There were no seismic shockwaves like Marcus's, nor molecular slashes like Torian's. In fact, if one wasn't paying absolute attention, they wouldn't have even noticed the cocoon was gone.
It simply vanished, swallowed by a darkness that seemed to devour the pond's very light.
From the shadow cast by one of the immense white quartz stalagmites, Sela emerged, the Third Elder and Supreme of Intelligence. She did not walk forward; she slid out of the two-dimensional floor as if the concept of depth did not apply to her existence.
Her awakening had reached 25% of the Eternal Night Dragon Bloodline. The physical change in Sela was both astonishing and terrifying. Her body was covered by the [Ebony Velvet Scales]. At first glance, she appeared to be wearing a skintight suit of the darkest, most matte fabric conceivable, but in reality, they were ultra-fine scales that didn't reflect a single photon of light. This biological Mantle of Silence absorbed 100% of sound and thermal vibrations. Sela was, for all physical and magical intents and purposes, a sensory void. She emitted no heat, displaced no air when moving, and her Qi signature was completely undetectable, blending in with the "background noise" of space.
Sela raised her face to Samael. Her human eyes had disappeared. In their place, she possessed the [Stellar Abyss Eyes]. They were two spheres of unfathomable blackness speckled with tiny points of white light, simulating distant galaxies. Through those eyes, the physical world lost its meaning. Sela no longer saw flesh, stone, or metal; she saw the "thread of life," that ethereal, silver connection that bound the soul of every living being to its mortal vessel. She could see the emotional fluctuations in the spiritual shadows of Marcus and Torian, effortlessly identifying their absolute vital points.
The Qi vortex around her was completely silent, but no less violent. The primordial energy pushed her cultivation base relentlessly. The Stage 1 bottleneck dissolved into darkness. Stage 4 Saint... Stage 6 Saint... Middle Stage 8 Saint! Like her companions, her actual battle power, empowered by the intangibility and lethality of her bloodline, stabilized at Low Stage 1 Great Saint.
Sela took a step forward, and her [Umbral Meld] instinctively activated. Linked to the shadows cast by the colossal Stellar World Tree, the elder understood she was no longer confined to a single place. The entire Citadel was now a map interconnected by darkness; she could dive into the shadow of the Throne Room and emerge in the deepest dungeon cell in the exact same heartbeat.
"[Primordial Nightmare Paralysis]," Sela whispered. Her voice didn't travel through the air, but resonated directly in the minds of those present. She projected her own shadow onto the illuminated floor, intentionally touching the shadow cast by a large testing rock at the far end of the room. Instantly, the rock began to crack. Sela's skill did not block the target's Qi, but restricted the very concept of their shadow. Any living being touched by that skill would feel the atmospheric pressure turn solid, anchoring them to the ground with the weight of an invisible mountain, leaving them at the mercy of the slaughterhouse.
Slowly, Sela materialized the [Silent Void Dagger] in her right hand. She didn't draw it from a scabbard; the blade of solid darkness sprouted directly from the shadow of her own hand. It was a weapon that ignored physical armor, designed to sever the lifeline directly from the opponent's blind spot.
Sela knelt on one knee before Samael, merging almost entirely with the darkness of the floor. "The shadows of the outer continent already belong to you, Patriarch. No one will breathe without our network knowing. Traitors will die before formulating the thought of treason."
Vexia adjusted her glasses, a rare smile of genuine approval crossing her perfect lips. "Elder Sela, optimal state of absolute stealth," the Marshal dictated. "Logistically, she is the asset that allows me to manage this empire without fear of sabotage. As long as she watches the shadows, there is no spy in this world capable of infiltrating. The Morningstar Clan's immune system has been perfected."
Immediately following Vexia's declaration, the fourth cocoon reacted.
The cave, which had filled with volcanic heat, the smell of molten iron, and a suffocating blackness, was suddenly purged by a wave of overwhelming freshness. The scent of an ancient forest, of wet earth after a storm, and of sweet sap flooded the environment.
The cocoon did not explode or vanish; it bloomed. The amber walls slowly opened like the heavy petals of a gigantic lotus flower, revealing Livia, the Fourth Elder and Supreme of Alchemy.
Her evolution had reached a 22% Awakening of the Vital Jade Dragon Bloodline. Livia's transformation was of an ethereal beauty, but hid a terrifying biological tenacity. Her skin was covered by the [Floral Jade Scales], translucent green formations that looked like jade leaves intricately carved by an artisan god. These scales did not merely serve as armor; they acted as a Photosynthesis Dermis. Visibly, they absorbed the cave's ambient Qi and the filtered aurora light, passively regenerating her energy.
Livia opened her [Eternal Emerald Eyes]. The soft green glow emitted by her pupils was an absolute biological scanner. Resting her gaze on Torian and Marcus, she could instantly see the micro-fissures in their new Qi channels caused by the violent evolution. She saw the heartbeat of life, the flow of blood, and the invisible obstructions.
Her cultivation bloomed with the same inescapable majesty of nature reclaiming ancient ruins. The barriers of her Dantian were fertilized by Samael's blood, propelling her upward in a torrential ascent. Stage 3 Saint... Stage 6 Saint... Middle Stage 8 Saint! Her combat power consolidated at Low Stage 1 Great Saint, but her value did not lie in direct destructive capacity, but in the inescapable manipulation of life and cellular death.
Livia exhaled deeply, and her [Primordial Restoration Breath] filled the cavern. It was an emerald mist saturated with the essence of the Stellar Tree. When the mist touched Marcus and Torian, the small micro-fissures in their bodies disappeared in a millisecond. Any Saint-grade poison or demonic curse would have been disintegrated by this extreme purification. But the true monstrosity of her bloodline lay within her own veins. Her blood had transmuted into [Jade Sap].
"Patriarch," Livia said, her voice serene and compassionate, but with a deep resonance. "My roots have touched the bottom of the spring of life. If any of our Dead Blood soldiers, or one of the young geniuses, loses a limb, a single drop of my blood will force a cellular regeneration so violent that the arm or leg will grow back in minutes."
To demonstrate her offensive power, Livia stepped lightly on the quartz floor. "[Emerald Root Prison]," she murmured. Without warning, roots as thick as oak trunks, made entirely of indestructible jade, erupted from the solid floor fifty meters away. The roots intertwined to form a pressure cage. They weren't mere bindings; Livia demonstrated how the roots acted as Qi Siphons, designed to drain the vital energy of any trapped enemy and channel it directly to her allies on the battlefield through the subterranean network. It was parasitism taken to the divine.
Vexia raised an eyebrow, typing furiously. "Elder Livia, optimal biological support state. Logistically, her capability is an unfair advantage, Master. She is the engine of perpetuity for our siege lines. With the power to purify lethal toxins and regenerate amputated limbs in minutes, the Morningstar Clan doesn't just fight; it survives any war of attrition. The mortality rate of our troops has just been reduced by ninety-four percent."
Samael nodded. The Anvil, the Sword, the Shadow, and the Lotus were ready. But the outer continent was vast. To dominate the skies and the seas, Samael needed the last two commanders. The ones who would lead the Storm and the Abyss.
The fifth cocoon, which had been vibrating with a constant electrical hum, finally detonated. KRA-KOOM! A bolt of pure plasma, born of primordial blood, shattered the amber. The sonic shockwave swept through the cavern, followed by the howl of a hurricane wind that cut like blades.
From the explosion's crater emerged Valerius, the Fifth Elder and Supreme of Reconnaissance and Aerial Assault. His awakening fixed at 20% of the Storm Piercer Dragon Bloodline. Valerius was the embodiment of speed and celestial fury. His body had become slender, carved like perfect aerodynamics. Along his arms, calves, and back had grown the [Static Ozone Feathers]. They were not bird feathers, but elongated, serrated scales that generated perpetual slipstreams. They constantly emitted sparks of static electricity, completely eliminating air resistance around him.
Valerius opened the [Cloud-Breaker Eyes]. His pupils shone with an intense electric blue light, and fine branches of lightning danced in his sclera. Through these eyes, Valerius could see atmospheric pressure changes, thermal currents, and kinetic vectors from kilometers away. Nothing in the sky could hide from him; not a bird, not an enemy flying ship, not the camouflage of a wind-element Great Saint.
The Qi swirled around him in a microscopic tornado, violently pushing his cultivation level. Like his brothers-in-arms, the chains of mortality were broken, elevating him to the Middle Stage 8 Saint Realm, with the aerial lethality of a Low Stage 1 Great Saint.
Valerius did not touch the ground; he floated a few centimeters off the stone, suspended by his own electromagnetic field. His entire skeleton had mutated into [Lightning Rod Bones], an internal structure capable of absorbing and redirecting the lightning bolts of heavenly tribulations. With a flick of his wrist, he demonstrated his mastery. "[Void Guillotine]," Valerius bellowed. He launched a slash with his open hand. A blade of compressed wind shot toward the cavern ceiling. But it wasn't just wind; Valerius's technique created an absolute vacuum in the center of the slash. Upon impacting a massive stalactite, the air around it imploded, cutting the stone in half not by friction, but by pressure collapse.
Immediately after, Valerius disappeared in a blinding flash and a deafening crash, materializing instantly behind Marcus, utilizing his [Thunder Shift]. He had traveled through the free electrons in the air, a form of short-distance teleportation that made him unreachable by any conventional weapon.
"The skies of the Empire belong to you, my Lord," Valerius said, his voice resonating with the crackle of a storm. "No enemy will fly over our land without my permission. I will be the eyes of the storm and the lightning that executes your will from the clouds."
Vexia recorded the data without blinking at the electrical flash. "Elder Valerius, air superiority confirmed. Estimated tactical deployment: perfect for preemptive strikes and annihilation of other sects' aerial formations."
Finally, the last cocoon in the pond claimed its birth. Unlike Valerius's explosion, Thalassa's birth was a suffocating implosion. The amber cocoon was sucked inward, crushed by overwhelming centripetal force, until it shrank to the size of a pearl that then dissolved into dark water.
Thalassa, the Sixth Elder and Supreme of Aquatic Prisons, rose from the pond's waters. Her evolution culminated in a 21% Awakening of the Abyssal Trench Dragon Bloodline. Thalassa's presence was the definition of the silent terror of the ocean floor. Her skin had acquired a pale, almost translucent blue tone, covered by the [Deep Black Sea Scales]. These scales were not designed to deflect swords, but to withstand the pressure of millions of tons of water. No crushing attack or gravitational manipulation could break her bones.
Thalassa opened her [Bioluminescent Lure Eyes]. In the darkness of the cavern, her pupils glowed with a hypnotic and ghostly cyan light. Those who looked directly into those eyes would feel the despair of drowning, a biological hypnosis that drew enemies into submission, shattering their will to fight.
With the slowness of a high tide, her cultivation ascended, claiming her place at the peak. The primordial energy filled her, taking her to the Middle Stage 8 Saint Realm, with the ability to suppress enemies in an aquatic domain like a Low Stage 1 Great Saint.
The air around Thalassa became unbearably humid. Her [Crushing Depth Aura] altered the environmental moisture, turning oxygen into "heavy water." Those caught in her radius of action would feel like they were walking on the seafloor, their movements slowed to a fraction of their normal speed, while the weight of the air crushed their lungs, an effect she called the Drowning of the Soul.
Thalassa raised a hand toward an empty section of the cavern. "[Tartarus Water Prison]," she whispered, with a voice that mimicked the echo of an underwater cave. The heavy air instantly condensed into a spinning, black water sphere ten meters in diameter. This was not normal water; it was a hyper-dense, unbreakable liquid. Prisoners locked in that sphere would suffer the pressure of the seabed, their Dantians sealed and their bones creaking under the implosive force, with no possibility of invoking their own laws.
If she wanted to execute, Thalassa only had to snap her fingers, invoking the [Abyssal Geyser], an ultra-high-pressure water jet capable of cutting diamonds and stellar steel as easily as cutting wet paper.
Thalassa bowed to Samael, her abyssal gaze full of dark devotion. "The seas and rivers will obey the command of the Eternal Dawn, Patriarch. And those who defy your will... will discover that my prisons in the abyss have no exit door. They will be interrogated by the silence of the depths until their minds break."
Vexia closed her Codex with a sharp snap. The recording was complete. "Elder Thalassa, naval and containment control secured. All six pillars have evolved successfully, Master. The Great Saint-level military command structure is operational and ready to be deployed on the continent."
Samael Morningstar walked toward the center of his six elders' formation. Marcus, Torian, Sela, Livia, Valerius, and Thalassa were kneeling before him, forming a semicircle of pure primordial power. The combined auras of Earth, Metal, Shadow, Jade, Storm, and Abyss made the roots of the Stellar World Tree tremble. The Patriarch looked at them one by one.
"Look at yourselves," Samael said, his voice low but resonating with absolute power. "You are no longer the remnants of a destroyed clan, chased into the desert to hide in a cavern. Look at how much we have grown; we now possess a world of our own. Now, you are walking calamities forged in my blood."
Samael looked at them one by one. His crimson-violet eyes burned with the fire of a conqueror who finally had the right pieces on the cosmic chessboard.
"The stage of survival is over," Samael declared, his voice resonating like a death knell for the rest of the world. "You have abandoned your humanity to become my claws. I have forged the Anvil and the Sword. I have awakened the Shadow that will hide us and the Lotus that will keep us alive. I have summoned the Storm that will clear the sky and the Abyss that will swallow our secrets."
The Patriarch spread his arms, and Kurohime materialized at his side, vibrating with murderous anticipation.
"Prepare yourselves, Elders. In seven days, when the Imperial and Void Sequences finish their assimilation in the healing domes, we will open the Gates of the Labyrinth. We will send our troops to the outer continent. We will begin our hunt. And the first target... won't know what hit them until their sects are reduced to ash."
The six elders lowered their heads until their foreheads touched the cold quartz stone. "FOR THE ETERNAL DAWN!" they roared in unison, their combined voices shaking the foundations of the Citadel.
The Morningstar Empire was ready. Peace had concluded, and the era of blood was about to begin.