[HOST CULTIVATION: BODY FORGING REALM — 4TH LAYER. TEN-THOUSANDFOLD ENHANCEMENT AVAILABLE. CONFIRM?]
Lu Chen tapped Yes.
DING!
[INITIATING TEN-THOUSANDFOLD ENHANCEMENT…]
The effect was instantaneous.
Power detonated through his meridians like a dam bursting. His cultivation didn't rise — it exploded.
Body Forging 4th Layer Peak.
5th. 5th Peak.
6th. 7th. 8th.
9th Layer Peak.
Done. The entire Body Forging Realm, conquered in seconds.
"Eight years," Lu Chen thought, even as the surge continued. "Eight years to crawl to the 4th Layer. Thirty more might not have taken me this far."
But it didn't stop.
Deep in his core, something shifted. His energy compressed, liquefied, and refined itself into something far denser and purer — True Yuan, the concentrated essence of a cultivator's power, born only when raw cultivation was pushed beyond its limits. It crackled through him like a current finding a new path.
BOOM.
True Yuan Realm. Broken through.
In Azure Sky Sect, that single step meant the difference between outer and inner disciple. Status. Respect. A place worth having.
It didn't matter. He was already past it.
True Yuan 1st Layer. 3rd. 6th. 9th Peak.
His True Yuan surged through the Eight Extraordinary Meridians in a torrent, scouring them clean. His dantian cracked open — expanded more than a hundredfold — and flooded with True Yuan that dwarfed everything before it.
Sea-Unity Realm. Shattered through.
If True Yuan was a stream, this was an ocean. Dark, fathomless, and limitless.
He kept going.
Sea-Unity 1st Layer. 4th. 7th. 9th Peak.
Core disciples. Pillars of the sect. He'd just blown past all of them without slowing down.
Then something changed.
The ocean of True Yuan inside him began to compress. Hundreds of cycles per breath — crushing, condensing, refining — until the endless sea collapsed inward and solidified into a single, fist-sized sphere of blinding power.
Divine Core Realm.
The compression continued.
Divine Core 1st Layer. 2nd. 3rd.
4th Layer.
Silence.
The enhancement was complete.
Lu Chen exhaled slowly and opened his eyes. A sharp light flashed within them, there and gone in an instant.
Three major realms. He'd leaped three entire major realms in less than a day. From the weakest outer disciple to an existence that could stand as an outer elder of Azure Sky Sect.
He almost laughed.
"Cultivation is harder to raise than I expected — even with ten thousand times the power."
The math made a strange kind of sense. A 1st-Grade Pill boosted ten-thousandfold became a 5th-Grade Pill. But he, starting at Body Forging, had only reached Divine Core 4th Layer — not the Divine Ability Realm a 5th-Grade Pill would serve. A pill could power a higher realm — but taking a pill wasn't the same as having lived through it.
Still. Divine Core 4th Layer.
"Lucky I enhanced my body and soul first," he thought. "Otherwise, I might not have been able to contain a surge like that."
"Even among Azure Sky Sect's true disciples, I'm no weaker now."
He knew the hierarchy well. Outer disciples, inner disciples, core disciples, true disciples — and above them all, elders. True disciples were the chosen heirs of inner elders, Vice Sect Masters, the Sect Master himself. Most started weak and grew slowly.
Not all of them.
Shen Qing had begun as a mortal, same as anyone. Eight years later, she stood at Divine Core 9th Layer — her True Yuan so dense and refined that her combat power brushed the edge of Divine Ability Realm. She had crushed other true disciples so thoroughly that the sect had stopped looking for a title and simply called her what she was.
The Sect Goddess.
There is no Sect Prince, people said. Only her.
Lu Chen filed that away and moved on.
DING!
[GOLDEN BODY ART — ENHANCED TEN-THOUSANDFOLD. COMPLETE.]
[DRAGON SPEAR ART — ENHANCED TEN-THOUSANDFOLD. COMPLETE.]
[NOTE: RENAMING AVAILABLE.]
"Rename them." He didn't hesitate. "Golden Body Art. Dragon Spear Art."
[RENAMING SUCCESSFUL.]
He pulled up the results:
Golden Body Art (Earth-Grade, Mid)
Dragon Spear Art (Earth-Grade, Peak)
Grades ran Mortal → Mysterious → Earth → Heaven → Saint, each tier a hundredfold beyond the last. His old Body Forging Art had been Mortal-Grade Mid. Two full tiers above Mortal-Grade Mid: Earth-Grade Mid. The Serpent Spear Art — once Mortal-Grade Peak, a technique most outer disciples never even saw — had climbed to Earth-Grade Peak.
In Azure Sky Sect, Earth-Grade techniques were guarded jealously. Core members only. Elder-level secrets.
He now held two of them.
The Dragon Spear Art had come from his sister — obtained outside the sect, where the rules didn't apply. That, at least, had been one small mercy in an otherwise miserable eight years.
"Even in Azure Sky Sect, these would be considered priceless."
He sat cross-legged and began to cultivate.
His True Yuan, forcibly elevated by the enhancement, was vast but untempered — carrying none of Golden Body Art's nature. It needed to be reforged from the foundation up. He let the technique flow through him, restructuring his energy pathways, reshaping everything the ten-thousandfold surge had left rough and unfinished.
A full day and night passed.
When he finally stopped, the transformation was complete. His True Yuan moved differently now — refined, purposeful, several times more potent than before. Combined with his enhanced bloodline and physique, his raw strength alone neared ten million kilograms. With True Yuan amplification layered on top, the force he could project was something else entirely.
Something that would terrify most people in this sect.
"Small Success in one sitting," he murmured. "Heavenly-Grade talent really is something else."
Cultivation within a technique progressed through four stages — Entry, Small Success, Great Success, Perfection. Without his new talent, reaching even Entry in an Earth-Grade art might have taken a decade. He'd hit Small Success overnight. Great Success was only a matter of time.
He opened his attribute panel.
Host: Lu Chen
Bloodline: Mortal Human (Pureblood)
Talent: Heavenly-Grade
Cultivation: Divine Core Realm — 4th Layer
Technique: Golden Body Art (Earth-Grade, Mid)
Martial Skill: Dragon Spear Art (Earth-Grade, Peak)
He stared at it for a long moment.
Pureblood. That was new — added after his enhancement. No Spirit Physique. No Divine Physique. Just a mortal human body, somehow carrying Heavenly-Grade talent.
An exception. An anomaly.
He closed the panel and stood.
Everything that could be enhanced had been. His body, his cultivation, his techniques — all of it rebuilt from the ground up in less than two days. There was still a spear inside, waiting. Once enhanced, it would be a fitting weapon to train Dragon Spear Art to its limits.
But first things first.
Revenge.
He pushed open the rickety door and stepped outside.
The outer grounds of Azure Sky Sect stretched endlessly — home to over a hundred thousand outer disciples living by their own rules, or lack thereof. The sect barely glanced in this direction. Chaos filled the void that authority left behind. Open rivalries, hidden grudges, disputes settled by fists or worse. Unless someone powerful had a reason to care, deaths went uninvestigated.
With backing, killing was a formality. Without it, you were prey.
Lu Chen had spent eight years understanding that reality firsthand.
High noon. Bright sun. A warm breeze moving through the outer grounds like it had no idea what was about to happen.
He walked slowly, hands loose at his sides.
Today, he thought, a lot of people are going to die.