Boom! Boom! Boom!
A terrifying surge of high-quality True Yuan erupted from Lu Chen's body, pouring upward and outward until it condensed behind him into two colossal azure dragons. They coiled around each other like they were playing with a pearl—massive, ancient, hungry. Each dragon stretched over a mile in length. They weren't real, not in the way flesh and blood was real, but their presence alone sent a suffocating pressure rolling outward in every direction, crushing the air, pressing down on the earth. It made the black mountain's earlier display look like a parlor trick.
Under that pressure, the outer disciples dropped. Knees hit dirt. Hands pressed flat against the ground. Even the outer elders staggered, faces bloodless, eyes wide. In the outer sect's Scripture Pavilion, Resource Hall, and Task Hall, the other hall masters stood rigid, expressions grim.
One of them finally broke the silence.
"Zhao Shun really went and kicked an iron plate this time." A pause, heavy with something between pity and vindication. "None of the rest of us dared to make a move on that spear. But he did."
Zhao Shun. That was Hall Master Zhao's real name. Not that it would matter much longer.
The two azure dragons were terrifying enough on their own—but the Azure Dragon Spear in Lu Chen's grip was waking up. Its aura alone climbed past the ceiling of the Divine Core Realm, swallowing the black mountain's presence entirely, like the sun swallowing a candle flame.
Lu Chen hung in the air, spear in hand, two azure dragons coiling behind him. His golden eyes blazed with True Yuan. His presence radiated something that had no business existing in someone his age—an aura of absolute invincibility, like a divine king in his prime who had simply decided to finish things.
"How… how is this possible?!"
Hall Master Zhao's face had gone the color of ash. The pressure radiating off Lu Chen wasn't the output of a Divine Core Realm cultivator. It was the might of the Divine Ability Realm. Crushing. Absolute. Inescapable.
The fear hit him before the logic could. Raw, animal fear—the kind that bypassed reason and went straight to the body.
I'm going to die.
Every instinct he had was screaming it. If Lu Chen attacked, it was over. But Lu Chen was only at the fourth level of the Divine Core Realm—how? How was this possible? Had he somehow forced the peak-grade Divine Weapon to output at full capacity?
It didn't matter. The answer didn't matter.
"Die!!!"
Murderous intent ignited behind Lu Chen's golden eyes. Hall Master Zhao had come here to kill him. Fair enough. He'd return the favor. The spear launched forward like a striking serpent, and Lu Chen's figure disappeared from where he stood. The two azure dragons let out a simultaneous roar—then folded into the spear, merging with it, becoming it.
"No—!!!"
Hall Master Zhao's eyes blew wide. He threw himself backward, trying to flee, and felt the killing intent lock onto him like a brand. His instincts told him what his mind refused to accept: there was no escaping this. No direction he could run that it wouldn't follow. His only option was to meet it head on—
—but that was exactly the mistake that had brought him here in the first place.
He shouldn't have come. He knew that now. But who could have predicted this? A good-for-nothing who'd been stuck at the fourth level of the Body Forging Realm, who had somehow clawed his way to the Divine Core Realm before even reaching his mid-twenties—while Zhao had lived for centuries and still assumed he had the advantage. He had been certain he could crush him.
Certainty was a luxury he no longer had.
There was no escape. Hall Master Zhao summoned the black mountain, threw everything he had into a desperate block, and screamed, "Lu Chen, stop! You can't kill me! I'm from Vice Sect Master Zhao's lineage!"
Lu Chen didn't slow down. The spear flew like a dragon. Nothing stopped a dragon mid-flight.
Boom—!
The black mountain couldn't hold. It was sent spinning through the air like a discarded toy. A dazzling beam of azure light pierced through Hall Master Zhao—clean, total, final. The light faded. The dragons were gone. Lu Chen reappeared in the same breath, holding his spear, feet planted in the air.
"I… I won't accept…"
The whisper died before it finished. Hall Master Zhao's body detonated into a crimson mist—and then even the mist was gone, evaporated on contact with the lingering power still bleeding off the Azure Dragon Spear. Body and bones, erased.
Nothing left.
Lu Chen stood tall in the empty air, True Yuan and divine light still rolling off him in slow waves. The aura of invincibility hadn't faded yet. He looked, in that moment, exactly like what he was becoming: a young divine king with no ceiling in sight.
He opened his left hand. A spatial ring dropped into his palm—Hall Master Zhao's.
"Come."
The black mountain, still tumbling through the air from where it had been deflected, reversed course and flew back to him. He bit his thumb, pressed blood and True Yuan into the surface, and methodically erased Zhao's imprint. Just like that, a low-grade Divine Weapon changed hands. To anyone else, it was a low-grade Divine Weapon and nothing more. To Lu Chen, its potential value could be multiplied ten thousandfold.
He didn't rush to enhance it. His current cultivation wasn't enough to properly wield a peak-grade Divine Weapon—let alone a low-grade one enhanced ten thousand times over. He'd break himself trying.
He reached into his storage and produced a seventh-grade healing pill, tossing it back without ceremony. He wasn't injured—but executing the Twin Dragon Kill and fully unleashing the Azure Dragon Spear's power had burned through nearly ninety percent of his True Yuan. His Divine Core had contracted to a fraction of its normal size.
The seventh-grade pill hit his system like a flood. True Yuan rushed back in within moments, filling the hollow spaces, restoring what had been spent. Healing pills didn't just close wounds. They replenished True Yuan as well—body and core, restored in one go.
His cultivation was still too low. The Dragon Spear Art and the Azure Dragon Spear both belonged to a tier far above the Divine Core Realm. Deploying them even once was enough to wring him dry. But the results spoke for themselves: a single use had pushed his battle prowess to the Divine Ability Realm level, enough to instant-kill a peak Divine Core Realm expert backed by a low-grade Divine Weapon.
Worth it. For now.
"Not bad for the head of an outer sect hall," Lu Chen muttered, sweeping his eyes across the contents of the spatial ring. A slow grin spread across his face. "He was sitting on quite a stash."
hundreds of thousands of low-grade spirit stones. Tens of thousands of mid-grade spirit stones. Hundreds of high-grade spirit stones. Pills—second to fourth-grade, healing, cultivation, detoxification—dozens of bottles across the board. Cultivation techniques, martial skills, spirit weapons, miscellaneous treasures. A respectable haul by any measure.
Then something caught his eye.
"Wait—what's this?"
Tucked into a corner of the ring sat a single fruit. Pure white, almost luminous, shaped uncannily like a cultivator's Divine Core.
A Heavenly Fruit.
For a Divine Core Realm expert, this was a windfall of the highest order. One Heavenly Fruit could advance a Divine Core Realm cultivator by a full small realm. And a small realm wasn't nothing—moving from the first level to the second level of the Divine Core Realm counted as one small realm. Moving from the first level to the peak of the first level, or from that peak to the second level, only counted as half.
Lu Chen stared at it. Then the thought arrived, slow and inevitable, like a sun rising.
What would happen if I enhanced this Heavenly Fruit ten thousand times?
His eyes lit up.